George Monbiot, a British journalist who writes for the Guardian, has a new column that explains how quickly the world is running out of oil and how drastically our society will have to change in oil’s absence. Oil production could very well peak in the next decade, he argues, and alternative energy sources are either not viable or chronically underfunded. He is not optimistic about our ability to adjust to a world without oil:
The only rational response to both the impending end of the Oil Age and the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming and our lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure, and our problem is that no one ever rioted for austerity. People take to the streets because they want to consume more, not less. Given a choice between a new set of matching tableware and the survival of humanity, I suspect that most people would choose the tableware.
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