Global Economic

Collapse
How the End of Oil will send
the world back 500 years
By Kyle Thompson
WHY IS OIL SO DELICIOUS?
 It’s free! It comes right out of the ground.
 It’s made up of dead plants and dinosaurs!
 It’s a liquid, which is easier to transport than past
fuels (coal, timber).
 It contains complex carbon chains which pack the
maximum amount of energy possible.
 It’s made up of many varieties of carbon chains,
which can then be separated for use as gasoline,
jet fuel, petroleum jelly, motor oil, and plastic
polymer base.
 It’s more abundant than natural gas, but less
abundant than coal.
 Modern Uses of Oil

essential uses ALTERNATIVES Will it be enough?

of OIL Will it work?

Gasoline (cars, Cars: solar, wind -based electric Probably

planes) Planes: solar, wind -based electric? No, probably not

Lubrication (motor/machine oil) Corn/vegetable-based oils Yes

Power (electricity from oil) Nuclear, Solar, Wind Possibly

Heating (oil burners in houses) Solar, Wind, Coal Yes

Shipping (oil tankers, trucking) Coal, Solar, Wind No, probably not

Manufacturing (plastics!, Corn/vegetable based Maybe

petroleum based products)
 ALTERNATIVES
 Many of the alternatives listed are already in use
in the USA and around the globe
• solar/wind power
• electric or biodiesel cars
• nuclear power
• coal-based power plants
 Many of the alternatives have only just begun to
be developed or are not competitive
• Corn/vegetable based polymers, still in development
phases
• Fully electric cars are expensive, underdeveloped, and
probably unsafe when driving next to an Escalade
 The Web of Oil
 Let’s use futuristic cars as an
example of the interconnected
nature of current technologies and
future alternatives.

 See Next Slide

Plastic Cars
Car Manufacture
 Lightweight, solar or wind-
based electric cars of the
future will rely on plastics for
manufacture.
 Bio-based polymer plastics
are in the beginnings of
research and are nowhere
close to being able to provide
car-worthy plastics.
 Funding for such research
should be supplied by the
government or oil companies,
which would take a shift from
a greed-based governance to
a responsible, longsighted
governance.
 The amount of bio-based
corn-oil needed to supply the
world’s current demand for
plastics will be very difficult to
produce considering all of the
demands on agricultural
products and the fact that
large scale agribusiness relies
on oil and machinery itself.
 Interconnected Web of Oil
 All of these modern uses of oil are currently highly
interconnected in a way which drives the current global
economy.
 The interconnected nature of these essential uses means
that if one link in the chain breaks, they will all grind to a
halt.
 The most energy-costly and interconnected use is long-
distance transportation (jet fuel and ocean tankers), and it
will be nearly impossible for the replacement to meet the
energy demands.
 Coal will become the tanker source of fuel, as there is still
more coal then there was ever oil.
 Coal is highly pollutant, however, and its large-scale use is
of questionable environmental practice.
 Although economics, not environmental issues, drives the
market, coal will probably fail as an alternative based on
the failure of the transportation systems to move it quickly
enough.
 Future Global Economic Collapse
 Global Economic Collapse is coming within the next 100
years based on the chemical properties of oil which have
revolutionized the modern world.
 Based on the current rate of alternative energy research
and implementation, it might be too late to convert by the
time the crisis hits.
 Without a "free" source of highly productive, highly
transportable, highly versatile energy source and polymer
base, the system as we know it will collapse.
 Get to know your local businesses and farmers, because
we're going to be thrown back into the Middle Ages.
 Unless some miracle source is found (radical geothermal,
coal converter, nuclear fusion), global economic collapse is
bound to happen within our lifetime.