DVD: The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream

About peak oil and the effect the end of cheap energy will have on suburbia.

We simply won’t be able to use cars to live in suburbia. We won’t be able to afford to heat McHomes. We won’t be able to afford to transport the ingredients 3000 miles for a Caesar salad. We won’t be able to afford the gas to travel to barn stores like Wal-Mart and they won’t be able to afford to transport goods all the way from China. We will have to start learning to make everything including food and energy locally. There is no point in building more gas-fired electric plants. We don’t have enough gas flow to drive them. The movie points out that even if nuclear (expensive), coal (dirty), hydro (none left to exploit), wind, solar, biomass etc. were all implemented in a crash program starting today, they would come nowhere near producing enough energy for our current energy-wasteful lifestyle. Hydrogen is not a fuel; it is just a way of transporting energy cleanly. You need electricity or natural gas to create it. No matter what, our energy-guzzling lifestyle will end no matter how much we whine and stamp our feet that it couldn’t or shouldn’t happen. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t fair. Nature and history don’t care. We will have to do more with less energy. We have absolutely no choice but to rethink our energy priorities, to cut back, to conserve and to create more efficient ways to use energy.

The people behind the film are an interesting assortment including:

• Matthew Simmons, CEO of the world’s largest Energy Investment Bank, Simmons & Co. International, member of Cheney’s energy task force.
• Colin Campbell, author of The Coming Oil Crisis, Trustee for the Petroleum Institute of London. Former geologist for Oxford University, Texaco, British Petroleum and Amoco. Former senior executive for Shenendoah Oil, Amoco, Fina and the Nordic American Oil Companies.