Bernice-+World+Without+Oil

 I think today we have past the “peak” of petroleum. From the high oil prices last summer, even though today the oil prices has dropped again, I think it’s hard for the oil industry to recover to the place that they were at last summer. One aspect that indicates this may be the demand and supply from the world. In the July of 2008, demand was extremely high in order for the world to operate at its pace. However, with the economic crisis, demand has dropped and the peak has past. Though it’s possible for the demand and oil prices to rise again, as countries like China and India are developing, but it’s unlikely that it will return to how it was before.

Like many articles have mentioned, with the low oil prices today it’s hard for the oil exporting countries or oil companies to have research and development. As a result, they won’t have the technologies to drill oil that are harder to reach, and their supply won’t be able to meet the new demand when the economy recovers. Therefore, people eventually will have to find other alternative resources to replace oil. However, a world without oil would be very different for us. So far in our lives we have learned to live with products and services provided by petroleum. For example, we’re very used to using computers, travel through cars and airplanes. But when petroleum is no longer available to use because of unaffordable prices or just because the resources has becomes too scarce, we would have to change our living habits. It’s unlikely that we would give up cars and other transportations because we don’t have any oil, like technocentrists believed, people will use new technologies to help them solve this problem. But the new cars that are running on new fuels will definitely be different than the ones today. People might also have to adapt and use bicycles to travel (like many individuals are doing today with the economic crisis) before the new technology comes out.

As a student, many objects that carry around are made of oil. My pencil, pens, pencil case, lip balm, calculator, or even my backpack that I carry around at daily basis are made of petroleum. Without oil one major example would be that I’ll have to change from doing all the calculations on a calculator or computer and switch to mentally work out the math or doing them on paper. If oil runs out and all these materials vanish, I would have to adapt to these changes.