“Oil is the excrement of the devil… the black bloodstream of the world economy,” intone the opening words of A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash – and you thought that it was money that makes the world go round.
This stark documentary, out this week, tells the story of the world’s addiction to oil, and how that obsession is dragging the global economy close to collapse. As you can tell from the above quotation, directors Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack don’t pull any punches when trying to get their message across.
The story starts out with grainy footage of geologist Dr MK Hubbert’s ominous warning that we would hit a peak in the production of oil by the end of the century. The “Peak Oil” theory will already be familiar to regular readers, but its true impact is laid bare on screen during this film – we see the black lunar surface of an abandoned oil field in Azerbaijan, rusting rigs off the coast of Venezuela and a once oil-rich Texan town left practically deserted.
But forget the visuals – the cold, hard facts the film presents are scary enough. When the world first discovered its taste for oil in the early 20th century, the number of people relying on it was a fraction of what it is today. Now, with Asia’s rapid economic development, there are 2.6 billion more people looking to drive cars and heat their homes. Unfortunately, there have been no major new discoveries of oil to take up the slack – and all the most promising areas have been explored. The oil industry might be pinning its hopes on the huge tar sands reserves in Canada, or deepwater exploration, but as one expert notes, “you don’t go to those areas, unless you’ve used up all the good stuff”.
The film takes opinions from top-level experts – not conspiracy theory cranks – who pour scorn on the oil industry’s efforts to disguise the crisis. One prime example of this dates back to 1985, when oil cartel Opec decided to base production quotas on each member country’s reserves. In response, the Kuwaiti government simply announced that it had 50% more oil than it had previously thought, allowing it to pump more oil. Iran and Iraq promptly followed suit. That gives some insight into the problems we have in obtaining any truly independent picture of just how much oil we have left.
The film has its faults – alternative fuel options, such as solar power and hydrogen are written off very quickly because they are, for the time being, economically unfeasible. And as is typical of this type of polemic, it plays up the apocalypse card, with predictions of a 1930s-style depression (possible) and massive depopulation amid famine and war (hopefully unlikely). It also doesn’t offer much by way of solution, bar a vague idea that the government should do more. The suggestion, though playfully raised, that we might return to an Amish-type existence after the oil crisis, is a bit heavy handed. But the film’s overiding message – that our dependence on oil is unsustainable – rings true.
In recent reviews, the film has been mentioned in the same breath as the Michael Moore and Al Gore documentaries. But the subject matter is far more unsettling – and far more convincingly supported – than anything George Bush or global warming have to throw at the world.
A Crude Awakening is on general release.