Collapse Assignment 2

We are staring into the near future, looking at the end of our lives, as we know it. It is for a fact that America is bound to collapse, the question is when. What exactly will cause the collapse? Too many reasons to count. One major reason being our lack of respect for our environment. Oil is a majorly used product that we use to produce energy. This energy could be used for anything but the fact of the matter is, the amount of oil that we’re using is soon going to be more than what we have.

Some say we’ve already reached our peak oil point. Oil is not renewable resource. We only have a certain amount of oil so by saying we’ve already reached our peak oil point, we’ve already used up half of the amount of oil we have. “Oil currently accounts for about 43% of the world's total fuel consumption [PDF], and 95% of global energy used for transportation [PDF]. Oil and gas are feedstocks for plastics, paints, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, electronic components, tyres and much more. Oil is so important that the peak will have vast implications across the realms of war and geopolitics, medicine, culture, transport and trade, economic stability and food production. Significantly, for every one joule of food consumed in the United States, around 10 joules of fossil fuel energy have been used to produce it.” (Peak Oil Primer) Without oil, our society will collapse. It is a main factor in our every day needs. Americans are highly dependent on economic growth. “– growth based on ever more readily available cheap fossil fuels.” (Peak Oil Primer). Oil is important to our society because everything we have contains oil to either produce it, or use it.

Exactly how Easter island collapsed due to their abuse of natural un-reliable resources, America’s collapse will be contributed by that same reason.

In response to Chloe’s last paragraph for this assignment, I kind of disagree. Chloe mentions how she believes big strong places such as America and China will collapse a lot slower than small countries because we are richer. The way I see it is the small poorer countries that won’t be able to afford oil might still be better off than us because they don’t solely base their society/economy around it. I’m sure they will find a replacement for oil and they’re already used to working harder due to their lack of advanced industrialization. We on the other hand will be screwed because we’re not used to working so hard for our products. We’ll probably starve a lot quicker than they will because Americans have lost touch with their natural instinctive side because of how advanced on technology we are.