The scientific community has long agreed that our dependence on fossil fuels inflicts massive damage on the environment and our health, while warming the globe in the process. But beyond the damage these fuels cause to us now, what will happen when the world’s supply of oil runs out?
Peak Oil is the point at which petroleum production reaches its greatest rate just before going into perpetual decline. In “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate,” a new video series from The Nation and On The Earth productions, radio host Thom Hartmann explains that the world will reach peak oil within the next year if it hasn’t already. As a nation, the United States reached peak oil in 1974, after which it became a net oil importer.
Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Foss, Richard Heinberg and the other scientists, researchers and writers interviewed throughout “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” describe the diminishing returns our world can expect as it deals with the consequences of peak oil even as it continues to pretend it doesn’t exist. These experts predict substantially increased transportation costs, decreased industrial production, unemployment, hunger and social chaos as the supplies of the fuels on which we rely dwindle and eventually disappear.
Chomsky urges us to anticipate the official response to peak oil based on how corporations, news organizations and other institutions have responded to global warming: obfuscation, spin and denial. James Howard Kunstler says that we cannot survive peak oil unless we “come up with a consensus about reality that is consistent with the way things really are.” This documentary series hopes to help build that consensus. Click here to watch the introductory video, and check back here for new videos each Wednesday.
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Peak Oil and a Changing Climate: An Introduction
Featuring Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Foss, Richard Heinberg and more
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January 12:
Richard Heinberg, "The Globe’s Limitations: How Peak Oil Threatens Economic Growth"
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January 19:
Nicole Foss, "We Need Freedom of Action To Confront Peak Oil"
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January 26:
James Howard Kunstler, "Peak Oil and Our Financial Decline"
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February 2:
Dmitry Orlov, "Peak Oil Lessons From The Soviet Union"
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February 9:
Noam Chomsky, "How Climate Change Became a ‘Liberal Hoax’"
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February 16:
Bill McKibben, "Why Climate Change Is the Most Urgent Challenge We Face"
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February 23:
Greg Palast, "We’re Not Running Out of Oil, Just Cheap Oil"
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March 2:
Thom Hartmann, "Corporations Are Fueling Our Peak Oil Crisis"
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March 9:
Jean Laherrère, "Why Cheap Energy Is a Bad Thing"
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March 23:
Lester Brown, "The Planet’s Scarcest Resource Is Time"
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March 30:
Joel Salatin, "Breaking Free From Factory Farms"
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April 6:
John Ikerd, "Dwindling Energy Resources Will Put The Economy at Risk"
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April 13:
Rob Hopkins, "How Climate Change Puts Globalization in Reverse"
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