A brief rant.

I’d like to take a moment to complain about the people I run into lately who throw up their hands and say, “we’re almost out of oil! That’s why this is all happening.” These folks, while well-intentioned and reasonably informed, bug me almost as much as the people who spent years saying there was plenty to go around, but Big Oil just wanted to stick it to us.

We’re not out of oil. Get a grip.

I know it’s counterintuitive since we’re staring $6.50 gas in the face, and the food distro problem is rearing its ugly head, but the point we’re at is where demand has finally outstripped supply… we’re now using up oil faster than we can pump it out of the ground, and the amount we’re bringing up is decreasing. It is just more scarce than it used to be. (No shit, you say. Well, thank you for finally paying attention.) Clearly we’re finally getting some real demand destruction now that things are so expensive, but think back; people thought the world was going to end at $2.00 a gallon, then $2.50, then it was “oh, people will get out of their cars at $3.00 a gallon”…and on and on. Even at $3.50, people bitched and moaned, but they kept filling their cars and driving alone to work every day. Europe had $6.00 gas for years and functioned impressively. North Americans have been spoiled brats.

We still have a lot of oil, though not as much as we need to run things the way we did before. But we need to STOP SETTING FIRE to what we have left. Too many other things need oil- plastics, medicines, tools, things that can keep us safe and healthy- to just waste it on internal combustion.

Looks like Matt Savinar is on my wavelength; there’s a (less ranty) discussion of the bell curve on his front page.