The "The Day After Tomorrow" thread got me thinking, that the movie showed a possible hollywood doomsday future, and alot of people watching it, will start thinking what can be done to prevent this from happing. However at the same time, then we are daily showed another, prehaps more real, "doomsday" type future - the future of oil, but this future is shown to us in 15-30 sec news clips daily (giving us the current oil price), and not in a 2 hours hollywood movie, so people are probably more immun to this future?
With the growth in world population, and the higher engery consumption per capita, then the world will need more oil in the future. Mix this demand with problems in the middle east, possible lower oil production, and we might only see the price for oil going up and up...
Now the question - is the western world ready to invest in oil alternatives and engery saving (might be very expensive, and mean changes in lifestyle), or will we choose to pay the price both economic and military/security/democracy in the future (ex. having trops in the middle east, fighting groups who try to destabilize the region)?
Both options seams like massive tasks/costs, but we will have to choose one of them or prehaps a bit of both, but no matter what we choose, then our daily lives have and will be changing - not in a drastic fast way, which hollywood can put into an 2 hour action movie, but over the years, and decades to come.
What do you think the western world should do?
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The optimist version of the problem:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/916492.stm
The pessimist version of the problem:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ (html)
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/crisis.html (flash movie - 11MB download, and 20 mins of slooow reading)