A Crude Awakening

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Film Description

This documentary lays out the stark facts behind our present situation on Earth. Oil has peaked, no significant discoveries of new oil have been made for decades, and companies and countries have been overstating their reserves. Oil, 'the bloodstream of the world economy', is running out. In the last century it has fuelled the astonishing growth in cities, industry and trading systems. It has homo sapiens hooked, and with India and China now expecting their share too, it's running out, sooner than we expect. And without a single realistic alternative to continue the job of oil as our primary engine of growth and development, we have no conception of just how big the adjustments required for human life on earth are going to be. But we better start thinking, and fast.

We are so completely dependent on oil for our present everyday existence that one industry expert says in the film: 'Oil is our God. If someone says they worship Jesus, Buddha, Allah, whoever ... they actually worship petroleum.'

Film Information

DVD Extras

Trailer; Other extras TBC.

Technical Details

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9 Stills

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Review by Graeme Hobbs on 4th March 2008

Even if you know the situation regarding increasing oil scarcity already, the stark message of this film still makes you sit bolt upright. Oil is used in the manufacture of just about everything we rely on, from computers to cosmetics, plastic bags to animal feed, weedkillers to toothbrushes. 98% of all transportation energy presently comes from oil, which has fuelled the dramatic growth of cities and industry over the last century. Oil is the blood of the world economy – and according to this documentary its supply has peaked. There have been no major finds of oil since the late 1960s; from now it gets scarcer, more expensive and more fought over, and there isn’t a single viable alternative anywhere near ready to pick up from where it is leaving us. When M. King Hubbert is shown demonstrating his ‘peak theory’, at one point he shows a graph of oil consumption across the span of 10,000 years of human existence. The oil era lasts a couple of centuries or so. That’s it.

So, welcome to the new era of ‘multi-generational resource wars’ where the Middle East is the only region in the world where oil supply has not peaked. The boom time programmes from 1950s America shown here seem so naïve now: the time when oil was ‘building a nation, guarding its security and assuring its future’. Now, America produces one fiftieth of the world’s oil and consumes one quarter of the same. In the words of one analyst in the film, ‘oil fuels war, is a catalyst for war, prolongs war and intensifies war.’ ‘If somebody says they worship Jesus, Buddha, Allah, whoever … they actually worship petroleum’ says another.

As this documentary makes clear, there are huge, inescapable adjustments coming to the life of homo sapiens on Earth. But as a ready supply of cheap oil is built into and fuels most of our lifestyles, trading systems and access to necessities, we are ill-prepared for the cataclysmic events just around the corner. 'Will my grandchildren ever fly in an aeroplane' one oil expert is asked, a question to which he can give no assurances. Although human ingenuity is called upon to solve the problem of a rapidly expanding human population relying on a natural commodity that there is ever less of, one industry figure even says the unthinkable: 'What if there is no solution?'.

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