Is the Earth (and its most important species and parasite) running short of petroleum? This would annoy the petrochemical industry (the First World) as no raw chemical feedstock but rock oil is suitable input. Could power plants or vehicles get by with Third World overpopulation harvested, rendered for its body fat, and said triglycerides cooked through Mobil ZSM-5 shape-selective catalyst to give C-8 aromatic hydrocarbons? Three billion volunteers might yield 200-300 million 42-gallon barrels of oil - a mere four days' worldwide consumption. Insanely large deposits of coal, oil, and natural gas (megatons of Arabian natural gas flares off into the nugatory Greenhouse Effect) rule.
Enviro-whiners are dealt another heavy blow. Long before a northeastern Alaskan oil reserve the size of Montana now a sacred caribou reserve had to be Officially discovered and tapped, Exxon and affiliates dipped some long straws into Gaia's hide off Africa. Initial reserves estimates are 25 billion barrels. Folks putting tigers in our tanks explored little of the potential productive real estate, but they are ever hopeful. How is that for an Enviro-whiner catastrophe of astounding proportions? Civilization is safe for an additional 70 years.
East and south and of the Ivory Coast (Cote D'Ivoire) lies oil heaven. 75-100 miles west of Africa the ocean floor suddenly drops two miles deep. Bonga at 3300-4400 foot depths off the Nigerian coast is a 15 billion bbl monster. Hungo, Dikanza, Kissanje, Marimba, Girdassol, Lirio, Rosa, Dalia lurk off the Northern Angola Coast, each tap a billion or more barrels (an "elephant" in oil jargon). Production in the early 2000s topped a million bbl/day. We will find something to do with it all, like shooting it up Arab noses.
The Earth's total recoverable petroleum is estimated at 1750 billion bbl or 67 cubic miles of oil. The prefix "peta" is 1015. 67 cubic miles of oil is 16.8 petamoles of carbon. Total fossil fuel reserves are about 400 petamoles of carbon. There are 50 petamoles of CO2 in the atmosphere, 3100 petamoles of CO2 in the oceans, 15-20 petamoles of carbon in the terrestrial biosphere. 0.5 petamoles of carbon are burned annually, 7 petamoles dissolve from the atmosphere into the ocean, 4 petamoles of carbon are photosynthesized and respired. Carbonate rock holds 5 million petamoles of carbon - nearly all of it derived from oceanic biological fixation. Send in more CO2! (http://www.gcrio.org/USGCRP/sustain/tans.html)
Fossil carbon reenters the biosphere directly as burned fuel or indirectly as processed garbage. Oil is 50 million years old. Radioactive carbon-14 has all decayed (8700 half-lives elapsed). 1950s and 60s nuclear testing increased C-14 background from 4 initial to 14 dpm/gm carbon. C-14 whether created N-14(n,p)C-14 from cosmic rays spallating atmospheric atoms and releasing neutrons or hydrogen bombs belching a pound of neutrons/megaton yield is a bad thing. We can dilute it back to safer levels.
Burning fossil fuel invests in the future. Immense annual carbon gigatonnages are converted through oceanic photosynthesis into algae and plankton that eventually die and sink into benthic ooze, directly or through the food chain, there to serve as the precursors of new petroleum deposits. Incredible masses of methane continuously make their way up out of the crust and react with cold, deep water into vast repositories of solid methane hydrate. Posterity has a locked in legacy of fuel, plastics and chemicals...
...and Enviro-whiners. As Greenhouse Earth Officially teeters toward ignition, immolation, incineration, cremation, and tepid January evenings it simultaneously threatens to freeze solid within another Ice Age and kill 650,000,000 historic European oppressors of Peoples of Colour dependent upon Ukrainian and thereabouts agriculture, Atlantic Monthly 281(1) 47 (1998). Flush the fjords with a sudden burst of fresh water, dilute the hypersaline northern seas so their waters no longer sink, squeeze off Gulf Stream circulation at its cold end, and Europe becomes Siberia. (On the bright side, Africa no longer sends hurricanes to the Gulf States and the East coast, and perhaps Louisiana summer relative humidity would inch down from triple digits.)
What will it be, Michiganders wearing loud Bermuda shorts in February or Ireland with green igloos and cold beer? As long as US gasoline hovers around $1.00/gallon I vote for Mid-West Christmas mosquitoes and starving Russians driving tanks along the Champs Elysee both. Of the 67 cubic miles of oil potentially recoverable we have consumed hardly more than 25 cubic miles, a little more than one third the way through. It could be a better world for everybody, especially me, and we have it within our reach to make it so. (The Green Sleeze priesthood will go the way of the March of Dimes - into exciting new venues groveling for alms.)
Whatever happens... bloody stop the whining.