Morris Publishing 2004
182pp
Available from
“http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.com/” www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.com

"Deal with Reality-or Reality will deal with you" – Colin Campbell

If you are interested in the more dire predictions as to what is likely to happen in the world in the years and decades after the effects of the phenomenon known as "Peak Oil" take hold; if you perhaps take a certain satisfaction however jaundiced from the possibility that you will be around to witness the collapse of Western Civilisation and all it has come to stand for; if you are one of those people who grimace at the more extreme aspects of the New Age movement and its advocacy of Positive Thinking as a cure to all our ills, then this is the book for you.

Matt Savinar - a 24-year-old law school graduate who professes to having had the typical expectations of someone in his position to follow career, family and the whole" American Dream" package - until he heard about Peak Oil - has written a concise and to-the-point book explaining why he feels sure that as we enter a new era of energy descent, humanity will find itself returning to the Stone Age.

The easy-to-read question-and-answer format is divided into 8 sections:
• Introduction
• Peak Oil and the Ramifications for Industrial Civilisation;
• Alternatives to Oil: Fuels of the future or cruel hoaxes?
• Issues of economy, Technology and the ability to adapt;
• Peak Oil and US Political/social issues;
• Peak oil and America’s march towards a Fascist-Feudal State;
• Peak Oil and Global War;
• Managing the Crash and Coping with the Ramifications.

The starting point for the book is the concept of "Peak Oil"- the understanding that the energy that has driven the rise of industrial societies follows a bell curve in its production, peak and descent. First described by the American geologist M.K. Hubbert in the early 1970s, who used it to accurately predict the peak and subsequent decline of US oil supplies in 1971, there is now emerging slowly but surely a "Peak Oil Movement" predicting an imminent or current peak in world energy supplies. Savinar draws on the work of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) and the work of Mike Ruppert of From the Wilderness Publications, and Energy Investment Banker Matt Simmons, among others, to support his case.

Although not yet, or only slowly permeating the public consciousness and the mainstream media, a lot of the evidence for peak oil has actually come from within the oil industry itself - or from now retired oil experts who have no axe to grind other than a wish to inform the world of the dire predicament we will all soon have to wake up to: whether we like it or not, the modern world - and civilisation as we know it - is coming to an end.

"I heard we have about 40 years of oil left. What’s there to worry about?" is the opening question. Savinar explains that though this is technically correct, the issue is that we are running out of cheap oil :
"Oil plays such a fundamental role in the world economy that we need not ‘run out’ of the stuff before we run into a crises of untold proportions".

The problem is that as energy becomes increasingly expensive - which will fairly quickly result in real shortages, not just higher prices - the worlds population continues to rise, demand increases dramatically as newly industrialising nations like China and India come on line, and there is simply not enough to go around. In a world as dangerous as the one we find ourselves in the early 21st century, this will only lead to more - and deadlier - resource wars.

The oil shocks of the 1970s actually lead to greater fuel efficiency and decreased demand, probably delaying Peak by 10-15 years. "Unfortunately, the day of reckoning is now upon us".

Savinar does not mince his words but gives his stark prognosis of what energy descent will mean early on in the book:
"In short, the end of cheap oil means the end of everything you have grown accustomed to, all aspects of industrial civilisation, and quite possibly humanity itself. This is known as the post-oil ‘die-off’."

Using biological models of population overshoot in other species, Savinar predicts a return to pre-industrial global population levels of less than 500million - less than 10% of current population - in the next 50-100 years as a result of oil depletion.

In saying this, Savinar sets himself apart from other writers in this field - eg the 10 possible scenarios presented by the writers of the 30-year update to "The Limits to Growth". He is not saying "this is one possible scenario - unless we take remedial action, implement such an such policies, save energy ,turn to renewables or move to a higher state of consciousness." He is saying this will happen.

One of the key reasons for this is that humans have become almost completely dependent on fossil fuels, not just for gas in the tank, but for much more basic things like food: natural gas for fertilisers, oil for pesticides. It is this that is responsible for the leap in human population from 1.5billion around 1850 to the 6.4billion today. The delivery of fresh water also depends on fossil fuels, as does modern medicine.

"If the experts are correct," Savinar writes making an analogy to bacterial bloom and die-off in a lab, " we are less than one generation away from a crash. Yet to most of us, there appears to be no hint of a problem. One generation away from our demise, we are as clueless as bacteria in a Petri dish."

In the third section, Savinar takes us through possible alternatives to oil and why they cannot stem off the inevitable: even "free energy " – were it a reality- would not change the fundamental issue that humans are up against: the earth has a carrying capacity, and we have efficiently used the super-abundant resource we have had - oil – over the last 150 years to systematically deplete virtually every other resource : top soil, fresh water, forests, biodiversity and minerals.

This is why we will not just be quietly slipping back to the 1700s but will be more likely to go straight back to the Stone Age without passing Go: for example, pre-industrial societies mined copper from ores with 30-50% metal. Nowadays, a typical copper mine averages les than 0.8% copper which can only be extracted using large amounts of energy. No oil, no copper- and no anything else that we take for granted in the modern worlds very much either.

In Part V and VI Savinar discusses the role of the US and its descent into fascism, and claims that the US government has based much of its foreign policy on Peak Oil for over 30 years. "That means" he states rather caustically "it’s 30 years too late for you to write to your Senator or lobby your Congressman about how to handle Peak Oil. The plan now unfolding was put in place a long, long time ago." Savinar actually says that the scrapped section he had originally planned on ideas and actions for lobbying and canvassing politicians since he has concluded that it is a complete waste of time to do so. The politicians are all in the hands of big business and the media is incapable of telling the truth. "The harsh truth is- we can’t handle the truth".

And that plan involves: invasion and occupation of oil - and resource rich countries- Iraq is just the opening volley-, suppression of civil liberties in the US; the development and deployment of Star Wars and space weapons; the complete running down of domestic economies and the reintroduction of the draft. "From their point of view, there is no tomorrow. They know that the future will be characterised by conflict, not co-operation. Why bother spending money on higher education when most of today’s young people are more likely to be heading to the Middle East than the Ivy League?" The US government - and many others as well- have already decided that the only way to deal with this crises is to go to war to get oil and kill anyone who gets in the way.

Savinar also links Peak Oil to 9-11 – a conspiracy by the US government- and CIA involvement in drug smuggling, which plays a major part in underpinning the US economy. "All wars are about GOD - Gold, Oil and Drugs." If you are not already familiar with this information it may be hard to swallow, as it was for me when I first came across it, but once you understand the mechanics of Peak Oil and the way it has influenced so much of modern history, all the pieces start to fall into place, and we awaken to a world at once more logical – and much more sinister.

In the closing sections of the book, Savinar addresses the issue of how to deal emotionally with the reality confronting us, and what we can do on a practical level to increase our survival chances, advocating a personal programme of reducing fossil-fuel dependency in every area of our lives, learning to grow food, educating others about Peak Oil - and encourages us to maintain a sense of humour, which he himself clearly has not forgotten. Despite the subject matter, the book made me laugh several times. Well, what else can you do?

In conclusion, Savinar speculates that this is all just part of natures’ plan to redress the ecological balance on earth. The real issue for us as human beings is the need to confront our own mortality – something the modern world has been singularly unwilling to do.

Is this all too much? Is Matt Savinar overdoing his extreme doom-and-gloom scenario just a little? Well, that’s for you to decide. I think he presents his case very well and the question-and-answer format works well- most objections that people will come up with are covered, I think. It will cause even the well-informed reader to think again about our dependency on oil and how its declining availability may affect your future. If nothing else it will set the standard by which all other doomsday scenarios can be measured - and highlight the possibly extreme nature of the crises now confronting us.

Maybe the only thing we are truly called to do is to contemplate with humility our mortality and the brief period of time we will spend here on earth - not just individually, but for the whole species.