Collapse Assignment 2 - Short and Smart

I think that America will eventually collapse. I don't think that it will happen as soon as everyone thinks but it will happen. The Easter island collapsed because they depended on the trees and ended up cutting ever tree down in their forest. America depends on the oil. We keep on using more and more oil. Sooner or later there will either be no more oil left or it will take up to much oil to get more oil. While the oil decreases the population and demand of oil will increase causing America collapse.

Almost everything produced needs oil. "Oil in particular is the most convenient and multi-purposed of these fossil fuels. Oil currently accounts for about 43% of the world's total fuel consumption [PDF], and 95% of global energy used for transportation [PDF]. Oil and gas are feedstocks for plastics, paints, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, electronic components, tyres and much more. Oil is so important that the peak will have vast implications across the realms of war and geopolitics, medicine, culture, transport and trade, economic stability and food production. Significantly, for every one joule of food consumed in the United States, around 10 joules of fossil fuel energy have been used to produce it."http://www.energybulletin.net/primer This shows how much we rely on oil and how fast we use it up.

Once peak oil is reached the amount of oil starts to decrease. Meaning that America will not have the oil that they need to prevent a collapse. As the amount of oil decreases the amount of people will still be increasing, causing a larger demand of oil. There will be more people which means more oil is needed. In 1930 there were about 1.5 billion people. In 30 years that number doubled so there were 3 billion people by 1960, 4 billion by 1974 and there should be 7 billion by 2010. These statistics show how the growing population is out of control. Since there will be less oil the price for oil will also start to increase, which will cause the oil dependent companies to collapse. When oil dependent companies can not afford these prices their products will not be made which will leave humans without many resources that are relied on to survive.

I think a good example of explaining Americas need for oil is: "The issue is not one of "running out" so much as it is not having enough to keep our economy running. In this regard, the ramifications of Peak Oil for our civilization are similar to the ramifications of dehydration for the human body. The human body is 70 percent water. The body of a 200 pound man thus holds 140 pounds of water. Because water is so crucial to everything the human body does, the man doesn't need to lose all 140 pounds of water weight before collapsing due to dehydration. A loss of as little as 10-15 pounds of water may be enough to kill him."http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/. This shows how we don't need to fully run out of the oil. We can just have a little bit less that will have a large effect on America. Such a small amount being reduced can lead to many things not being able to be done.