Oil Case

This movie primarily explains that oil is scarce, and nobody is prepared for what is going to happen when it runs out. In the beginning of the movie people begin talking about oil as this wonderful thing. Oil is used for and in everything. For example: clothes, make-up, food, food packaging, transportation, and technology are all items that use oil as their main energy source. Oil is a cheap energy source that many take for granted. Although many believe that oil will last for centuries to come; the harsh reality is that it won’t. Oil will eventually run out. For example, many places like Texas and Venezuela had great abundances of oil, but due to oil being a non-renewable resource those places that were abundant in oil eventually ran out. That is exactly what the movie implies and states will happen to the entire world. When oil becomes very scarce there are only two options: war over the land that contains the scarce resource, most likely the Middle East, or explore new energy sources that are cleaner and more abundant. As appealing as option two sounds cleaner and more abundant energy sources are hard to come by. The movie list several examples: hydrogen, bio-diesel, wind, and solar power. All of these solutions have many issues; hydrogen needs more technology and about fifty years to become cheap and available. Bio-diesel would do more harm than good using food for fuel instead of for worldwide hunger. Solar and wind power would take a lot more development of gathering this natural resource and would take time. The only way to face this problem is head-on. Nobody in power high enough will do anything if it means decreasing the productivity of America. Additionally it is hard to face the oil problem when OPEC lies about the remaining oil reserves. According to the movie, OPEC claims that the oil reserves stay, but they produce billions of barrels of oil every year. America's political leaders, like those of most other countries, are far too committed to the oil industry and the amount of profit they gain each year rather than to invest money into visionaries and inventors who can transition our world into a non-petroleum economy. Moreover, the large US energy companies which often implement great influence over the nation's political leaders are determine to prevent this transition for as long as they possibly can.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that our leaders are prepared to accept this new reality. Rather, they prefer to defend themselves and the rest of us from the difficult changes that will certainly be required. For some officials, these changes will prove damaging to the profit intake of their friends and associates in the oil business, and so they avoid any changes in the current situation at hand, while others are simply worried about the political risks of speaking the truth to the public, and so support only little sorts