Photo: Ridgewood Scouts Build 'Memorial to Oil'

Students entering Ridge School Friday morning were greeted by a memorial statue marking the end of oil.

Black gold hasn't reached its demise yet, of course. But the message of the Webelos Boy Scout group that built the statue is that the energy source won't last forever, said Den Leader Dana Glazer.

"The idea is that it's a finite resource and at some point it's going to run out," he said. The dozen scouts assembled the statue, pictured above, last Thursday night, entirely with items made from or tied to the production of oil. The goal was to raise awareness of oil dependency and environmental issues through a hands-on arts project.

"It was a really great experience for the boys to do something civically minded and to find out how much we own is oil based," said Glazer. "It was a very positive experience."

Here's the message the Scouts from Pack 44 wrote and posted to the memorial:

We are calling this sculpture "R.I.P. OIL" because oil is a limited resource, which means that it will go away someday if we use it all. We have made this oil memorial for three reasons.

1. Most people don't think of oil as a limited resource, so they waste too much of it. 

2. Most people don't know how many things have oil in them or got here because of oil. 

3. We want people to start thinking about preparing for when oil runs out.

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