Oil went up another $3 per barrel today. The media would like us to believe this is due to the unrest in Egypt. Does anyone really believe that? It’s a simple and clear fact that oil is running out, and easy to get at oil has already all but run out. We mainly depend these days on dwindling, drying up oil fields, deep-water drilling, and Canadian tar sands oil, and that will be even more the case as time goes on. Interesting that politicians would have us believe that oil is not really running out — the problem according to them is that we get our oil from the Middle East. In fact, the U.S. does not get much of our oil from the Middle East at all, only about 14% these days. That may increase a bit if we go to war with Iran, a development that would be a true disaster in so many ways.

So, the truth is that we reached peak oil as a country in 1974, and the rest of the world is now approaching peak oil too, if it hasn’t already. In response to this reality, The Nation magazine has started a series of videos and information on peak oil, and above is the latest video from one of the biggest peak oil warners, James H. Kunstler.  What can we expect?  He ties it into our (poor) financial health.

“In this fifth video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, author, blogger and social critic James Howard Kunstler opens up on two circumstances he sees running neck and neck “that are going to put us out of business as an advanced industrial civilization”—the “fiasco” in banking, money and finance and the unfolding “energy predicament.” He explains that the crises are really all about “capital” and that we need to look at how wealth has been accumulated and deployed for productive purposes.”  Read more here.

From The Nation:

Peak Oil is the point at which petroleum production reaches its greatest rate just before going into perpetual decline. In “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate,” a new video series from The Nation and On The Earth productions, radio host Thom Hartmann explains that the world will reach peak oil within the next year if it hasn’t already. As a nation, the United States reached peak oil in 1974, after which it became a net oil importer.

This is discussed in the new Climate Files podcast too.