Form a very informed perspective, we're pretty much screwed as far as the transition from oil goes.
By British Petroleum’s own 2008 estimates, we will completely drain the world’s oil deposits in 42 years. (based on the current global rate of consumption and the estimates for the usable global oil reserves, predicting future oil finds and improvements in refinement technology)
More interesting statistics: based on the amount of oil reserves in the region and the regional rate of production, North America would last 14.8 years, compared to 78.6 for Middle East
If only forty more years of oil by the absolute most optimistic estimates (at our 2008 rates of production) isn't enough to scare you, keep in mind that's only when we refine our very last drop. Once the production of oil peaks and starts declining rapidly as reserves become more scarce, the effect on the civilized world will be catastrophic. That's in about 15-20 years, again by very optimistic estimates. In conclusion, unless we become extremely efficient with what we have left and get our act together about finding alternative sources of energy, we're going to run out of oil very quickly.
But that's where we run into MORE problems! China and India are just becoming industrialized, so they need oil prices low to stimulate growth, meaning their governments are willing to pay subsidies to get more oil at the same prices. The end result is that they are using more of the world's remaining oil up at an INCREASING rate, even past peak oil, making it really damn difficult for us to increase our efficiency enough to noticeably extend our reserves. This only makes the most difficult problem of all even more ridiculous to solve, finding something to replace oil.
I am not even joking here, every single alternative source of energy has their own set of massive problems. We're going to be forced into the least damaging option, a chain of lesser evils until we're right back to friggin coal. If anyone wants to know what's wrong with their favorite alternative fuel, ask me, because there is always something wrong with it. I'll go over what is currently the most promising idea, and then what someone brought up earlier, nuclear power.
A promising source of alternative oil is converting the abundant Canadian tar sands into crude. However, obtaining oil in this way almost requires more energy, through natural gas, than it the small amount of oil it yields. The processes required also release massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and pollute the oceans and other sources of water directly with nasty chemicals. Real bad ones. Alternative sources are almost always more expensive and energy extensive to produce than crude oil, even with diminishing supply, so there is basically no immediate incentive to invest in them. Once we hit peak Oil, these methods to extend the reserves of our oil will become much more attractive however, but these are all just stalling tactics that come at the cost of our environment's health. Which leads me into my last point...
There are no alternatives to replace oil as a source of power. Nuclear power has political barriers, AND only produces electricity, which introduces the problem that all of our fully electric cars suck. They just suck. Watch "Who Killed the Electric Car" for more info on that mess. America, with our long commuting distances, can't survive on electric cars without amazing advances in technology which also aren't happening. Hydrogen Fuel Cells? Very expensive, and producing the clean-burning fuel releases 2/3 of the pollution of crude. But wait, we have an abundant, cheap resource - Coal! Or not. You need a completely retarded amount of coal to produce one barrel of oil, and it releases well over 20 times the CO2 crude does along with tons of other nasty chemicals, straight into the atmosphere. Biofuels? Remember those? Ethanol runs in diesel engines, we don't even have to convert it! But we already shot down that idea, once we discovered the sheer amount of corn we would have to grow to even meet half of the current oil usage wouldn't leave us room to grow food.
The most optimistic view of the situation we’ve put ourselves in is that by supporting gradual scientific growth we may eventually produce an unexpected solution that replaces oil and solves everything. There is no easy solution to this.
Hipmonlee, your worry about extra Carbon in the air happens to be directly in conflict with the 90's documentary The Greening of Earth, which supports the idea that increased CO2 will make plants grow or some other misrepresented pseudoscience bullshit. However, their main idea, that CO2 isn't bad enough to stop using crude oil, will only get more popular as we run out of an easily available supply. I personally think Global Warming, although still important, is going to be put to the side for a while to deal with this crisis.
Oh yeah BP spilling that oil. We're screwed faster. Everybody is wasting time pointing fingers at leaders for pointing fingers at companies for pointing fingers at themselves as we very, very quickly run out of what oil we have left.
