A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

Filmmakers Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack's A Crude Awakening, featuring a haunting soundtrack by Philip Glass, delivers a serious wakeup call about the oil crisis that is certain to arrive as oil-producing nations move beyond peak production and start the precipitous slide toward inevitable depletion. The film makes several interesting points: Oil is a magnet for war; demand for fossil fuels will continue to rise (especially in China and India); and the U.S. invasion of Iraq is more about controlling future oil supplies than about the war on terror (an observation also made by Alan Greenspan in his recently published memoir, The Age of Turbulence). After providing a concise history of oil booms in Russia, Venezuela, and the U.S. (especially Texas), the film illustrates how all of the former hot-zones for crude oil have since turned into depleted wastelands, after which a wide variety of interviewees (including politicians, oil-industry analysts and consultants, geologists, and historians) offer a consensus opinion that current alternate sources of energy (solar, nuclear, wind, biofuels, etc.) will only provide a fraction of our global energy needs when oil supplies run out. The conclusion is inescapably gloomy: not only will an oil crisis occur in the foreseeable future, but we also have virtually zero viable strategies in place to deal with it. DVD extras include a bonus chapter called "Petrostates," which details the harsh consequences for countries with oil-based economies, and additional interview excerpts. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (J. Shannon)