My son turns 25 today. Naturally my mind moves back a quarter of a century, to 1980.
Jimmy Carter was still in the White House then, still trying to get the country to realize that the energy crisis was real and not contrived. He, like his predecessor, would be defeated for re-election at least partly because the public blamed him for economic problems that were really caused by drastic increases in the price of oil.
We know, today (though it wasn’t in the news then), that the United States had passed its peak oil production in 1970. The two drastic oil-related economic shocks – the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 and the drastic price hikes of 1979 – would not have happened if the United States had still had enough domestic oil to merely open the taps wider. Once you become a net importer instead of a net exporter, you’ve lost control of the game.
We lost control as long ago as 1970. It didn’t become apparent until recently because we were shielded from the effects for 20 years by the massive discoveries of oil in Alaska and in the North Sea.
Guess what. Turns out they were the last big discoveries. Geologists aren’t hopeful about finding any more large oil fields. We had it, we squandered it, and now we’re on the far side of the peak-oil curve. Not just America, but the entire world, has now used half of the world’s entire endowment of oil. From now on, it’s only going to get scarcer and more expensive.
Therefore, we have seen the end of cheap oil, forever. And this means the end of a way of life that depended on cheap oil. In turn, this means drastic changes in the way we see things, which means drastic changes in our values, individually and as a society.
I don’t think it has to be a disaster. It doesn’t even need to be unfortunate. But it does mean things are going to change. A quarter of a century hence, people will look back at 2005 and say “what were those people thinking?â€Â
Happy birthday, David. Your generation is going to live in a very different world.