Stressed Out Teens

A report by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that more and more teenagers are being sidelined by anxiety and depression. This is due to their every increasingly busy lifestyle, mainly preparing themselves for college. There is more and more pressure on students to do well in school, participate in extracurricular activities, be involved in their community, and perform well on SAT’s. The Admissions departments at colleges admit that there is a lot of pressure on teenagers to prepare themselves for college, and they have a great deal of competition. Doctors are seeing physical signs of the stress that these kids are dealing with, like stomach pains, chest pains, and headaches. Many students begin getting bombarded with college application deadlines and scheduling SAT’s during the first few weeks of their senior year in high school. According to some people, these kids are now suffering in their ability to be imaginative due to their hectic schedules. They do not have any down time to just think about whatever they want. This pressure to do well isn’t just in high school. It often starts in grade school as parents try to prepare their kids for high school activities. The kids are told that they have to be involved in school activities, do well academically, and find other activities in the community to get involved in. This is all in preparation to look impressive on their college application later on. The big problem here is that these kids no longer have the opportunity to do what they really should be doing – being kids.
(See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6221872 for source article.)

Oil is like a strawberry field

The world’s oil supply is like a “U-pick-it” strawberry field. The early morning pickers have the best selection, and will get the easiest, biggest strawberries. The latecomers will have a harder time finding the good ones, and they will be smaller. This is similar to the way that the world’s oil production is playing out. At first, it was easy drilling and the supply was abundant. After a while, it became harder to find those free-flowing wells. We now have to dig deeper and harder, but are finding less and less oil. This strawberry field analogy is how a Swedish professor of physics, Kjell Aleklett, puts it, as reported by the Vancouver Sun. Even the Houston Chronicle is reporting the “Oil Crunch”. A Chronicle editorial had warned that global oil production would peak in this decade or next, and now a study performed by the U.S. Department of Energy is agreeing. The study was led by Robert Hirsch, a consultant and former government official overseeing research into renewable energy. He is predicting peak oil could come within the next five years, and almost certainly by 2020. The study recommends a 20 year lead time to develop alternative energy sources to replace the dwindling oil supply. However, we may not have 20 years left. Right now the world consumes 82 million barrels of oil per day. The United States Energy Information Agency projects consumption to increase to 103 million barrels per day by 2015, and 119 million barrels a day by 2025. The problem is that global production would have to increase by 45% just to keep up with demand, and no one can assure us where all this extra oil will come from.
Right now gas prices are on a downswing. Some feel that this means that peak oil was just a fabrication by a few loony scientists. Well, the world is running out of oil. It is just a matter of when. The falling gas prices can be attributed to economic slowdown and a surplus of oil reserves at the moment. Many were expecting more turbulence in the Middle East and natural disasters, meaning hurricanes, that never really materialized over the summer. So, the oil companies are left with a bunch of oil and not a whole lot of demand. It would be in the human race’s best interest to begin learning how to live without the abundance of cheap oil. If we begin now, we can wean ourselves slowly. If we wait too long, it will be a big kick in the head. Simply hoping for “alternative energy” is not the solution. The real solution is learning to do with less. This means reducing automobile travel, reducing our consumption of plastic products, and re-localizing our economy. And, we cannot wait until the government takes charge of this situation; it needs to start with the people.