I had a read, and his numbers look solid, but it struck me that he didn't take into account the extent to which human society will adapt to declines in oil availability, rather than simply head into freefall. There are a number of variables in this area which are simply not quantifiable.

No doubt the spikes in oil price will mean huge psychological turmoil for people - they will have to change their whole way of life - but does that mean they we will inevitably see chaos and massive disorder? I don't think so, and I think the situation is a lot more flexible and fluid than the straightforward "decline in oil > die-off" scenario that people such as this guy seem to suggest.

I think there is considerable spare capacity in our economy to absorb a decrease in oil with considerable economic turmoil but without compromising our ability to feed and shelter the population - at least in developed societies. This might mean giving up going on holiday, driving to see friends all over the country, and buying large numbers of consumer goods - all of which, when push comes to shove, are nonessential.

I think the author is also completely neglectful of technological solutions. I don't think we can 'invent' our way out of this problem, but I don't rule out the possibility that we can soften its impact with technology - especially if a large slice of society's research and development were geared towards, say, agriculture and energy efficiency, which it isn't at the moment.

No man, oil is our modern day blood. We lose enough blood and we die. It's really that simple.

I don't think most of us here rule out the possibility that we can soften the impact of peak oil with "technology" - just that many of us don't see this happening soon enough or fast enough to make a significant difference.

But sure, it might happen. I just wouldn't personally bank on someone else fixing this problem.

I'm afraid it really isn't!

It's getting a little too late in the game. We needed to do something BIG 30 years ago. The damage will be done. The storm is in the horizon NOW. You can't stop the rain.

Yep, I completely agree.

X'plain how we get around this?

http://dieoff.org/

Enjoy !

spare capacity of what? Air?

By 2020 we will have to live with the same amount of fuel we used back in 1930. How does this worK?

I'm not sure what you refer to as Spare Economic Capacity. The US consumer as well as the gov have had a negative savings rate for years, many people's balance sheet has gone even more negative in the last few years with RE value declines and lately with increases in the "volatile" portion of the CPI - you know; food and fuel..


Not to be overly harsh, MD, but how much of that charity has helped the starving orphans over the last 20 years of prosperity?

And you think we are going to all give up our commutes, flat panels and hot wings of a sudden?

Well - this is where we part ways.

Keep reading.

The rabbit hole is deep and the illusion is powerful.

You will look back on today and remember reading an essay from Perry Arnet and you may say that he was right...and you may not...either way...you have been given a more clear picture of the facts then what our childen learn in school...what is taught at all levels of "higher learning"...or notions about the way things "are" honed into a career/job.

Later

I'm not so sure, but let's say for a moment that you're right, and that no technological advances will prevent or even slow the problem. Does it still follow that we'll see an outright Malthusian catastrophe?

I'm not so sure we will. I normally look at my own country, the UK, which is probably not too dissimilar to other urbanized and materially developed Western countries. In our case, we could do a number of things even if technology was static from this point onward, to mitigate the 'die-off' that some people envision.

First off, we could massively reduce our dependency on oil. We could put a near halt to flights, and forbid all but the most economically-essential car and haulage journeys. We could make much more efficient use of our energy overall, which currently is profusely wasteful. All of this is really painful, but far from impossible under special circumstances, and certainly wouldn't entail a mass die-off.

We could replace much of our fossil fuel-based energy production with renwables, particularly offshore wind, which we have in abundance, but also nuclear and tidal energy. This would hopefully at least keep the lights on.

And in terms of food, even in this densely populated state, we have unused land, land used for non-edible agricultural products (e.g. flowers), land used for 'inefficient' or low-calorie per land space crops, and gardens and urban spaces - all of which could grow food, and even without petrochemical products, as was done for hundreds of years beforehand.

This would require remarkable change and state intiative, but such is possible in a crisis and has been done before. In the two world wars, as I mentioned before, our economic activity and ability to cope under stress was remarkable, and the same could be said for most other countries in these circumstances. All this is also possible without technological breakthroughs, but you should also bear in mind that crises - including the world wars - seem also to be times when we are able to find some of our most remarkable technological solutions.

So very painful? Yes. A massive die-off, I'm not so sure.

Somebody else's job - like my job!

It's "nonessential" - except to me!

Some people are going to die prematurely from our profligate ways. How many remains to be seen, but I tend to think it will be a significant %, particularly in poorer areas of the world, (first).

I'm more concerned with the impact where I live. I can foresee massive economic disruption, exacerbated by the current woes of the finance sector. My working lifetime in manufacturing (cars) has made clear to me how dependent we are on fossil energy. The 1970's oil crisis was a cakewalk, with some areas hitting high levels of unemployment. With a projected oil production shortfall increasing by 5% a year, we will be in dire economic straits in 2 or 3 years, without cheap energy to exploit and "grow" our way out of it. A lot of social problems come with unemployment, made worse by a spoiled society in the US. I can see that happening in just a couple years.

Yes, there is a lot of fat to be cut out of our lives, and no, people are not going to like it. They will find some scapegoats rather than admit the truth, and try to hold on to an outmoded life. This is our greatest impediment to mitigating the problem to ANY degree. People will be dragged kicking and screaming to powering down, by their empty wallets.

I once had a sister in law that was greatly over weight. My toddler daughter was alarmed that someone could be so fat and apparently not realize it. So, she told the woman, "Look at your arm, Pat!" Of course Pat couldn't figure out what the kid meant. Talking about it later, we explained that pat was used to being fat, so she did not notice it as unusual. The kid still thought she was mentally deficient or something.

Such are we, fat with the use of too much oil, and cannot conceive of what a problem it is.

When I was young, some of my family still farmed with horses, drew water from a well with a bucket, made loose hay, and threshed grain with a steam engine and a stationary threshing machine. I can't begin to describe the drudgery of that life, but I believe that most of the world will be worse off than that within less than 10 years, if available oil goes down at 5% a year, and there will be a lot more bicycles in the US.

Do the numbers and you"ll find that the US will be lucky to sustain anything close to the life we now live in as little as 5 years at that rate of decline. Think no air conditioning in most places. It was so in 1950, not so long ago. My Dad was a carpenter then, and used a handsaw to build houses. Hammers, no nail guns. A fan in the house if you were well off, sweltering in summer if you were not, and sleeping on the back porch. One trip to town a week if you lived outside the city limits very far. Cold bedrooms in winter, and ice in the icebox in summer if you could afford it in the 1920's. (That's the only one of the above that I haven't personally experienced.) I think you will find it a useful guide to future life if you research how people lived in 1860 to 1920 in the US.

None of the above killed anyone directly, except maybe an occassional heatstroke. But life was not as pleasant. What kind of reaction would you get from one of the affluent kids who hang out at the mall today, if they were plunked down into such a life in a matter of 5 years from now?

This will get ugly. Fast.

When I'm talking about 'spare capacity' in the economy, I'm not referring to savings, funds, or even money itself. Money is only worth as much as we believe it to be; it is representative of value, not value in itself.

What I mean instead is the amount of labour and energy that we put into non-essential goods and services. When push comes to shove, the entire leisure industry, most of the service sector, and a good deal of commodities created for entertainment are non-essential. If the labour and energy focused in these sectors were instead allocated to the essentials, and in particular food production, then we could radically increase our ability to feed our own populations even if the other current fundamental, i.e. cheap petroleum, were to go into decline.



I don't think we'll give them up all of a sudden, but rather that people will give them up because they have to. If you have a choice between starvation or stopping your long summer car journeys, I think most people would rather live (some would no doubt choose death!)

In the last resort, state intervention could compel people to act in ways contrary to what they want - at least in the short term.