What will the world do when we run out of oil? Very good question, and I don’t think anyone really has an answer for that. All that we know so far is that the day of reckoning is close at hand, and we only have so much oil left. Our children will most likely be the ones who face this question head on, but it is something that we can prepare for right now. Oil is like gold right now, but soon we will run out of the precious resource, and what will we do when that happens to us?
The political landscape of the world is certainly going to change. Countries like Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia are going to have to find something else to sustain the economy. With oil being the number one export of those countries, it will be hard for them to survive. They have enough trouble staying afloat as it is, and without oil to give them a sustainable revenue, what will happen to those countries? Not only will they have no economy, they will have little leverage on the world stage.
On a personal level, I think that people will be a bit wary at first. Almost like a smoker who has quit cold turkey, it will be tough for people in this country to accept that we have no more oil. Hopefully we will have transitioned to something else by then, and I think the rising gas prices have been like the patch, where we slowly decrease our consumption. When the oil runs out, we will be used to having less and less gas, and we will be OK.
I think the transition is going to be the scary part, not the day that we actually run out of oil. I have a feeling that as soon as we run out, there will be five companies who will roll out some sort of new energy source. It will be amazingly cost-effective, and will be able to fuel us all for a very long time. Exxon-Mobil will probably be leading the charge, and will continue to make a massive profit off the use of energy.
Until then though, I see a lot of warring, and tensions over the oil supply. It will be interesting to see what policies are put in place to ease the fears of what we are going to do after we lose our oil. It will happen sooner or later, and we need to be ready. There is no need for World War III to be over a resource that we really should be cutting back on anyway. Hopefully the day that we lose our oil is a day that is a peaceful one.
Whatever happens on that day, we will have to be ready. We have had plenty of warning about the decreasing supply of oil, and we need to act now. Only we can prevent problems from arising due to a lack of oil. What are we going to do when we lose all of our oil? More importantly, what are we going to do as the supply dwindles to nothing?
