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Pending Oil Crisis
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<blockquote data-quote="sanzar" data-source="post: 194135"><p>Actually they're mutually constitutive. The world population at the end of the 19th Century was about 1 billion, a number it had hovered around for some time. The discovery of oil (and coal before it) however, quickly began to change the world with more effective transportation and industrial techniques leading to an influx of people in cities, freeing up the land in the country side and providing civilisations with easier ways of transporting food. This brought the population up to about 3 billion about half way through the 20th Century and then we had the green revolution (which resulted in huge numbers of high yeilding crops that were assisted by 'petro' chemicals) and then the population went up massively again. So Oil has really been the reason for the population growth throughout the 20th Century and thus is really at the core of all these problems (including global warming)... which means we're kinda of in a **** because there is no serious alternative to oil as it stands and it's only getting harder because the demand for oil keeps rising. Some people have speculated that we've already peeked globally and it's only the ambiguous reserve numbers listed by the OPEC states that have kept it from becoming official and thus sustaining demand. But if we have peeked, then... well I don't think it'll be awefully good for any of us. But you're right, the planet can't sustain 6 billion people, let alone the 9 billion we're predicted to reach before 2030 and oil isn't our only problem either. We're running short on a number of basic resources and both food and fresh water are becoming bigger and bigger issues (we're currently fishing large numbers fish into extinction on the food front for example).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="sanzar, post: 194135"] Actually they're mutually constitutive. The world population at the end of the 19th Century was about 1 billion, a number it had hovered around for some time. The discovery of oil (and coal before it) however, quickly began to change the world with more effective transportation and industrial techniques leading to an influx of people in cities, freeing up the land in the country side and providing civilisations with easier ways of transporting food. This brought the population up to about 3 billion about half way through the 20th Century and then we had the green revolution (which resulted in huge numbers of high yeilding crops that were assisted by 'petro' chemicals) and then the population went up massively again. So Oil has really been the reason for the population growth throughout the 20th Century and thus is really at the core of all these problems (including global warming)... which means we're kinda of in a **** because there is no serious alternative to oil as it stands and it's only getting harder because the demand for oil keeps rising. Some people have speculated that we've already peeked globally and it's only the ambiguous reserve numbers listed by the OPEC states that have kept it from becoming official and thus sustaining demand. But if we have peeked, then... well I don't think it'll be awefully good for any of us. But you're right, the planet can't sustain 6 billion people, let alone the 9 billion we're predicted to reach before 2030 and oil isn't our only problem either. We're running short on a number of basic resources and both food and fresh water are becoming bigger and bigger issues (we're currently fishing large numbers fish into extinction on the food front for example). [/QUOTE]
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