The End of Suburbia online

international | environment | other press Wednesday November 01, 2006 19:33 by Terence

Peak Oil Film now available

The rather famous documentary made a few years ago and which has been shown widely is now available online with YouTube. It documents how the growth of suburbia was based on the assumption of an endless supply of cheap oil. That assumption now no longer holds true.

This film called: The End Of Suburbia is rather famous and this stage and is about the impending peak in the global production of oil -known as Peak Oil and it delves into how the structure of our suburbs were built on the premise of Cheap Oil being abundant forever.

It demonstrates the folly of the suburbs and points out the rather obvious that they are very car dependent having been built with the car in mind in the culture of easy motoring.

After Peak Oil, when supplies will decline each year, then this means there is going to be less motoring. This will have dramatic effects on suburban all around the world and obviously the worst affected areas will be the most car dependent areas.

Here in Ireland the number of cars during the 1990s during the boom doubled and in the last 10 years there has been a massive increase in sprawl. We are sitting ducks to the problems coming downstream as a consequence of Peak Oil and for those concerned about it, this film is probably a good place to start. It is by no means the final word and I would have to say even though the film is both good and informative, I don't think it gets across the depth of the problem.

You can download or view it here. It's 52 mins long.