When oil reserves run dry...?

Question

How stupid will those who are too myopic to have forseen the need for alternative energy sources feel?

Answer 1

I have a sneaky suspicion that most of the big corporations will adapt and then pretend that the problem was recent and that their hasty actions were well co-ordinated and thought out all along.

Answer 2

The oil reserves will not "run dry" for quite a few hundred years but I essentially agree; oil is a finite resource and alternative energy research must be started NOW, just like the drilling must be done NOW.

Answer 3

Oil reserves aren't going anywhere anytime soon... just trust me on that.

Answer 4

Let's just weigh the facts; A barrel that cost $10 in 1998 and $64 in 2007 today costs $135 and is expected to reach $200 by the end of the year! Oil is becomming increasingly harder to find and even harder to extract! Unless we can come up with some way to make oil more efficient in 2020 oil production will only be at 20% of what it is today. So the pol won't be gone it will just be expensive largely unavaliable.

It's stupid that we are so dependant on oil when we KNOW it's running out and we already have many means of replacing it. Solar power, Geomass, Geothermal, Wind, Wave (yes as in the ocean). Heck! we even recently learned that we can burn saltwater! People just aren't willing to work toward change until they have no choice...

Answer 5

Very stupid.

Especially when they can't drive, or turn on any lights, or cook anything, or work because their computers are dead....

The stupid thing is that now would be a great time to invest in hydrogen power etc. because we have global warming, realisations about the fact that oil is a finite resource, and rediculously high prices......shame the government is in the pocket of the oil companies.....

Then again the USA and Russia will probably have blown us all up in some nuclear war well before the oil runs out...

Answer 6

Well, I see the solution to our energy woes as more drilling NOW and more research on alternatives NOW. Both sides have it right.

But we'll never run out of oil. Before the actual reserves run dry it will become much too expensive to extract it from it's various sources.

Answer 7

When oil runs out. We'll develop something else. It's just a shame we don't develop something else before it runs out.

Answer 8

There is plenty of early warning around right now.  In the short term, the world needs to reduce consumption to give time to develop those alternative energy sources - but rationing by price is the very worst way to bring that about.

Running dry is actually quite a long way ahead, but the road to that situation will be marked by economic and social crisis, famine and war, unless we take action now - and if the masters of this age won't - then they need to be ousted as quickly as possible by any necessary means.

Answer 9

we keep focusing on being an oil based society and the atmosphere will be gone long before the oil!

Answer 10

We are carbon based society and we need to drill her and drill now.