'A Crude Awakening' - An ashockalyptic reflection

The film, 'A Crude Awakening'.



Well, I don’t know if that is quite an accurate statement, but the film did certainly bring a few points to my attention which I was previously unaware of.
Whether it was that much of a shock to me, is debatable.

For me, the film is a good piece of cinematic ‘shock-therapy’. However, upon further thinking after watching the film, and research, the actual situation we face, I don’t feel will be as apocalyptic as the film suggests.
For example, the film debunks the possibility that by using energies such as solar, wind, tidal, geothermal and hydro-electric power, we can replace the energy that we use from oil. However, upon further research, it is possible (from various sources) to maintain our current level of energy consumption that we obtain from oil, with other alternatives.
The film doesn’t provide a solution or at least focus on the possibilities that might lead to a solution. That’s not really what the film is about. If it was, it might have been called A Crude Awakening, followed by something saucy like ‘A Lude Solution’, but it’s not.

What the film portrays is how oil is becoming less and less reliable as a resource. And rightly so. But the future, the near future at least, is not so bleak, in my opinion.
And here’s my reasoning.
From what I understand about Peak Oil, we’re pretty much at the peak of production level now, or at least will be before 2010/2015. 1970s saw the peak of oil consumption, since then, the amount we have has been running out. The time lag between the two sets of info on Hubbert’s graph, shows that coming very soon, is the pretty much the end of oil.
Now, briefly, let’s look at these oil monsters. These people aren’t clueless. They’re not idiots. A couple of companies even managed to get a family and a executive representative into the White House for God’s sake, in the form of Bush and Cheney, both with huge oil company connections. Since being in office, Bush executed his plan quite well of using man-power of America to go in to the Middle East and get himself some more oil.
All in all, that was an efficient plan, and it worked. It was disgusting and he should be tried for war crimes, however, you can’t deny that it worked.
Now, do you honestly think that these oil monsters are turning a blind eye to the reduction in oil levels / production? Do you really think if they can execute a plan to get someone as PRESIDENT, that they would be as stupid to not have a follow-up plan after the oil is gone? I think to say that these monsters are clueless is quite ignorant. They have been one step ahead of the game since they invented it.

Recently, if you saw Obama’s inauguration speech, you would have heard him mention quite obviously, his desired introduction of ‘greener technologies’ as opposed to fossil-fuel based technologies.
My theory? That these monsters are already planning / have planned the back-up energy source to oil. They are going to introduce it, soon, and they are going to make money off of it. It is going to be labeled as the ‘greener solution’ and 85% of the people that can afford it are going to leap at the idea, thinking they are ‘doing their part’ to save the environment. You watch, I reckon this is the kind of formula they are going to follow.

However, is it going to be greener? A touch, but not really. Those of you who are familiar with the fraudulent term ‘sustainable’ know that in truth, no method of energy that we are harnessing is sustainable. The source of energy itself might be, such as sunlight or wind etc, but making the technology to harness / capture and convert that source is not.
And if is not sustainable? Well, that means money. Potentially HUGE money.
It won’t surprise me if the same companies that have fucked the earth over year after year, start turning around under different names, churning out ‘sustainable’ alternatives to oil. It’s a very clever idea.

In the news recently, Chevrolet have begun their exposure of their new electric car. However, it only does 40 miles on one charge. Their previous model back in the 90s ... 70 miles per one charge. This is another point; it won’t surprise me if the technologies we have access to are deliberately designed to be less efficient than is possible. The car is a good example. If back in the 90s they had the technology to make a car run 70 miles on one charge, the technology now, let’s say, could at least get you 100. Or maybe 71 miles. But the fact they are releasing it at 40 miles? Well, I suspect it has to do with the good old Capitalism factor of ‘planned obsolescence’.
On a worryingly pess/optimistic note, you could say that the whole ‘oil’ era was planned obsolescence. After the last oil field was discovered, these people would have concluded that they need to come up with other plans. I say just watch what happens in these next few years, as to what is force-fed to us and labeled as the 'alternative solution' to oil.

This theory that I am proposing, that the governments will start pushing other ‘alternatives’ on to the populations by way of the corporations’ requests, I think will only last a matter of time.

On one hand, you could say that there are going to be stages.
Some examples of the stages might look like this:
Oil (runs out, planned obsolescence) > Perfect opportunity to introduce ‘Green’ technology

Oil (runs out, planned obsolescence) > Companies use Uranium as a ‘bridge’ > Eventually we reach Green.

Oil (runs out, planned obsolescence) > Companies use coal as ‘bridge’ > uranium or green etc.


On the other hand, after the oil is gone, there are a mass combination of energies, Uranium, coal and green technologies, all working together to power the globe.
I don’t think the world would just stop and collapse. There are too many people at the top of their pyramid that need to make more money and have more power, and they wouldn’t be as stupid as to let that happen solely by not planning ahead.

My current explanation is; with the remaining oil we have left, I think these companies are using that oil to power their research into other technologies. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had planned out just how long we have left before the earth is fully dry, and have tapered their new energy production to coincide perfectly with their ‘oil-time’ limits.
If the technology exists to cure cancer and aids, or to construct a train line upon which the train can travel up to 4000mph using magnet and vacuum technology, all of the latter being things we haven’t 'heard' about, then I am pretty sure that these fuckers at the top have got it pretty figured out.

But, perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps the world is going to collapse after the oil runs out.
And what is interesting is that the film, intentionally or unintentionally, points to the only viable solution being primitivism. For me? Well, that’s awesome, haha, as anarcho-primitivism is something I have been looking into recently. If the world did collapse, how ironic that we might return to our primitive state!

So either way, if we’re given a fixed choice of energy alternatives, or if the world collapses, I think it makes sense to start looking into self-sufficiency as much as possible, right now.
I came across the term ‘Permaculture’ recently, and the ideas behind this appear very interesting in relation to the ‘self-sufficient’ lifestyle.
I think to rely on governments and energy sources, their methods of ‘solution’ is only a prolonged form of suicide. If the world does collapse due to oil running out, the sad fact is that the billions of people that are currently ‘reliant’ on governments etc, are all going to die. Period. This is what is referred to, in primitivism as ‘The Die Off’.

So far, that is all I have to conclude on the subject.

Some interesting things you should read to balance out the view made by ‘A Crude Awakening’:

There are some great points here:-
Peak Oil Debunked: Confessions of an Ex-Doomer

A VBS video about Toxic Alberta, Canada;