Nearly all the lives of those in fully developed countries are permeated with the spectacular accomplishments of technological advancement. Most of these we take for granted, lucky enough to have grown up accustomed to such essentials as an efficient sewage system, welfare state, a reliable energy grid and incredible health service amongst countless others. All this is an ever-evolving result of the curious component of our nature, yet our seemingly unquenchable inclination towards exploitation has simultaneously led to the impending exhaustion of the earth’s most vital resources. Our levels of consumption surpassed necessity long ago and have now created the gravest threat the earth has seen, a threat which will most affect the people who have contributed least.

For millennia our species has instinctively sought the pursuit of knowledge. Curiosity leads to discovery, and the progression of discovery has been enabled only by the gradual evolution of ideas. Our capacity to master new technologies has created a vast and richly diverse range of vocations within the arts and sciences; areas of expertise such as physics have been expanded into numerous subdivisions, just as forms and genres of arts such as music have reproduced at a phenomenal rate. The polymath has made way for the specialist, with frontiers of discovery being constantly pushed and concepts refined. The sciences still have a long way to go in many fields, such as our comparatively limited knowledge of the brain, or the unanswered questions of the universe, that which powers us and that which we inhabit.

We take for granted those technologies that even 50 years ago would have been inconceivable. Our heightened state of consumerism has facilitated the mass development of technologies that would usually only serve the elite, had it not been for the abundance of cheap oil. Most people who are lucky enough to possess such products as mobile phones can barely imagine a life without them, and such products have become accessible only through the abundance and resultant low cost of oil. As we become more efficient at refining and building on technology, the research and development of which is provided by demand, its presence balloons pervasively and before long such a technology becomes another debatably essential commodity. In this country we have 99.5 TVs/100 households, 75.8 computers/100 homes and 116.6 mobile phone subscriptions/100 people. This serves as a fairly accurate reflection on the state of our consumerism, or our state of consumerism.

A massive distance has been established between those technologies which contribute positively to our lives and those which are wholly unnecessary. The former is a product of our curiosity and innate inclination to better our collective existence, the latter a product of an insatiable desire to obtain superfluous luxuries, as well as an exploitative market that will jump on anything that sells. We are conditioned to believe that certain products are the keys to happiness or essential to our day-to-day lives. In the UK our children are some of the most exposed to advertising in the world, conditioned to demand the latest in toys, gadgets and games; ingraining this insatiability at the most influential age. Objectively the size of your TV, model of your mobile or quality of computer games contributes only to short term superficial happiness. We have become obsessed with making luxuries accessible commodities, maximising efficiency and minimising any kind of physical exertion where possible (by this I mean the prevalence of electric everything, from whisks to foot scrubs).

In oil we found a resource unrivalled in its energy efficiency. This resource has severely shaped our society and dictated the course of the developing world. It is unsurprising that such means were exploited to maximise produce with the ethical dilemma of climate change going undiscovered. Nor is it surprising that corporate interests have done their best to battle and suppress such information when it had become conclusive and a threat to profits. The power and political establishment that is an inevitable product of such monopolies has safeguarded the sustained mass manufacture of these now ubiquitous technologies.

This facility of development has produced some undeniably incredible products, such as the manufacture of life saving drugs, but most are outweighed by their contribution to environmental degradation. In principle the ability to fly anywhere in the world at an amazingly cheap price is an incredible opportunity and a spectacular achievement of science, yet it is wholly unsustainable. A code of ethics is essential in regulating the potential for this sort of exploitation. Nothing is worth the earth.

Curiosity in the last century has still has still played a massive part in progressive discovery (ie, advances in medicine, science etc), but technological advancement through consumer demand heavily outweighs it. Demand was met with the emergence of mass production as population size began to increase exponentially, and our social and economic advancement became defined by the potential of oil and the seemingly limitless possibilities it provided. In the history of mankind there has been no comparable period of intensely concentrated development facilitated by the discovery of a single resource. Oil defines us, the way we live, the opportunities available to us and it has shaped our environment. But the limits of this lucrative luxury have become clear, its depletion is imminent and the questions lie in our capability to adapt in time to avoid the most drastic reforms a society has ever undergone. Will we wean ourselves off or make the most as long as we can? Ultimately the essential targets lie in the hands of the government, but when the US alone consumes 25% of our fossil fuels, and with us not much better per capita, how we conduct our lives does become a heavily weighted ethical matter. We need to pressure our governments to act and commit to the necessary targets, we do have to set an example.

Throughout our history our development has been geared into progressive invention, at no point have so many scientists co-operated in the name of preservation. Will peak oil result in a peak of technology, or at least those technologies which are such an ubiquitous aspect of our society?

I grew up with this notion that our race was infallible, that we would explore the stars, and even when I learned that, if we weren’t wiped out by a meteor the sun would burn out, the assumption was that we would inevitably prevail. I also naively believed that our evolution and the state of society was at a level and we would not experience even half the change our parents and grandparents witnessed. The last hundred years have seen the most drastic change to the lives of the ordinary in human history, but the next hundred will outdo that effort effortlessly, but we all know where you’re headed after a peak. The metaphorical conception of oil as the earth’s blood is only too accurate; we are bleeding it dry and the life-force we have invested far too much in will soon give up on us. Nature will have her revenge, she is already displaying her destructive potential, flexing her muscles, and we need look no further than our temperate little island to see the effects (in terms of unprecedented weather patterns and consistent meteorological anomalies).

Adaptation will be disastrous-or our lack of adaptive measures will lead to disaster- at the rate we’re going, condemning the lives of those less able to help themselves to abject suffering while we struggle to survive. Mitigation of these circumstances is the only way forward. Since we have not been able to avoid runaway climate change (a rise in 2 degrees which makes irreversibility impossible and adaptation our only option), hope lies in a shift of social order to one of ethics, justice and effective measures that will at least ensure mitigation for those who will have to bear the brunt of our imposed burden.

I do not doubt that we will bear witness to our earth’s relatively rapid transformation into a pitiless and resourcefully overstretched wasteland. We are on the cusp of peak oil and as our most dependant resource is depleted, we will fall so short of the necessary preventative measures that our adaptation will be unprecedentedly drastic. The lack or foresight and consideration that has led to the depletion of the earth’s oil will usher in an age of technological survival, the accelerated product of our inherent tendency towards avarice. For those who do take comfort in our innate capacity to solve any problem of whatever magnitude, be warned, everyone in a position to make a difference is accountable for this world’s demise. This is a collective effort; politically, socially and globally, which cannot be left to politicians. The pressure comes predominantly from people, a pressure that needs to be sustained if we are ever going to see the necessary change.

This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.