What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis

"Soaring fuel prices, rumours of winter power cuts, panic over the gas supply from Russia, abrupt changes to forecasts of crude output... Is something sinister going on? Yes, says former oil man Jeremy Leggett, and it's time to face the fact that the supplies we so depend on are going to run out."

"We have allowed oil to become vital to virtually everything we do. Ninety per cent of all our transportation, whether by land, air or sea, is fuelled by oil. Ninety-five per cent of all goods in shops involve the use of oil. Ninety-five per cent of all our food products require oil use. Just to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires six barrels of oil, enough to drive a car from New York to Los Angeles. The world consumes more than 80 million barrels of oil a day, 29 billion barrels a year, at the time of writing. This figure is rising fast, as it has done for decades. The almost universal expectation is that it will keep doing so for years to come. The US government assumes that global demand will grow to around 120 million barrels a day, 43 billion barrels a year, by 2025. Few question the feasibility of this requirement, or the oil industry's ability to meet it."

This is very much a 'doom and gloom' piece. It goes into detail about why some think that within a few short years, literally less than a decade, we're all going to be in deep trouble.

Aside from predicting economic disaster for the near future, this is also a long article that may just bore you to death, but it's important to read. Whether you believe those that say a crash is coming in a few short years, or the ones that say we have longer, the time for us to prepare for it is......yesterday, or maybe even, last week. We can't keep saying we want alternatives to oil, and not do anything to move towards that goal. Even if we have another hundred years, we can't wait for the 99th year to take action.

[UPDATE]

The original article at The Independent is no long available in its' entirety except to subscribers, so here's the complete article found on another site:

What they don't want you to know