A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

A Crude Awakening is a feature length documentary which shows the viewer many videos of all over the world, and the oil supply. The tone of this film is very much the tagline, "we're running out and we don't have a plan".

Written up notes:

• Oil is the excrement of the Devil??
• Oil is the blood of the dinosaurs??

• Making ourselves dependent on something that isn't eternal
• $1 = 25000 hours of manual labour = 1 barrel of oil
• 1960 Thunderbird new fords
• 70% of oil is refined into transportation oil
• Green revolution - revitalizing land with oil, making vehicles for easier copping using petroleum to run them - 20th Century
• If you ship everything away that uses oil - what do we have left?
• Baka 1800s passed to dig up oil - became a huge industrial city
• Venezuela 1914 discovered oil in their country 1922 16th December, blowout, the day of the black rain - became the largest exploiters of the world
• They couldnt picture a world with out oil - it was everywhere, on everything (Texas)
• Now we know nothing can last forever
• Now none of the above countries have any oil left - it is empty
• Oil is a magnet for war - a way of securing suplly
• Different religious make -up means governments cant agree onoil etc.
• Sadam Hussians attack - was about oil
• The 'O' word
• Securing energy for USA - war on Iraq right in the middle of the oil patch
• Oil is going to come from less secure places, places that will fight against oil being taken
• Do the public know the truth? About how much we actually have?
• Dr M.K Hubbert 1975 - we will peak one day
• 1970 December 10.2 million barrels a day USA peaked
• Thatcher became prime-minister, wanted more
• The better you do at exploiting oil, the quicker it is gone
• 2020 - we will run out - only 6 years
• Patterns show that every country that founded oil have peaked and decreased to little or nothing
• People think technology will solve our problems
• Technology that was used to help oil production have actually made it so we have ran out quicker - kind of like we are our own enemy
• The only place in the world that hasn't peaked is in the Middle East
• If they reach their peak supply then so has the rest of the world - when you reach the peak you are at the top of the mountain, some times the other side is a slow decline or it can be a rapid way down, and so we have to face the opposite side and start thinking of how we are going to improve this - live through this
• Petrotech 2005
• Higher oil prices will maybe stop people buying it
• Why are we waiting for oil to make it's peak before we act on any thing?
• If we act now we could save more for later
• No one is telling the truth about oil levels
• Always about increasing rather than ways of preserving
• Nuclear plants?
• We have an indispensable amount of sunlight, so why don't we start using the solar power - a huge technological challenge, but it is not impossible
• There are so many ideas to help save this but that is all they are, ideas - no one is trying to act, they need research to see if anything can be done, but no one is researching
• We could never undo Mars, we can never go back to original farming. We have to to adapt to new ways of living. The lifestyle we have now is unsustainable
• Armish life?
• Driving and air travel will become only available to those top of the tree
• Air travel could stop altogether
• Which more powerful money or oil?
• People used to think it was money that made the world go round, but it was actually cheap oil
• 193os depression
• Another depression if we run out?
• Without oil how much can the population sustain? The number of population would have to decrease for the world to continue
• Its never happened before so no body knows what to do
• A simpler life is the answer?
• Is that the only way we will survive?

This film was interesting. It highlighted all the bad things we have done in much detail, and gave good idea of where oil came from, and where it had dried up. Though it did not give any answers to how we can stop this. It left us feel very helpless and deflated, like we cant do anything now because it is too late.