Human existence as you and I know it has been built upon a viscous black foundation – oil. Oil is used for more things than most will realise: engine fuel; fertiliser; plastics; pharmaceuticals and computers, the mere beginnings of an impressively long list, and it is the reason why most people who are alive today, are alive. The use of fossil fuels in agriculture allowed the world to accrue an adequate food supply to sustain a population growth from 1 billion to 6 billion following the industrial revolution, along with the other invaluable functions of oil.

Peak oil is the theory that once oil production reaches a peak, it will begin a terminal decline, with which the cost will very rapidly become scandalous due to the economic doctrines around which we have structured human society. To very briefly explain, as supply peaks and begins to decline, whilst simultaneously demand increases due to uncontrolled population growth, cost will go up – a decline in supply by 5% during the 1979 oil crisis in the USA led to a fourfold price increase. Once the inevitable peak comes, it is suggested that the terminal decline will average out to about 3% year on year. Considering how the majority of the entire global economy is built upon this one resource, the cost increases will result invariably in complete economic chaos with very hardhitting consequences for everyone – other forms of energy may take the brunt somewhat but currently none are sufficiently developed to soften the blow to a comfortable level and many believe that due to the unique properties of oil, no straightforward alternatives exist. To believe in this theory requires the acceptance of one basic inter-subjective fact – that oil is a non-renewable resource; it is not a theory compiled by conspiracy nuts but rather one accepted by academics and governments alike – it is merely a matter of when.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing facts about this theory is that, with the evidence base for the resources we are yet able to muster varying from source to source, and the uncertainty of what technological advances will allow us to do with respect to increasing oil production, there is a lot of speculation about when this eventuality will arise and very little factual substance. There are oil geologists who speculate that the peak is already here and taking time to stabilise before declining, and there are others who believe it will come by 2015 – former BP chief executive Tony Hayward claims it will come by 2020 with a very significant risk of it coming before 2015. The reason why this is so disturbing is that if it were to come when nations are unprepared, the consequences will be nothing short of disastrous, with resource wars and famine a very likely supplement to the likely global economic implosion.

With the conflicting evidence it would be worthless to fathom a guess as to when it will come, and in turn what the consequences will be; nevertheless, one thing that this environmental issue has done is markedly change my perspective on human existence upon this planet. These buildings which we walk past overflowing with people fulfilling different niches within our construct of society; these economic doctrines which govern every day of our lives and consign others to utter poverty, are merely humanity’s own demented little take on Darwinian survivalism, and a deciduous ephemera of life on earth. Any illusion of entitlement, and of the idea that man can somehow unreservedly expend the earth’s limited resources without consequence, is precisely that. Human existence as it is on this planet is a fragile one, only permitted by this chance discovery, and lest we reach rapid consensus on how collectively as a species, we are to tackle this, we may have just experienced the peak of the human species.

Yesterday the When I Grow Up project came to an end. It was a project that I had been working on all term, culminating in an exhibition at The Shop which over 100 people braved the cold to come and see. Throughout the exhibition people asked me ‘what gave you the idea’ or ‘what do you think of growing up,’ and I didn’t really have an answer. So I thought about it. And it starts at the American Cemetery.

On a really cold autumn day I decided to cycle to the Cambridge American Cemetery. Despite the fact that I had to cross several motorways, I thought the sense of achievement would be worth it, and so after 40 minutes of getting lost and almost joining the M11 by mistake I arrived. It was pretty amazing. I’d been to Dunkirk but years and years ago, and I’d forgotten the scale and symmetry of the military graveyards.

There was no-one else in the whole place (apart from a solitary gardener), and I walked through the graves thinking about how young everyone was when they died. My age. These Americans were so grown up they were fighting for their country, and there I was still being looked after, going back to my family in the holidays and living with my friends in term time.

What makes someone ‘grow up’? Fighting did it for the people in the cemetery. A soldier of just 20 had won the Medal of Honor and his name was embossed on the wall. It was so tranquil in the cemetery and suddenly I had an idea. To find out what growing up meant to people. Was it when their parents split up? Was it when they realised they had to get a job? Or when they split up with their first boy or girlfriend? After a few days I came up with the When I Grow Up kit, a way for people to record their memories, dreams, fears, drawings and ideas about growing up.

I sent it out to people in Cambridge who wanted to participate, and was lucky enough to be featured in Varsity which got the project more attention and more responses. Around 40 people returned their kits, most with intricate and detailed responses about how they had found growing up. Though originally I just wanted to make a magazine, the way people returned the kits were so detailed and different that it never would have done it justice. So I decided to have a one night exhibition.

Since tents are ‘my thing‘ and Anna is really good at putting them up I decided that an exhibition of four tents: one each for dreams, one for fears, one for memories and one for people’s own responses would be best. In a day and a half I managed to put them all up (with lots of help from Megan and Anna!) and then I added a fan for the dreams, a uv light for the fears, my mum reading out memories and pens for people to contribute themselves.

I also added a shop with t-shirts, bags and magazines to document the project (though some people looked like they’d never seen a shop in an exhibition and called me a ‘capitalist’..).

I also put a film in the exhibition featuring films about how 1950s children were supposed to grow up. In the 30 minute compilation there were tips about getting a date, getting a job, being confident and being quiet. Though a lot of the scenes were quite comical it showed how grappling with growing up is hardly a new phenomenon.

Over the course of 4 hours (7-11pm) people came and looked at other people’s responses to the question of growing up, and after looking at other people’s they decided for themselves what growing up was, and wrote it inside the final tent.

It was also nice as a lot of people came off the street to see what was happening, including a family and several teachers. The fact that there was so much space to talk in the middle of the room and dream tent gave the exhibition a real sense of community.

It was quite sad to take everything down after 11 (though it only took about 15 minutes, with the help of Maz, Lucy, Lowell and Anna) but I felt that I had really explored what it is to Grow Up. Originally I thought that it meant you had to “realize you weren’t special” or “realize that you have to compromise,” but what the project taught me is that ‘growing up’ isn’t a bad thing. It’s a normal thing. And ultimately, everyone has the same worries, concerns, dreams and fears about it. The whole point is that we take the good and the bad and go forward. With each other. Not looking too far past the horizon. Just like the people I’d seen in the cemetery had done. And then whatever happens, happens.

God is in heaven,

And we all want what’s His,

But power and greed and corruptible seed,

Seems to be all that there is.

Bob Dylan

During my momentary relief from lecture induced boredom, I decided to indulge in a nostalgic walk down a 21st century variant of memory lane by going on my twice-daily walk to my primary school on Google street view – perhaps not the function which the developers had in mind but nevertheless it seemed like a good use of technology.

As I walked along the street in jerky, internet speed dependent motions, I couldn’t help but break a smile to see that these landmarks of my childhood were still gracefully standing as a reality for others passing; the shop on the crescent path was still there, an inexorable detour to spend my daily pound on; the houses and hedges still matched the etchings in my memory, however they had lost their vivacious colour which I remembered them to possess, an alteration in perception perhaps – or merely a natural product of weathering of the paint, I’m not quite sure. I was quite amused to find that the part which I longed for most were those strips along the pavement where the tarmac had been relayed after fixing some piping or some-other – every day without exception I would walk along the strip as if it were a bridge over lava, an urge I try to resist as a twenty year old. Being in peaceful suburbia, it seems an attractive place to me now for respite from the high paced, polluted London lifestyle, but being young I didn’t appreciate it at all. That’s not to say I would have liked to appreciate it because that was one of the best things about youth, never appreciating anything because you never realised you ought to.

It took me back to a time where our life paths were still densely branched before us and there was a naive sense of invincibility. As university progresses and we start to narrow our focus into more and more specialised regions, the finite branches of this path start passing us by at a decreasing frequency and an increasing sense of inevitability, a phenomenon which I presume will continue throughout life. This walk for me acted as a reminder that if there’s a path you long to have taken when you were back at the start, you should take the next opportunity to diverge from your current one and at least head towards it, even if you don’t quite get there – be this learning something you’ve always wanted to learn, or taking a life path you’ve always had thoughts about taking – better that, than endure the tortuous transition into a bitter and regretful soul in an ever aging body.

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This image from the hubble space telescope shows a disc galaxy, almost perfectly edge on. This line spans about 35000 light years from one end to the other. Galaxies this thin are common, for example the Milky Way, within which earth resides.

“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime or at least a Main Era – the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant…”

An excerpt from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

A few weekends ago I went to visit some friends in Oxford. During the three and a half hour journey on the X5 from Cambridge I traveled through Milton Keynes. At the same time the song Candy Shoppe by Emeralds was playing on my iPod. As I looked out at the straight boulevards and perfect trees I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had told me I was in paradise. Pretty much every street name sounds like something out of a Utopian fantasy: Midsummer Boulevard. Child’s Way. Springfield. Matched by the music I was listening to, the roads stretched on for eternity and every perfectly landscaped flower-bed shone beautiful light. Despite all the bad things I’d heard about Milton Keynes I felt like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s:

Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?
Paul Varjak: The mean reds, you mean like the blues?
Holly Golightly: No. The blues are because you’re getting fat and maybe it’s been raining too long, you’re just sad that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
Paul Varjak: Sure.
Holly Golightly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany’s. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that’d make me feel like Tiffany’s, then – then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name!

Milton Keynes with Candy Shoppe playing felt like a place where nothing bad could ever happen and where people go to live ‘happily ever after,’ even when the sky turned grey and rain started to stream down the windows of the bus.