"It's not an if - we're going to have to change. Oil is simply going to be gone"
About this Quote
Coming from an actor, the line has an interesting cultural charge. Weaver wasn’t a technocrat issuing a white paper; he was a public figure using plain speech to make a complicated problem feel immediate. “Change” becomes the unavoidable plot twist, not a policy preference. And the phrase “Oil is simply going to be gone” works because it’s almost childlike in its clarity, a deliberately unglamorous endpoint. No geopolitics, no jargon, no heroic talk of “transition” - just absence.
The subtext is bigger than peak oil. It’s a critique of American modernity’s core bargain: cheap energy in exchange for looking away. Weaver frames the future as a forced rewrite, not a moral awakening. That matters because it sidesteps the culture war trap of “going green” as virtue signaling. He’s arguing necessity, not righteousness: you will change because the fuel that props up the current script will stop showing up.
In that sense, the quote is less prophecy than pressure tactic - a way to make the present feel finite, and therefore politically movable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Embrace Change |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Weaver, Dennis. (2026, January 15). It's not an if - we're going to have to change. Oil is simply going to be gone. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-not-an-if-were-going-to-have-to-change-oil-47264/
Chicago Style
Weaver, Dennis. "It's not an if - we're going to have to change. Oil is simply going to be gone." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-not-an-if-were-going-to-have-to-change-oil-47264/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"It's not an if - we're going to have to change. Oil is simply going to be gone." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/its-not-an-if-were-going-to-have-to-change-oil-47264/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.

