Peak Oil 101
Rolling Stone’s “The Long Emergency” by James Howard Kunstler is the single clearest, most accessible article I’ve found recently on the crisis that is known as “peak oil.” If you don’t know what peak oil means or have trouble separating out the facts from the noise, this is the article to read. Pass it along to everyone you know - it’s written to be easily understood.
The bottom line about declining oil reserves:
- There is definitely a coming energy crisis that’s going to severely impact modern life as we know it. Watch out for geopolitical instability to get a whole lot worse.
- Renewables, biomass, hydrogen, and improved drilling technologies are not going to save our ass. They simply cannot be scaled up to the current level of consumption.
- What is going to save us is shifting to localized economies-of-scale and foodsheds and dramatically reduced levels of consumerism.
In March, the Department of Energy released a report that officially acknowledges for the first time that peak oil is for real and states plainly that “the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary.”
Yes, yes, it’s an exciting time to be alive (assign your own value label to “exciting”).
If there is any positive side to stark changes coming our way, it may be in the benefits of close communal relations, of having to really work intimately (and physically) with our neighbors, to be part of an enterprise that really matters and to be fully engaged in meaningful social enactments instead of being merely entertained to avoid boredom.
Get involved! There’s plenty to brainstorm and work on. To get you going, there are 221 Meetup groups all over the country around oil awareness - people just coming together to discuss this. I’ll be attending one in Portland next Wed. night (4/13) at 7pm.
I recommend Matthew Savinar’s excellent Life After the Oil Crash web site and book. Also, my friend and former professor, Rowan Wolf of Uncommon Thought, has started a new group blog all about peak oil and global warming issues: Radical Noesis. She’s looking for contributors.
Brad said,
April 7, 2005 @ 3:44 pm
Hey Emily,
Thanks for posting this. I have gotten out of the habit of reading RS - just no time. But when the Peak Oil story starts to hit mainstream pubs like this, its possible that a lot of people are going to start paying attention. Not that it will matter for most of them…
A caller brought up Peak Oil on the supposedly “progressive” Ed Schultz radio show today, but it came immediately before a break, and he never brought up the subject again.
ben said,
April 7, 2005 @ 5:25 pm
Reading these (in the case of Savinar’s site, for the second or third time) kinda ruined my day.
Meanwhile, I appreciate the reminder that these are things that need to be addressed yesterday.
GreenInk said,
April 8, 2005 @ 1:12 pm
Sh*t, meet fan
Major hat tip to Emily at Strangechord for pointing out the terrific James Howard Kunstler article in this week’s Rolling Stone about the coming oil crisis and the very real,
intellectual properties said,
April 8, 2005 @ 4:07 pm
peak oil
it’s true that there is still a great amount of denial on a lot of parties’ parts that there is a FINITE amount, and that a peak is coming. shortly. and that our global policies - economic, military - are being swayed by that fact.
t’s true that there…
leblanc said,
April 13, 2005 @ 11:19 am
for a humorist twist on the subject, see mark morford’s recent column:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/04/13/notes041305.DTL&nl=fix
“We reproduce. We consume. We use it up and dry it all up and move on to find more and it reminds me of that line from Agent Smith in the first “Matrix” movie where he stares menacingly at Morpheus and speaks about how every mammal on Earth instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, “but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague,” and then Morpheus gets all huffy and righteous and goes on inspire Neo to prove how we are also full of beauty and fire and life and he makes it all better by saving humankind so we can go buy the mediocre soundtrack…”
Radical Noesis - Thinking outside the box said,
July 10, 2005 @ 9:16 pm
Peak oil in two parts
Hi, I’m Emily, a former student of Rowan’s. I live in Portland and just graduated a month ago with a major in Sociology. This entry is cross-posted over at my blog, Strangechord. Part I: President Bush has been briefed on…