25 thoughts on “Peak Oil”

  1. Note, rear view mirror =retrospect, not necessarily = already there.

    Dodgy picture in the sand = done in a hurry = did it for Val and Opoetoo picture poetry = pathetic attempt (need more time 🙂

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  2. The image went with the words, the words went with the horror of so much oil gushing into the water. What are we doing to our planet? Raping it and leaving it bleeding. I am ashamed of our species.

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    1. Thanks Carolyn. The oil spill is a catastrophe, but nothing like what will happen if oil runs out without a feasible alternative – mass starvation and mass deaths throughout the world – everything we produce is soaked in oil.

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  3. I’m ashamed of the human species too and appalled by how little we’re paying attention to what we’re doing to the earth, that most of us just see the future as business as usual, while we’re plundering resources and destroying species

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    1. It’s pathetic isn’t it Crafty Green Poet – head in the sand ‘she’ll be right’ attitude and no real action until the planet starts beating up on us. People will look back in the future and say ‘what the hell were they thinking’.

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  6. GB, your timely poem may have been dashed off, but it hit the spot. Congratulations.

    Quote from the novel ‘Cull’, set in the US after Obama, where Wayne Myers, US VP is presenting his paper on climate change progress to Cabinet

    (“It seems that man is the first species in the history of this planet to predict its own extinction.” He laughed bitterly. “And the joke is, we have the technology to prevent it,” He tapped his notes. “But we won’t use it!
    “This document is a tribute to ignorance, stupidity and plain pig headedness.” He picked up the papers, glanced at Tanner and passed them along the table.)

    Another, from the play of 1990, “20-20 Vision”. (‘Coal is Nature’s Hazardous Waste Dump and we continue ot exhume it!’)

    I joined the Australian Greens in desperation.

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  7. Utterly Brilliant and totally out shines me dearest Gabrielle! I love it and your words are a warning to be heeded.

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    1. Thanks Paul. I’d like to do more with the visuals but have great difficulty with the formatting in wordpress – I’ve posted a few poems that look different in my word processor than they do in the blog, unfortunately.

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  9. Indeed Gabe… the Gulf of Mexico spill should be enough to shock us all into a chain of events leading to change. We can only do our bit and hope the world follows.

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    1. You’d think so, but I don’t think so – you just have to listen to the garbage coming out of the mouths of BP officials about how it is only a small spill and the ocean is very big – what a joke. There is so much money tied up in the big polluters and they have so much power. We need some brave politicians (is that an oxymoron?).

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  11. BP have incensed me with their nonchalant attitude so much that I have spent many hours fantasising about forming a guerilla group of environmental warriors to take them out one by one. I don’t believe anything will change because oil is so linked to money and we all know the corrupting influence of money on the human psyche.

    Your poem in many ways is prophetic. It is like the final scene from a film where there is nothing left in our world and we look back on the wasteland we have created with horror. But it is too late to do anything and all we can do is walk. Chilling.

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    1. Thanks Selma. Humans seem little able to change unless they are forced by circumstance; and there is no doubt that oil will eventually run out as it is a limited, non-renewable resource. The thing that gets me is that the rich people (like the ones that own the mines and wells) are the ones that will be least affected by these things.

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  12. Hi, yes, I did view this poem but couldn’t post a response at the time. Thanks for posting a link to it. I think the time is NOW for all of ‘us’ to start doing everything we can to change our own behavior and thinking in order to create the change our earth needs for our own survival. Why should the few greedy ‘elite’ get to call all the shots? Why? We must do it. The PEAK indeed, GB. The Peak indeed.

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    1. Thanks 47whitebuffalo – now is definitely the time as we have nearly run out of time. Individuals should make changes but Governments need to make the biggest changes to assist individuals with change. Humans have the power to change the shape of the Hubbert curve in that if we shift to sustainable energy ASAP then there won’t be a need for oil (and it will be too expensive anyway). In Australia we are lucky to have lots of sunshine so I’m going to invest in solar power and then a battery car which plugs into my solar system at home – bingo, no need for trips to the petrol station (or as you say Gas station). The problem is there is a bit of oil in everything we consume, so there needs to be a massive shift to renewables (and NOT friggin’ nuclear energy – can you imagine the mistakes they would make with that).

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