{"id":196,"date":"2010-03-06T03:00:02","date_gmt":"2010-03-06T07:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helveticabold.tv\/wordpress\/?p=196"},"modified":"2011-05-03T02:11:27","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T06:11:27","slug":"even-more-inconvenient-a-crude-awakening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/helveticabold.tv\/wordpress\/?p=196","title":{"rendered":"EVEN MORE INCONVENIENT: ‘A CRUDE AWAKENING’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cEnergy is the most pressing issue. If you have clean abundant energy, you can solve all today’s problems: You can turn the Sahara into a garden, you can desalinate salt water, you can pump it wherever you want to have it. Cheap energy can develop the world. A barrel of oil — one hundred and fifty-nine liters \u2014 contains the physical capacity of what twelve men would have to work for over a year. It’s really the key to our time.”<\/p>\n

This is Basil Gelpke, and that\u2019s the optimistic part. Here\u2019s the flip side: Our global civilization is dependent on one particular energy source, and if we run out of it we\u2019re in trouble. That time might be soon. It might be now.<\/p>\n

Gelpke, a TV (NZZ Format) and print journalist based in Zurich, is a self-professed conservative (\u201cwith a small \u2018c\u2019\u201d). He is also the director of\u00a0A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash<\/em>, and even though the film is creating something of a storm in international eco-circles, Gelpke actually didn\u2019t set out to make a \u201cgreen movie”.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing a good Swiss, we’re always interested in commodity prices. So I was reading a paper by an Australian hedge fund \u2014 people who work with George Soros \u2014 and they were trying to find out how much fossil fuel was left in total. They couldn\u2019t come to a clear conclusion. Eventually, they gave a figure of [an amount which would last] roughly forty years, and if you have children, it doesn’t seem like such a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Gelpke in the field<\/p><\/div>\n

Gelpke launched into an investigation . \u201cIn retrospect it seems like a very naive question, \u2018how much of this stuff is left?<\/em>\u2019 because there are no hard answers. And that’s how the film came about; I find this to be the most under reported story. Even if there is a ten percent possibility of us being right\u2014it has implications that are so far reaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

He joined forces with Irish film maker Ray McCormack and LA based Swiss film maker Reto Caduff.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really have to give credit to Basil for tapping into the zeitgeist\u201d says Caduff, who filmed the U.S interviews and footage and brought a vintage\/retro sensibility to the table. \u201cWhen we started, there was no discussion about this; oil was still $38 a gallon. Now we\u2019re completely blown away by the momentum\u201d. The zeitgeist in question is the head rush from An Inconvenient Truth<\/em>, Al Gore\u2019s global warming vehicle, which made everyone perk up. Crude Awakening comes hot on the heels of the global warming movie (they were in the works at about the same time). And while the comparisons are unavoidable, Gelpke nods aesthetically in another direction:<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m very sympathetic to\u00a0Koyaanisqatsi<\/em> and this sense of speeding things up. Looking back at our lives in the last ten years, we’ve all increased our mobility.\u201d\u00a0Koyaanisqatsi<\/em> is the first of Godfrey Reggio\u2019s cinematic\u00a0\u201cQatsi<\/em>\u201d trilogy depicting the world off-kilter and in a crisis through formally beautiful epic montage of nature, industrial waste and destruction, replete with a wall-to-wall Phillip Glass score.\u00a0Crude Awakening<\/em> exhibits family traits with\u00a0Koyaanisqatsi<\/em>: hi-definition vistas, lush ominous slivers of Philip Glass, (in turn straddled by Handel, Saint-Saens, Phillip Kuhn and Stefan Faesch)\u2014 nested between Daniel Schnyder\u2019s atmospheric score. Then other fun DNA pops up: the scenario of how we got into our current energy crisis unfolds with a quirky helping of vintage commercials\/infomercials.<\/p>\n

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Vista of tomorrow, today: depleted oil field<\/p><\/div>\n

Most importantly, Crude Awakening<\/em> is not just a pretty picture; it features an international posse of whip smart specialists and heavyweights, ranging from former OPEC Secretary General (and Iraqi Oil Minister) Fadhil Chalabi to republican Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, to Terry Lynn Karl of Stanford University; all of them articulating before the camera the shape of things to come.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the message of Crude Awakening<\/em> is an alarming one: We\u2019re about to run out of cheap abundant energy, and then what?<\/p>\n

Peak oil \u2014 the idea that we are sitting on a finite mountain of fossil fuels which is just about peaking \u2014 has been debated since the 70s. What\u2019s striking about this film is that the issue is non-partisan. Conservatives, liberals and millennialists all converge at similar conclusions.<\/p>\n

As Gelpke notes:<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone tries to glimpse at what the future is holding. I’m convinced that we have a problem in which soon supply won’t meet demand anymore at a very crucial time when the world’s two most populous nations (India and China) are rapidly industrializing and therefore really need that source of energy. We can’t replace it with anything else really\u2014except perhaps for coal. So I think we’re headed for a crash. I might be wrong and I hope I’m wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s next for him, another environmental movie?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo! A romantic comedy! I got a bit depressed making this film\u2014 and that’s not me. I do enjoy life, I enjoy the lifestyle that comes with oil \u2014 I even like cars\u2026 I just feel there’s a huge party going on and it’s coming to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps, but in the last minutes of\u00a0Crude Awakening<\/em> we catch glimpses of the Amish, in their unindustrialized bubble. So maybe the party will be ending, and then we\u2019ll have to attend the ones we used to ignore? The option is yours. Look into it.<\/p>\n

For more about Crude Awakening visit:\u00a0www.OilCrashMovie.com<\/a><\/p>\n

All images courtesy of\u00a0www.OilCrashMovie.com<\/a><\/p>\n