by Francis Harris

Created on: August 12, 2010

If you've ever looked into climate change and been just a little bit puzzled - about all the data proving it and then disproving it - then perhaps there is a very good reason. Perhaps it is because climate change is a mask for our real problem - that is, global oil depletion. Whatever is happening to the climate we know - 100% without doubt - that global oil reserves are running out, fast.

Now climate change and oil depletion are related. Some theories of how and why the climate is changing lay the blame upon industrialization. That is, the 20th century's use of fossil fuels including oil. Certainly pollution from industrial processes has done much damage but a far greater toil on human life will be exacted when oil ends and no one is prepared for it.

When it comes to the environment, the biggest smokescreen of all must be the one that turns our attention away from oil depletion and makes us worry about something else - like climate. Oil depletion means oil is running out. We have already reached peak oil. The point has come when demand can hardly match supply. And it only gets worse from here on in. Daily we are demanding more and more from a smaller and smaller pool.

In the not too distant future we will be brought face to face with going "oil free". Many things we take for granted just wont be possible - from food that has been transported across the state (or world) to us, to the machine that builds your house; from the tools to make wind pumps and fix up solar power, to the plastic that China uses to make its stuff. It is all going to end when oil runs out.

There will be chaos in every nation when we no longer have oil to move things around, make things, dig things, and all the by products from it. No more petroleum jelly is just the start of it. Perhaps you should save that old pot since it will be worth a fortune one day! Food will be scarce and conflict inevitable at all levels.

If the worry of "climate change" has anything to offer us then maybe it is that we can slow the industrial (or domestic) use of oil a little bit - at least in some nations - and slowing us down may give us a few more years to get organized (although there are no easy solutions to paradigm shifting our society into a post-oil age).

The worry of "climate change" also means it is going to be easier to lay blame on each other - because with hindsight we will ALL know that we should have been more concerned about "climate change" - that is peak oil and its depletion - but not all of us were because we were confused and led into academic arguments about the data for climate change, whether and what it is changing, and if that is natural or caused by the 20th century use of fossil fuels.

Many are confused about climate change - and would much rather forget it and build that new road and house, or perhaps "address it" and do some conservation in a park - but all the while we are missing the real problem - oil is running out. And so is our time to do something about building a truly sustainable, self-sufficient "oil free" world.

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