Peak oil – the South will rise again

But will the best or the worst of Dixie win out?

Science-fiction writers like to imagine how, after a limited nuclear war, disease pandemic or other catastrophe, North America would break up into half a dozen or so smaller nations. There would be French-speaking Quebec, Yankee New England, an eco-state in the Pacific Northwest, a Latino-dominated neo-Aztec kingdom in the Southwest and of course, a risen-again Confederacy in the Southeast.

These days, such scenarios are not just entertainment; they’re contingency planning. Futurists are now concerned that an energy crisis brought on by the peaking of world oil could disrupt America’s economy and politics enough to strain the U.S. social fabric beyond its breaking point.

Peak oil is the idea that someday – even optimists agree that it will happen within the next 30 years – the world will reach the point where oil production can no longer be increased to meet rising demand and must begin its inevitable decline.

That doesn’t mean that oil will run out right away. What it does mean is that as supplies run down and countries compete for an ever-tighter supply, prices are sure to rise. Oil is so important to modern society – 95 percent of world transportation runs on oil – that the end of cheap oil could be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Augusta Free Press