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This page last updated: January 9th, 2010
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 by car 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.
THE STONEWALLING OF PEAK OIL (BY THE US GOVERNMENT)
Robert Hirsch giving this speech on September 9th, 2009.
How and why the U.S. Government avoids talking about Peak Oil.
Click Here
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PEAK OIL - WHICH CAR ARE YOU IN?
Copyright Albert Bates 2009
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This Editorial Last Revised January 5th, 2009
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 and other small electric cars and bicycles in your future
What is Peak Oil?
Peak Oil 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 and more expensive to find, more difficult to recover, more onerous to refine and will frequently be located in areas
adversarial to the U.S.
No one knows precisely when the Peak will occur, or if it already has.
Many people* believe that Peak Oil occurred in 2005 because we have been
on an oil production plateau ever since, but most experts have predicted
that Peak Oil would happen sometime between 2006 and 2010, or more recently 2008 to 2012.
The Many Consequences of Peak Oil
First: 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 and transport/ship
crops around the world, thereby providing food diversity and the luxury of seasonal
crops to first world countries all year long. Also, recent large-scale
biofuels production is contributing to the scarcity and rapidly rising
prices of basic foodstuffs worldwide because a huge amount of this food product instead now goes for fuel. In fact, because of the bad idea of food to fuel, instead of people, much of that effort is now being curtailed. Another contributor is speculation by well-heeled commodities investors who don’t mind preying on the misery of others.
When you also factor in the plummeting value of the U.S. dollar, this
situation could easily spin out of control and cause serious food supply
problems right here in the U.S. And note that this situation could
balloon out of control very rapidly.
The survival strategy is that a large percentage of the American
population will have to start growing food for consumption within their
local community to avoid famine. “The three thousand mile Caesar salad
is over.”**
And any city without considerable arable land nearby and plenty of extra
water to irrigate it has a population that will soon find itself in
dire straits!
I cite this possible catastrophic food system collapse first because we
must ensure our ‘food security’ before we have the luxury of considering
the effects of Peak Oil on anything else.
Transportation Woes
Today’s entire American economy is anchored on a foundation of cheap
and abundant oil, and nary a thought was given to what would happen if
oil ever became scarce and expensive. However, after the worldwide peak
production of oil its price will trend upward as worldwide demand
continues to outstrip the declining oil supply. This ever-increasing
cost of transportation fuels, plus future unpredictable scattered
shortages and possibly 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 eventually cripple the profligate American lifestyle of Happy
Motoring. The resulting chaos will foster widespread economic and social
hardship amongst bewildered consumers who have always assumed that
plenty of oil is an American entitlement. And as the oil companies have assured us that there is an endless supply out there that we can always access.
The fantasy that we can simply “Invent our way out of this crisis”
and that “Technology will save us” will finally crash on the rocky coast
of reality as oil availability continues to dwindle, and a matching
substitute is nowhere to be found.
Companies all over the world are working feverishly to innovate and make
today’s internal combustion engine cars more efficient through
technological tweaks, But such tweaks can do little more to improve the
efficiency of internal combustion engines as the engineers butt their heads up against the limits of the Laws of Thermodynamics.
Instead we need a new mindset toward adopting “zero emissions” vehicles
as soon as possible if we want to survive on this planet because we have
already wantonly plowed enough billions of tons of pollutants into the
atmosphere to trigger many future difficulties. According to many
scientists we are already on the verge of moving beyond some critical
tipping points that could cause very turbulent and upending climate
events worldwide.
To put it bluntly, you can kiss your SUV goodbye, or face the
catastrophic consequences of an unstable climate offering sporadic
torrential rains, searing heat, monster snowstorms, massive floods, ginormous tornadoes, super hurricanes, and more! In that scenario, only
something like Coober Pedy, Australia’s*** underground homes would have a chance of surviving such a weather onslaught.
In addition, hundreds of thousands of everyday consumer products
formerly made using cheap oil will either disappear from the shelves or ratchet up in price, exacerbating inflation in millions of products ranging from pharmaceuticals
to car tires to almost everything made of plastic.
Most suburbs will lose their current inhabitants as gas prices skyrocket
and it becomes unaffordable for many millions of Americans to commute
long distances to work, school and the Mall every day.
Widespread unemployment is one certain result of such an oil-based, but
oil-starved, economy until it adjusts to its new conditions. Because
almost very few are prepared for such changes, many people will have to
accommodate to suddenly not having an employer, a regular paycheck or a
structured work day. Some will suffer nervous breakdowns and worse, while others
will face the future with optimism and create self-employment opportunities for themselves. Many of those opportunities will have to be based upon learning 19th century early Industrial Age skills using only locally available materials.
Congress might stop the gigantic annual federal subsidies
(giveaway) to the oil companies, perhaps in exchange for allowing the drilling of the
continental shelves. However, these moves will prove to be an exercise
in futility because they will have little effect on the naturally
depleting worldwide oil supply which the International Energy Agency now estimates will average 6.1% per year!
The Airlines
The airline companies will surely shrink because fuel costs are
their biggest expense, by far. Expect them to merge into fewer airlines,
be charging extortionist ticket prices only the rich can afford and expect more delays and snafus as they twitch about in their slow company death spirals. Some
may even go back to prop planes which use less expensive
fuels. The result will be a downsized industry that almost exclusively serves the rich.
How about this possibility for future air travel? Solar cell-powered,
electric motor propelled dirigibles that are filled with hydrogen, not
helium. That is a zero emissions air travel solution that could be
implemented right now, as opposed to conventional ‘dirty’ airplanes
which contribute as much as 25% of the atmospheric pollution worldwide.
And dirigibles would provide a nice, leisurely ride, like the German
Zepplins of yesteryear. Since writing this, a company has proposed exactly the above.
Future Land Vehicles - What to Expect
Future vehicles will be smaller, lighter, slower and produce zero emissions. They will also be much more energy efficient than today’s gas guzzling behemoths. The internal combustion engine will take its last drive to museums. The much smaller overall number of vehicles in the future will mostly be driven locally on slow
trips over very potholed roads. Most of them will be powered by
locally-produced clean electricity. In the future few vehicles will
still be running today’s carbon spewing, complicated internal combustion
engines burning ever more scarce and expensive liquid fuels.
There are three types of electric-powered vehicles that you can expect
will become the majority of vehicles on our roads in the future. They
are battery electric cars, compressed air-powered cars and a few
totally solar-powered electric cars. These vehicles have many distinct
advantages over all other vehicle power systems:
1. Their technologies already exist, and they are being manufactured today.
2. They produce zero pollution.
3. They need less energy to run them because their propulsion
systems are more efficient, and they are built lighter. (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 of the precious depleting fossil fuels to power
them, thereby conserving those fossil fuels for more critical uses as the Industrial Age winds down.
6. Even when powered by electricity from a dirty, coal-fired power
plant, electric cars produce much less pollution per mile driven, than
an internal combustion engine car.
7. A small electric-powered vehicle can have its batteries recharged
from a backyard solar or wind power system, or through any 110 volt
outlet anywhere instead of having to rely on today’s complex liquid fuels
importation, refining and distribution systems to the over 170,000 U.S.
filling stations.
Solar powered cars of the future could use the new 40% efficient solar
cells that have already been developed for the U.S. Military, or maybe even better ones. Those could produce twice the power of today’s experimental solar race cars
that are being built and raced by many university engineering teams as technology
demonstrations.
Bicycles and small electric-motor-assisted, pedal-powered vehicles of
many sizes and shapes will become commonplace in our personal
transportation mix because they are efficient, supremely practical and they are affordable, as is evidenced by the hundreds of millions of bicycles in use all over
the world.
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars
Hydrogen fuel cell powered cars are an engineering evolutionary dead end
for many technical, practical, financial, energy, physics and environmental
reasons. So don’t expect to see many of them rolling down our highways
anytime soon. The auto companies love them because they envision a
tsunami of incredibly expensive high tech, high maintenance vehicles that only they
will be qualified to repair.
However, hydrogen fuel cell cars are only good for misleading public relations baloney from some of today’s biggest automakers, so they continue to push them. Making hydrogen fuel cell vehicles viable will take decades, and we don’t have that much time to waste getting ready for the future.
Mass Transit
For mass transit in areas not currently served we can first expect that
school buses will be drafted into dual use for full-time public
transportation, instead of maintaining this expensive mass transit
system exclusively for children to ride on twice a day. They already do
this in Sweden, and have for years. When rising fuel prices finally make
even this compromise too expensive, other arrangements will have to be
made. For education; home schooling, Internet schooling, radio schooling (as in
Australia for over 50 years already) and traditional local small town schools are all appropriately-scaled solutions.
A few light rail commuter trains will be installed in a few cities that do not already have them, but the resources to construct such large scale mass transit
projects will be scarce and much more expensive in the future, as well as the energy needed to power them.
The ubiquitous individual mobility of the cheap oil era in America 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
remains of today’s currently decrepit freight hauling system for relatively easy and safe travel from city to city.
Recycling will become the new Mining
Since conventional mining costs will become much more expensive in the
future, we can expect that recycling will be mandatory and that many of our future metals and materials needs will be recovered from local dumps and landfills - just like many people in third world countries do today. Poor communities have often gotten saddled with today’s landfills, but tomorrow they may be some of the luckiest
communities with much self-employment.
We might have to turn back to pre-industrial and very early industrial
times for clues as 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 its operations in 1879.
The Roadbeds
As the price of asphalt (another oil byproduct) increases you can also
expect less frequent road repairs, hence the slower and more cautious
driving (by everyone) 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 eventually crumble to
something like the consistency of gravel roads once again. Some new
plastic sealant toppings for roadbeds have been developed, but they too
are an oil derivative, so they won’t be affordable either.
You can expect that many municipalities in places with below-freezing
winters will post more weight limits on their roads in the springtimes to
avoid roadbed damage from the few heavy trucks that’ll still be on the roads in the
future.
What is the Best Future Source for Electricity as Fuel?
The worst source for electricity is coal-fired power plants because they
are the largest combined CO2, mercury, sulfur and radioactive particle
pollution sources 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
400 year supply that the coal industry falsely claims. Since these power plants
are planned with a 30 year payoff period, and we now know that the coal
supply to feed them won’t last even that long, it makes absolutely no sense
to build any more of them. Not only should we not build any more of
them, but today’s existing coal-fired plants should be shut down
immediately to prevent possible irreparable climate damage, but they
won’t be.
Despite several pioneering experiments that are now underway around the
world in carbon sequestration for cleaning up coal-fired power plants,
this technology will prove, in the end, to be too expensive and too
energy consuming to utilize in more than a handful of very geologically
favorable places on this Planet, and only by companies willing to sacrifice a
large chunk of their profits for the sake of the climate, and of course, continued
human existence.
Only coal industry shills and demagoging, paid-for politicians spewing
easy-sounding, but counter-productive, ‘solutions’ to society’s problems
will back the proliferation of coal-fired power plants in the future.
But beware, this entrenched and very powerful industry will remain a
formidable anti-environmental and Climate Change force to be dealt with until all of the recoverable coal is gone.
Natural gas-powered electricity plants are much cleaner than coal-fired
plants, so they are preferable. However, the latest estimates are that
there’s only perhaps 5 to 10 years of natural gas left until depletion at current usage rates, and it won’t even last that long if we start building more natural gas
power plants now to replace the coal-fired ones.
Electricity from the Sun
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 non-polluting manufacturing facilities. And the factories
harboring those processes should be engineered to run on solar and wind power
to make them sustainable too. In any case they should not be powered by
unsustainable and depleting fossil fuels like today’s factories are. We need to
intelligently conserve and prioritize the use of the remaining fossil
fuels so that we can build factories like these, and be able to mine the
raw materials needed for their processes - by drastically curtailing the
current massive vehicle consumption of fossil fuels.
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 or terrorism. Instead solar panels should be utilized in
clean, neighborhood ‘islands of energy’ which is called ‘distributed energy’
systems. This refers to localized, smaller installations with much shorter
transmission lines, and free local maintenance. But you’re eliminating a huge, entrenched and powerful energy industry, so don’t think it would be easy.
Since the average future home will consume perhaps 20% to 30% as much
electricity as today’s average home uses, each home could produce enough
spare electricity to also run a small battery-powered electric car for
local transportation. You don’t believe it? Here’s the proof: The U.S.
Department of Energy’s annual Solar Decathalon Competition requires that
they also be able to run a small electric car from the house’s solar
panels: http://www.solardecathlon.org/
If very energy-efficient homes like these prototypes also had a small
wind turbine in every yard where it is feasable they could produce even more electricity for their residents’ use. By the way, since there will be plenty of car
alternators lying around in the future, any basic handyman-type will
have access to something that he or she could easily turn into a
low-tech backyard wind turbine. Now there’s an inexpensive way to get a
little extra energy for your home use.
We’ll all need to produce enough electricity to power our small electric cars, and
every American home in the future should also have some sort
of a solar water heater on their roof, like tens of millions of Chinese
homes already have. And such devices can be constructed very
inexpensively, and with just a few hand tools, if necessary.
Our Economy Today and Tomorrow
Today’s ‘Big Box’ national chain stores, with their ‘just in time’
deliveries from around the world utilizing oil tankers and
diesel-powered big rig trucks are doomed. These types of businesses will
no longer be viable the moment it becomes too expensive to distribute
their cheap goods around the country. Their outmoded business model will
stagger and wobble for a few years as they burn through their piles of
money, and then they’ll finally collapse.
Local 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 disrepair after having been
obsoleted by shopping malls in outlying areas as modern shopping tastes
changed. These future local small businesses will likely provide little
more than the basics of life because our wasteful, cheap-energy-powered
consumer economy will have been throttled back to match a new and more
parsimonious American lifestyle reality. And “Shop ‘til you drop” will
no longer be a part of our lexicon, except perhaps in reference to an
occasional blacksmith who has to physically carry his new anvil all the way home.
Most extremely wealthy Americans, who have in large part
looted this country and hollowed out the American Dream in recent years
thanks to malleable politicians, ghostly government regulations and
out-of-control military/industrial spending, will simply flee overseas to safer places
and permanently just as soon as they feel threatened by irate members of the
newly-disenfranchised, newly poor, former middle class. This will, to
a measurable degree, decrease the available financial resources to help rebuild
our society toward both lowered energy usage, and the lowered
expectations inherent in a no-growth economy.
Some Conclusions
Shortly after the onset of Peak Oil the noble, but ultimately
impossible, American experiment of an economy based on never-ending
growth within 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 of choice is likely to be barter for a while.
Smaller cars and smaller, more practical homes will become the new reality. And any semblance of a so-called ‘Global Economy’ will quickly fragment and disappear as a worldwide streetfight over the few remaining scraps of productive oil fields gets underway in earnest. The fact that the other major fossil
fuels, natural gas and coal, will start depleting shortly after oil
itself peaks won’t help the equation. And if the current trend toward countries
beginning to hoard their natural resources to help their own future populations
continues, less international cooperation will be the result. So it looks
like the World will soon forget that it was recently flat, Tom Friedman.
With most petroleum-powered ships unable to affordably operate, global trade will decline considerably. In some distant future it is possible that both nuclear and sail-powered freighters will comprise the majority of the world’s large transport ships, and there are unlikely to be very many of them.
Tourism should not be counted upon as a widespread benefit in the
future. Even the highly touted, and less destructive ‘Eco-Tourism’
concept still requires a lot of travelling, and that will be much more
expensive and difficult to safely accomplish in the future.
Only train-based tourism might be feasible in our foreseeable future.
On a more personal level, we will all be going on an ‘energy diet’ in
the near future, but that is not a bad thing because it is quite easy to
substantially reduce today’s energy consumption around a typical
home without ending up feeling deprived. “Buy insulation once,
or buy heating fuel forever.”****
The Good News
The good news is that ‘The Great Transition’ from this polluting, selfish and depleting fossil-fuels-based energy and economic system to living with a cleaner, but lesser amount of sustainable electric power means that
people will discover themselves better off than before.
People will develop closer family ties, friendly neighborhoods and they will experience better general health from eating more nutritious, unprocessed foods and getting more physical exercise. They will also live in a much cleaner,
slowly recovering, post-fossil fuels natural environment, but in a
considerably degraded landscape due to the ravages of the massive
pollution already released.
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 community.
Although surely few look forward to such a difficult changeover, it is
an inevitable reality. So don’t count on having a whole lot of time to prepare for this coming crunch. In fact, these crises are just turning into your driveway as you read this...
And driving small, Low Speed, zero pollution electric vehicles in a much
less frenetic society will certainly help to reduce our stress levels
below today’s high water benchmarks.
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.
Think about as much as 80% of our population becoming amateur farmers
overnight and growing most of our available foodstuffs locally. Of
having a food selection with little meat or fish, and with few exotic or
out-of-season foods or tropical fruits available. Realize that the
migration from rural areas to the cities and then out into the suburbs
will now lead back to the rural areas which have precious farmland for survival.
Think of a future in which extremely polluting gasoline-powered
lawnmowers and yard maintenance equipment, and big electricity-wasting
appliances like dishwashers, electric clothes dryers and 24 cubic foot refrigerators are all banned.
Think of people suddenly developing great respect for the Amish, the
Hutterites and similar groups, and begging them to teach the rest of us how they thrive without a lot of so-called ‘modern conveniences.’
And stop laughing at those small, Low Speed electric cars newly on the
American roads, and instead think of them as perhaps 90% of tomorrow’s
vehicles, slowly but adroitly negotiating our deteriorating byways on
the way to the local Farmers’ Market a couple times a week.
And certainly be thankful that through good planning and a modicum of
luck that you might be amongst the one third of our population that
successfully negotiates the coming food shortages and pandemics and
survives to enjoy this coming “Great Transition” to a much less hectic
life in future times.
It is a Good and Necessary Thing
In the final analysis, Peak Oil is a good thing because it may be the
only phenomenon that can finally put the brakes on worldwide pollution.
Spineless politicians, Right Wing Crazies and Global Climate Change
will otherwise conspire to overwhelm every living thing on Planet Earth.
So buck up folks. Stop being so damn scared about everything. Come alive
and take on these new challenges with gusto. Open your eyes, ‘Seize the Day.’ and Enjoy Life. De-stress, and plant a garden. Get to know your neighbors. Ride a
bicycle. Build or buy an electric car. Get out and enjoy the sunshine.
You’ll be glad you did.
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* In particular, Matthew Simmons, a recognized oil industry expert for
many years: www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches
** A quote from the documentary video, “The End of Suburbia”
www.endofsuburbia.com
***Coober Pedy, Australia, a famous opal mining town where most homes
were built underground to escape the fierce desert heat.
www.walkabout.com.au/locations/SACooberPedy.shtml
****A quote from Tom Gocze, the Hot & Cold TV Show personality in the
State of Maine, USA. www.wvii.com/weekendwarrior.html
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
And if you believe that the U.S. economy could not possibly crash read
this: www.energybulletin.net/23259.html and this:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/BreakingNews.html
For a more international view of Peak Oil see what Ireland thinks about their prospects after Peak Oil in this hour long TV documentary called “Future Shock”: www.rte.ie/tv/futureshock/av_20070618.html
Recommended Books
For a slightly different look at a possible post-oil future read James Kunstler’s novel, “World Made by Hand” Here’s his website about it: www.worldmadebyhand.com
A new book recently published, and highly recommended, is “Reinventing Collapse”, subtitle: ‘The Soviet Example, and American Prospects’ by Dmitry Orlov. See the reviews on www.amazon.com
Copyright © 2008-2009 William G. Drinkwater All rights reserved
“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 your life 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 your family’s survival.
- Make an effort to learn about your local edible wild foods, there will be a day when you’ll be glad you have acquired that knowledge.
- 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, rather than later.
- Get rid of as many monthly utilities payments as possible. They are only going to increase.
- Exercise more and adopt a much healthier diet. Consider vegetarianism because meat is likely to become very expensive in the future. Lose weight, if you need to.
- 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.
- Figure 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.
- Save every penny you can now, and if its substantial consider investing in precious metals so you won’t lose the value of your savings.
- 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 the 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.
- Carefully look over today’s battery-electric and compresed air-powered cars. Test drive them.
- Be happy and realize that you really ARE preparing for an uncertain future as best you can, and much better than most.
So buck up folks. Don’t listen to the constant confusion and fearmongering overtaking our land. 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
--------------------------------
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
___________________________________________________________
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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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 have to decide how to change it for the better.
Click Here
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN OIL RUNS OUT? (UK SITE)
Heinberg at his best
Click Here
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
Click Here
The Oil End Game
Innovation for profits, jobs and security
Click Here
Why ‘Peak Oil’ May Soon Pique Your Interest
from the Christian Science Monitor August 6, 2007
Click Here
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...
Click Here
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”
Click Here
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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