My last post asked what will happen with people who have a disability and I got exactly what I expected no reads and no comments. That speaks volumes.
I a very short time I will have to take a dead-end job just to pay the bills because Not the governor of Colorado not any city I contacted here where I live care about creating any sort of transition plans or real sustainability, durability, resilience policy. It seems the state I live in could care less what happens after cheap energy is gone and that will happen soon.
A now former CEO of Shell just a few years ago predicted we will have $3 per gallon gasoline by 2010 and we did, and do. He also said to expect by 2015 the price to be $5 per gallon of gasoline. We are heading that way and I have no doubt we will reach it.
Former president Clinton said in more than one speech or interview that we were headed for Peak Oil soon. That was in 2006. He also gave a deadline of 2030 as the year we can expect to run out of oil. He may have let the cat out of the bag.
Here are some links. You decide for yourself.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/warning-oil-supplies-are-running-out-fast-1766585.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
http://business.financialpost.com/2011/04/01/oil-may-run-out-by-2060-hsbc/?__lsa=dcb8baa2
http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=0423
At this point the U.S. is fu–ed. There isn’t enough time to do anything really so here are my suggestions:
- Get some land, even within a city.
- Reduce your consumption of energy by super insulating your home.
- Learn to grow food and save seeds from one year to the next.
- Connect with people near you, within walking distance, to barter and exchange whatever you need. This would include skills.
- Learn to grow fiber, process it and make cloths or whatever else you need. Also learn to grow dye plants.
- Grow some plants for easy fuel like sunflower for oil to burn in a lamp. Honey bees for honey and beeswax. Grow your own fuel.
That’s it people. The other option to fight and defend precious resources is not the answer because those who rely on war and violence will die at some point when they can’t steal anymore because the people who know how to grow food, fiber and fuel will live far enough away for violence to reach them.
The future will change dramatically and we are not prepared.
World crude oil production: growing slowly.
http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?product=oil&graph=production
US oil production: growing fairly rapidly.
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2012/06/11/US-oil-production-reaches-historic-high/UPI-54781339419354/
Estimated production costs for biofuel oil equivalents (algae-based, not cropland-based) are broadly competitive with fossil hydrocarbons, about $80/barrel. (Current Brent spot price is $97/barrel.) http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/
Your listed Wikipedia article self-reports as out of date. Your “news” article, in at least one case, are almost a decade old and their predictions have already not come true. Oil is not an unlimited commodity, and it is very likely that over time we will shift away from burning hydrocarbons, but we’ll do that for environmental reasons, not because there aren’t any more hydrocarbons. In just the last ten years or so, we have found more new oil sources in North America than we thought existed worldwide just a couple of decades ago. Peak oil is a correct theory, as applied to any one particular source of oil; fields deplete. The predictions of its adherents have failed to materialize in the marketplace as a whole.
The vast majority of US fossil energy use for electrical power comes from coal, not oil, and we have coal reserves for centuries. We have uranium and thorium reserves for centuries if not millennia. Renewable power sources are becoming cost-competitive with fossil sources. There is simply no credible basis for believing that we face an energy-crunched future; even less basis for recommending that people switch to subsistence agriculture (about the lowest-possible valued use for human labor).
I think it quite likely that there is considerable interest among many political figures and governments, some in Colorado among them, in exploring sustainable policy choices and better environmental planning. I have a number of friends who earn a living in those fields. What the governor and the mayor and whomever are not interested in, is badly-outdated “doom” predictions from someone who does not appear to be acquainted with the actual facts of the issues.