Mervyn Peak Oil

Wow. Want a really depressing documentary? Try The End of Suburbia. It's about the problem of peak oil and its tie to the North American way of life. Key ideas:

1. Economic growth is dependent on increased consumption of electricity.
2. We may already have passed peak oil production. If not, the most optimistic outlook is that we'll hit peak oil by 2010.
3. Every calorie of food we produce requires 10 calories of energy from hydrocarbons, often in the form of pesticides and fertilizers.
4. Because transportation has been cheap for the last 60 years, we need to re-learn how to have local food growth and local economies
5. The struggle to control the last of the world's oil will constitute a war that will never end in our lifetimes
6. Once people begin to understand the peak oil problem, they will demand our governments to make extremely bad decisions to protect their complacency

Here's an interesting quotation from David Suzuki (who isn't in the DVD):

To me, a hope is that we are going to hit peak oil [when oil resources begin to decline] -- and some geologists say we already hit it last year. The business community is now starting to take this very seriously.

The first thing to happen would be the big-box stores, like Home Depot and Walmart, collapsing because they are dependent on cheap oil to ship cheap goods. Also, in the suburbs of Canada we have these gigantic homes with two or three people in them, and the heating and cooling bills are enormous, and they depend on cars.

But the big thing is food. In Canada, food travels an average of 5,000 miles (8,000 km) from where it's grown to where it's eaten. This can't go on.