Our dependence on oil must come to an end

Millions of years to create it, hundreds of years to destroy it. The reality of oil is puzzling. The combustible is finite in the short term but replenished in the long run. Millions of years is a long time to wait for it, though.

Oil stems from a mix of various decomposed organic remains, from marine plants, dead animals, and rocks, to other elements such as methane, carbon dioxide, and anaerobic bacteria.

All this together turns into oil at the bottom of the ocean. While new oil is continously produced this way, we use it at such a high rate that the current reserves will soon run out.

The curious thing about oil is that its global quantities are much larger than many people think. Not all oil can be reached, however.

Some bubbles are very expensive to drill, while others require certain technology that has not been developed yet. Multinationals such as Repsol, Gazprom, or Rosneft have confirmed this.

To see when our oil reserves run out, we therefore have to limit our count to the oil that is accessible and extractable with our current means.

According to BP (British Petroleum), the amount of oil left to be extracted in the whole planet should be around 1,700 billion barrels.

When we translate the number of barrels into the amount of time they usually last, we can estimate that oil will be exhausted in 50 years or around 2070.

After millions of years in existence, oil is now being eliminated by humans in little more than two centuries.

Why is it a problem that oil will run out in half a century?

At the moment it is the combustible most widely used in the world. It counts for a third of global energy consumption.

Coal and gas are next on the list. In fourth place there is hydroelectric energy, the first renewable energy in the ranking.

With the end of oil in sight, the obligation to promote renewable energies has become more urgent. The world must be prepared to live without oil.

Besides, there is another reason to lower our oil consumption. If the use of the fossil fuel is not stopped, there may be no world to live in by 2070.

The buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere continues to increase. The Mauna Loa Observatory, a global reference center in Hawaii, recorded 415.39 parts of carbon dioxide per million (ppm) in May 2019. That's the highest atmospheric concentration of CO2 in history, as reported by the World Economic Forum.

As a reference, in the 19th century, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, the atmosphere registered 250 ppm.

In the middle of the 20th century, with the increase of cars and despite knowledge of the greenhouse effect, the threshold of 300 ppm was surpassed for the first time.

In March 2016, the 400 ppm average was maintained for a whole month for the first time. It is reaching levels that threaten human life.

One of the major pollutants of recent decades, the car industry, is devoting itself to the electrification of its models.

All the major manufacturers have eliminated diesel motors from their new sales lines. Everything suggests that by 2035, gasoline car motors will be marginal if not banned.

Obviously, the investment needed to electrify the vehicle fleet is huge. Forbes Magazine states that it is now twice as high globally as the investment in fossil fuels. The change is not going to be achieved immediately. But to lower our dependence on oil, it is an absolute necessity.