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TechnoratiWhen Hurricane Katrina struck two years ago, Americans learned just how ill-equipped the government is to respond effectively to natural disasters. But if you think the government's response to Katrina was inept, brace yourself for peak oil.
Global oil production will hit its peak in the next few years, at which point oil prices will skyrocket and voracious consumers like the United States, China and Europe will quickly drain every last barrel they can afford to buy. Our per-capita oil consumption is double that of most European nations and more than triple Mexico's, and shows no sign of slowing. As supplies dwindle, an economic disaster on a par with Katrina will start to unfold.
Global oil demand is at 84 million barrels a day and rising, and there are at most a trillion barrels' worth still in the ground, most of which is very difficult and expensive to recover. Do the math, and you'll see that the end of oil is, at most, 30 years away.
But long before oil actually runs out, economists and energy analysts warn that extreme scarcity will cause prices to soar so high that it will no longer be feasible to use petroleum on a wide scale. It is the imminence of this supply-demand shortfall that has people like National Petroleum Council member Matthew Simmons and Reps. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., and Tom Udall, D-N.M., worried - very worried - about our economy's ability to withstand the end of oil.
Cheap and plentiful oil is the foundation of our economy. Everything from food production and distribution to the manufacture of clothing, footwear, medications and plastic goods relies heavily on petroleum. You name it, and we need oil to produce it, ship it and, in many cases, run it.
In February, the U.S. Government Accountability Office dropped a quiet little bombshell: a report on peak oil concluding that there is an urgent need for a swift, coordinated government strategy to assess and develop alternative energy technologies to avert "severe economic damage."
The agency concluded: "(T)he United States, as the largest consumer of oil and one of the nations most heavily dependent on oil for transportation, may be especially vulnerable among the industrialized nations of the world." Stark though its conclusion is, the GAO may in fact be understating the gravity of the situation.
The report followed on the heels of a 2005 peak oil risk management report commissioned by the Department of Energy, which warned of the "extremely damaging" and "chaotic" impacts that will ensue if "intensive," "aggressive" and "expensive" mitigation measures are not put in place at least 10 years ahead of time. Both reports landed with a dull thud and have been dutifully ignored. In other words, there is no Plan B.
Depending on whom you ask, the impacts of peak oil range from dire to catastrophic: At best, get ready for a crippling recession and widespread inflation. At worst, we face severe global food shortages that threaten wide-scale starvation and an overall breakdown of social and economic institutions. And if history is any guide, we can expect a series of military invasions into every remaining oil hot spot in the world - invasions that may, by the way, require even more fossil fuels than we could possibly expropriate by force.
Because oil companies and OPEC nations are notorious for overstating their reserves to manipulate the market, it is impossible to predict when exactly the world will start feeling the crunch. As award-winning New York Times reporter Peter Maas wrote in 2005, "Because we do not know when a supply-demand shortfall might arrive, we do not know when to begin preparing for it, so as to soften its impact; the economic blow may come as a sledgehammer from the darkness."
But here's a little hint: Crude oil futures hit an all-time high of $78.21 per barrel on July 31. Prices cannot go much higher without us beginning to feel the foreshocks of a peak oil catastrophe. Oh, and by the way, natural gas (which provides 42 percent of California's power) is running out, too. One day, even coal will be gone. How much longer are we going to wait before we figure out how to survive without fossil fuels?
The United States has reacted to the threat of peak oil and gas with all the alacrity of its response to climate change. It is ignoring the looming crisis for as long as it can, just waiting for that sledgehammer to land its first blow. Eventually, when a recession hits, tax revenue will plummet, and the government will have nowhere near the money it needs to build an alternative energy and transportation infrastructure. Every year that goes by without an intensive mobilization to build an oil-independent economy diminishes our odds of surviving the end of oil.
States, too, seem to have their heads in the sand. California, considered a leader in efforts to reduce carbon emissions, just cut funding for mass transit by $1.3 billion for the fiscal year. Like most states, it ignores the urgent need to build a transportation network that does not rely on fossil fuels.
At this point, you might be asking yourself: When oil becomes scarce, how will I get food? That's a very good question. Here are a few more: Will my garbage get picked up? How will my water district purify and deliver water and treat sewage without petrochemicals? What if I need an ambulance? What if my home is one of the 7.7 million that rely on oil for heating? Which of my medications are made out of petrochemicals? How will I get to work? Will I even have a job anymore?
But don't just ask yourself. Ask your elected officials, your public utility district and your grocer. Ask the U.S. Postal Service, Federal Express and American Airlines. Ask GM. If you have one, ask your financial adviser or stockbroker which companies will still be in business after peak oil hits. Odds are, he or she will give you a blank stare.
While the United States blindly carries on with business as usual, countries such as Sweden, Iceland and Ireland are taking steps to assess and mitigate peak oil impacts. Oil-rich Iran has begun rationing and has already cut oil consumption by 25 percent. But here at home, demand for oil is ever on the rise, and there is no talk of conserving reserves for essential goods and services or to develop an alternative energy infrastructure.
Instead, we are on course to squander every last drop on long solo commutes, leisure travel, mountains of plastic junk and the senseless transglobal shipment of unsustainably grown food.
That's where local government comes in. Small but growing numbers of municipalities are initiating a process that federal and state leaders should have begun 30 years ago, when domestic oil reserves peaked. They are, in short, figuring out Plan B.
In May, Oakland appointed an Oil Independent Oakland by 2020 Task Force. In June 2006, Portland, Ore., formed its own Peak Oil Task Force, which got busy fast: By March of this year, it had released its first major report, urging the city to "act big, act now," even without further study or analysis. The report prompted the city to pass a resolution to accelerate oil and gas conservation measures to halve Portland's fossil fuel consumption.
Last year, San Francisco passed a resolution to assess the city's vulnerability to oil depletion and to develop a transition plan. Other cities, from Austin, Texas, to Bloomington, Ind., are confronting the stark reality and trying their best to figure out how to soften the blow.
Cities are looking at options such as local food cultivation, urban redesign to minimize transportation needs, locally controlled electricity, rainwater catchment systems (to ensure local access to water for food cultivation), energy-efficient mass transit, and the preparation of emergency plans for sudden and severe food, water and energy shortages. They are embracing bio-regional sustainability - a concept once dismissed as an ecotopian fantasy that is suddenly starting to look like our last best hope.
But cities cannot solve the peak oil problem on their own. They don't have the revenue needed to build light-rail networks and wind farms or to store massive grain reserves. During a recession, they will be in no position to guarantee income supports for millions of laid-off workers. But the more they do now, while they still have a revenue stream, the better off their residents will be.
If the peak oil doomsday scenarios are to be averted, it will require coordinated action at every level of government, by every sector of the economy and by every community and citizen in the nation. We are heading into a political era in which the need to come together to invent and support life-sustaining social and economic systems will trump all else.
Some tout alternative energy technologies as the silver bullet that will save us from a peak oil crisis. But there is a broad consensus among energy analysts that it will be decades before such alternatives are available for wide-scale implementation. Moreover, some of the alternatives with the strongest political backing, including ethanol and liquefied coal, may cause even more severe global warming than petroleum has.
The United States needs to slam the brakes on fossil fuel consumption. As if arresting climate change weren't enough of a reason for immediate and strong conservation measures, the end of oil may just force upon Americans a reality we have ignored for far too long: We cannot go on like this, pedal to the metal, asleep at the wheel.
Erica Etelson is a Berkeley journalist, former environmental attorney and oil independence activist. Contact her at oilindependence@yahoo.com.
© 2007 The San Francisco Chronicle
70 Comments so far
Show AllWater is the source of life - treasure it! R3
Water is the source of all life on earth. It touches every area of our lives. Without it, we could not thrive — we could not even survive.
Sustainability – "We strive to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".
We should discourage wastefulness and misuse, and promote efficiency and conservation.
For the benefit of mankind, maintain the quality of life and preserve the peace and tranquility of world population. Water resources must be preserved - to sustain humanity. We must eliminate wasteful utilization of water, conserve our water sources and implement rigid conservation methods. We should utilize solar and or other source of renewable energy to operate desalinization projects from the oceans. Utilize renewable energy sources to purify and transport the water to its final destination. As world population increases the scarcity of water will become a cause for conflict, unless we take steps now to develop other sources of water for drinking, rainwater harvesting – storm-water and gray-water utilization. Designing of landscaping that uses minimal amount of water.
"With power shortages and a water scarcity a constant threat across the West, it's time to look at water and energy in a new way,"
To preserve the future generations sustainability, we should look into urban farming – vertical farming. The term "urban farming" may conjure up a community garden where locals grow a few heads of lettuce. But some academics envision something quite different for the increasingly hungry world of the 21st century: a vertical farm that will do for agriculture what the skyscraper did for office space. Greenhouse giant: By stacking floors full of produce, a vertical farm could rake in $18 million a year.
Jay Draiman, Energy and water conservation consultant
Oct. 28, 2007
PS
Hydro dynamics: forget oil. Sharing freshwater equitably poses political conundrums as explosive and far-reaching as global climate change.
Quoted from other sources
Anyone who has ever stood on a beach and looked out into the vast expanse of an ocean knows that there is a lot of water on this planet. In fact, 70 percent of the Earth's surface is covered by water. It may seem like water is all around us, but safe, clean, reliable drinking water is not a cease¬less resource. The problems facing drinking water range from failing infrastructure, to climate change, to insufficient supplies.
Personal Conservation
Preserving our water resources is not a job for water industry professionals alone. We all have a vested interest in ensuring that water remains safe, af¬fordable and available. Therefore, each individual American has a responsibility to monitor and control their water use, There are many simple ways for people to reduce excess water use, lower water bills and protect the environment, espe¬cially in die spring and summer months, Beyond the standard constraints of watering the lawn only when neces¬sary and washing car wisely by using soap and a bucket of water, some steps include: draining water lines to outside faucets, disconnecting hoses, shutting off outdoor water sources during cold weather and running a small trickle of water on whiter nights to prevent pipe from freezing.
Conclusion
Water supply management is an issue that affects us all. It may not be apparent to every citizen today, but with climate change and population shifts transforming the United States, it soon will be. Effective solutions need to be put into place today before we are faced with a water crisis. A focus on careful planning, treatments, innova¬tions and conservation measures will help to create stability for long-term water management. Commitment to keeping water at the top of the list for communities and citizens will better prepare us for whatever the future of water holds.
WATER!
The indispensable source of life-without water there would be no industry, no agriculture and, most importantly of all, no life. In dry parts of the world this essential commodity is even more precious. Almost all human actions involve water from taking a shower to reading a newspaper to driving a car or simply eating a sandwich - almost everything we do or touch is somehow related to this precious treasure. We ask that you stop and think how you use water and what you can do to conserve this essential natural resource.
*Water, beliefs and customs,
*Water as a vehicle of the economy,
*Water, source of art and life, irrigation and cultivation.
The people have decided to act to try and develop a real awareness program on the theme of water preservation and distribution in an attempt to help maintain the original purity of rivers and streams.
In many parts of the world water sources and wells are not equally distributed. Water as a source of life can also be at the source of conflict.
Whether we live in India, Iceland or the Atlas… we have always tried to trap and tame water. Dams, pumps, canals, water treatment centers; there are so many different ways to exploit this resource that we often forget how fragile this unique and essential treasure actually is.
Unfortunately, many of the things we do every day can harm our water. That's why all people and government should be working with municipalities, farmers, business leaders and developers just like you to take action to protect our water and clean it up.
Small changes can make a big difference. This guide outlines practical things we can all do to preserve and protect our water. We all need to be part of the solution.
"You can't escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today" - Abraham Lincoln said it.
"That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest" – Henry David Thoreau.
"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed" – Theodore Roosevelt.
"When the 'study of the household' (ecology) and the 'management of the household' (economics) can be merged, and when ethics can be extended to include 'environmental' as well as human values, then we can be optimistic about the future of mankind. Accordingly, bringing together these three E's is the ultimate holism and the great challenge for our future" – Eugene Odum.
So as no companies could be named and no incidences demonstrated, it is safe to say that the assertion ""Oil companies have been raising the spectre of peak oil over and over again for decades," is rhetoric and not based in fact. Of course, once examples are provided, this statements could be established.
Gail,
I apologize, apparently I misunderstood. I guess I'm a bit on edge and hyper reactive from interacting too much with right wing fundamentalists. I've heard everything: apologizing for torture, ranting about evil doers, cheering on the coming attack on Iran, utter worship at the feet of Cheney / Bush and cronies. Sadly their actions stand in direct contrast to that which they claim to believe. Sorry about the misunderstanding.
Mark
all owners August 31st, 2007 2:12 am
"Gail,
Since when is taking personal responsibility for yourself and your own alarmist and silly? Your criticism and ad hominem attack are silly. Sure, what we need are more great blustering do nothing prognosticators such as yourself.
Personal responsibility is critical and if you re-read my comment you will discover it was a complement and not an attack. Taking precautionary measures for yourself and those you love in this unpredictable, global economy we live in is neither alarmist or silly as the loved-ones suggested. In fact, I wish I had some land to do the same.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/132106/water_as_fuel/
Water as fuel. It's clean and efficient. According to this video, he can drive a car 100 miles on 4 OUNCES of water.
Screw oil. Screw bio-fuel. Water fuel should be the wave of the future.
Gail,
Since when is taking personal responsibility for yourself and your own alarmist and silly? Your criticism and ad hominem attack are silly. Sure, what we need are more great blustering do nothing prognosticators such as yourself.
Bio-diesel is a joke. How many acres would we need to produce enough?
peak oil is no joke. i can see already our bus park and rides are totally full by 6:50 here in seattle. luckily people are starting to get with the program with mass transit and carpooling. unfortunately too many still do the solo driving thing. it won't be easy to get america to change it's gluttonous oil habits
ballerina August 30th, 2007 9:01 am
"…i'm starting a very small farming operation so that at least the people i love will still be able to eat..they think i'm being alarmist and silly, and if they are right then i'll have just enriched my own life, but if i'm right i may be saving theirs….."
ballerina,
You sound more like a choreographer. Grand idea! No doubt your alarmist and silly performance will be greatly appreciated. The future of this country and the world is not looking very promising right now.
Never under-estimate the Republican capacity for hypocracy... remember "compassionate conservatism"? "No more nation-building missions for our military"?
Perhaps the word "nationalize" is incorrect... "bail-out" is a better term. We're going to end up paying dollars for dime's worth of rusting refineries and leaking pipelines - because Chevron, Shell and the others have cut back spending on maintenance.
Personally, I approve of public utilities. The only electric power company that kept its customers' lights on during the great 2001 deregulation swindle in Califonia was the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power - a regulated public utility.
But I'm not in favor of generously bailing out industries whose investors merely want to move on to greener pastures.
Amtrak illustrates my point. The American passenger rail network that thrived in the 1930's and 40's was challenged in the 1950's as intercity travelers switched to riding automobiles on the new (taxpayer-funded) interstate highways. Rather than re-invest and compete, the railroads cut back on service and maintenance.
Suburban sprawl and smog soon followed. America switched from an oil-exporting to an oil-importing nation. By 1970 (only three years before the first Oil Shock) passenger rail service was on life-support.
When Congress proposed that the federal government take it over, this was opposed by Democrats who pointed out the the railroads were hanging on to their profitable freight-hauling routes - why shouldn't THEY subsidize the passenger service?
A fully loaded passenger rail car is 15 times more fuel efficient than an equivalent number of automobiles. Rail-oriented communities are compact, walkable and healthy.
Amtrak is subsidized but nowhere near as much as the highway system or the airlines. If it got equivalent levels of support you wouldn't hear complaints about limited service or failure to "pay its own way".
Passenger rail was abandoned by Wall Street because it became a mature industry which produced only modest - rather than obscene - profits. It was neglected while Capital quietly moved its money out, and what remained was foisted off on the public "in the national interest".
I expect to see the same thing happen with the petroleum industry in my lifetime.
The Free Market is a myth. Corporate welfare is a reality.
Everyone has good ideas on how to cope with dimishing fossil fuels and are already trying to do their thing. Great, now somebody needs to collect these great ideas and put them in a handy booklet to get others at least thinking about what can be done on a personal and local level. Gold Stars for all who are attempting to leave a smaller fossil fuel footprint!!!
"They've done it before… Electric power and railroads started out at for-profit enterprises and ended up as public utilities.
This will be a huge Republican cause in the near future… to "save" our petroleum industry - a vital strategic asset - from ruin, by nationalizing it."
Odd, in the electric power case you present, it has typically been democrats claiming it is so vital it must be collectivized. And in the railroads, there is only one line that is...and it's heavily subsidized. It cannot even pay it's own bills with it's fares.
Since republicans support private industry and private profit, I think it's pretty unlikely they'll support nationalizing the oil industry.
The dishonesty and political motivations behind the manipulation of the public through the use of the concept of peak oil comes from my reading of the work of Greg Palast in "Armed Madhouse."
Of course, no one in his or her right mind would argue that oil flows endlessly. Of course, oil will hit its peak.
It may have happened already. It may be imminent. Reserve estimates may depend critically on the cost of extraction, with upward adjustments as the extraction of heavy oil becomes feasible.
All could be true.
My point is that the concept of peak oil has been used as a political tool to manipulate the public into accepting higher gas prices, foreign escapades, and a feeling of resignation that the military-industrial complex in its current formulation is inevitable and no debate is possible.
That's my point. I believe, based on the political motivations of those that advance the concept of peak oil as it has been presented historically, we should be very skeptical about these claims and should always look for the underlying motivation and angle of the researcher.
For example, if Palast is correct, Hubbert was hired by Big Oil to produce his white paper.
From Hubbert's point of view, so the story goes, the objective was to present nuclear technology as the solution to the country's long term energy needs.
Big Oil was happy to sponsor and promote the work because they saw it as a great tool in advancing the concept of controlling critical strategic assets around the world through the projection and extension of the military-industrial complex. Amazingly, the countries with some of the greatest reserves who are not in full cooperation with Washington, Venezuela and Iran, are those that are the most "evil" and are most often presented as hostile. Incredible coincidence, or does this support my theory?
By no means am I denying the laws of physics, the facts of geology. I only mean to reject the distortion of the picture by power interests.
Any way you look at it, the goal should be to weaken the influence of fossil fuels on the economy. To say that the dependence of the economy on fossil fuels is not variable is not correct.
In fact, it is an imperative of science that we diminish our oil dependence, YESTERDAY if possible.
I live in Texas. Texas is transitioning from an oil-based economy to a high tech economy.
Are fossil fuels still required to punch chips at Motorola, AMD, Samsung, and Texas Instruments? Yeah, sure. But, alternatives are available to power the plants. Lots of cow chips lying about on the plains, for example.
ballerina,
I commend you for taking some action rather than sitting idly by and just complaining. I have taken some modest steps myself, gradually replacing the grass lawn I inherited from the former owner with fruit and nut bearing trees and bushes. Half a dozen peach trees, an apple tree, a pear tree, a cherry tree, three blueberry bushes, strawberries. Given that I live in suburbia, this is radical stuff, everybody else seems preoccupied with killing that last dandelion. I have been driving a car that gets 40+ MPG for decades now and I drive it less and less every year. I have allowed myself the guilty pleasure of acquiring a small motorcycle (ninja 250) that is capable of highway travel and still gets 70MPG. Many sport motorcycles running about get not much better mileage than an SUV!
Small steps for sure, but most people I know are still in denial even after my pummeling them with information. Make no mistake, FOX TV (and TV in general) and religion are powerful intoxicants that leave one ill equipped for critical thought. We have seen the triumph of a toxic propaganda that often works its magic by projecting the worst sins of the ruling class onto straw man threats, for example an agent of the CIA claiming that evidence of their terrorist activities is generated by "propaganda mills."
Oil Shortages: The Final Solution...
Clearly, plan B is simply to genocide large populations, in order to create more wealth and resources for an priveledged core of wealthy, mostly white nordic, west european people. It's the third reich all over again...always was, ever since the USA conceived itself as a new Roman res republica, hundreds of years ago.
Less resources can be solved, by downsizing populations. Smaller populations can be served by machine power which already overproduces.
Genocides are ongoing in Iraq, South America, Africa, and even inside the US itself, as for instance evinced by the Katrina aftermath. Genocide is ongoing against Iran, with a big push for nuclear genocide. There are genocides in Afghanistan and even in the Balkans (though with varying degrees of success).
Genocide is the underlying policy of the US government at present. That is its economic plan. Destroy the surface populations and cultures and take the resources and replace the infrastructures and industries.
Remember the American Indians? It is on their land that the US thrives. And the early settlers used slaves from Africa to till that land and operate industries. This is the actual blueprint - not the Constitution.
For things to change, there would have to be a general revolution against this concept and practice.
I doubt it will happen.
all owners..you are absolutely correct...but did you read the marx/kelley article further up on the CD page...i know it's well passed time to have started to work on these problems, but as annabelle says, what about our children?..for their sakes we must start thinking and working for the common good or each individual truly is doomed...i'm starting a very small farming operation so that at least the people i love will still be able to eat..they think i'm being alarmist and silly, and if they are right then i'll have just enriched my own life, but if i'm right i may be saving theirs.....
Plan B is take over of the middle east. The serious problems we face are being addressed strictly through aggression. There is no coherent plan for efficiency or self-sufficiency because these are not important issues for transnational corporations who have already told us that global corporatist rule is inevitable. There are some who disagree and they must be ruthlessly dealt with. The "war on terrorism" is the method for working towards this gaol.
We won't run out of fossil fuels in our lifetimes, so why worry? However, whether you have children and grandchildren, even great grand children what kind of a mess are we leaving to them? Continual greed over remaining fossil fuels (wars), wiping out whole countries for their resources, more pollution of air and water, not to mention global warming, even the dying off of bees and other species doesn't seem to interest too many people. Not a pretty inheritance for our descendants. I doubt they will think very highly of us for deliberately disreguarding any stewardship of the planet we are leaving them. Where will they live? How will they eat? Will there be jobs for them? Their survival on a sustainable planet concerns me more than whether or not the arguments over peak oil or global warming or dwindling water supplies are pro or con. Humans will wait until the tidal wave washes them away before coming to grips with any problem and then only if a solution will be profitable.
PJD good show with the electric scooter. I ultimately think our power down will look more third world, than yuppie Prius.
Plan B is really quite simple..
Google for "Bussard Google IEF Fusion" and follow through.
This is very exciting but strangely ignored..
It could (please note use of word 'could') be the answer to all our problems.. and its on your doorstep..
Clean, non polluting fusion from Boron, a ubiquitous fuel.
The IEF reactors could 'burn up' existing fission by-products.. That alone should make the necessary $200 million to build the first Full sized 'proof of concept' reactor the Bargain of the Century.
Clean energy will enable us to build the technology we need to clean up our planet and even cool it down.. (think huge cascades of heat pumps that extract atmospheric heat and use it to synthesis hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2 and other gases. The result being buried back into the ground...)
Clean energy will allow us to hydrolyse /distill sea water, thereby solving two problems at one go..
The list of possibilities goes on..
We may never know because the money is not in the kitty for the trial plant.. they would rather spend it on destroying other people, cultures and our planet..
"Oil companies have been raising the spectre of peak oil over and over again for decades."
Alright, then name at least two (you are the one who used the plural) that have 'raised the specter' at least twice (you are the one who said "over and over") over the course of two or more decades.
"After Oil Supplies Dry Up, What's Plan B?"
The Rapture, of course.
The televangelist multimillionaire John Hagee, Joe "Mossad" Lieberman, Bible-whacking prospective felon Tom DeLay, and the rest of these SUV-driving knuckleheads are urging that Bush invade Iran, thereby hastening the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, causing the faithful to be floated nekkid as a jaybird into the invisible sky-kingdom of the Great Big Daddy Figure Who Blessed America with the weapons to be able to secure as much oil as Exxon/Mobil and Chevron are willing to sell, and at whatever price they're willing to sell it.
Who needs a Plan B? Global warming? No problem! Continuous murder, mayhem, death, and destruction? It's but a comma in the book of history, the Bible that is.
It's all prophecy directly from the Humongous All-Powerful Invisible Know-It-All Omnipotent Ass-Kicking Being Who Created The Entire Universe But Has Nothing Better To Do Than Worry About Us Lousy Rotten Filthy Piggish Greedy Hateful Humans.
Gail says that "Canada's oil sands contain 175 Billion barrels or more..." Perhaps, but the world currently consumes more than 33 billion barrels of oil each year. Divide 175 by 33 and you get 5 years of oil for the world. Also, Canadians are re-thinking the idea of supplying the U.S. with oil if it means polluting their country and using up their valuable clean water. They could just as easily wait a decade and then that clean water may be worth as much as oil on the open market.
MtnGoat, when you wrote,
"If they want to keep driving their SUV's and building their McMansions, those actions are their votes for what they actually choose to value."
yes, i agree, people intentionally choose these luxuries. personally i feel that people knowingly decide that air conditioning and high horse-powered cars do indeed cost more money, but they are willing to pay for it.
you have been posting alot and i wondered what you thought about all of this?
We have already started to react to Peak Oil. We started twenty five years ago.
Detroit made all kinds of compact cars back in the seventies. Solar homes and hot water heaters were easy to find. Energy conservation was a national priority right up until the inaguration of Ronald Reagan. He removed the solar panels from the roof of the White House and froze the CAFE standards. Congress followed suit by discontinuing the research grants and tax credits that had been fueling the renewable energy industry. Detroit folded up the Pinto and Vega production lines, and rolled out "sport utility vehicles" on standard truck chassis.
The problem is that our political system is controlled by powerful corporations who are heavily invested in fossil fuels. They will keep us hooked until they can get their money out and safely reinvested elsewhere.
Their profits are high today because they aren't reinvesting in new exploration or refineries. But the supply of cheap crude won't last
When the industry is wrung dry of profits, they'll move on and leave us with a gutted carcass of an industry to rescue with public funds. They've done it before... Electric power and railroads started out at for-profit enterprises and ended up as public utilities.
This will be a huge Republican cause in the near future... to "save" our petroleum industry - a vital strategic asset - from ruin, by nationalizing it.
Canada's oil sands contain 175 Billion barrels or more and it costs roughly $20 per barrel to boil it down to crude oil. There is no shortage of oil but it is crucial that we start eliminating atmospheric carbons that are endangering our planet.
OPEC rules......shortage or not!
Yeah! She said it ! Hahahahah! thank you Erica.... time to plant a Garden...like I do...time for roof-top black-pipe hot water - time to walk and ride a bike - baskets are great for shopping...time to... Get your Act together! Whaddya waiting for...the Ocean to rise and make your overpriced suburban home waterfront property?!?
One thing missed in the above is the tax deductions and subsidies provided by Uncle Sam to encourage extra consumption and drilling in high cost low volume locations.
Without intervention by the government we would use less energy. If you want to postpone peek oil remove the tax deduction for energy consumption.
Prices would go up on goods with high energy consumption. Of course, that would mean the capitalists actually believed in a FREE market system.
They don't. They want monopolies and government welfare.
Plan B---"Soylent Green"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green
Forget going green!
It's too late anyway.
Are we not having fun? SUVs? Rock and Roll? Milkshakes? The Mall of America? Bean Bags?
Easy chicks with fake boobs? Road trips to Graceland? Driving 3 blocks to the grocery store
and letting the car idle with the AC on?
I can't live without any of it!
The way the world is sliding, we'll all be wearing canister masks and roasting our neighbors over campfires in a few years anyway.
I say enjoy it, it's a hell of a toboggan ride!
Plan B is Bupkes . . .which is to say, nothing. When the middle class is in the street with its thumb up its backside, wondering how everything collapsed, The Glorious and Omniscient Leader, George Wanker Bush, and his ilk, will have skulked off to the Duchy of Grand Fenwick where their kind are eagerly welcomed. When asked by a reporter what happened to the United States, The Wankerman will answer: "They were not worthy of me or my leadership." Joe Lieberman will also be trying to get in to Grand Fenwick but danged if they won't let him. Wonder why.
Let us figure this out Friend who says the Earth still has plenty of oil.
even if it was so we continue to use more oil each year.
And since that is happening your supply of oil dwindles faster each year,
By the way deep sea drilling for oil is costly and very potenciay ecologically dangerous. And just why has Russia planted its flag up around The Artic Circle?Oil or Gas?
We just this year saw the many leaks from our Alaska Pipeline .Does anyone think Russia will be anymore carfull pipelining its oil?.
Do you really want a solution > go back to what was said in the 1970'and 80's .If we would have got together then. We would habve saved trillions upon trillions of barrels of oil for many generations not yet born.
Do I expect us to fall in line today? NOPE!
The USA is on that down hill slope heading to be a 3rd world country. It's cherry has been poped and it is dried up.
Yes, we survivors can still live a closer to Our Earth life, but we will have to safeguard against the bands of others which will kill and steal for a gallon of bio detzel or your windmill. It won't be pretty an oiless America. but no more worries about Iran and Iraq just the people that live near you.
Must the sky fall ten times a day at Common dreams?
Oil prices may come down even after peak oil, if there is a drop in demand. Sooner or later China will have its very first post-Mao recession and for a while the world will worry about that a lot more than peak oil.
The most powerfull thing a human can do for society is make a simple memorable word for it. Let's have one. thanx
"Americans just want to keep driving along in their SUVs and heating and air conditioning their McMansions and they seem impervious to the notion the world is changing on them."
Not at all. They're just burned out on being told the sky is falling every day, day in, day out, day after day, on some new and most important crisis.
If they want to keep driving their SUV's and building their McMansions, those actions are their votes for what they actually choose to value.
"peak oil + wider awareness may combine to produce an Apollo Project-like effort to turn things around."
Which is the worst possible way to come up with alternatives. A State directed, top down, 'one best way' solution subsidized to hide true costs, characterized by people throwing someone elses money at State planners and programs chosen for poliitcal reasons, and immune to what the market actually wants.
IF peak oil is real, and IF it results in rising oil prices, hundreds of millions of players will each craft their own response and choose their own replacements which make sense to them for their own reasons and needs. No govt program can hope to match the parallel efforts of this many people all attacking whatever challenges such changes bring them.
"Bio-Diesel is Big Oil's nemesis."
Why? They are energy companies looking to make a profit for shareholders. I doubt each share comes with a contractual statement that the dividend or stock price is based on oil.
If bio-diesel proves to be feasible, they will just move into that market...as several are moving into solar and wind in spite of a lack of govt requirements that they do so. Of course, the result will then be an outcry against big oil for moving into such a market, just as there is now a bunch of people ticked off that major farm outfits now grow organic.
Plan A is working very well, thank you very much! After the chaos and depopulation of the planet, the 1% who own most of the worlds wealth will hunker down in their respective Rivieras and... Anyone remember the flik, A Boy and his Dog?
Peak oil is Gaia's answer to global warming. If we can make it through this administration, (get your reps to sign on to Kucinich's H.Res. 333 to impeach Cheney NOW!) peak oil + wider awareness may combine to produce an Apollo Project-like effort to turn things around.
Or maybe the Agent in the 1st Matrix was right: humans are a plague on the earth.
peach
"The problem will not be solved by individual actions"
Of course it will be. Any govt program *anyone* proposes affecting citizens behavior or choices, will depend on individual actions to work. This statement is a veiled avoidance of the responsibility for ones actions of each person.
If individual actions will not work, then there is little point in attempting to use govt to compel those individual actions.
The answer is "bio-diesel"--i.e, vegetable oil diesel.
Because of the free flow of information on the Internet people are finally beginning to hear the truth about Rudolf Diesel and his engine that runs on peanut oil. Peanut oil, canola oil, soybean oil will all run vehicles, big trucks, and even tractors. We have had this technology since 1902. Or, rather, this technology has been discreetly hidden since 1902.
It doesn't surprise me that there is no mention of bio-diesel in this article, since it is published in the mainstream Press. The mainstream Press is owned by Big Oil, after all.
Bio-Diesel is Big Oil's nemesis. It must be ignored at all costs, and we must instead hear endless yakking about gas-guzzling SUVs, liquified coal, ethanol, and other nonsense.
"The United States needs to slam the brakes on fossil fuel consumption."
So slam on your danged brakes. Stop traveling, stop using products that are not locally made or grown. There is no one making you do these things, they are the products of your own decisions.
Plan B is to insure every living thing on this planet is killed off by spreading DU all over the globe.
Driving their SUVs, Americans will rush like lemmings to the sea!
COMarc's application of the analogy of the boiling frog to peak oil is a little too late.
If only 20% of the US electorate had voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004 it would be proof that the US is already a nation of boiled frogs. Even if you account for voting "irregularities", Bush got well over 20%.
The US is already a nation of boiled frogs.
Adjusted for inflation we aren't even CLOSE to the record price for a barrel of oil (one of the authors indicators). Adjusted for inflation in 1979 oil was over $100.00 a barrel.
The only problem I have with this is the headline put on the article. The article itself is very sensible. The fear-mongering, stupid part is the headline that talks about "oil supplies drying up".
We will see two things happening at basically the same time. Oil is going to get to be harder to get out of the ground and more expensive. Its something that is going to happen gradually. The story about the frog in cold water that's slowly heated is closer to the truth of this. Oil is just going to keep slowly getting harded to pump out and more expensive.
The other side of this is demand. Demand is climbing rapidly. Mainly because you've got giant countries with billions of people like China and India developing economies where now you see more and more cars and trucks and oil usage. Add to that the amazing attitude in the US that plugs their ears to all this talk and says "nah, nah, nah, nah, nah" loudly any time someone tries to tell people about this. Americans just want to keep driving along in their SUVs and heating and air conditioning their McMansions and they seem impervious to the notion the world is changing on them.
So, in a time when we really can't expand oil production, we have a demand curve that's climbing rapidly. That means oil prices are going up and they are going to keep going up.
So, the headlines that talk about oil drying up are indeed fear mongering. There will always be some oil around. But its going to someday be a luxury most people can't afford. And the stories that talk about the immenent collapse of society because of this are fearmongering as well. But you'd better be thinking about what the next decade is going to be like as oil and gas and energy in general gets more expensive and more expensive and more expensive.
Like that frog in the water that's getting hotter and hotter, if you just plug your ears and say 'nah, nah, nah' so you can't hear the warnings of people saying 'watch out', you gonna find yourself in big trouble someday in the future.
If you want something to watch, watch whatever you can learn about oil production numbers in Saudi Arabia. For years, the Saudis kept the price of oil down because they could always pump more and flood the markets. So the Saudis were the 'swing producer' who could control market prices. These days, they can't or won't do that. I'm betting on "can't". They used to say they could pump 12 million(?) barrels per day, and these days they seem lucky to do 9. And the rumor in some circles is that the overproduction they've done in the past has damaged the oil fields such that the decline in production today is the result. Watch the numbers the Saudis report on oil production. If their numbers are declining, its very hard for any other place in the world to make up that production. Which means that the Saudis aren't a bad indicator for whether worldwide oil production is peaking now or not.
What about 'free energy', or electromagnetic energy? Why do we even bother with oil, when we know that the oil companies have been suppressing competing technologies that would have put them out of business years ago?
We're going to have to figure something out. Oil is dirty and inefficient. If we're going to use MORE energy in the future, how are we going to make up the shortfalls from lack of oil when we have no mass scale alternatives?
We should have taken care of this problem 50 years ago.. but here we are.. still waiting..and waiting..
I figure it's either adapt or suffer the consequences. That means live where the food is grown and water is (and should continue to be) relatively clean and plentiful. Learn to garden, eschew meat and other high-intensity food stock in favor of high-yield, low intensity foods (vegetables, fruits, grain - yep - including hemp seed).
Wherever you choose to live, get in shape - use a bicycle and walk - support walkability/bikeability/smart growth land use and transportation initiatives and development in your community. Living lower on the food chain is SO much more sustainable - regardless of how long it takes for the oil to actually disappear. Living high on the hog means you've got that much farther to fall when we reach peak pork...:)
Wilmoor--What a beautiful way to describe the progression of tectinic upheaval which will result in everything from city collapse to tidal wave rsunamis. Nicely done!
the issue isn't so much about peak oil but where we have to get it from and the consequences of getting it. Today, the immediate and obvious task is to find a way to produce energy, clean cheap renewable energy; the research capabilities that we have in this country could be harnessed to produce a solution in the next ten years with a $500 billion bankroll.
Imagine what the USA could do with the patent to produce small non nuclear/ non polluting units capable of producing sufficient energy to power small towns:
We could make thousands of American jobs to manufacture, maintain the units, train people to maintain them etc.
We could demand that all conventional and nuclear power generation units be scrapped, ending the threat of nuclear proliferation as well as the pollution of the atmosphere everywhere in the world
We could make potable water out of sea water economically, solving what is probably the worst problem the western US faces, lack of water (this assumes that the desalinization plants we have today are not improved over the next ten years).
We could eliminate our dependency on foreign oil, which without an alternative over time will become the biggest drag on our economy
We could take a giant step towards reducing global warming.
I think that by taking up this challenge, the US would be able to change its foreign policies to become once again respected in the world for its stance towards peaceful contribution, give poorer deserving foreign countries the energy plants in lieu of money, (we would still maintain them or train staff). All we need is a leader with the vision.
BS!
How many 1 inch pipes would it take to pump the same amount of oil at the same pressure of a 2 inch pipe.
Answer: 4
Mathematics is being used against you, whether you like it or not. IF you take ALL the oil that has been pumped out of the ground, based on mathematics it would not even fill up Lake Tahoe. Even if using todays yearly consumption and times it by 200 years, the amount in actual cubic feet in comparison,,,, would amaze you.
Coffeelover,,,,,,,
What will happen to us? We will have to live in and adapt to the climate and environmental factors around us. We might in time start evolving again.
Hmm.
Two words: "Mad Max." We humans do not, as a rule, react until AFTER catastrophe hits. The bottom line is simple: argue all you want about "when," but everything is finite, including oil. It WILL run out eventually, and we WILL NOT be prepared for that eventuality, and most of the human race WILL PERISH.
Meanwhile, let's rebuild a city below sea level because we never learn... let's rebuild Town X wiped out, again, by a tornado, because we never learn... 20 million displaced by flooding in India, all waiting to go back and rebuild for the next flood, because we never learn... SUV sales strong because we never learn... Exxon profits obscene because we never learn... Bush - twice!
While I don't argue with the facts and seriousness of peak oil, I think peak-oil "promoters" like James Kuntsler, and Mike Ruppert are overly pessimistic and alarmist, and this is leading to a certain amount of peak-oil denial and even this abiotic-oil nuttery. (disclosure: i'm a civil engineer with a geology degree and previous oil field work)
I still have faith that, if we can get rid of the oil-crazed warmongering neocons, peak oil will have a lot of positive benefits. this will include the end of suburbia and a rebuilding of compact communitied for people, not cars. And, it will force the developed world to rekon with it's destructive economc habits. So I'd rather it come sooner rather than later.
mirf59 August 29th, 2007 11:53 am
"Erica, why don't you take your fear-mongering elsewhere?"
Denial of Peak Oil, Global Warming, Climate Change and diminishing Bio-Diversity equals the DoDO Bird equals extinction in the long run.....
Big Oil and Military Industrial Complex relies on naive, ignorant and complicit masses and wants "business as usual" prompted by the likes of mirf59's linear attitude....
EveningLand August 29th, 2007 1:55 pm
Is CORRECT make no mistake about it.....
"During the Cold War, the Cuban economy relied heavily on support from the Soviet Union and the other members of the Socialist Bloc. Approximately 50 per cent of Cuba's food came from abroad. When the USSR collapsed [in 1989], Cuba ground to a halt. Without Soviet OIL, city streets were emptied of cars and, more ominously, tractors were idled in the fields; domestic agriculture production fell by half."...
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=3003
"City farming is spreading fast -- it was estimated in 1993 that city farms were contributing 15% to world food production and it was expected to grow to 33% by 2005. According to the UNDP, some 800 million people worldwide were involved in urban agriculture in 1996, growing fruits, vegetables..."
http://www.journeytoforever.org/cityfarm.html
Web-search for Terra Preta 'technology' for potential to alleviate climate change and aid sustainable development of food and fuel.
maxpayne, before you go on fuming, I recommend you read the discussion of alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, water, tidal power, nuclear fission (or fusion, for that matter), coal and tar sands, shale oils, geothermal, etc., in the book by James Kunstler that I cited in my entry above (Chapter Four, more exactly). Here is a taste of the argument set forth by Kunstler: "Based on everything we know right now, no combination of so-called alternative fuels or energy procedures will allow us to maintain daily life in the United States the way we have been accustomed to running it under the regime of oil. No combination of alternative fuels will even permit us to operate a substantial fraction of the systems we currently run -- in everything from food production and manufacturing...to the ordinary business of running a household by making multiple car trips per day, to the operation of giant centralized schools with their fleets of yellow buses. [...] We will certainly use many of these things [the alternative energy sources, that is], and the various systems they entail, as much as we can, but they will not make up for the depletion of our oil supply. To some degree, all of the non-fossil fuel energy sources actually depend on an underlying fossil fuel economy. You can't manufacture metal wind turbines using wind energy technology. You can't make lead-acid storage batteries for solar electric systems using any know solar energy systems."
See also the discussion of the same issue in David Goodstein's above cited book (Chapter Five).
Occupying Iraq for its oil and spending billions on such occupation naturally only puts off the work we should be doing to mitigate the extremely painful future that faces us all, and massively denies the truly tragic character of our predicament.
>Magically again, the total worldwide reserves figure keeps >going up. It would seem the Earth's crust is an oil >factory, if you look back at all the amazing upward >adjustments over the years
The oil factory you refer to is called the Abiotic Theory of Oil and it's considered by geologists, the ones who work for Exxon-Mobile, Chevron-Texaco, or Shell, about as credible as the idea that the earth is flat.
Oil doesn't flow out of the earth like chocolate nougat from a bon bon. Anyone who's ever been to an oil field or worked in it knows that it takes a lot of hard effort to extract oil out of the ground.
20 years ago in Texas, 12 years after oil production here peaked, in a place called Lovelady I witnessed the end-game scenario of oil extraction. We injected gas into the well using a compressor to extract oil out. When you see the so-called nodding donkeys, what you usually associate with oil pumping, you are seeing an oil well in decline. In the end game you inject sea water like the Saudi's are doing at the world's largest oil well Ghawar, or you inject CO2, ironically, or CH4 (Methane) into the well to force oil out.
When you're at that stage of the game the oil well is well past production peak and what's left is more energy intensive to extract and is higher in sulphur content and hence more difficult to refine.
One day Mother Earth will get fed up with us sucking her dry, poluting her waters with all our s**t, shaving her surface bare, and covering her with cement, and she'll give one BIG buck, and send us all to oblivion! She'll show us who's boss.
I've often wondered what happens when we get all that oil sucked up and where it once was is just a very huge empty space.
mirf59, you dead wrong on all counts. PJD is right to correct you.
Industrial society, as we have known it since the beginning of industrialism at the end of eighteenth century, whether of the capitalist, communist, socialist, or fascist variety, is entirely dependent upon the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) as its primary energetic source. If one were to remove fossil fuels from industrial societies in one fell swoop, they would collapse in a matter of days or weeks, depending on the amount of fossil fuel each has garnered up.
See Professor of Physics (at California Institute of Technology) David Goodstein's very clear and systematic discussion of our energetic predicament in his little book "Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil" (Norton & Co., 2004). Here is the opening paragraph of the book: "The world will soon start to run out of conventionally produced, cheap oil. If we manage to overcome that shock by shifting the burden to coal and natural gas, the two other primary fossil fuels, life may go on more or less as it has been -- until we start to run out of all fossil fuels by the end of this century. And by the time we have burned up all that fuel, we may well have rendered the planet unfit for human life. Even if human life does go on, civilization as we know it will not survive, unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels."
Check out also James Kunstler's "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005). Kunstler envisages in detail the consequences of the exhaustion of the oil wells. Terrorism looks like a garden party when placed side by side with what will happen when we run out of oil.
Or see the documentary film "A Crude Awakening: the Oil Crash," by Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack (Lava Productions AG) (see www.crudeawakening.org)
Did the author ever take time off her busy schedule to research ALTERNATIVE RENEWABLES such as solar, wind, geothermal, tidal/water, and HEMP? Of course not ! Hell, she thinks there won't be enough time to invest ! First of all, like all other issues, the Left only reacts AFTER THE DAMAGE IS DONE ! Instead of crying over spilled milk, why not take the time and preparation to GO ON THE OFFENSIVE and quit crying DOOM and GLOOM ! Just another DOOM and GLOOM BULLSHIT article with NO plan B !
By the way, here's something better to help out:
http://www.hemp4fuel.com
Don't worry, be happy. The market will take care of things...ad nauseaum.
Plan B=escalating poverty, governmental and economic breakdown, food riots (cause agriculture without petro-chemicals is almost non-existant in the US)and then maybe a dethroni9ng of the moneyed class and more power to the people!
Comments such as this define the problem: "Even if oil was not running out [which I believe it is]"
Oil is not magically renewing itself underground. It is not something that will replenish itself again. It IS running out, it is a one way street and peak oil will hit, assuming it already hasn't.
It is not a "belief" issue. It is simply a fact that we are burning through something that took millions of years to create within a 150 year time period.
"Oil companies have been raising the spectre of peak oil over and over again for decades."
Completely untrue - oil companies are big deniers of peak oil, even creating unrealistic reserve estimates to hide it.
Magically, production keeps increasing, decades after it was expected to peak.
Completely untrue. Presuming you are talking about US peak oil production Hubbert predicted it, in the 1950's to be at 1970 it peaked in 1971. the earliest global oil peak prediction is about 2010. Global oil poduction is most decidedly slowing and falling behind demand - that why the prices are going up.
Magically again, the total worlwide reserves figure keeps going up.
It is going up only at a much slower rate, and many believe both OPEC and big oil is greatly inflating the figures.
Where are you getting these "facts"?
There are unconventional sources of oil like the Alberta tar sands and the Venezuelan Orinoco belt - some of which already use only a litle less energy extracting and processing them as one gets from the oil extracted (and terribly polluting and global-warming enhancing too), so they will follow their probable rather short and sharply-peaked Hubbert curves as they become impractical to extract except for high value-added chemical feedstock use, So they are relatively small contributors compared to conventional oil.
Even if oil was not running out [which I believe it is] it still makes a lot of sense to use it in the most efficient manner possible. Our leaders don't seem to be leaders at all, more like pied piper's of destruction. Pollution is a big problem. The fact that we have to import most of our oil.
We definately should be looking down the road to a more efficient and sustainable way to exist and prosper. We can have our cake and eat it too.
Already we are in foreign war's for resources while at the same time increasing our dependence on such resources. It goes against common sense and is also evil.
Under the current system, the only thing that will work is individual action, and it might be lonely for a while.
I own an older car that is used only for aoccasional out of town trips, so I average only a few gallons of gasoline a month. From March through November, I use a battery electric motor scooter. I buy wind-energy offsets bought from a wind energy developer, and I use the bus. When home shopping, the primary consideration was location in wslking distance to shopping, being within 5 miles of work, and being a short walk to several bus routes. I have used the A/C only 5 days this summer.
Nothing expensive or fancy - no solar panels, no windmills of the roof. Am I suffering in any way? None whatsoever. I get suspicious looks from my neighbors. For some reason, the scooter elicits spontaneous ridicule from a cetain percentage of drivers and other people as I ride by.
But gasoline prices? I don't use nearly enough to even notice them.
If you thought continual war and encroaching fascism was disturbing, now look at peak oil. If those pointing to this potential disaster are correct, there is absolutely no time to waste in preparation for this event. The theory goes that humans, using the bountiful energy released from wanton and thoughtless fossil fuel use, have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet earth. Food production and distribution in our present system relies entirely on cheap and abundant fossil fuels.
As a society, it seems apparent that we need to immediately begin to rethink EVERYTHING we do, and to reinvent ourselves as creatures that are rooted in our local environments. We try to grow as much of our own food as we can, drive as little as possible, generate as much energy as we can from solar power, etc. For most Americans, the biggest hole in their environmental stance is transportation energy. Even amongst the "green lifestyle" crowd this is not well understood. Witness the construction of "green" McMansions, constructed entirely out of "green" building materials, which are located on a mountaintop somewhere out in the boonies, where the occupants must burn their body weight in gasoline every day just to get to work or shop for basic necessities.
The problem will not be solved by individual actions, but in this era of thoroughly corrupt imperialist insanity at the national level, it is imperative that that each of us begin by thinking deeply about the issues involved. There are things each of us can do right now. Make decisions that reduce fossil fuel dependancy immediately. Plan lifestyle changes that continue this process, and become active in making the greater society aware of the challenges we face. Buying a Prius will not solve the problem. Having Congress enact small incremental fuel efficiency increases, phased in over years, is worse than pathetic. This is potentially huge, and only by facing the problem head on do we have any hope of solving it.
Erica, why don't you take your fear-mongering elsewhere? The calculations around peak oil are fuzzier than Bush's election math.
Oil companies have been raising the spectre of peak oil over and over again for decades. Magically, production keeps increasing, decades after it was expected to peak, and
Magically again, the total worlwide reserves figure keeps going up. It would seem the Earth's crust is an oil factory, if you look back at all the amazing upward adjustments over the years.
Fear mongering about peak oil is advantageous to all the wrong people -- oil executives (who want higher prices and want to spook the public into radical increases in nuclear programs), and the military-industrial complex (who benefits from the peak oil rationale that drives us around the globe killing foreigners on pools of oil for the sake of preserving our 'vital national interest').
So, please, let's not have the fear-mongering.
It also occurs to me that Erica has the cart before the horse. The economy need not have oil as its basis. Oil needs the US economy, but the US economy should not need oil. In fact, our dependence on oil is not a constant, but a variable to be ratcheted down as needed. That is, if there was not massive resistance to devaluing existing reserves.