Everywhere you look today the mainstream news is talking about shortages. Authorities all over the globe are boldly proclaiming that the world is rapidly running out of food, water and oil. So are these doomsayers right? Well, it must be noted that some of the most famous "prophets of doom" of the past several decades have seen their predictions fail spectacularly. For example, in his infamous 1968 book entitled "The Population Bomb", Paul Ehrlich made the following statement: "I don't see how India could possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980." Well, India is now feeding well over twice the number of people than they had when Ehrlich originally wrote his book. But that doesn't mean that major shortages won't happen in the future. It just means that we should be careful not to look incredibly ridiculous like Ehrlich did. The truth is that there are good reasons why we should be watching global supplies of food, water and oil very closely. Life as we know it would cease to exist if we had severe shortages of any of them.
So will we actually be facing serious shortages of food, water or oil in the coming years?
Well, let's take a look at oil first.
Oil Shortage?
Right now oil is absolutely essential to almost everything that we do. We require oil to drive our cars, we require oil to produce our food, a large percentage of our homes use energy that is derived from oil and most of what we buy at the stores comes in packaging that is made up at least partly of oil.
So if we run out of oil that is going to be a really huge deal.
So are we going to run out of oil?
Well, right now advocates of the "peak oil" hypothesis are getting a lot of attention in the mainstream media.
Basically the idea behind "peak oil" is that the world has reached (or almost reached) the maximum amount of oil that it can produce and that from here on out the amount of oil that will be produced will begin to decline. Meanwhile, the demand for oil is only going to continue to increase.
So is there evidence that this is actually happening?
Well, it depends on who you ask. But what is undeniable is that there are some very powerful interests that are doing their best to hype a coming oil shortage.
In recently released report entitled "Signals & Signposts", Shell Oil warns that global demand for energy is going to be three times as large in 2050 as it was in 2000.
So where will all of that extra energy come from?
Can the world possibly produce two or three times as much oil as it does today?
The Shell Oil report forecasts that the global supply of oil will continue to rise but that the rise in supply will not be fast enough to keep up with the rise in demand. According to Shell, this is going to cause rapidly rising oil prices which will cause the gross domestic products of all nations to fall.
So just how high could oil prices go?
Well, the truth is that the price of oil is very highly manipulated. The market for oil is not exactly what you would call a "free market".
However, it is alarming that almost everyone is forecasting much higher oil prices at this point.
For example, Weeden & Co. oil analyst Charles Maxwell recently stated that he believes that the price of oil will eventually hit $300 a barrel by the end of this decade.
If that were to happen, it would be absolutely disastrous for the global economy. Yeah, those in the oil industry would make a killing, but for the rest of the world it would be a complete and utter nightmare.
Unfortunately, what most Americans don't understand is that there are lots of alternative energy technologies out there that have been repressed by the big oil companies and by the big oil producing nations because they threaten hundreds of billions of dollars in profits.
For example, did you know that it is possible to run a car entirely on water? One Japanese company hopes to start mass marketing them....
But I wouldn't count on seeing water-powered cars sold on every street corner any time soon. Why? Because of greed.
Our entire system of energy is based on making
as much money as possible for those who have all the oil.
So if the world has a shortage of energy in the coming years, it is not because that is how it inevitably had to be.
Rather, it will be all about pure, unadulterated greed.
There are plenty of alternative energy technologies out there that are incredibly promising, but those that are getting incredibly wealthy off of our oil-based society are not going to quietly step aside for the good of mankind.