The Party's Over : take you and your oil out !

The Party’s Over, a text by Richard Heinberg goes more into depth about the branching from energy to human society. Energy is the ability to do work, according to Heinberg, and is needed by all living things. Plants receive energy from the sun and the animals that feed on these plants obtain their energy by consuming the plants. Humans receive their energy by plants and animals, but also create energy using oil.
Oil has become America’s prize consumption, and due to the over indulgence in oil, our population has exponentially grown. “The momentum of population increase may lead the rabbits to overshoot their carrying capacity. The likelihood of overshoot is increased by the fact that the environment carry capacity for rabbits is not static” (Heinberg, 19). Heinberg is stating that because the rabbits over produce; the availability for food to support the population is scarce. Once there is no control of the population: competition and deaths will occur, due to the lack of resources. This example of a ‘community’ is a prime example of what is going to happen to the United States. The U.S. population has exponentially grown, and our oil-based energy is limited, and cannot support the entire nation for much longer. Once our only form of sufficient energy is gone, the life would be far worse than we would have if we never discovered oil. The use of oil has there formed a “Long Emergency”. Kunstler’s text highlights peak of oil, climate change, diseases and water scarcity. All of these factors tie together to form the Long Emergency, the title of his book. Long Emergency is a paradox because long contradicts emergency, but is used in a key sense to describe the oil crisis and how wars are formed based on that. It is a long emergency because for a long time oil supply has steadily decrease creating oil shocks in the 1970’s. “I predict that we are entering an era of titanic international military strife over resources” (Kunstler, 2). Kunstler’s assumption of war is correct because after the bombing of the Twin towers on September 11, 2001, U.S went to war on Iraq, mainly due to its oil supply, rather than Saudi Arabia, the country that is responsible for the destruction of the towers. “The decline of fossil fuels is certain to ignite chronic strife between nations contesting the remaining supplies. These recourse wars have already begun. There will be more of them. They are very likely to grind on and on for decades” (Kunstler, 3). Kunstler is stating that fossil fuel (oil) is the main cause for the wars, along with water, which he later discusses in his chapter. Since oil is comprised of almost everything, it is used to create the machines and vaccinations, and from vaccinations, diseases as well. Diseases that spread and mutate due to pesticides and antibiotics we invent, would become a contributing factor to depopulate the nation. Another real issue that is no longer a theory is Global warming. Since our earth is brutally damaged, climates are starting to change, altering ecosystems and biomes.



Heinberg, Richard. THE PARTY'S OVER. Canada: New Society Publishers, (April 1, 2003). Kunstler, James Howard. The Long Emergency. New York: Grove Press, (March 2, 2006).