The End of Black Blood

"Oil is our God. I don't care if somebody says they worship Jesus, Buddha, Allah, whoever. They actually worship petroleum."

And so begins a thriller documentary called "A Crude Awakening."

As soon as the award-winning expose arrived in the mailbox yesterday I found time at 3 this morning to watch it - a time when most of humanity is sound asleep but my mind still churns with election stress and environmental concerns. "A Crude Awakening" did little to settle those fears instead arming me with answers and anger.

Weaving sound bites from the world's top energy experts, the scientists explain what oil is, where it comes from, who controls it, where it's used and when Earth will run out of it. It goes on to share the consequences of industrial societies when black blood runs dry in 10 to 40 years.

Footage from once thriving cities like Baku, Azerbaijan, Texas and Maracaibo, Venezuela, contrast with startling rotting, rusting corpses of oil drilling machines today. These areas were once the 'Saudi Arabia's of the world' and few ever believed it would end for them but it did.

One reputable Shell Oil scientist named Marion King Hubbert knew and warned the U.S. government, 20 years beforehand, that peak oil would plummet in the 1970's but nobody took him serious, questioning his judgment and practically laughing him out of the room.

Sound familiar?

The doc is a harbinger of things to come if personal habits, industries, corporations and governments do not embrace alternatives soon. But even wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, hydro, tidal and wave will not be able to power the grid like oil does. So what then? What sustainable energy source is readily and cheaply available to replace the Devils excrement? That's a question for another documentary and a blog entry I can't answer.