The Beginning
Of The End For Oil
By Adam Porter
12 January, 2004
Aljazeera
One
of the surprises in the oil world in 2004 was the success of an underground
documentary on the perilous state of world energy.
The End of Suburbia
has sold more than 10,000 DVDs and has been aired on TV around the world.
Now the documentary
maker behind the celluloid hit has announced the follow-up, Escape From
Suburbia, exclusively to Aljazeera.
Greg Greene made
The End of Suburbia with editor Barry Sliverthorn, about the way the
so-called American dream will be affected by an end to cheap energy.
"The whole
post-war American way of life ended up being centred on the suburb;
the nice house with a nice lawn and the picket fence; a nice car in
the drive.
"It stopped
being about escaping tyranny or finding democracy. Instead, it became
about achieving a way of life that was propped up by cheap energy."
Greene believes
the world is entering the beginning of the end of the age of oil, a
phase that will affect every aspect of human existance.
"People who
have bought into that American dream of an ever-growing lifestyle with
ever cheaper goods and services, are going to be the most affected by
the changes that are coming."
Released in the
spring of 2004, The End of Suburbia has been on television in Europe
and Canada and is now being prepared for dubbing into Spanish.
"We were pleasantly
surprised. We beat all our sales targets for the DVDs and they are still
flying out," says Greene. "And we have had a lot of TV stations
around the world talking to us, except in the US."
The timing of the
release of The End of Suburbia could not have been better as oil hit
the headlines during the summer of 2004. Spurred on by high prices and
very tight demand, oil became a topic dripping its way into the mainstream.
"TV executives
who did not understand why we wanted to make a film about oil suddenly
realised what was going on. As oil climbed in price, so did the interest
around the world."
"Every time
you even see a Hollywood science fiction movie, say AI or I-Robot, the
futures predicted are always energy rich"
As a result, Greene
is now set to start filming his second film, Escape From Suburbia, hitting
the same topic from a different angle.
"In Escape
I wanted to look at the people who really were trying to make some kind
of impact over the energy question. Right now. Who were the people who
had a future without cheap oil? Who were the ones who didn't want to
waste any time waiting around for it to hit them?
"After all,
every time you even see a Hollywood science fiction movie, say AI or
I-Robot, the futures predicted are always energy rich. It takes some
foresight for people to actually start planning now, for a future in
which we all may be energy poor."
Greene is going
to cover a variety of areas in the new documentary, including recoverable
oil from so-called tar sands.
"We will start
by looking at a guy who is working in the booming area of the Canadian
tar sands.
"The desire
to extract the energy from the sands in Northern Alberta has meant that
there has been a great deal of expansion in these areas.
"We are going
to use this guy, who also works in Kuwait, to look at the situation
around Opec and how their influence is changing."
As well as the conventional unconventionals such as tar sands, Greene
is also going further afield.
"We are going
to take a look at the Cuban situation as regards their urban agriculture
programme.
"When their cheap oil imports stopped coming in from the Soviet
Union, they were forced to use land in urban areas to grow food.
"A lot of land
was opened up to private Cuban farmers in the cities. This was in order
to get around the problem of fuel becoming so much more expensive. We
want to see how they managed to do it and what lessons could be taken
from their experience."
Not content with
this level of global travel Greene has then lined up Iceland as his
next stop.
"Because it
has one of the world's oldest alternative energy economies with its
use of thermal energy. But also because there have been people trying
to kick-start the hydrogen economy there. It is important to see what
they have achieved and what their plans are for the future."
But even among those people who think oil is starting its decline there
is scepticism over these alternatives. Hydrogen especially is often
derided as pie-in-the-sky thinking, too energy-expensive to produce
on any meaningful level.
"That is true. Even people who talk about things like peak oil
are often sceptics about other forms of energy. We are not so concerned
with that. We want to see the people who are actually making attempts."
Greene says his
new film will not just be about technical energy questions, it will
be about the people who are trying to address them.
"These are
people who are anticipating massive social changes based on energy becoming
much more expensive. That is what we are going to look at. Their futures,
our futures, could be vastly different depending on the success or failure
of their projects. Very different indeed."