"This book may well become for fossil fuels what Fast Food Nation was for food." Publishers Weekly
Billions of people around the world enjoy an unprecedented standard of living based on one thing: oil. Every twenty four hours, we burn 81 million barrels of crude--using it not simply to heat, feed, move or defend ourselves, but to educate, entertain, construct our world then fill it with stuff. Everything we buy, from a McDonalds' hamburger to garden furniture to cancer drugs, represents a measure of energy produced and consumed.
And we need more. With the combined appetites of North America, Europe, Japan and now rapidly-growing China and India, oil demand is rising fast: each year, daily consumptons climbs by nearly 2 million barrels. Consumption is rising so fast that oil companies must discover a new billion-barrel oil field every 2 weeks--or the equivalent of a new North Sea every 18 months.
What's now clear, however, that this pace of consumption is outpacing production. Oil companies are struggling to find new oil fast enough to replace the oil they're currently pumping. Once prolific oil regions, like the North Sea and the United States, have hit production peaks and are now in decline. And little wonder: by some estimates, we've already burned our way through half the easily available oil.
What's needed is a viable, cost-effective strategy for moving our economy beyond oil.
And yet, despite that need, the pursuit of oil continues to dominate national policies, and so shape the diplomatic, economic and military strategies of nations, perverting the cultures and politics of entire regions; it props up corrupt governments and dictators; it fosters the instability and resentments that have already spawned Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
The End of Oil looks at the decline of global petroleum production, the social and political costs of a post-oil shock and the possibilities for moving beyond oil.
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24 hours a day, 365 days a year....
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