What Will the World be Like When Oil Runs Out?

No, because I don't want people running around screaming we're running out of oil when we aren't.

Holy shit we're running out of oil!!!!

Might as well be if the only remaining reserves lay in the range of financially impractical.

For the time being. We might be on the precipice of a major breakthrough in oil drilling!

That would be one hell of an expensive drill wouldn't it?

Nah, we'll make it outta balsa wood. It's dirt cheap! Plus, nothing could possibly go wrong.

What would happen if the world runs out of oil? I don't think it would be really dramatic. Right now we are relying more and more on renewable energy and by the time the oil peak is reached those technologies will be a lot more efficient. And I personally think that if the renewable resources aren't enough, nuclear energy is a decent back-up plan until you can sustain your country with renewable resources. It might become a problem in third world countries though, they just don't have the money to use the renewable resources.

it will be chaos if we dont start lowering our dependence on it soon and the scary part is that this is only 50 to 100 years away

Everything you own and use today was manufactured with the use of oil and one or more of it's byproducts. Oil is the backbone of modern society; it's extremely energy dense, transportable, efficient, and (at one point) cheap and easy to produce with a great ratio of profit from energy expended in the extraction process.

It still is. Only after 'peak oil' will we see diminishing returns, and even conservative estimates don't predict peak oil until the 2020s.

Oil is useful, but non-essential for modern society. Its primary function is energy production, and we are currently developing replacements for that purpose. Synthetic oil and alternative materials can be used to create plastics, grow crops, and perform anything that we can currently do with 'natural' oil.

The structure of our economy and society does not allow us to become hopelessly dependent on any resource, as the basic function of supply and demand creates pressures that only allow the most efficient (technically, the most profitable, but the two are almost always synonymous) processes and ideas to survive. Forget the fearmongering about civilizational collapse and technological regression that people love to shout about 'the end of oil', because it is exactly what it sounds like: hogwash.

Thank god someone who gets it. People who say it will be a disaster when oil 'runs out' are either idiots or leftist scaremongers.

None of this is news to me and I don't disagree with it. The topic of this thread proposes a situation that is highly unlikely. I was simply posting according to the OP's "what if" scenario of the world running out of oil because presumably we just kept drilling and using rather than adapting and improving.

The title is "what will the world be like when oil runs out", implying that he fully expects oil to run out and considers it an inevitability. Not a "what if".

Only the first part of my post was directed at you.

Might as well be a "what if".

I fully aware that global production has yet to peak. So I guess it still is easy'n cheap and shit

I have to agree with You rang.

You Rang? is Kali. Sounds weird when you call him by his new name.

Explains the intelligent post on this thread, and one I agree with.

His name should be changed to Kali just saying, unless he doesn't want that.

The mods should just change it back to Kalalification. To avoid confusion.

EDIT: Dammit Viking!

If @You Rang? wants his name changed back then all he has to do is message one of us and we will change it. Otherwise we will not.