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There is a little time left now to adjust to a world without oil, as we have about as much left as we have used so far. Unfortunately, we are now using this limited resource faster than ever before, so that, at the current usage rate, it will all be gone within about thirty years. Like it or not, the world as we now know it has to change.
If energy production was increased to the point where a world population of 9 billion people consumed energy at the current per capita rates of the rich world, all estimated fossil fuel reserves (including an estimated 2,000 billion tons of coal) would be totally exhausted within about 40 years. Background to today's problem The fossil-fuelled heat-engine was developed into the internal combustion engine, driven at first by benzene produced from coal, before turning to petroleum refined from crude oil. This new energy form has transformed the world during the short span of a single century. Cheap and efficient transport opened the world to trade, while the manufacture of consumer goods exploded. The new energy also transformed agriculture, providing the food for a growing population that has expanded six-fold, exactly in parallel with oil production. Oil was in turn followed by gas, increasingly used for electricity generation, which brought power and light to households throughout much of the world, opening the door to electronic communications and a growth in consumerism. This extraordinary progression was achieved in not much more than 100 years. But now, in the twenty-first century, we face the onset of the natural decline of the fuel that made all this possible, and we do so without sight of a substitute energy that comes close to matching the utility, convenience and low cost of oil and gas. Beyond the limit For example, look at the production and use of cars. Given the limited amount of oil in the world there is simply no prospect of China, India – or any other countries such as Malaysia, Brazil, Turkey, Iran, Ukraine, Mexico, the Czech Republic, and other emerging car producers – being able to achieve US, West European, Australian or Japanese rates of car ownership. The Chinese ‘Car Bomb’ therefore ticks onward, as each day another estimated 112,190 cars are produced. Each one requires up to 55 barrels of oil-equivalent to produce, and must operate on bitumen-based highways, on tires that themselves are about 40 per cent oil by weight. Not only is this explosion of the world car fleet a serious threat to the earth’s environment, but through its oil demand impact it will become a threat to international peace and stability. By 2035, oil and gas production, and therefore consumption, will have fallen from today’s levels by as much as 75 per cent and 60 per cent respectively. Coal production and consumption may well have bounded upwards – but if so the environmental and climatic consequences will be grave. World climate, by 2035, will have substantially changed from today. The effects of high carbon dioxide levels will most certainly wreak major, accelerating and unpredictable changes in climate and sea levels. The overshoot in consumption levels of oil and gas, compared to availability, is enormous and so the amount of energy use in a sustainable society will have to be a small fraction of the amount we take for granted in a consumer society today. It follows that a sustainable society cannot be achieved without very radical changes in lifestyles, systems of land use, patterns of settlement, the economy, and social values. A new society
It is argued that only by moving to something like this vision of ‘The Simpler Way’ can we expect to achieve a just and sustainable global situation. How can this be achieved? From Genesis onwards the Bible is full of predictions about vast changes to be brought about in the earth. Abraham, the founder of the Jewish nation, was told that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through one of his descendants, who is identified in the New Testament as Jesus Christ:
Psalm 72 speaks of a King (Jesus Christ), who will set up a universal rule of such benefit to humanity that “all nations shall call him blessed.” All these changes are dependent upon the return of the Lord Jesus Christ to the earth, exactly as was promised by the angels when he ascended into heaven almost 2000 years ago. As the disciples watched him go, the angels asked them:
“So come” – literally, physically, personally – not merely into men’s hearts and minds. He is literally coming back to change human affairs beyond all recognition. The Bible makes it clear that when he comes again, Jesus will take over the government of the whole world. At a time that the prophet Daniel described as “a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time” (Daniel 12v1), everything will change. But just before this ‘change for the better’ happens, Christ predicted that there would be “distress of nations with perplexity…men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth” (Luke 21v25-26). In short, there is to be a ‘clean sweep’ of the present human political and religious organisations, just when the world needs it most.
Many of the prophets of the Bible describe Christ’s future rulership of the world. For example, the prophet Micah gives us some more details about this coming worldwide kingdom:
“Every man under his own vine” suggests a basically pastoral type of life in the age to come, exactly as recommended by ‘The Simpler Way’ – the only way to overcome the coming energy crisis.
So it will be again when Christ rules on earth. The object will be to give to mortal men and women a proper background against which their minds may expand and their thinking become attuned with the God who made them, that they might reflect his glory. A better world is coming!!
And this is just a ‘taster’ of the new world order that God says will happen when Christ returns to this earth. With the biggest crisis ever faced by the modern world now fast approaching, his return is assured and cannot come too soon. More information |
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With the dawn of the Bronze Age about 3,000 years ago, mankind started on the path to industrialisation. He did not give up his flint club because he ran out of flint, but because he found that bronze made a better tool and weapon. The Iron Age followed from small and slow beginnings, but has only dramatically flourished over the last 300 years. At first this age of metals used fire-wood as the fuel for smelting the metal, which often led to deforestation before new fuel was found in the form of coal. Lumps of ‘sea-coal’ were at first collected from beaches, before it was mined in shallow pits. Mining itself, as it penetrated the water-table, led to steam-driven machine-pumps to drain the surplus water, these pumps being later adapted to provide locomotives for transport. 
The Bible records that under Joshua – an early leader of the nation of Israel in the past – every family had a farm of its own. This provided the basis of life, whatever else they did. When things went well, as they did when Israel obeyed God, they were blessed with everything they needed. They lived a life that provided every means of comfort and enjoyment, providing a healthy, happy existence. They were ‘partners’ with God, who made all things, instead of being remote from him, as in modern civilisations. They found satisfaction in their work well done, so that their lives, their worship and their families were thoroughly integrated. They were whole men and women, untroubled by the balance of payments, devaluation, inflation, import quotas, and all the other characteristics of many societies today, for God blessed them and they rejoiced in his goodness.