There’s been a lot of doom and gloom in the news lately. The first was an article last week on the Energy Watch Group’s latest report, which states that global oil production peaked in 2006. It’s only one study, and there have been no additional follow-up reports in the news lately from other groups. Still, given the Hubbert Curve, it’s probably safe to say that we’re either at the peak, past the peak, or looking straight at ahead at the peak. Personally, I think we’ve passed the peak, but we’re still at the top of the plateau– the free fall that will happen isn’t quite here yet, though I would say it probably isn’t all that far off. If you ever wanted to do an “affordable” road trip, now’s the time.

This doesn’t mean we’re going to run out of oil tomorrow– far from it. It does mean that the end of cheap oil is definitely here, and given the talk about $100-a-barrel oil lately, it’s my guess it certainly won’t be too long before the Corporate Media breathlessly opines about prices such as $125, $150, and upwards. The musings about the magic $100 mark have been around for a while, as you can see in this Forbes article from 2004. But the unease has increased now that it’s finally within sight. It certainly doesn’t help that the remaining oil we know of or that can still be easily extracted is in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and Venezuela, to name a few. Our gummint is tight with the Saudis, but trying to pick a war with Iran, bogged down in Iraq, not about to interfere in Sudan (where the tragedy that is Darfur continues unabated), and ostensibly enemies with Venezuela. There’s oil still in places like the Gulf of Mexico, Canada, and other seemingly benign locales, but not as much as in the more volatile regions worldwide. That does complicate things, doesn’t it?

Speaking of the Gulf, Mexico itself has been a reliable importer of oil to the U.S. Last year, there was an announcement of a supposedly huge find– an underwater field that could potentially be huge. However, just a couple months later was this article, stating that Mexico’s glory days as an oil giant are coming to an end. Not only that, the decline will definitely impact U.S. - Mexico relations in more ways than just petroleum:

Oil income accounts for more than 40 percent of the Mexican federal government’s annual revenues, so the decline of oil output could leave the country’s next president with a nightmarish budget crisis.

How much you wanna bet that fence or no fence (and walls historically don’t work all that well: see the Berlin Wall, Hadrian’s Wall, and China’s Great Wall, among others…), we’ll see an upsurge in impoverished migrants seeking better opportunities elsewhere?

What’s interesting is that for all the talk about “We’ve got plenty of oil! There’s oil shales all over! Colorado has tons of oil in the rocks!”, you don’t see a lot of serious musing about taking that path. In this article discussing the cost of oil, oilman T. Boone Pickens isn’t betting his fortune on oil shale extraction– he’s putting his money and his mouth on wind power. He and others with half a brain know that the cost of extraction isn’t going to be worth it in the long run, and that any smart energy company needs to start investigating and cornering the market on alternative energy sources. There’s also the fact that oil shale extraction is fairly similar to open-pit mining, and has many of the same environmental risks (not the least of which is groundwater pollution). In an era where global warming is the watchword and a resurging environmental movement is afoot, I foresee some companies trying oil shale extraction, but the majority looking elsewhere.

It’s not just oil that’s going to be a problem. As many of you know, it’s been rather dry out West. This isn’t something new; the Western U.S. has historically been drier than the eastern half of the nation. But now in places like Georgia, we’re seeing water woes. Just this past week, most major news outlets carried the story about impending water shortages. I’ve linked to the San Francisco Chronicle out of habit (and also due to the fact that they don’t tend to toss their stories into protected archives as fast as other papers do), but the story is essentially the same:

The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.

A lot of people have pointed to global warming as the culprit. It is, but just to a degree. The above sentence actually has more of the complete story: population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.

Both oil and water are finite resources. Water’s a bit less finite, thanks to the natural cycle (water evaporates, condenses, precipitates, and collects, as most of us learned in grade school. Here’s a pretty simple diagram), but in the end, the water is essentially the same– it just gets “recycled” (unlike oil). Because they’re finite, that means there’s only so much to go around.

So what’s the point, you say? The point is the real culprit here isn’t “global warming”– “global warming” is a consequence. The real problem is overpopulation. It’s something that Al Gore touched on in “An Inconvenient Truth,” but didn’t go into much detail on. I wish he had, because the central issue we’re all going to need to face is the fact that the planet only has so much carrying capacity. Malthus, among others, has discussed this over the years. A managed population could probably have stretched out the petroleum a lot longer than it’s lasted so far. A managed population could probably exist just fine on the amount of water we have. But the exploding population worldwide means more and more people are going to want the same finite resources (and water and oil are just the tip of the iceberg, really).

It doesn’t help when nations like China and India have over 1 billion people each. It doesn’t help when religions like Catholicism and Mormonism exhort their followers to keep pushing out kids by the dozens. It doesn’t help when gummints like ours refuse to responsibly confront topics such as sexuality, contraception, and population control.

It also certainly doesn’t help when states, cities, and counties do a piss-poor job of planning, zoning, and smart growth. At some point we’re all going to need to have a serious talk about all this. We can’t keep building McMansions without responsible planning for infrastructure. We can’t keep allowing highways to be built without addressing mass transit and the future of transportation. We can’t keep draining rivers and lakes and expect that everyone will be able to turn on the tap and get what they want without any problems. We can’t keep allowing suburbs to sprout up where there once was arable land. At some point, the bill comes due. It’s looks increasingly like that bill is going to come due a lot sooner than any of us expect. The earth is home to all of us, and it’s a five-bedroom, four bath home with 100 people in it.

We can discuss global warming til we’re blue in the face. We can wring our hands about the melting polar ice caps. We can mourn the snows of Kilimanjaro all we want. But until we’re willing to have a serious, adult conversation at all levels (and yes, this means you, Mr. Bush) about the whole picture, nothing’s going to change. I believe global warming is real, and that it’s happening. But it’s happening in part because there’s too many people on this planet– we’ve pushed the boundaries of forests and savannah to the brink, we’ve siphoned billions of gallons from ultimately finite rivers, we’ve gobbled up topsoil worldwide. The word “hubris” comes to mind.

I’m not sure what the ultimate solution is, or should be. If you’ve made it this far, feel free to start the discussion that I think we need to have– start it right here. It’s as good a place as any.