The Roman empire was built on the backs of slaves. Without predation of one class of humans upon another, the empire would never have accomplished anything of note, for there was simply too much work to be done. If all the work was distributed equitably, the maintenance of the infrastructure of the state alone would devour every available man hour. Slavery has not fueled the creation of modern western society, oil has. Just as Rome overused, depleted, and abused the very foundations of its society, so too has our modern world.
I should probably clarify my metaphor (to give credit where it’s due, I’m actually borrowing it from Paul Herrick at Northern Illinois University--Anthropology). Oil, in the work it has done, in the technology it has fostered, has done more work, in terms of Joules alone, than humans could ever manage without it. Oil is the blood of dragons--it has the power to grant wishes. And our wishes have been granted. Travel above the speed of sound, buildings thousands of feet high, central air conditioning, electric lights, computers, space travel. We carry fire in our pockets, and think nothing of it.
Our technology is incredibly sophisticated. When Galileo timed the relative speeds of falling light and heavy objects, he sung a song and counted the upbeats. We track time by evaluating the decay rate of Cesium atoms. All of this is wonderful, and we are all wholly dependent on it. With peak oil looming, we must be aware of the fragility of our way of life.
Very often, discussions of X-risks involve possible catastrophes--major events that destroy enormous amounts of essential infrastructure. These are worth considering, but it must be realized that no event is needed to cause a societal collapse. Our infrastructure requires an incredible amount of energy every day just to maintain the status quo. That energy will become more and more expensive, and more and more scarce. In a world where food is hard to get for billions already, what will the drastically rising cost of petroleum based fertilizers do? And the increased cost of gasoline makes food delivery over long distances many times more expensive? When one major oil exporter realizes its power and greatly increases the markup on oil to protect itself from the global depression? When another country decides to invade that one to secure the oil fields for itself?
I’m not imagining a situation that might happen, or that could happen given a few stipulated circumstances. This is what will happen if the infrastructure of modern society does not change. Maybe not this year, and maybe not the next, but it will happen. All by itself. When no war is enough to provide the resources needed by a country, when transportation infrastructure breaks down completely and no one can even afford to drive, when centralized governments lose their ability to govern large areas of land entirely out of sheer impotence, when global depression forces major pharmaceutical companies to cease manufacturing antidepressants and stimulants, when depletion based industrial farming no longer receives the fertilizers needed...billions of people are going to die. Let me repeat--Billions.
Personally, I think we should avoid this. Let’s start talking about how.
