PowerSwitch

Seen in a GSCE chemistry textbook I am quoting directly:

In the worst case scenario, oil may be pretty much gone in about 25 years-and that's not far off.

and later

I don't know what they'll do when it runs out totally

I love the 'what they'll do'

Denial-in-action.

In case anyone is wondering, the book is a CGP one which are known for their 'accessibility' and consequently written in a very different way to when most of us were young.

To me, the running out of oil has nothing to do with chemistry. It is more to do with politics.

They were relating it to all the things made out of oil and the processes by which they are manufactured, but point taken!

I was studying for GCSE's about ten years ago now and I vividly remember that a question in one of the applied Science textbooks was "Imagine waking up one day and finding out all the oil was gone. What would you do?" (If my memory serves me correctly.) I thought it was good as it caused the reader to question its effects on them and how they will adapt to the problem. It's a shame that the question was more of an optional one and wasn't a question we all had to sit down and write an essay about. Had the class collected the data and then had a reunion today where the question was asked again I wonder what the difference in perspective would be? Would we be more in denial a decade long? Would we be more fatalistic, more wizened? I don't think I answered that question back then and do not think I could answer it now either. I don't know what I would do save for learning skills, acquiring a myriad of tools and back-up plans and hope I can make it through.

GCSE science wasn't all bad. Even if the textbooks sucked the teachers could still make you think. My teacher commented that you could not fly a plane with coal and criticised the act of drilling for more oil when alternatives should have been looked for.

2007