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Fossil fuels are a limited, non-renewable resource. 

It's a simple fact.

Yet for the last two centuries, starting with coal and then oil and natural gas, we have transformed our civilization to be utterly dependent on fossil fuels. It has brought to at least some of us unparalleled comfort and material wealth, a way of life so comfortable we can no longer imagine any other.

If we ever stop to think that there will be a time when those resources will run out, we probably think it is far in the future, and when it happens we'll just think of something else as a substitute.

But that time is coming sooner rather than later. The good news is that our fossil fuel supplies won't run out all at once. In fact, we'll never be able to use them all up. The bad news is that we are rapidly reaching that point at which the rate of production of oil, gas and coal will no longer keep up with our ever-growing demand. Production will peak and begin a permanent decline. For oil, that will likely happen in the first years of the next decade.

What about alternative fuels, technological innovations? Certainly there are other sources of energy and certainly there will be technological innovations that will help us make use of those sources. But it is clear that those sources in any combination will never match the abundance and convenience of fossil fuels.

Our current way of life is unsustainable.

There are other ways that we can arrange our lives that require far less energy and that fit within the limits of our remaining energy supplies. We need not return to the stone age and given the fact that there are now more than 6 billion of us on this planet, we cannot. But it will take many decades, perhaps generations, and enormous capital investment to make the transition to a better system.

It is time to make a choice. We can continue on the path that we are on, using the last of our fossil fuel resources to maintain our current way of life with no thought of future generations. That is the path to a global disaster unlike anything we have ever seen. Or, we can use those remaining resources to build a better, sustainable future living within the energy means of our planet.

Choose the path to sustainability.

Thanks to Scott McLean for the video.

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