C&L July Film of the Month: A CRUDE AWAKENING The Oil Crash
Documentary by Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack
“Oil is our God. I don’t care if someone says they worship Jesus, Buddha, Allah, whoever – they actually worship petroleum.”
Mathew David Savinar, Lawyer and Founder of Lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
If An Inconvenient Truth could be considered The Wizard of Oz of environmental documentaries, then A Crude Awakening would have be considered the Rosemary’s Baby of that same genre.
Global warming. So what? Melting polar icecaps? Call me later. A Crude Awakening paints a picture so much grimmer than anything Americans have seen in their lifetimes. Or in the movies this summer, for that matter. It is dark. It is primordial. It is terrifying. It is - The end of oil, as we know it.
While technically speaking, oil is running out, for it to go bone dry will take a few lifetimes. But do not dare exhale a sigh of relief. That fact is not relevant to this splendid documentary. It seems there is a bigger problem. One that is arriving faster than Netflix. That problem is global peak oil. Say it over and over, folks. Say it until your tongue gets used to saying it. Write it down. Tell your children. Open the windows of your Ford Explorer and scream it out into the dark abyss. You will be seeing and hearing about it for the rest of your lives – possibly beginning today.
Written, produced and co-directed by Basil Gelpke, from Switzerland and Ray McCormack, from Ireland, A Crude Awakening will scare the living Bush out of you and at the same time leave you dumbfounded. If you’re like me, you’ll be grasping at straws for a logical way out of this oncoming runaway train that some experts have already dubbed the “post-industrial stone age.”
Now that, my friends, is an inconvenient truth. It is a truth so scary, so inconvenient, that few will even utter its name. Once again, for the record, its name is Peak Oil. And no one seems to have the slightest idea what to do about it.
You might not know about it but THEY do. The heads of the ‘Seven Sisters’ oil companies. The Saudis. OPEC. Dick Cheney’s secret Energy Task Force. Bill and Hillary – they ALL know about Peak Oil. Everybody but YOU! Maybe its time YOU found out? Huh? Curious? End of the World? Saving for your toddler’s college education? Uh, sorry, that won’t be necessary.
The world as we know it is coming to an end soon.
That doesn’t come from a religious cult like the Moonies or conspiracy lunatics with tin foil hats in Idaho. Rather it is the uncontested scientific conclusion of the world’s most widely respected geologists, physicists, oil executives, bankers and politicians.
Gelpke, with a background in anthropology and economics, worked as a war correspondent before becoming a scientific filmmaker. His partner, McCormack who has a history in corporate filmmaking also holds an Honors Degree in Environmental Policy and Management. These guys know their stuff, are extremely serious and bring on-camera expertise to back them up. A parade of renowned academics, scientific experts and corporate advisors from across the political and economic spectrum enter and re-enter this shocking film. Each time they reappear they bring with them overwhelming amounts of irrefutable evidence that the world as we know it is about to go through some very savage changes.
And they mean NOW.
I don’t want to alarm anybody but you should be afraid. VERY AFRAID. Not of bin Laden. Not of AIDS. Not of global warming. Not of George Bush. But of global Peak Oil and what that represents.
For the uninitiated, in order to understand this movie one has to understand peak oil. It is not very difficult.
Peak Oil, also known as Hubbert’s Peak was named for the Shell Oil geologist, Dr. Marion King Hubbert. In 1956, M.K. Hubbert accurately predicted that America’s domestic oil production would peak in 1970.
His peers laughed at Hubbert at the time.
He had successfully examined the amount of new discoveries of oil in the United States from the 1930s onward. Those rose and fell like a bell curve. After a huge spike, they were simply running out of places in the U.S. that held oil fields. He figured that if the discovery of oil supplies formed a bell curve, then the production of the oil would form a matching bell curve soon afterwards.
He was dead right.
By 1970, U.S. oil production had peaked and the decline was in rapid freefall. Using the same extrapolations for the entire world, Hubbert predicted that world oil production would be peaking by 1995. It would have been spot on accurate, had the politically motivated oil embargoes of 1973 and 1979 not been enacted, setting back world oil peak by just 10-15 years.
In other words…NOW.
“The United States had been the largest oil producer on earth for nearly 100 years and nobody thought it would ever end,” explains Mathew Simmons an energy investment banker and advisor to president George W. Bush.
The last new frontiers in oil discovery were in the Alaskan North Slope, Siberia and the North Sea. That was in 1967, 1968 and 1969 respectively. All have peaked since then. The North Sea oil finds were indeed massive and quite unknown at the time. A huge discovery. It peaked in 40 years. Next year Britain will actually have to import oil for the first time since the discovery.
The world has been so thoroughly explored with massive new technological devises that most experts feel there is no new oil out there. In fact, advanced engineering technology has created in effect, “super straws” to suck all known oil out of the ground faster than ever before believed possible.
The desperation of the oil companies have led them to oil shale fields in Canada and steaming old well sites for the very last drops of “the devil’s excrement.”
Two thirds of the known oil fields today are in the Persian Gulf. In 1978, Iran was producing 6 million barrels a day. Today? 3-3 ½ million barrels a day. This is indicative of the downward slope of oil production following a peak. The Saudis have found only one new oil field since 1967. They pump 12 million barrels a day yet each year they claim their reserves are exactly the same. How is this possible? It’s not. In the late 80’s all the OPEC countries simply increased their “known” oil reserves by 50% for political reasons and quota busting.
With the massive industrialization of India and China already underway, it is becoming quite obvious that oil production will not be able to keep up with demand. In fact, we already see this happening with the doubling of our own gas prices in just the past few years. Experts believe that those same prices will rise steadily and quickly to $15 per gallon.
And that’s when things will really and finally get hairy. Once oil peaks, the downward crash is fast and furious as the entire world scrapples for the remaining apples.
Our entire civilization has been built on cheap oil. Not only are we reaching the end of the artificial American dream, peak oil experts also feel we are on the precipice of a massive worldwide Age of Depression. We have become the victims of our own success. Huge population booms have occurred due to the mid-century “green revolution” in farming that produced enough cheap food to feed the entire world. Our cities and society grew at staggering rates because of the use of the cheapest fuel source ever discovered.
Oil.
“One barrel of oil for $100, will produce as much energy as you would get from 12 people working all year,” says Roscoe Bartlett a scientist and U.S. Republican Congressman from Maryland.
But the times they are a changin’.
Ten or fifteen years ago, the per capita income of the average Saudi was $28K. Today its down to $6K. There has been a huge drop in the standard of living for the average Saudi. Strap yourselves in folks. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride. We’re next.
There seems to be two solutions:
1) Multinational resource wars. Militarize our population to allow them to continue to drive SUVs. Tell them what the stakes and go for it. Invade till the last drop.
2) Begin to prepare for the end of cheap oil and adjust to available alternatives as soon as possible. As bleak as they may seem.
Just so you understand what we’re up against.
If we hybridized every stinking car on the road today, we would still be consuming the same amount of gasoline as we are now in just 5-7 years. With each year demand grows enormously. With no end in sight.
The alternative fuels everyone has been jabbering about lately don’t cut it. If you added all the alternative fuel sources up, that is if they were even ready and functioning at massive levels, it wouldn’t even make a dent in the loss of oil.
Oil is that cheap.
“We pay more for a bottle of drinking water than we do for a gallon of gasoline,” explains David L. Goodstein, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology.
If you went nuclear alone, we would need 10,000 new nuclear plants immediately and then the damn uranium would run out in 10 years anyway. Unless you’re France. Their entire country is powered by nuclear power. Just watch were you put the trash, Jacques.
The most fascinating chapter of the film is entitled, Life After The Peak. This shows us the other side of the Hubbert Peak. The downward slope. Ouch. We got a snippet of it in 1973, when OPEC turned off the U.S. oil spigot because of the Israeli War. Cars lined up for miles to get the last drop of gas. Everyone freaked, but quickly forgot about it when the man hooked them up again with the Persian Black.
In the near, near future, driving cars and flying by plane will be a luxury reserved only for the Super Rich. The financial markets will shrink due to the elimination of petro dollars. The stock markets will collapse worldwide. Populations will shrink immensely as hunger and starvation sweep the globe.
An apple will cost $7.
Hydrocarbon Man’s days are severely numbered.
Oh, and if you think hydrogen is gonna save you, think about this: It currently takes 3 – 6 gallons of gasoline to make enough hydrogen to drive a car the equivalent distance that one gallon of gasoline would drive it.
Coal? Too dirty. We’ll choke to death. Wind power? Keep blowing. Hydroelectric? Every river is already dammed. Biomass? Too much energy to create it.
In fact, the only science that seems to have any chance in hell is solar. How ironic. But there is a catch. A huge catch. It would take a field of solar panels half the size of California to power the country. The sun. Of course. How could we miss it?
When Jonas Salk found the cure for polio, he was asked if he had filed a patent on his new vaccine. Salk looked quizzically at the reporter and famously said, “No. After all, could you patent the Sun?”
Hey, New Mexico. Let’s go. Everybody out! That means you.
See A Crude Awakening before there are no more petrochemicals left to even make DVDs.
A screenwriter/producer/journalist based in Hollywood, California, Mark Groubert is the Senior Film and Book Reviewer for CrooksandLiars.com. As a filmmaker he has produced numerous documentaries for HBO. Groubert is also the former editor of National Lampoon Magazine, MTV Magazine and The Weekly World News. In addition, he has written for the L.A. Weekly, L.A. City Beat, Penthouse, High Times and other publications. He is currently at work on his memoirs…or so he says.
3 Trackbacks To “A Crude Awakening“
maybe this will finally motivate them to research an alternative source of energy.
Second!
The laugh in the end was funny and scary at the same time. Nice!
The hysteria of this article is unnecessary and unwarranted.
If true - and quite frankly, this is so over the top it makes me doubt it - but if true, the data and theory speak for themselves, and do not need apocalyptic arm waving.
already knew of it
this article is more than a decade late
Oh yes. The end is near but not exactly the way the Khristians dreamed it.
you will see a conflict that will reduce world population by 80% in the next 20 years.
This might be a touch of hysteria, but it’s true. Oil WILL run out and the world is at the point of oil no longer being easy to get and cheap to process. Think of what life will be like in 20 years when oil is freeking expensive and the price of everything will be sky high because EVERYTHING has to be transported in this country - - food, clothes, and other “necessities” like mp3 players and TV sets.
Hey Jim D: watch the movie, take two vicodins and call me in the morning!
Fear is the Enemy
Innovate, don’t retreat.
God gave some of us a brain.
And not all brains are created equal.
At the rate this planet is pumping it out of the ground there is no way it can replenish itself.And as long as we have been pumping it out,I believe it
Hey Me: Sorry I couldn’t write this artice for you 10 years ago. I was busy sifting through tons of meaningless propaganda. Now we have no years left. Better late than never, huh?
It is possible to make crude oil out of biowaste, and what makes it better than digging it out of the ground is:
– It takes less energy than extracting it out of the ground and refining heavy sour crude.
– There are far less hazardous substances such as benzene and sulfur compounds.
– It’s from a readily renewable source. Even if the abiogenic oil theory is true, it would still take hundreds of years for new oil to be produced from the Earth’s mantle.
– Byproducts of this process are easily alternative fuels such as methane, ethanol, and butanol.
If we’re to survive the slow transition out of oil, more research needs to be put into thermochemical conversion of biowaste.
Mark Groubert @ 11:
The meek shall inherit the Earth.
Can’t wait.
Here are various forecasts of oil production. Most of them predict a peak within the next decade. This is just production, and doesn’t take into account current reserves or consumption trends.
Buddha - sorry to inform you that biowaste production uses far more oil to produce it than it could ever produce and its not even close - as for the “slow transition out of oil” - it will be and is becoming fast and furious.
This article is interestingly dissmissive of a lot of the alternative energy sources out there and doesn’t even mention several that haven’t been explored thoroughly.
Major ocean currents are easy to predict in their locations and use incredible amounts of energy to move water.
Harnessing the Gulf Stream and the Kuroshio and most importantly, the West Wind Drift would create massive amounts of energy.
I’m not saying we aren’t in crisis, I’m typing on a big ‘ol hunk of petroleum product right now. I’m just saying this look a little ‘Chicken Little’ish to me.
But…I’m no expert.
National Geographic did a nice job covering this topic in 2004.
http://magma.nationalgeographi.....ltext.html
Mark Groubert @ 16:
Well thank you for the defeatist attitude. At least some people are TRYING instead of sitting on their ass while about to roll off the cliff.
This is an excellent film. My husband and I watched it the other evening. You can order it from Netflix.
Tim in japan
You are right, but they are all theoretical concepts. Fine for a laboratory. Our entire social/economic/political/physical world is run on petroleum. Everything is made of petroleum by products. Our society was created by it. All food comes from it via pesticides and harvesting machines on a massive scale.
Tim in Japan @ 17:
I’ve heard that a desalinization plant in Holland uses nothing but wave energy from the ocean, and is still operational since the late 60’s. Also, either Spain or Portugal was testing the use of train-like objects floating offshore to generate electricity.
There is plenty of oil. It might not be as easily (cheaply) accessible as some of the old Saudi oil fields, but there is plenty of it. It is my understanding that with the current prices, places such as the Orinoco Belt (Venezuela) is profitable to extract. I saw the trailer for this movie and the premis, peak oil = no more oil or much more expensive than today, is wrong. Find any serious oil analyst that support this.
Buddha - the truth is not a defeatist attitude. This is not about attidude, Dude. There is science and there is falsity. Watch the movie. Rent it from Netflix. Try sitting on your ass and watching a movie. Is that too hard? C’mon you can do it. Go to Netflix on your computer. That’s it, you’re almost there….
Please daddy Republicans, I just want that narcissistic candy… Let me just have my SUV and my toys and not think about how many people have to die to feed my needs.
I can just stay with you daddy and not think. We can go back to the ’50s. And I can say, whoa, how come we got blown up?
Oh, you mean there’s some oil dictatorships that are attached to my SUV in some way? That we trained and armed? Who knew?
(Adapted from the special features commentary of the movie, “I (heart) Huckabees”)
I like oil
I weep for what big oil has done to the world and how the politicians kept taking money from them for their campaigns. We need public financing of campaigns and an apollo project for renewable energy
I thought C&L did not like to post conspiracy theories.
I agree this article is a little late. While I have my doubts about some of the cataclysmic repercussions of peak oil (think y2k) I do believe its very real and have known about it for quite some time. While I don’t think the world as we know it is going to turn into Road Warrior overnight. I think it will surely have an inconvenient effect on the daily lives of most Americans. Maybe its what many Americans need to put their arrogance in check. A few years of oil and energy rationing would be a real slap in the face wouldn’t it?
The shame is that we have a backwards thinking gov’t led by an oil Man who’s most likely going to get very rich going down with the ship. The more time spent preparing for the inevitable shift away from oil dependence would only make the transition smoother. Instead its going to be the problem of our next President or whomever follows them. It’s a shame because one of the few good things about Kerry’s campaign in ‘04 was his energy plan and we all know how Gore is on board with alternative energy…it’s easy to be left wondering where we’d be today with 8yrs of Gore or Gore/Kerry. Instead we’re completely unprepared and the Neocons seem intent on taking the last bit of oil by force.
Don’t worry children, I will nuke Iran and TAKE the oil!
I will slaughter these stupid backward Iraqis ans TAKE the oil!
I subdue these ridiculous Saudis and TAKE the oil.
Only our friends will share and if the Chinese don’t like it, GOOD! We will end the world in a hail of ICBMs! They will not threaten, they have no God. Unlike Christians whom have an after life, the chinese fear death!
Haaaahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…….I will be Emperor of the World!
Back before 9/11, when King George was ridding the treasury of that bothersome surplus by giving tax “relief” the the wealthiest humans in history, all in the name a stimulating the economy, friends and I complained bitterly that the money was better spent building a 21st century transportation infrastructure for the next 50 years, one capable of addressing the dispersed nature of the American population. Our best guess was rail of some contemporary sort; our hedge against the oil bet.
It seemed to us that it was the single most important thing the country could do to secure economic prosperity over what was sure to be a tumultuous period. It also would have infused the stuttering economy with money while strengthening the middle class by creating good paying jobs during that recessionary period. Instead, we got tax reform that fuels the greatest disparity in wealth than even the British Class System. Add an unfunded $1,000,000,000,000 war to secure Iraq’s oil reserves, a war likely to produce the opposite effect, and I fear we’ve missed our moment.
Let’s just say that when the chickens come home to roost, as they surely will, there will be political hell to pay. My guess is the two competing forces will be for a police state or socialist oriented reforms. Given our track record thus far, I’m not optimistic.
Good to see this posted on C&L.
At the start of the energy crisis in the early 1970s the country of Brazil saw the writing on the wall and did the smart thing by starting their own little internal nationwide Manhattan Project and successfully switched the country off of petroleum based fuels and today enjoys not only the world’s hottest Super Models, but also complete energy independence, as of this year.
Who knew?
While we here in the United States, as we now know, went in the complete opposite direction.
What I’d like to know, in a world where almost every body else is paying for a gallon of gas what we Americans pay for bottled water, about $10 a gallon, what makes us Americans so super extra *special* that we get away with paying so little for our gas?
(The only worser offender than the USA is Venezuela, where they pay between 15 and 25 cents a gallon for their gasoline, but, then again, everybody know that Hugo Chavez fights dirty.)
$3.50 a gallon is an abomination, it needs to closer to $10 a gallon, and we should have been paying that much a decade ago.
$10 a gallon gas in The United States of America will drive more innovation towards getting the most we can out of every drop of fuel faster than if everyone in the country switched over to driving hybrids, and cheap collapsible electric scooters in urban areas.
No time like the present.
~Nyc
It would seem that in order to survive Peak Oil a self sustaining farm might be in order. a place to grow crops, a cow or two for milk, cheese and butter, hens for eggs and meat, a horse or mule, and a whole ton of hand tools. (a tredle sewing machine.) Learning to dry and smoke meat (no refrigeration) a root cellar for storage of veggies. Hunting and fishing. Gathering wild berries. Freezing in the winter and sweating in the summer. A private well and an outhouse. We had better learn a whole lot of new skills.
Greg Pallast, the author of “Armed Madhouse”, says otherwise.
lafin gas @ 28:
You sir/madam, were mistaken!
Jo @ 34:
You just described HEAVEN.
I’m disappointed it will take a few lifetimes to run out. I wish it was this time next year.
Jo @ 34:
but a man with a gun will take it all from you.
If you have not done so already, take the time to watch Robert Newman’s ‘History of Oil’.
It is a thought-provoking comedy routine, well worth one hour of your evening.
Many innovations, like plasma gasification, make me very unafraid of the future.
George W. Bush @ 38: