This year has seen ever-higher prices at the pump, rebels seizing Libyan oilfields and a nuclear facility crippled in Japan. Yet few have realised that these disparate events are part of a larger unfolding drama. Our global energy economy, long-powered by fossil fuels and nuclear, is spiralling into a dangerous and unstable endgame.
In the first decade of this century, the emerging nations, led by China and India, brought one-third of the human race into the declining oil era. Global output rose and because every activity in our economy requires carbon-based energies, huge demand pressure was placed on diminished fossil fuel reserves.
When the price of oil passed the $125 per barrel mark in early 2008, the folly of constructing a civilisation on exhumed carbon deposits became clearer. Looking back, we can see that we hit peak globalisation, the outer limits of an economic system dependent on fossil fuels. By July 2008 oil had risen to $147, precipitating a slowdown in the global economy. This was the economic earthquake that signalled the passing of the oil era; the financial collapse 60 days later was merely the aftershock.