Lately I have been receiving email forwards and hearing a lot of talk about the price of gas and how it is sooo high no one can believe it. Allow me to weigh in on the surprise and shock people seem to feel towards the rise of gas prices.
Du-uh!
What did people think was going to happen? Did people think it would go the other way? We know that oil is non renewable and that as it gets more expensive to pump it the price will have to go up. Gas prices aren't reflecting an emergency, at least not the kind of emergency that goes away. Get used to it, the price is never going back down to where it was, and if it does it will only be long enough to relax us before the huge hike that will follow and the inevitable exhaustion of oil reserves on earth.
Does that scare you? It scares me.
Now of course I've seen star wars and I know that the future will be full of flying cars, vast stretching cities of ranging towers lit up like christmas trees, protocol droids and even droids whose only purpose for existence is to wash other droids.
All those things must be powered by something, some kind of futuristic super scientific magic. Thank goodness we have that to rely on cause otherwise without a fall back we'd be pretty screwed. However, it seems that no one presently knows what that magic power supply is, and with very little paperwork or traces of evidence of where it comes from, the prospects might be, I dunno, maybe ... bad.
Sure we can all switch to electric cars, but the food at the supermarket was probably delivered by a truck, and also boat, train or plane. Electric vehicles seem neat and promising, but think about it. You can't really have an electric jet airplane, or an electric freighter ship. Most of the billions of goods and services we rely on for survival are woven in some manner into the oil energy powered industry.
Not to mention the money you buy food with comes from a job that probably exists within our industrial economy. Not much money in the present economy comes from pre-industrial occupations. Sure if you take a drive through the rich neighborhoods you see a lot of nice homes owned by blacksmiths and spinning jenny repairmen, but don't let that deceive you. Those careers don't contribute as much to the economy as you would think.
And most of the other smithing career forms, like Swordsmith are practically dead. This is true except for Arrowsmith, who being a warped version of conservationists are probably currently recycling "crying".
So ... unless dinosaurs were nice enough to leave us some oil on the moon we better think up a plan b. Meanwhile the plot thickens, the soup thickens, and anyone want to guess how much time we have?
Opinion is somewhat divided on the matter, but forever isn't being too strongly supported by anybody.
It is true that before the industrial revolution human civilization somehow managed to survive without industrial energy. So once the 6 billion people that the earth can't support die, the 40 million that will survive can go back to a leisurely life of plagues and feudalism. Stupendous!
Now then, there are other sorts of energy, but the question is whether we will somehow convert our industrial economy over to a different form of energy before we run out of oil and time, or the economy collapses before, during, or after the changes, or the new industrial economy turns out to be insufficient to support the resource needs of the human race.
Here's a semi optimistic article on alternative energy I found on the internet http://dieoff.com/page84.htm
Now here's something you probably don't want to read
and here's a view by some experts in the energy sector and their version of the future, which reads like quite a bit of bullshit to me.
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=4475&printable=Y
Anyway, one view of the future is the nice Star Trek future where energy and technology are everywhere. People operate all kinds of smooth contoured electronic contraptions which can talk and seem to be powered entirely by something magical like childish wonder or maybe unicorn cum.
But another view of the future may look more like Mad Max, so start spray painting that hockey equipment black. Personally I hope that bitch Tina Turner never gets her hands on a real thunderdome or its curtains for all of us!