all we can do is keep breathing

i started the day with an incredibly productive attitude and looked forward to getting a lot done in the window of time after lunch (that is, right now). that energy has been zapped. i need to get out a few thoughts and reflections before i turn myself back to my work.

today at lunch a group of us watched the second half of a movie called A Crude Awakening. it is a documentary made in 2006 about our world's consumption of oil and the impending "peak" of the earth's supply of oil. bread has a "green team" that promotes awareness and discussion of environmental issues such as this.

the first half, which we watched last friday, was informative and moderately concerning. it was good food for thought and i think we all left in a contemplative spirit. the second half, however, was downright apocalyptic. when the credits began to roll, we all could only stare at one another in morbid shock. here's the movie's message in a nutshell: we've over-exploited our oil resources and we're going to run out--in our lifetime. we've built our society upon the assumption that the oil would never run out and the infrastructure just isn't there to realistically deal with such a crisis. anything we might do to help---buying hybrid cars, carpooling, conserving, reducing our carbon footprints---is too little too late.

 it certainly comes as no surprise that we've been exploitative in our use of oil. but the movie's doomsday predictions were harsh and hopeless. the interviewees gave no real viable energy solutions--perhaps solar, but the development isn't currently in place and the cost is high. so do we revert to simpler lifestyles? do we fight wars over oil until we kill almost everyone off? do we wait and see what happens and then solve it or do we beg our politicians and leaders to wake up and start dealing with it now?

i'm torn between calling the film propaganda and over-exaggerated scare tactics...or actually believing it. i want to believe so i can do something about it in my own life, but that was the most depressing part of the movie--there's nothing we really can do, according to these folks. it's like watching an implosion in slow motion--and the fuse has already been lit.

they really alarmed me when they started talking about population. the exponential growth we've seen in the past couple centuries is congruent with the rise of oil. there are well over 6 billion people on this planet--this is where things really got apocalyptic--and the interviewees seemed to suggest that the earth can only viably sustain about 1.5 billion on the oil resources that remain (or that will remain once we "peak" in the next 10-20 years). okay, so what happens to all those billions of people? how is that a solution? 

will people read about us in history books 1000 years from now (if the world hasn't exploded or dried up or jesus hasn't come back yet) as the oil age (comparable to the stone age, iron age, etc) that ended in some catastrophic way, resulting in a Book of Eli-esque world that had to be rebuilt from the ground up--this time without societal dependence on oil? what are we working ourselves up to here?

sorry for the heavy thoughts--i needed to get them out of my brain quickly so i can try and make myself useful on this friday afternoon. lots of other, less depressing and non-cataclysmic things have been going on--sorry, too, for being remiss on posting. hopefully i can find time to play catch up sometime this weekend.

until then, as ingrid michaelson sings, all we can do is keep breathing.