Why then do I assert that oil is finished?
I made up a thing I call "generation bias" (just now I did). It's the preference that a generation gives to a common cause, based on similar environmental conditions and life experiences. I didn't live before the civil rights era and have no problem with my kids going to school with black kids even though my parents generation did. Indeed, its hard for me to make sense of exactly what all the fuss was about, different color skin, so what? Pick a cause and the generational bias will be there:
- Cuba for example was about the spread of communism. Find me anyone under the age of 15 who even knows what communism is, let alone why we should fear it. To the young, communism gives us inexpensive electronics from China not the red menace that inspired fear and the resulting invasion of southeast asia, followed by that stupid "cold war" which just siphoned resources away from more important things.
- Gay marriage, only old people who go to church seem to have a problem with this because they confuse marriage with the sacrament of matrimony, where a couple is joined in the eyes of the lord god in an unbreakable bond. Fifty years ago it was the only way you could get laid with any regularity because no one did it before you were married. Now marriage is less religious and you don't go to hell if you divorce, I would argue that same sex marriage saved the ceremony from cynics.
- Privacy, this is one that catches me. Young folks don't seem to care about protecting their privacy like I do. My generation didn't even like to have our phone numbers public but kids today have mobile phones set up to constantly update their current location. This gives me the willies but really, why should I be concerned if people know where I am (since I am usually at home anyhow)? Not like I'm ducking a death squad...
This is my basis to assert that oil is finished. My generation is sick of oil but we aren't as versed in alternative fuels. We even call them "alternative" which should not be the nomenclature for wind, hydroelectric and solar power - all proven forms of power generation. The young will see this disaster for what it is, A DISASTER. They will grow up knowing that fossil fuels are that, FOSSIL FUELS. Petroleum and its industry as a whole has given us the gulf war, the recent spike in oil cost that ruined the auto industry and the mine collapse that killed all those men because they were trying to save a few bucks by not venting the shafts. We won't live to see it but our kids will do away with this stuff. They will view as quaint and filthy, like vinyl records, an artifact of an ignorant older generation.
Moral: Use less fucking oil, shit is nasty.
