Focus Week 3 started a few days early with the viewing of a multi-award winning documentary A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash at a new little cinema in Kensal Rise - The Lexi. My local transition town movement Transition Kensal to Kilburn is quick on the mark inviting members to events, talks, market days and important events like this documentary viewing.
The documentary, produced and directed by Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack highlights the frightening issues surrounding our exhaustion of this non-renewable fossil fuel, in a manner that even a toddler will understand. Oil is described as the excrement of the devil, black blood, the blood of the earth and the bloodstream of the world economy, the latter seemingly the most appropriate when you consider pretty much every single thing we use, wear, consume has come to being thanks to oil.
The viewer is shown disturbing imagery of some of the world's most prominent ex-oil mining sites, dry, deserted and incredibly depressing - McCamey Texas, Maracaibo Venezuela and Baku Azerbaijan.
Baku, Azerbaijan
By 1900, 95% of Russian oil came from Baku, thereafter Venezuela discovered oil in 1914 and became the largest importer in the world. The USA is described as being the Saudi Arabia until the 1950's, being the largest oil producer for 100 years. Noone thought it would peak, yet a Geophysicist, the late Dr. M. King Hubbert had said for years that it will come to an end. He was laughed at. He created a graph of oil discovery and production called Hubbert's Peak which showed quite clearly the concerning issue's in relation to oil supply and demand.
The message throughout is that oil has peaked, but there are doubts about the middle east. Every year, oil producing countries have the same numbers for oil reserves and production, and some even rise, which according to those interviewed, does not make sense. If countries like India and China continue to grow, and strive for the standards of living that the rest of the world is used to, how are decreasing oil reserves meant to cope with these new demands for cars, food, products and industry? Worryingly, if Saudi Arabia does in fact exceed its sustainable oil supply, then the world has reached its supply.
We will continue to have multi-generational RESOURCE wars if the world's behaviours and attitudes do not change and look seriously for energy alternatives.
There are interviews with hugely influential people in the world-wide oil industry - a list of whom can be found here. Matt Savinar, interviewed throughout the film is an attourney from California with a political science degree and an informed individual in the peak oil crisis (often quoted in the US Congress, and US journals). His website lifeaftertheoilcrash is assigned reading at multiple university courses around the world, and worth adding to favourites.
I hope this documentary makes it onto the mainstream cinema circuits, with household effects like that the Inconvenient Truth did, but then again, like all things political, it probably wont.
+ oil crash the movie
+ transition kensal to kilburn
+ the lexi cinema
+ Hubberts Peak
+ lifeaftertheoilcrash
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