Crude

This DVD documentary Crude begins by explaining how oil got to be there in the first place (starting around 160 million years ago) and how much we have become addicted to it (and not just for motoring).


Consuming it at a rate of 84 million barrels per day, "we're all of a sudden dependent on rapidly shrinking supplies of evermore expensive oil"

It's tempting to think that perhaps running out of the stuff might save us from climate change, but Jeremy Leggett does the maths...

The latest work of the climate scientists says we can "afford" to put into the atmosphere another 400 billion tonnes of carbon. Well, you just look at what's left in fossil fuel reserves below ground. You've got 700-plus in oil alone. Then you've got 500 billion in gas. And coal - forget it - it's 3500 billion and counting. So we can cook our planet many times over

Having switched from exploration geology to a solar company, he explains that

My abiding fear is that i'll live through what remains of my vocational life in an exciting fast-growing company while the world is going to hell in a bucket because of the stupid addiction to oil we've had all these years and the effect that it will ultimately have on our economies ... plus of course, the unfolding effects of global warming, which just get worse by the month.

The DVD ends with this

Every year we burn more and more of what we have less and less of. Are we mining the aftermath of past climate catastrophes, simply to engineer our own?