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Last Revised Sept 22nd, 2008
Peak Oil, Electric Cars and the American Future
Editorial by Bill Drinkwater, Director, EVMaine.org
Transportation, as we currently know it, is coming to an end soon.
Think low speed cars, bicycles and yes, even shopping carts!
What is Peak Oil?
Peak Oil is not the end of oil, instead it is when the world’s total oil production peaks. After that, worldwide oil production will enter a period of permanent, and possibly steep, decline. This will occur because there is a finite (limited) amount of oil in the ground. Over time, new oil deposits will become harder to find, smaller, more difficult to recover, more costly and onerous to refine and these new deposits will frequently be located in areas adversarial to the U.S.
No one knows precisely when Peak Oil will occur, or if it already has. Some people(1) believe that Peak Oil occurred in 2005 because we have been on an oil production plateau ever since, but most experts now predict that Peak Oil will happen sometime between 2006 and 2013.
The Biggest Unexpected Consequence of Peak Oil
Food Insecurity
The end of cheap oil will signal the beginning of the collapse of the Global Industrial Agricultural System (Agribusiness) because that system requires massive quantities of cheap oil to profitably grow, process and ship food crops around the world, thereby providing food diversity and seasonal crops to first world countries all year long. In addition, this artificial “Green Revolution” has supplied more food to many poorer countries in the world. This has allowed those cultures, many of which traditionally suffer high infant mortality rates, to now have larger families. However, when the current food supply diminishes considerably, many of these large families will likely be faced with starvation.
Ten calories of oil-based energy go into every calorie of food energy found in your local supermarket, so this system is not sustainable over time as available energy supplies wane and become much more expensive. Also, recent large-scale biofuels production has been found to already be contributing to a worldwide food shortage as American SUVs now compete with hungry people the World over for the energy available in foodstuffs.
Another contributor to fuel price rises is speculation by well-heeled commodities investors preying on the misery of others in their efforts to find a hedge against the falling dollar. Closer examination of this issue reveals that such opportunism is not clearly a cause rising food prices, but may rather be a symptom of them.
The plummeting value of the U.S. dollar is also raising U.S. food prices through inflation, and this situation could easily spin out of control. It is likely to eventually cause serious food price increases right here in the U.S. - maybe even the unthinkable - hyperinflation! The important possibility to note here is that this dollar could quickly start falling completely out of control, and thereby plunge Americans into the unfamiliar economic territory of a worthless currency and a cashless, barter society.
The survival strategy is that a large percentage of the American population will eventually have to start growing food organically, and mostly by hand in their back yards, for consumption within their local area to avoid regional famines. “The three thousand mile Caesar salad is over.”(2)
And any American city that does not have considerable arable land nearby, along with plenty of extra water to irrigate it, has a population that could soon find itself in very serious difficulty!
I cite this Peak Oil-caused catastrophic food system collapse first because we must start implementing ways to ensure our own ‘food security’ before we have the luxury of considering any other effects of Peak Oilhttp://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/.
Transportation Woes
Almost every aspect of today’s American economy was established on a foundation of cheap and abundant oil, and nary a thought was given to what would happen if it ever became scarce and expensive. However, after Peak Oil the price of oil-based fuels will trend upward as worldwide demand continues to outstrip the (then) permanently declining oil supply. This ever-rising cost of transportation fuels, plus future unpredictable local fuel shortages and likely even rationing (like we had in the U.S. in the 1970s, when customers could only buy five gallons of gasoline at a time) will quickly cripple the wide-ranging American lifestyle. The resulting chaos will rapidly foster widespread economic and social hardship and unrest amongst bewildered consumers who have consistently been told that there would always be plenty of oil to fulfill our ever-increasing demand, not to mention China and India growing at 10% per year.
Many who are aware of this coming crisis believe the hyperbole that we can simply “Invent our way out of this crisis” and that “Technology will save us.” But such hopeful notions will crash on the rocky coast of reality as a matching substitute for very energy-dense oil is, and will remain, an ever-elusive prey.
Companies all over the world are working feverishly to try to make today’s internal combustion engine cars more energy efficient through technological tweaks, But such tweaks can do little more to improve the efficiency of internal combustion engines as those many engineers collectively butt their heads up against the limits of the Laws of Thermodynamics.
Instead we need a whole new mindset toward adopting “zero emissions vehicles” (ZEVs) as soon as possible if we want to survive on this planet. We have already wantonly plowed enough billions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere as if it were an open sewer, to trigger many future difficulties. According to scientists we are already on the verge of stepping beyond some tipping points that could cause very turbulent and upending climate events worldwide, and in the very near future.
Dmitry Orlov, in his latest book about a possible collapse of the American economy, “Reinventing Collapse” believes that we’ll eventually resort to bicycles, and even to widespread use of grocery shopping carts for basic transportation. Let’s hope things don’t get that bad. But I highly recommended his book, as do many of the reader reviews of it on www.amazon.com
To put it bluntly, you can kiss your SUV goodbye, or face the catastrophic consequences of a hotter climate with sporadic torrential rains, monster snowstorms, innundated major coastal cities worldwide and 300 mph super hurricanes! In that scenario, only something akin to Coober Pedy’s(3) underground homes would have any chance of surviving the onslaught.
In addition, hundreds of thousands of everyday consumer products formerly made from cheap oil, everyting from medicines to plastics to car tires to gasoline, will continually ratchet up in price. Some common products will disappear entirely from the shelves, while a few others might be made from more expensive oil, or using new, very expensive oil substitutes. All of these adjustments, not to mention the increase in shipping costs for all of these items, will drive up the price of every single product in this consumer society because there has been absolutely no widescale effort to prepare for this crisis before now.
Most suburbs will have to be abandoned eventually as gas prices skyrocket and it becomes absolutely unaffordable for many millions of Americans to commute their usual considerable distances to work every day.
Widespread unemployment will be one result of an oil-based, but oil-starved, economy until it adjusts to its new condition of a much lower energy regime and lifestyle, which will likely take at least a generation.
Many people will have to accommodate to suddenly not having a job, a regular paycheck or a structured work day. Some will suffer nervous breakdowns and not survive, while others will create self-employment opportunities for themselves based upon their previous skillset, their physical condition and their mental flexibility. Also, the current generation in their 20’s will suffer a ginormous disappointment as they realize that they will not have as many choices and freedom in their lives as their parents did. Many of the opportunities in the future will have to be once again based on 19th century pre-industrial skills and materials for making products for local sale or trade out of mostly locally available materials. Some thoughtful pre-planning for this eventuality might be a good idea to consier. For example, learn how to repair things around the house, get a few hand tools and learn to use them so that you can barter your time in the future helping others for a bit of food. Plant an organic garden or perhaps consider buying a sturdy bicycle (and a couple of spare tires) for future riding if you are only a few miles from the nearest local farmers market.
Congress will surely pass a windfall profits tax on the (U.S.) oil companies eventually, and they might even stop the annual federal giveaway of huge subsidies to them, perhaps in exchange for allowing the drilling of the U.S. continental shelves and/or Alaska. However, these moves will prove to be an exercise in futility because the relatively meager amounts of oil still available from this country will have little ameliorative effect on the totality of the naturally depleting worldwide oil supply.
The Airlines
The airline companies are the canaries in the coal mine for Peak Oil. The airlines will decline before other businesses because fuel costs are their single biggest expense, by far. Expect fewer airlines, more mergers, considerably higher ticket prices, slower flights, more fees and many more irritating delays and snafus as they flail about in their company death spirals. Some airlines will try switching back to more economical prop planes which use less expensive fuels, but that too will eventually be offset by ever-rising fuel costs. Expect a radically downsized industry that will mostly serve only the wealthy. The casual and easy movement of middle class Americans across continents by air is becoming a thing of the past.
How about this possibility for future air travel? Solar cell-powered, electric motor propelled dirigibles filled with hydrogen. That is a fairly simple, zero emissions air travel solution that could be implemented now with no new hi tech breakthroughts required. This suggestion is in juxtaposition to today’s conventional ‘dirty’ airplanes which contribute as much as 25% of the atmospheric pollution worldwide, which is itself a good and necessary reason to get rid of them. And such dirigibles could provide a comfortable, leisurely ride, just like the German Zepplins of yesteryear. Although the following link is to a military contract, it proves the concept that dirigibles are viable today: http://hydrogencommerce.com/zepplins/zepplins.htm
Future Land Vehicles - What to Expect
Future cars and trucks will be smaller, lighter, more streamlined, will produce zero emissions and will be much more energy efficient than today’s over-the-top gas guzzling, ludricous behemoths. The internal combustion engine will take its last drive to museums. The much smaller overall number of future vehicles will mostly be driven locally on relatively short and slow trips over very potholed roads. And most of those future vehicles will be powered by locally-produced clean electricity. In the future, very few vehicles will still be running on today’s expensive and polluting liquid fuels. Most of the oil will have to be rationed into a controlled shutdown and revamping of the industries of the world. Without a doubt, electricity is destined to become our primary transportation fuel.
There are three types of electric-powered vehicles that you can expect to see on our roads in the future. They are battery-powered electric cars, compressed air-powered cars and a few solar-powered electric cars. These vehicles have at least eleven distinct advantages over all other vehicle power systems:
1. Their technologies already exist, so they are already being manufactured.
2. All three produce zero pollution when driven.
3. They need less energy input to run them because their propulsion systems are more efficient. (Electric motors are as much as 98% efficient, compared to about 25% efficient gasoline engines and about 40% efficient diesel engines.)
4. They are very simple mechanically, and therefore require very little maintenance.
5. They do not use any fossil fuels to power them, leaving those precious fossil fuels for more critical uses in the future.
6. Even when powered by electricity from a dirty, coal-fired power plant, electric cars still contribute far less pollution, per mile driven, than an internal combustion engine car.
7. Electric cars can be recharged from the grid power at night, which is usually when much energy is wasted keeping the power plants running.
8. A small electric-powered vehicle can have its batteries recharged from any electric source, including a backyard solar or wind power system, instead of having to rely on today’s complex liquid fuels production and its expensive daily delivery system by tanker truck of extremely explosive liquids to over 170,000 U.S. filling stations.
9. All electric car batteries will be recycled in the future, just like 98% of todays lead-acid car batteries already are.
10. Many standard, internal combustion cars can be converted to battery electric cars, which saves the energy required to manufacture a whole new vehicle.
11. You can even use your electric car as an emergency power supply to power your home during power outages - no generator needed.
Solar powered cars of the future could use the new 40% efficient solar cells that have already been developed, or maybe even better ones in the future. They would require only half of the surface area of today’s experimental solar race cars built by high school and university teams as technology demonstrations, and raced in many international competitions.
Bicycles and small electric-motor-assisted, pedal-powered vehicles of many sizes and shapes will become much more commonplace in our personal transportation mix in the near future because they are supremely practical and affordable, as is evident by the hundreds of millions of bicycles in use all over the world. Their health benefit will include some much-needed exercise, plus cleaner air to breathe without so many tailpipes spewing toxic fumes.
Hydrogen fuel cell powered cars are an evolutionary dead end for many engineering, practical, financial, energy and environmental reasons, so don’t expect to see many of them rolling down our highways in the future.
However, they are very good for providing a public relations diversion away from low-maintenance battery electric cars by America’s biggest domestic automakers, who continue to talk up hydrogen while actually making little real progress toward manufacturing the zero emissions electric vehicles that they already know how to make, and have already made in the past. Making hydrogen fuel cell vehicles commercially viable would take decades, and would provide no real energy savings because it takes about as much energy to produce the hydrogen, as it later provides in a vehicle that is anything but simple. Here’s another legitimate concern about hydrogen powered vehicles. If you’re burning hydrogen and atmospheric air in an internal combustion engine, instead of using a fuel call and electric motor, then you are producing nitrides, a major pollutiant. Gov. Swartzenegger’s hydorgen-powered Hummer, for example, burns hydrogen gas in its specially modified internal combustion engine.
For mass transit in areas not currently served we can first expect that school buses will quickly be drafted into dual use as full-time public transportation instead of just being an exclusive mass transit system for children that is only used twice a day. Students and the public already share the buses in Sweden, and have for many years. When rising fuel prices finally make even this compromise too expensive, other arrangements will have to be made. For the kids, home schooling, Internet schooling, radio schooling (as in Australia for over 50 years) or traditional local village schools all seem like they would be appropriately-scaled and workable solutions in the real world.
Light rail commuter systems will eventually be installed in a few larger population centers, but the resources to build such major projects will be found to be very volatile, very scarce and very expensive in the future, not to mention the expensive energy needed to power them after they are constructed.
Recycling is Better Than Mining
Since conventional mining costs will become more expensive in the future, and it costs much less to recycle materials, not to mention it provides much needed self-employment, we can expect that many of our future metals and materials needs will come from recovered materials, not only from backyards, but also from local dumps and landfills - just like many people in third world countries already do. Today, our poorer communities often get saddled with our landfills, but tomorrow they may consider themselves the lucky communities.
We might have to turn back to pre-industrial and very early industrial times for clues to what we might be able to accomplish in the way of a mass transit system in the future. For example, the San Francisco cable car system is still the most efficient mass transit system in America, per horsepower/per passenger mile, and it began operation in 1879.
The Roadbeds
As the price of asphalt, another oil byproduct, has increased (from $34 a ton in the 1990’s to $327 a ton in early 2008) it is reasonable to expect less frequent road repairs in the future, hence our slower and more cautious driving future on rougher roads as predicted earlier. And concrete is no substitute because it too requires prodigious amounts of fossil fuel energy to both produce and transport it. Our roadbeds will crumble to something that is the consistency of gravel roads once again. Some new plastic sealant toppings for roadbeds have been developed to reduce traffic damage, but unfortunately they too are derived from the same costly oil.
You can expect that many municipalities that experience below-freezing winters will simply post more and lower weight limits on their roads in the springtime to avoid roadbed damage from the few heavy trucks still on the roads in the future.
The ubiquitous mobility of the cheap oil era will soon come to a screeching halt, and our lives will become ‘profoundly local’ until a nationwide passenger rail system can be slowly fashioned out of the remnants of today’s technology if we are going to have relatively easy and safe travel from city to city.
What is Our Best Future Source for Electricity?
Since electricity will surely become our primary source of energy in the future, we must consider its origins and consumption carefully. The worst possible source of electricity is coal-fired power plants because they are the largest combined CO2, mercury, hydrogen sulfide, nitrides and radioactive particle pollution source in the world. The latest research indicates that there are only about 15 to 20 years of recoverable coal left anyway, not the 150 to 200 year supply that the coal industry often touts. Since these power plants are planned with a 30 to 50 year payoff period, and we now know that the coal supply to feed them won’t last that long, plus we don’t have any extra mile long trains to move that additional coal, it makes absolutely no sense to build any more coal-fired power plants. Not only should we not build any more of them, but today’s existing coal-fired power plants should be shut down immediately to prevent possible irreversable climate damage, but they won’t be.
Despite several pioneering experiments that are now underway around the globe in Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) for cleaning up coal-fired power plants (“Clean Coal”), this technology will prove, in the end, to be way too expensive and too energy consuming to utilize in more than a handful of very geologically favorable places on this Planet.
Only coal industry shills and paid-off politicians spewing simple-minded, but counter-productive, solutions to society’s problems will back the proliferation of coal-fired power plants in the future. But beware, the entrenched and very powerful coal industry will remain a formidable anti-environmental force to be reckoned with until all of the readily recoverable coal is gone.
Natural gas-powered electricity plants are much cleaner than coal-fired plants, so they are preferable to coal, but they certainly aren’t zero emissions. However, the latest estimates are that there’s only about 5 to 10 years of natural gas left until worldwide depletion, and it won’t even last that long if we start building more natural gas power plants now to replace the coal-fired ones, thereby using up that resource even faster, or if T. Boon Pickins gets his wish of powering America’s cars with natural gas.
Both solar photovoltaic panels, and wind turbines should be manufactured in the millions by governments as well as by private companies as soon as possible using the least polluting manufacturing facilities and processes available. The factories harboring those processes should be engineered to run on solar and wind power themselves to make them sustainable too. They should not be powered by unsustainable and depleting fossil fuels like today’s factories are.
We need to intelligently conserve and prioritize the remaining fossil fuels for mining and transporting the raw materials needed by these factories - by drastically curtailing the current unnecessary consumption of fossil fuels by wasteful and polluting internal combustion engine vehicles.
Then those solar panels should NOT be arranged in gigantic arrays in the hinterlands that waste most of their electricity in many-miles-long transmission line losses, and which also leaves them isolated and vulnerable to vandalism. Instead the solar panels should be utilized in clean, local ‘islands of energy’ called ‘distributed energy’ systems. This refers to localized, smaller installations with much shorter transmission lines only within neighborhoods, for example, or even if installed as many small, individual “rooftop” or ‘backyard’ power systems.
Since the average future home will be smaller and will consume perhaps 20% to 30% as much electricity as today’s average home uses, each home could produce enough spare electricity to also charge a small battery-powered electric car. Don’t believe it? Here’s the proof: The U.S. Department of Energy’s annual Solar Decathalon Competition: http://www.solardecathlon.org
These energy-efficient prototype homes are also required to produce enough spare electricity to power a small electric car!
By the way, since there will be plenty of car alternators lying around in the future every basic handyman-type person will have access to something that he or she could easily turn into an inexpensive and low-tech backyard wind turbine. Now there’s a cheap way to get a little extra energy for home use.
Wind turbines, wave-powered turbines and many other ocean energy sources should also be exploited as soon as possible to contribute to our new, clean, smaller electricity supply. And the public should stop fighting these critical new sources of energy.
To help reduce electricity consumption every American home in the future should also have some sort of solar water heater on their roof, like tens of millions of Chinese homes already have. And, unlike solar panels, such devices can be built quite inexpensively with low-tech parts and just a few hand tools.
Our Economy Today and Tomorrow
Today’s ‘Big Box’ national chain stores, with their ‘just in time’ deliveries of cheap, disposable goods from around the world using diesel-powered big rig trucks for their nationwide distribution system are doomed. These types of businesses will no longer be viable as soon as it becomes too expensive to distribute their goods around the country. Their outmoded business model will wobble for a while and survive by raising prices again and again, and then they will finally collapse and abandon their huge buildings, offering another materials recycling opportunity for the local populace.
Locally-based economies can then reassert themselves to fill the vacuum, but many town and small city business centers will have to be rebuilt almost from scratch wherever they have fallen into abandonment and disrepair after having been superseded by shopping malls in outlying areas as modern, cheap oil-fueled shopping tastes changed. These future local businesses will likely provide little more than the basics of life because our wasteful, cheap energy-powered, throw-away, planned obsolescense society will have been throttled back to a whole new and much more parsimonious American lifestyle. And “Shop ‘til you drop” will no longer be part of our lexicon, except perhaps in reference to an occasional blacksmith who has to physically carry his big new anvil all the way home.
Most of the extremely wealthy corporate Americans, who have looted this country and hollowed out the American Dream in recent years thanks to malleable politicians, wholesale deregulation of corporations and out-of-control military/industrial contracts for unnecessary wars, will flee overseas permanently to enjoy their spoils in other places. Asia has already received some of our CEOs, and some will surely luxuriate away their final years in the area called “the Switzerland of Argentina.” This will occur for most of these Robber Barons just as soon as they feel threatened by irate members of the newly-disenfranchised, newly poor, newly homeless and carless, former American middle class. This will, to some degree, decrease the available financial resources to help rebuild our society toward both lowered energy usage, and the lowered expectations of a new, no-growth economy.
Some Conclusions
Shortly after the onset of Peak Oil, the noble, but ultimately impossible American Experiment of a permenantly growing economy in a world of limited natural resources will go on life support. For better or worse, the single-minded money chase will be over. Our currency is likely to become either turnips or carrots, take your choice...
Any semblance of a so-called ‘Global Economy’ will also quickly fragment as the present worldwide streetfight over the few remaining scraps of productive oil fields gets underway in earnest. The fact that both natural gas and coal will start depleting shortly after oil peaks won’t help the equation. And if the new trend of countries beginning to hoard their own resources so their own populations will suffer less in the future (it has already started with India banning rice exports), less international cooperation will be the result. It looks like the World is going to soon forget that it was recently flat, Tom Friedman. The so-called “Global Economy” is a momentary phenomenon based of cheap energy and it is already reeling, and about to fall down.
“Oil Nationalism” is a new phrase that refers to oil exporting courtries picking their customers, rather than selling to just any country. With the U.S. in disfavor the World over these days, we are not likely to be their first choice as “preferred customer.” Also, the Worlds’ military forces will surely end up consuming much of the oil they will be fighting to acquire for their own country, much like the famous quote from the Vietnam War, “Did you save the village?” Answer; “Yes, but it became necessary to destroy the village, in order to save it.”
With most petroleum-powered ftreighters becoming unable to profitably ply the world’s oceans world trade will shrink considerably. In some distant future it is likely that nuclear and sail-powered freighters will comprise the majority of the world’s few large transport ships. It would be quite practical for the U.S. government to start making nuclear-powered freighters now, instead of destructive nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines, but perhaps that is too practical and sensible to expect from politicians.
Tourism should not be counted upon to be a widespread benefit in the future. Even the highly touted, and less destructive ‘Green’, ‘Eco-Tourism’ and ‘Camera Safari’ concepts still incorporate a lot of travelling, and that will be infinitely more expensive more difficult and much less safely accomplished in the future. ‘Tourism by Train’, however, seems like it might be the only feasable way to transport lots of ‘less than wealthy’ tourists in the future. For one person’s interpretation of what the future might look like, check out James Kunstler’s “World Made by Hand” at www.amazon.com
On a more personal level, we will all be going on an ‘energy diet’ in the near future, but that is good because it is quite easy to substantially reduce today’s energy consumption around a typical American home without ending up feeling deprived. “Buy insulation once, or buy heating fuel forever.”(4)
A Climate Conservation Corps?
Some liberal politicians have plans to reinvigorate our economy by ‘going green.’ They think they can somehow get huge ‘green’ projects underway that will employ millions to help us transition into a whole new non-polluting economy. Some dream of a new ‘Climate Control Corps’ somewhat like the Depression-era ‘Civilian Conservation Corps’. Unfortunately, such planners are still locked into the same old mentality that assumes we’ll still have today’s massive energy levels readily available to support the big trucks, factories, machinery, commuting, etc to make this workforce both available and productive. However, we will not have the level of energy resources needed for most such large scale projects in the future. I hate to say it, but it looks like a lot of walking and manual labor are in our collective futures.
I sincerely hope that someone will figure out a way to employ millions of Americans in great industrial/ecological/green projects in the future to help clean up our environment during a time of otherwise high unemployment. I just don’t have any good ideas about how to manage that.
The Good News
The good news is that the hardy survivors of this ‘Great Transition’ from today’s selfish, acquisitive, wasteful and depleting fossil-fuels-based energy regimen to living with a cleaner, but far lesser amount of sustainable electric power will suddenly discover themselves better off. People will develop closer family ties, and will experience better general health from eating more nutritious, unprocessed foods and getting more physical exercise. They will also live in a slowly recovering, post-fossil fuels environment that will include a considerably degraded landscape due to the ravages of the Age of Oil, but Nature will start recovering the minute the massive polluting assaults stop.
Good, honest hard work will provide its own rewards, both of purpose and of a sense of real accomplishment to people who will rediscover themselves closer to nature and to each other in their local communities.
Although surely few look forward to such a difficult changeover, it is an inevitable and inescapable reality. And if the decline hasn’t gotten underway by 2008, then it certainly will have a full head of steam by 2010. So don’t count on having a whole lot of time to prepare for this coming crunch. In fact, Peak Oil is just turning into your driveway as you read this, and Climate Change is waiting just around the corner...
Driving smaller, slower, zero pollution battery electric vehicles short distances in the future in a much less frenetic society will certainly help to reduce our stress levels below today’s high water benchmarks.
In addition, a diet of locally-grown organic foods will leave us much healthier and more energetic. Perhaps some of us will even get our Mojo back, whatever that means.
A Quick Glimpse into Our Post-Peak Oil Future
Think about living in 1900 in America again, but this time with a small solar panel, an old car battery and some LED lights, instead of kerosene lamps for nighttime illumination of your home.
Think about as much as 70% or 80% of our remaining population becoming amateur organic farmers overnight and growing almost all of our available foodstuffs locally, of having a food selection with little meat or fish and with few out-of-season foods or tropical fruits available. Realize that the earlier migration from rural areas to the cities and then out into the suburbs will now rush back to rural areas in a desperate search for precious small plots of arable land for survival.
Think of a future in which extremely polluting gasoline-powered lawnmowers and similar yard maintenance equipment are banned, as well as a ban on big, unnecessary electricity-wasting appliances like dishwashers and electric clothes dryers.
Think of a world without most of today’s medicines, and how we’ll be free of our over-medicating, obscenely overpriced and often inaccessible health system.
Think of people suddenly developing great respect for the Amish, and begging them to teach the rest of us how they thrive without modern conveniences.
And stop laughing at those small, Low Speed electric cars newly on the American roads, and instead envision them as the majority of tomorrow’s vehicles, slowly but adroitly negotiating our deteriorating byways on short trips to the local Farmers’ Market a couple of times a week.
And certainly be thankful that through good planning and a modicum of luck you are in the one third of our population that successfully negotiates the coming food and fuel shortages, pandemics, ocean rise and severe storms to survive and enjoy a much more communal and less hectic life in future times.
Peak Oil is a Good and Necessary Thing
In the final analysis, Peak Oil is a good thing because it may be the ONLY thing that can finally put the brakes on worldwide pollution. Spineless politicians, ultra conservatives and Global Climate Change would otherwise conspire to overwhelm nearly every living thing on Planet Earth.
“Climate Change makes Powering Down necessary; Peak Oil deems it inevitable.”(5)
But What Can I Do Now to Prepare? You Ask?
Here are some suggestions, take your pick:
- Get out of debt any way you can.
- If you want a home, don’t buy a home, but buy a piece of land instead and build yourself a home out of the materials there. Our ancestors did it. So can you!
- Make sure you live within 20 miles of a ‘market area’ where you can buy your food, clothing and other necessities after you ride there on your bicycle.
- Arrange to be around some open land where you can plant a garden.
- Plant a small organic garden now so you’ll have those skills ready to use when they are needed for survival.
- Make an effort to learn about your local edible wild foods, there will be a day when you’ll be glad you did.
- Reduce your utilities/energy consumption now, so it won’t feel like you have to deprive yourself later when all of their prices rise impossibly high. Consider living “off the grid” sooner or later.
- Get rid of all monthly utilities payments, if possible.
- Exercise more and adopt a much healthier diet. Consider vegetarianism because meat is likely to become very expensive in the future.
- Stockpile some emergency food for yourself and your family. That’s a good idea anyway, in case of a natural disaster.
- Install a small solar panel, and a deep cycle battery for some 12 volt LED lights in case the grid power goes off during a storm. Read how to do it yourself so you understand your own simple system. Its easier than it sounds, and you can later use that new knowledge to expand your system, if you ever decide to do so.
- Work on figuring out how you can survive in the future without a job, and without a regular income.
- Drive a smaller and more economical vehicle. A bicycle is best. An electric assist bicycle is second best.
- Drive your gasoline powered car more slowly and carefully to conserve fuel and save money. And keep the tires at the recommended pressure.
- Paint your black gasoline powered car white so you will never have to turn on the air conditioner which greatly increases your fuel consumption. Remove the air conditioner to save weight and temptation.
- Save some money every day, even if it is only pocket change.
- Build a basic electric car, if you have the skills, or want to develop them. It really is quite simple. .
- Carefully look over today’s battery-electric and compresed air-powered cars.
- Be happy and realize that you really ARE preparing for an uncertain future as best you can.
So buck up folks. Don’t listen to the constant fearmongering by officials and stop being so damn scared about everything. Come alive and take on these new and optimistic challenges with gusto. ‘Seize the Day.’ Enjoy life.. Get out and enjoy the sunshine. You’ll be glad you did.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his Inaugural Address on March 4th, 1933
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Recommended Books
For a slightly different look at a possible post-oil future read James Kunstler’s new novel, “World Made by Hand” Here’s his website about it: www.worldmadebyhand.com
A new book just published, and highly recommended, is “Reinventing Collapse”, subtitle: ‘The Soviet Example, and American Prospects’ by Dmitry Orlov. See it on www.amazon.com
Copyright © 2008 William Drinkwater All rights reserved
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Permission is hereby granted to reprint and distribute this editorial in its entirety in any media with a credit to www.evmaine.org
Please email your comments about this editorial to director@evmaine.org
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Introduction
What is Peak Oil?
The concept behind Peak Oil is that we have reached, or are about to reach, the point where one half of the total amount of oil in the ground has been removed. So future suppiles will be harder and more expensive to extract, and an increasing demand from the US, China, India and other developing nations will soon outstrip the worldwide supply, and those pressures will continually raise the market price of a future decreasing supply of oil and gasoline, As the oil becomes ever more expensive and difficult to obtain, the effect will be to end the oil-based Industrial Age as we know it.
There are NO energy substitutes on the horizon that can match very energy-dense oil, and no suitable substitute is likely to be found in the near future. (The immediate transition to a hydrogen economy is a total myth.) So we will all have to adapt to a much lower energy diet - permanently.
How long, how easily or how painfully the transition to a much lower energy world will take place will depend upon how resourceful individuals are, and how skillful and realistic political leadership becomes in this World. With politicians only giving us ‘Happy Talk’, and most people either unaware of the situation or in denial of it, we are unlikely to be able to avoid resource wars, social chaos and civilization collapse amidst a rain of contracting and collapsing economies around the world.
Some Things You Can Do:
If you want to survive, start growing as much of your own food as you possibly can.
If you want mobility in the future get a bicycle and some spare parts, or drive a small electric car and recharge it using your own wind or solar power. (Very long trips will be a thing of the past.)
Battery electric cars use no oil, cost less to run and maintain and they are much more energy efficient than today’s gasoline-powered cars. Therefore, battery electric cars are the best choice for pollution-free transportation that is available today, and that you will still be able to drive tommorrow.
As their range per charge rapidly increases with better batteries now coming onto the market, battery electric cars and trucks will become a major part of the world’s transportation mix, like they already are becoming in both India and China.
Another definition of Peak Oil and its consequences is Here
Mainely Energy - An Excellent Energy Information Website
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OIL RELEASE
Without doubt, this is one of the best and most informative websites on the topic of Peak Oil. LISTEN to the first video on this page, and then read the rest of this web page in its entirety. Then go to the linked sites, and this experience will change your life. But you get to decide how it changes.
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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN OIL RUNS OUT? (UK SITE)
Heinberg at his best
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The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
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The Oil End Game
Innovation for profits, jobs and security
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Why ‘Peak Oil’ May Soon Pique Your Interest
from the Christian Science Monitor August 6, 2007
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Are These The Last Days of The Oil Age?
This is an article from The Times of London, July 16th, 2007
...27 of the 51 oil-producing nations listed in BP's Statistical Review of World Energy reported output declines in 2006...
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Zero Carbon Britian - An Alternative Energy Strategy
This Report is “an inspiration to all who are grappling with the challenge that climate change is bringing to our world”
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Watch the animation on YouTube
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Peak Suburbia
James Kunstler says it is not an accident that the housing bubble coincided with the phenomenon of Peak Oil.
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Life After the Oil Crash
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This is ASPO, The Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas
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Peak Oil News
A news blog with current coverage of the peak oil issue
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Peak Oil News and Message Boards
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Peak Oil: Welcome to Surviving Peak Oil
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Are you an Investor who would like to take Peak Oil into consideration?
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Australian Four Corners Broadband Edition: Peak Oil
This excellent presentation is from ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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An Article
The Petroleum Plateau
by Richard Heinberg
“Which do yo want, Plan A or Plan B? Plan War or Plan Powerdown?”
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A Book
The Party’s Over
‘Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies’
by Richard Heinberg
(read an excerpt Here)
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A Documentary Movie
Energy Crossroads
‘A Burning Need to Change Course’
“What made America great and powerful in the last century may well be the cause of its own demise in the 21st century if we don’t change course today.”
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A Documentary Movie
The End of Suburbia
‘Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream’
The American Dream of the past 50 years is no longer viable. What will happen next?
Read about it here
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Or watch it for FREE here
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A Documentary Movie
Escape From Suburbia
“Beyond the American Dream”
“Sit, be still, and listen,
For you are drunk
and we are at the edge of the roof.”
- Rumi, 13th Century”
The Official World Premiere was in Toronto on June 28th, 2007
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