by Will Patching

Created on: December 03, 2007

With a massively successful economy based on US corporations infiltrating* every society across the globe, combined with a media machine pumping out images of affluence beyond most people's reasonable expectations, America provides the role model other nations are eagerly pursuing.

Rampant capitalism, measured by GDP growth, is the holy grail, especially in the developing world. With the decline of the socialist Soviet Union and China's capitalist economic reforms, there is seemingly no viable alternative.

Everyone wants to live like an American. From Bangalore to Bangkok the pursuit of materialism through the development of an urban/automotive economy is well underway.

And so, like lemmings, we are heading unwittingly and inexorably towards our own doom.

No, this is not an article about global warming serious as that matter is - but a more immediate, pressing and potentially disastrous problem: oil is a finite commodity and it is running out. This valuable resource is undoubtedly the true reason for the current war in the Middle East, and the future is not bright. The likelihood of global strategic conflict will increase as China and India consume ever increasing quantities, whilst trying to achieve the impossible: to emulate the US industrial economy.

Americans currently guzzle around a quarter of the world's petroleum output. The capitalist model says that's OK: if the US can continue to afford to pay as prices rise, then why not?

Well, if we all want to live like Americans, perhaps we should determine how long current known reserves of oil would last if we did.

The math is easy:

The US, with one twentieth of the world's population, currently uses about 7.5 billion barrels of oil a year. If everyone consumed oil at the same rate, then planetary consumption would be twenty times 7.5 billion. That means we would be using over 150 billion barrels per annum. Known petroleum reserves are estimated at 1.2 trillion which sounds like a lot...

So, how long would those oil reservoirs last if we all lived the lifestyle of the average American and burnt over 150 billion barrels a year?

Just eight years.

Now, many skeptics would argue that known reserves are increasing all the time as new discoveries are made. The reality is that the few major oil finds over the last twenty years have failed to keep up with increasing demand over the same period. New discoveries cost ever more to locate and are increasingly expensive to exploit as the most accessible large deposits have

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