Oh, by the way, recently discovered offshore Brazilian reserves were trumpeted as being “approximately 30 billion barrels”. To put this into perspective, this is equivalent to approximately 1 year of global oil consumption at 2007 rates – hardly equivalent to Saudi Arabian oil reserves, I would think.

What I think you’re not understanding is that there’s a proven numerical relationship between new oil discoveries and remaining oil reserves. This is bearing itself out in virtually every oil producing country, including the contiguous U.S. (peaked around 1970, almost exactly as predicted).

Yes, there is, in fact, a lot of oil left in the ground, including the tar sands, oil shales and offshore polar reserves. It’s just getting more and more costly, both in terms of energy costs and capital costs, to extract it and bring it to market. Add to this the externalized costs, not only of the production and consumption of oil, but for virtually any fossil fuel.

The question we, as a society, need to be asking is: “at what point do we admit that our addiction to fossil fuels (particularly oil and coal) is becoming too costly, both to the environmental life support systems we depend on, and to human society?” Sustainability lies in the direction of renewable energy, not fossil fuels.

At the very least Canada should be following the example of countries like Norway by setting a price on carbon, with a view towards investing in a post fossil fuel economy, which Norwegians seem to realize – unlike many Canadians – is imminent.

Mike Harmon

Unfortunately I don’t think we can depend on our leaders (or expect them to) make decisions for our benefit. We don’t live in a society where people are put first but rather money. Money and the market ends up being all that determines value. Which is why these forerunners are going to be people who do lead groups of people who start to value people and things on kingdom values.

I think the church has a rough road ahead because they depend too much on politics for the goodness of God’s kingdom to flow through instead of being the force of goodness themselves.

During the depression (The Dirty Thirties), the bars filled up with people who were out of work, despondent and felt they had no hope. We have no control on these economic issues while fat cats get fatter. It is unfortunate that we have few leaders who are willing to step up to the plate and “actually make a difference.” Our bars are full and our pocket books are empty. Is this a warm-up to depression or just a recession. Economic Crisis.

I applaud “The Forerunners” in this area for at least helping us with access to information about what is really happening. I encourage everyone to stop buying Shell and Esso gas. An action we can all take is to buy our necessary gas from the little gas stations so that we can at least hurt the big ones. If everyone did this, it would make a huge difference. The ripple effect.