You Read it Here First! $1000-a-Barrel Crude!

I don't know why everybody is pussyfooting around about this. I think it's safe to say that, with oil blasting up to $200-a-barrel sometime soon, another inexorable millstone suddenly sails into view. I want to be the first to say it. Remember where you read it first.

To hell with $200-a-barrel oil. That's so 2008. By 2010, we're going to see crude oil reach $1000-per-barrel.

I say this with absolutely as much information at hand as the pundits who are now making headlines for themselves by their soggy $200 predictions. Nobody knows what's going to happen. So I'm going to not know what's happening at an even more dramatic level.

$1000-a-barrel oil! What a concept! Let's look at a few of the implications, not all of which are negative, if you're a hippie:

Air travel, except to five or six hub cities, will end.

The Interstate Highway System will moulder, since most people will only be able to drive locally.

There will be no cars that are not hybrids on the few remaining roads, but even those will be only for the very rich who can afford $27-per-gallon gasoline.

Vehicles that run on alternative forms of energy will proliferate. Most will achieve speeds up to 8 mph.
There will be no food available that is not grown locally. The nation will quickly become overrun with chickens.

All businesses that have any element involving transportation of people or goods will fold.

Unable to go anywhere, people will communicate primarily by cell phone and e-mail, eventually crashing the Internet and plunging society back into the mid-20th Century.

The countryside will empty out; 95% of the population will need to live in urban areas since transport will be too expensive for most people.

The average one-bedroom co-op in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York will go for $50 million.

The Federal Government will still be cutting generous arms deals with Saudi Arabia.

Of course, there are many things that could slow this process down. But none of them seem to be in place. Why should we believe that something will be done before it's too late?

Isn't it sort of too late already?

Comments

[SCG]

Isn't it sort of too late already?

I think so Mr Bing, .....I think so.

[MichaelGeneSullivan]

This is not about supply or demand. It's speculation. The same hedge funds that lost money on housing are just making up their losses by inflating the price of oil. The upside is it may kill the SUV, the downside is the Rich get richer at everyone else's expense. Again.

[RButler]

Ross Perot proposed a 50 cent a gallon tax increase on gasoline when he ran in '92 but people didn't like the idea. Just think. All that tax money could have been used to improve roads and infrastructure. Remember the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Or it could have been used for mass transit or alternate energy research and development. It probably would have discouraged the SUV boom in the late '90s and forced fuel efficient cars. It would have weakened the power of the oil cartel over our economy. In the end, more than 50 cents a gallon has gone to oil producing countries that aren't friendly to us and we're having to face the problem now as a crisis. But, hey, that crazy Ross Perot. What an idiot?

[Synoia]

Hybrids are NOT energy efficient. It takes more energy to build a hybrid than the hybrid will save in its lifetime. Much more.

Bicycles now, there's the future.

[BlackbirdHighway]

That's completely incorrect. Where in the world did you get such rubbish? Only about 10% of a vehicles lifetime energy use goes into building it.

I see this myth all of the internet, every time hybrids are mentioned. Stop repeating this lie!

[vippy]

You all heard the stories here and there, that someone invented an engine which uses very little gas
and the companies either offered millions to buy it or the inventor was found dead. The Wankel
Engine Hitler had the patent on had perpetual motion and was ideal for this purpose. However,
America took the patent and filed it away. Look at congress every year they offered tax incentives if you
bought a vehicle over 5000 lbs you got to write it off. Congress with their energy policy just recently
passed the legislation of 35 mpgs by 2020. Is that not insane? Why not do like Europe who have
45 mpgs vehicles right now? Why not pass an energy policy that mandates at least 50 mps by
next year. That would show some hope. But we are being fooled and congress asks the oil guys
why they don't invest in alternative energy - that is like asking you to buy bread in a hardware store.
I am really getting fed up with the lies and people believing the crap when all they have to do is
put brain in motion.

[KillTheMessenger]

You do know that the efficiency of a car is basically a function of its mass, top speed, top acceleration and aerodynamic drag and that the engine technology alone has little role to play in building truly efficient cars, right? If you don't, I would suggest to take a class on Newtonian mechanics.

As for the Wankel: it is not an efficient engine at all. Not sure which depths of your un-knowledge the perpetual motion machine idea came from. Wankel was a self taught engineer, not an idiot.
Hitler never held any patents personally as far as I know, certainly not on Wankel's engine. German patents are meaningless outside of Germany, anyway. You can buy a Wankel driven car if you want:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_RX-8

Fuel efficiency is poor: 16/22mpg for a sports-coupe which has basically no leg room in the back? Some inefficient engine that is... and the testers still say it feels "underpowered". Go figure.

Your comments about fuel efficiency in Europe are correct. But you would do yourself and the idea of being green a great favor if you would cut out the other crap.

[aceholiday]

thanks moms in the suvs riding 1 strong. we have suburbia to thank for the eminent death of performance vehicles.

[zizyphus]

I think Obama can inspire the country to move in the right direction, toward a sustainable future. Learn about permaculture now. Replace the foolish lawns with gardens that can feed you.

[bigdoug1053]

Get ready folks. The transition to energy scarcity will be brutal - even through the rich countries will feel the pain last, nobody on this planet will escape the coming calamity. Remember Gardar Farm, Greenland.

[LloydDrako]

If there is no food except what is grown locally, isn't it more likely that the cities will empty out, rather than the countryside?

[KillTheMessenger]

Transportation energy cost is overrated as far as food production is concerned. The main problem lies in providing fertilizer but that could be somewhat mitigated with better agricultural techniques.

The problem is not that we have suburbs. The problem is that we don't use them. Bring jobs to the suburbs and people will stop commuting. Bring jobs to the countryside and people will stop migrating to the city. Those who still need to commute can commute more efficiently on buses and mass transit systems.

[jsarets]

"Isn't it sort of too late already?"

For most of us. There will be 2-3 billion humans on Earth in 2100.

[KillTheMessenger]

You might want to do a little fact checking. Speculation about massive die-off events does NOT count as fact.

[bigdoug1053]

2-3 billion? My, aren't you being an optimist. World population prior to 1850 was 1 billion.

[jsarets]

Maybe a little bit optimistic, but I think that we've learned enough during our brief ejaculation of cheap energy that we can sustain more people per unit energy than we could prior to industrialization.

Some long-lost knowledge is already coming back to us. For example, natural ventilation and daylighting where well-known building design techniques in the days of the Roman Empire. Now they are cutting-edge efficiency measures that require the expertise of specialized sustainable design consultants, but that's a substantial improvement compared to 10 years ago.

[WIpatriot]

Optimism is humans in the year 2100....

[jfor]

America can live with high priced oil. What we can't live with is unmitigated greed. Greed is what will kill this country. Greed is what Bush, McCain, and Clinton are all about.

[KillTheMessenger]

I'll up that to $10000/barrel in 2016! Unless hyperinflation sets in, of course. Then it will be more like $100 trillion/barrel. No wait... we'll be using Euros in America long before then. If the Europeans let us, that is.

I loved the article. Thank you!

[eshock]

Peak Oil? Speculators need not look any further to purchase futures. This scenario is not doom and gloom, hardly. We can live in a world with expensive oil, by being better citizens. Yes, the freedom of the internet has a lot to do with a post-peak-oil utopia. It is at risk as other alternatives are currently under struggle as well.

By sharing transportation resources and re-thinking our lifestyles, even in this country, expensive oil can be dealt with. Win/win situations exist if society can embrace the fast pace of technological change. Because, it is a game-changer. Learn to grow food now, get to know your neighbors. Start carving out your mini-niche that you can market to the entire world all from the comfort of your hearth. Imagine a future that is many times weirder and stranger than your parents could have dreamed.

Getting back to nature, or "being a hippy" as the author proclaims is a spiritual transformation as we unlock so much new knowledge on what it means to be human living on this wonderful planet.

[PermacultureMainer]

right on! Permaculture can assist many in the transition to a post carbon future....the future is now.....

[DrPaulProteus]

Hopefully the saviour Obama will fix everything like everyone is expecting, otherwise a hard rain is gonna fall thanks in no small part to both parties in Congress and in the White House doing nothing to deal with these long-forseen problems. Prepare to start queuing up for your rations of Soylent Green.