Dear Jim and Family,
There are many web sites dedicated to Peak Oil. All the explanations, the various arguments about when and explanations about why and the different methods for mitigating this disaster. I’ve spent most of 10 years involved with it. Once you get past the Kubler-Ross Grief Process, then Peak Oil is a matter of approach. It’s a huge problem for civilization, but its not necessarily an end.
I admit to being optimistic about civilization because we are adaptive people. We will find a way. I take a lot of cues from the Third World because they adapt first. It’s very important to look at them, and look at how cultures have adapted to change in the past. It’s popular to take the 1980s Apocalypse view of change to the Peak Oil Problem, but this is not rational. We are not the same people we were in 1983 and The Day After was running on television to scare us all out of Nuclear War with a ruthless depiction of MAD. We saw the light, we adapted, nuclear war will never be an all encompassing spasm. It will never be global or total because it is politically unacceptable. Any nation that tried would end up like North Korea, isolated, mocked, a pariah nation nobody wants to do business with. Peak Oil is as big an issue as global thermonuclear war. It really is. But the end of easy energy is not the end of energy. Its a temporary cessation of movement, and a reconstruction binge associated with it as we all come back to reality from the fun of Car Culture, something which is all we’ve known.
In the Third World, many people can’t afford to own a car or the fuel to move it around. They get by other ways. Taking buses, riding scooters/underbone motorized cycles. Hitching a ride on a farm or work truck for a little money, a bicycle, or even walking. There are ways to get things done. We in the First World have had it really good, and the USA was a major oil exporter until 1970. As far as I’m concerned, that was Peak Oil. The day we had to start importing oil to meet our own needs is the day we lost control of our national destiny. It is ironic that all those presidents, even Richard Milhous Nixon, were right about our dependence on foreign oil costing us so much.
We are heavily invested in the trappings of oil dependence. Cars, planes, most buses, earth moving equipment, industrial civilization is mostly powered by oil. Getting away from that, so the oil left is reserved for vehicles is going to be expensive. We’ll have to electrify rail, both for freight and for passenger lines. We’ll have to bring back the Streetcar and put them in every town that’s big enough to justify a bus service now. We’ll have to smooth the roads left, and narrow them to adjust to the fact that we can’t justify six lanes of empty freeway for no cars but lots of bicycles and scooters and a few trucks and buses going by. We’ll also have to lower speed limits to save energy, the most irritating of mandates. Many of us are old enough to remember the 55 MPH maximum speed limit. Compared to today’s 80 (officially 70 in many states), the countryside seems to crawl by at 55. Its important, though, and we’d better get used to it. Peak Oil makes it necessary.
Survivalism is about doing what’s necessary. Anticipating government moves is part and parcel to Preparedness. Driving 55 on the freeway, and seeing scooters and bicycles in the slow lane is something which will become common as time passes, probably by the time the next President is elected.
As less oil is available, fuel will also become less available and more expensive. Right now, weakness in the world economy is keeping the price “low”. That $147 per barrel of oil a couple years ago was not a fluke or one time thing. We should expect the price to creep up to that as the remaining oil gets more expensive to recover. As bad as the recent oil spill was, it was largely inevitable. Welding at that depth is bound to cause problems as the chemistry is not favorable for it. There will be other incidents like it in future. We’re into the expensive and difficult oil, not the easy and cheap oil.
What expensive and mostly unavailable fuel means to you is you must adapt to the conditions. This is a long term and nearly permanent situation. The oil is going away. Alternatives take time and effort and money to develop. They aren’t here yet, and what’s available isn’t affordable. So what can you do? You can carpool. You can take mass transit, if available. You can work closer to home and take the pay cut, or get training so that job will pay more, or other jobs become available. And you can get a motorcycle license and learn to ride a light weight fuel efficient bike so you can get to work wherever that is. This is what they do in the Third World when they want to get around. The 125cc 2-stroke is the third most popular motorcycle on earth. The scooter and underbone are the first two. The equivalent in 4-stroke, required in most states for legal highway access, is 250ccs. Its enough to get the job done and have good fuel economy.
Just as you would learn to shoot a rifle, the ability to ride a motorcycle is an important life skill. Having the bike is like having a full pantry with rotating stock. Just as you would keep a backup water supply or a well, alternative personal transportation is very important. This is what they do in the Third World, where they just don’t have the resources we do. They get by on what’s available and make it work. I admire their determination and ability to solve problems. We all should. Being a farmer is a lot of that. Living in the boonies, or huddling in the burbs to keep your specialized job, you can camouflage yourself with poverty and position yourself to survive by not sticking out, just adapting quietly to the conditions with a few less hardships. And if you happen to teach your neighbors to ride bikes to work, then you’re one of many and that much less noticeable.
Eventually, sustainable fuel will allow us to have cars again, probably. But in the 10 years or so it takes to get that far, best case, we’ll need to continue living and going to work. Peak Oil is a big change, but it is not the end of the world. It’s going to be awkward and irritating and inconvenient and expensive, but it’s not the end of the world. That’s why you have to keep going to work. Make sure you’re prepared to do what is necessary to get there. Best, – InyoKern