Peak Oil or... what will it be like to live within our means?

(Click on image to enlarge)

Assalaamu Alaykum all,

I love this cartoon, I use it as my desk top at work because it is a good conversation starter and gives me a chance to talk to people about what is happening in the world and a way for people to understand those events in a light hearted way that hopefully will not result in the usual blank stares when you mention topics like Peak Oil and the coming economic crash.

First of all does anyone remember back to about a year ago, just before the recession hit when the petrol got REALLY expensive, and the mainstream media started talking about peak oil issues for a change? It was a quite odd time, because all my friends were like "oh, that is the thing you keep on about" and wanted further help and explanation.

Independent -Fade to black: Is this the end of oil?

But now most people seem to have blanked it from their minds, forgotten it ever happened. Its like as bad as the recession is, it doesn't cause people to collectively forget the matter as too scary, too big a matter to deal with.

Now don't go, because your mind is now pushing you to close the page or go look at something else but in reality that is your way to cope with the biggest problem that is ever going to come mess up your life and the life of your kids, it is so big you want to pretend it isn't going to happen and so you do this...


Its probably the biggest problem mankind is going to face as a species but absolutely no one is willing to talk about it.

Recession /depression, starvation, famine, deforestation, acidification of the oceans, species extinctions, desertification, global warming, even nuclear war, o' we can talk about them but we don't want to talk about the Elephant in the room. Well I do want to talk about the elephant in the room so if you've read this far you might as well go further and finish reading the post.


The general point of todays Naseehah is this...

Our whole economy, no our whole modern civilisation is built upon Oil, well other fossil fuels also but mainly oil (I know I've mentioned this before but I cant stress this as a reason for Hijrah enough).

So this oil doesn't just get you to work and back, it gets all your food to the super market from the farmers field, it gets the lorries and trucks around that help our society run, without it we are not just going to hit a downturn, our society is going to come to a dead stop. Dead being the important word there.

Lets take the UK as our model here to explain what this means.

The UK before oil could provide enough food to feed between about 5-8million people, sometimes more. But 5-8million seems to be the stable figure. We did this by farming the land, then transporting the food to local market towns for selling and it kept the whole of pre-industrial society ticking along nicely.

Then along came Coal, all of a sudden you don't need to be near a water supply for power anymore and instead industries moved closer to where their suppliers and customers were in the cities.

Further down the line people realise you can use this coal to power other machines, not just the factories and the train comes along. The train allows for food and other goods to travel further and leads to further efficiencies in food production and a population boom.

This population boom is accelerated by oil, with cars, trucks, planes etc all now possible and all the food you eat comes from all over the world.

The oil is also used to farm the fields much more efficiently so where as in the past your field might produce X amount of grain, but needed Y to be deducted for all your manpower to give Z amount to send to market, now the X is much bigger because of all the machines and the Y is much smaller.

So the amount of food getting to market is much bigger, all thanks to oil. Oil based fertilisers are also used to boost those crops again, no oil means no oil based fertilisers.



Hope you are beginning to get the picture now, because the Elephant is starting to get upset with us for ignoring it. We need to realise this problem will never go away. NEVER.

We all live in a society which is going through massive growth in numbers and consumption of the worlds resources, all based upon a finite base. Infinite growth based upon a finite resource.

That is right. Oil is a limited resource, but what does that mean? IT MEANS IT WILL EVENTUALLY RUN OUT.


Most of you probably just jumped to position two in your mental defence strategies... You just read the statement 'it means it will eventually run out' and assumed it will be some point off in the far distance so thought "OK, it's going to go, but that is the future, that is a long time away."

Another classic defence, once the elephant is actually noticed, file it away for dealing with later.

But this is just like global warming, in that the longer we leave things the worse they become. It is not like global warming in that it cannot actually be solved.

I probably just lost a few more of you just then. "wait a minute? did he just say there is no cure? no solution?"

Those still with me here, who didn't hit the little X in the top right corner are probably in uncomfortable territory but this is the place you need to be in, you didn't run away and hide under your covers and pretend nothing is happening, you've at least got an idea that oil is going to run out and there is no cure for this problem.

Some of you might be thinking, but what about renewables? The sun hits the earth with 90,000 times more energy a day than we need. Yes that is true, but 90% of it is reflected right back out into space. So you will think OK, then 9,000 times more energy than we need in a day.

But you forget that energy is not easy to capture, it also uses plastics to make the technology to do it and plastics come from... oil.

Other renewable energy technologies still use oil to power the machines, to get the metals and other materials out of the ground to the factories, from the factories to the distribution centres and finally out to the field where they don't work particularly well and require a little man in a petrol powered van to come and fix it.

So they are a sticky plaster over a gaping wound.

So when will this oil disaster happen? Surely even if the oil is running out there is still quite a lot of it there isn't there?

Yes there is, but most of the easy to get stuff is now gone. This is the meaning of the term 'Peak Oil.' It is not the point where oil runs out, but the point where the worlds oil supply stops rising and starts falling. At that point the rising demand for oil that keeps all our towns, cities and even villages these days from starving will start to break down.

The UK and other western nations will use their military might to push on for another few years but in the end the scenes of famine and disaster we'll see from Africa, Asia and South America will come to haunt the landscapes of the West also and the western model of civilisation all based upon oil will come to an end.

The UK with its 65Million plus population will go back to only being able to support a few million, and you can imagine the scenes of the disaster, war, civil strife, starvation (and probably canibalism) that will take place when that happens. All over the world the same scenes will play out.

Harsh isn't it?

Quite depressing also, but then not really. You see every disaster is also an opportunity, an opportunity to live within our means, to live closer to the land and be free of many of the more nasty aspects of capitalist greed such as the massive pollutions we push into the environment.



In short an opportunity to live a better way, a way more in keeping with the commands of Allah!


Those people left, (for which the Muslims have to ensure we are a great a proportion as possible by being prepared) we will have to go back to farming or living in small towns, living closer to the natural base, living a life more in accordance with the life led by our ancestors.

For me that is a great thing, I don't particularly like modern life, its evil and stinking and the maybe that is why I saw the elephant in the room when everyone else didn't, but Allah has given us this great leveller against our enemies.


They've got planes, helicopter gun ships and tanks but within a short space of time they will just be rusting lumps of metal sat uselessly in fields and the Muslim lands will be free from the kuffar armies with only the apostate rulers left to deal with.

Now when is all this going to happen? Because those of you interested in Hijrah might be thinking if there is no oil, no planes flying, then really I don't want to get stuck here so maybe I need to go now.

Depends. Not a good answer I know but it might be 50 years, it might be 5 years. In truth is we don't know as it depends on a whole set of variables that are constantly changing, the demand for oil, the supply, the amount left (a state secret in many oil producing countries like Saudia), whether Allah sends any other disaster to hit whilst we are waiting for this one.

It therefore makes sense to leave as a matter or urgency, not to wait too long and when you go don't go somewhere in an even worse position like Qatar which has a couple of million people living an a desert where only a few thousand lived before, unless you are planning on going there to make more money to buy your farmland somewhere else.

The place you should be looking to make Hijrah towards should be closer to the natural economic base, agriculture and the lesser developed the better as it will then have less far to fall, even better somewhere fortified which today would cost you only £30k or a little more as they are in remote locations but in the future will cost far, far more as more and more people wake up to that damn elephant.

Hope I haven't depressed you all too much, and that like me you see the opportunities as well as the problems and that Inshallah we can all come out of this one alive and well with our families to help build a better society on the other side of the crash.

Assalaamu alaykum,
Abu Abdillah