The Ultimate Race: Peak Oil vs. Global Warming

Which will end the world first: peak oil or global warming? In the spirit of apocalyptic competition, the team at ESPN The Magazine recently put the question to the test. "We thought it might be fun to run the two doomsday scenarios head to head, based on a mostly random reading of current events. What can we say? We like competition."

So, when it comes down to the Oilers (no, not those Oilers) versus the Hockey Stick in a bare-knuckle brawl to the end of time, who comes out on top? Based on the past week's events, and with tongue firmly in cheek, the winner is...

Peak Oil! Yep, "Hugo A Go-go" (that's Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela) pulls this one out, thanks to record-setting oil prices topping $104/barrel due, in some part, at least, to Chávez's saber-rattling south of the border, massing troops at neighboring Colombia's doorstep and making the oil-based world's economy just a little more unstable.

Though we would have voted for global warming -- it's a bit semantic, but we've always thought peak oil and global warming have something of a cause and effect relationship, so it's a bit of apples and oranges here -- it's tough to argue against the pure volatility of an oil-thirsty world when the well starts to run dry. Global warming wins the marathon, but peak oil the sprint, this week, at least.

Perhaps the most sentient point made by the piece is this, though: "And still, in the Western world, not one call for conservation!"

Does this mean that NASCAR is on board to fight peak oil and global warming? ::ESPN The Magazine