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Simple: All industries are heavily dependent on cheap crude oil. All new technological development is heavily dependent on cheap crude oil. For a good example, do you know how many calories of cheap crude oil it takes to produce each calorie of FOOD??? For another good example, how do you produce non-oil-dependent automobiles without using any plastic or metal? How do you build wind farms, solar farms or nuclear energy plants without using gobs of energy directly derived from fossil fuels? Yes, there are alternatives to fossil fuels. To get there requires USING fossil fuels, though. When we most need fossil fuels, is EXACTLY when we won't have them.
Imagine if all oxygen were to suddenly vanish from the Earth's atmosphere. You're one of the lucky ones who happened to be near a source of canned oxygen, so you didn't die within the first couple of minutes. You (and the other survivors left on the planet) can build a factory to convert water to hydrogen and oxygen. Only problem is, the current supply of (mostly bottled) oxygen will run out before any new factory is built. So what new trick do you come up with to keep breathing in the meantime? IT DOESN'T MATTER . . . the world economy has collapsed in the meantime. That is exactly the same type of scenario that we are facing. It won't be quite as dramatic when oil production starts falling off, but ALMOST. The immediate problem when oil production starts falling will be lack of food. If we can solve THAT problem, we may just build a new worldwide economy someday. But considering that our only priority will be food production for several years, it's not hard to see that the worldwide economy is definitely going to collapse. You don't worry about making money when you are worried about lack of food at any price.
A gradual, smooth change would have had to have been started decades ago. So far, we have done almost NOTHING in the way of converting our worldwide economy to be totally NON-dependent on fossil fuels. The type of (literally) overnight change needed soon will cause the world economy to collapse. You don't go from thoroughly oil-dependent economy to (not enough oil to go around anymore) to (gradual, smooth change) to (everything's A-OK now). The world economy WILL collapse. It might eventually recover, but not before it totally collapses. To believe otherwise is simply ignorant. The world economy is totally dependent on CHEAP crude oil. A "gradual" change can not save the world economy from collapsing. To prevent the world economy from collapsing, we'd have to drop our world-wide OIL usage down close to zero percent in a manner of weeks, AT MOST, starting from the time that worldwide oil production starts falling off.
It would take a huge miracle to STOP the worldwide economy from collapsing at that point. If you disagree, you simply are not aware of the billions of ways that all industries are (currently) totally dependent on cheap crude oil. -Dave
