Another doomsday story is only a click away, and in virtually every broadsheet in the country. Each financial crisis, terrorist threat or climate catastrophe will apparently be the end of us, and with each story pervading the news recently, it’s very difficult not to get caught up in the mounting fear pushed on to us every day.

I became interested in understanding one such topic, a primary cause for the most of the stories posted: the peaking of the world’s oil extraction. I was a little late to the discussion, and wading through the mountains of disinformation, it was difficult getting to the facts on the subject. Even after finding numerous books and studies documenting the phenomenon, the subject was largely over my head, and most opinion pieces had it pegged as the end of society as we know it. After studying the maths involved, looking at the hard evidence including different portrayals of the crisis in each case, I couldn’t help but come to the same conclusion, this was the most defining event of our history. My immediate thought was to reduce my own energy usage and to start thinking about changing my own lifestyle. Talking to my friends and family on the matter was extremely difficult. ‘Who cares?’ or ‘Why does this matter?’ were a couple of the responses I’d usually get. While I knew that their response was probably the most rational, I couldn’t help but read more about the subject.

The issue was first established back in 1956, when M. King Hubbert postulated a logistical model to predict the timing of the peak of oil extraction in the lower 48 states of America. While most people dismissed his predictions he was proved right when oil production peaked in 1971. The energy crisis and recession of the 70s was undoubtedly caused by the lack of supply, and the oversight of industry to accommodate a change in the financial and commercial configuration.  At this point, global economic policy was altered allowing increasing debt which fuelled the change in infrastructure required to let energy growth continue, primarily from foreign imports.

The more I read about the subject, the more I found it a little overwhelming and very concerning. It seemed common sense: any given system needs energy to grow, and the eventual lack of energy eventually leads to its demise.  At the birth of civilization people discovered a means of harnessing the energy from the sun to grow crops and rear animals. As the first step away from the controlling force of nature, we had discovered a path to societal growth that was seemingly limitless. If more people needed to be fed, then the farm could expand to cover the needs of the population. This exponential expansion eventually lead to the decay of the surrounding ecosystem and required too much energy to sustain.  In a historical sense, society has been extremely cyclical in this regard.  Over 6000 years every civilization had succumbed to the same energy imbalance, and all of them eventually collapsed.

For the past few years it seems that many have been worrying in a similar vein, and with the birth of local currencies, government and business initiatives and transition towns, they were all  trying to find solutions to problems which seem insurmountable. While these projects eased my mind, I still felt rather helpless as to how to achieve transition in my own life with the oncoming behemoth of societal change around the corner. My background is in film and post production, and as such my skills are far from transferrable to a low energy world. To the detriment (or perhaps benefit) of my credit card company I decided to create a short documentary about the connection between the financial crisis and oil depletion. My motivation for which was obviously to raise awareness of the problem, but on a more personal level it was possibly a means to quell the guilt for not achieving a low energy lifestyle.

When I started the documentary I was ultimately worried for our future, the transition, and the immense problems that we’d all have to face, but after meeting a couple of the highest regarded experts on the subject, I realised that while the problems that we face are horrifying, a great deal of good can come of it. A steady transition away from debt, the international economic infrastructure and our high energy lifestyles, will create a huge opportunity to connect with the people around us, to form closely knit communities, and most importantly reignite our bond with nature. The peaking of oil production, the financial crisis and climate change do not need to be doomsday stories, but stories of hope: a transition to a cleaner, more integrated, and sustainable world – A Natural Regression.

Ben Saunders