In The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream, Director Gregory Greene, addresses the issues that the world more specifically suburbs, is going to face when oil peaks. Greene is educating his audience on what to expect when the production of oil peaks. The meaning of oil peaking comes from M. King Hubbert's theory, in which the production of oil reaches its maximum and starts to decline, which causes the price of oil to increase. Greene presents the issues humanity will face when oil production starts to decline, with many authors and experts explaining the situation. These experts explain we can no longer ignore this gigantic issue.
The End of Suburbia opens up with the history on the development on the suburbs we have today. In the late 1800s, society no longer wished to live in the city, due to pollution, factories, and noise. The upper middle class, moved into the suburbs seeking to live in peace, away from the city. The suburbs started off as a single home on a large estate isolated from everyone. However, after WWII soldiers were given homes in the suburbs as gifts for their services to our country and thus began the development of the suburbs we have today.
The suburbs started to grow and grow due to the fact that people were now able to buy and own their own homes. As the suburbs grew, the issue of transportation grew because people needed to get around. People could no longer walk to places, so society turned to automobiles. The reason automobiles was such an easier solution over railroads and buses, was due to the fact that suburbs were large and people were spread out making railroads and buses inefficient. People started to depend more and more on cars to get around and it wasn't an issue at the time because gas was very inexpensive. If oil wasn't cheap suburbs wouldn't have existed.
As suburbs continued to grow so did the demand on oil and natural gasses. In the suburbs, people rely on oil to get around and on natural gasses to provide heat and many other things. As the demand on oil grew because the growth of suburbs, the amount of oil is now running out. Julian Darley an expert provided by Greene explains how oil is obtained. He explains that there are two layers of oil; the first (top layer) is easily obtained, while the second is very difficult and expensive to get. Once the first layer is gone no matter how much effort you put in you cannot get same rate of production as before, in other words the production of oil is peaked.
M. King Hubbert, a very famous expert on this issue and a worker for shell, he conducted a speech on this issue in the mid-late 20th century. He calculated by 1970, we would peak and oil production would start to decline. At first, although he was much respected, nobody took his theory and calculations serious. Until in 1970, when they found out his theory proved to be true, that oil production would peak and start to decline. M. King Hubbert's theory also calculated that the world's oil production would peak in the mid-1990s. M. King Hubbert's theory would have been correct about that as well, if not had been for the prices of oil shooting up in 1970 due to the scare of oil peaking. Today experts are calculating that the world's oil production will peak 10-15 after M. King Hubbert's original production.
As time passes we now expect to live this same lifestyle forever, we are not ready to move backwards. We expect that oil and natural gas will always be there to fuel our cars and heat our homes but to believe that is unrealistic. Suburbs use tons oil and natural gas that it is suggested it was the reason behind the power outage in 2003. From 4-6pm that is when the most energy is being used, commercially, industrial, and private homes are all using energy at this time. On August 13, 2003, roughly a little past 4pm, the blackout occurred leaving millions without power. Although, it was officially said to have been caused by faulty transmission lines; experts like Matthew Simmons think there is a deeper story. He believes the reason 57million people went through a blackout wasn't because faulty lines but because the natural gas everyone was using reached its limit.
With the demand of oil being so high in order to maintain the lifestyle we live today, what happens after the production of oil peaks? Experts and authors such as Michal Ruppert, James Howard and Steve Andrew discuss what the outcome will be. When oil production peaks, suburbs will soon come to end, due to the fact it cannot function without affordable and reliable fuel. The prices of food will increase, because the price of oil to fuel the machine will shoot up. Another gigantic issue we will face is war; people will fight over control of the last oil refineries. People all throughout our nation do not know this issue is alive due to the media not covering these issues. The reason behind the media keeping quiet on this entire issue is because oil peaking is bad for business. We as a society must face these facts and prepare for the future. There is no alternative fuel or substance to keep up with the way we are living today. We must change, we have to become aware of this issue and educate others on this matter. We must design smaller towns in order to walk to places instead of drive. We can no longer ignore the issue of oil production peaking and start preparing for the issues we are going to have to face.
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