Ashurbanipal, I hope you'll try to get a copy of "Permaculture: a Designers' Manual" by Bill Mollison, which gives a detailed template for a different way of life not so dependent on energy, but with a high quality of life. I think you will find it very encouraging, and also may answer someof your questions about what we can do. I really recommend this book to everyone. If you can't afford it (it's rather expensive) try to get a copy through interlibrary loan.

This was one of the points I made in my Solutions in Isolation thread. Even if we could get our current population to conserve, and also find ways to reemploy those displaced while using less energy than before to maintain a net reduction in energy use...what about the new comers?

Where will the energy come from to clothe, house, and feed them?

Conservation will have to proceed apace, arriving where ashurbanipal stated. Or, if it doesn't proceed apace, then the energy for the newcomers will have to come from part of your "current" per capita share.

This leads to an ever-lowering standard of living and eventually ends up at the same destination: not eating, not having shelter or clothing, etc.

Concerning living on one income:

My observation is that often people who feel they NEED two incomes are living inefficiently. They have houses that are too large, cars that are too big, and they eat expensive food and wear expensive clothes. I know there are parts of the country that have living expenses such that two incomes are necessary, but most of the US is not in that category.

If people could downscale their expectations of material goods, they would find they have a lot more money, as well as the intangible but important presence of a full time parent in their children's lives.

Some of this ties in with conspicuous consumption, and some of it is social - the idea that a full time homemaker is somehow less of a person than one that has an outside paying job. It is also felt by women's rights advocates that this would undermine the efforts of women to better thamselves in the job market, as women might be more likely to stay home. However, the other side of that is a lot of women would consider a stay-at-home husband a bum.

I think if a significant number of people would try to live on one income, the impact on the labor market would be quite favorable. Less available labor might mean higher incomes for those that did have jobs.

DK

Personally I liked living on one income, the home person had the energy to keep up with the moderate ammount of housework which is nessecery in any home and paying bills was just a matter of self discipline.

When I got married to my second wife 5 years ago she was not working, but soon resumed her career. She makes 15% more income per year than I do, but every time I mention quitting my job and staying home to write she mentions that DIVORCE is always an option. Of course if I did stay home I would have no more excuses for my writing career, it would be sink or swim and that has a certain fear factor to it.

In her view of the world, women should work outside the home and men MUST work outside the home, or you are a bum.

Hey thuja,



For the sake of simplicity, let's make 2 assumptions :
1) Oil peaks in 2010
2) Oil production follows a Hubbert curbe

Thus, in 2020 we will have the same level of production as we had in 2000, that is 26 GB/Year.
In 2030, it's as in 1990 : 24 GB/Year.
In 2040, it's as in 1980 : 20 GB/Year.
In 2050, it's as in 1970 : 17 GB/Year.

In 1970, there were about 3.5 billion people on Earth.
However, since the 1973 energy crisis, we have also greatly reduced our dependency on oil. Also, with a likely recession or even a depression, there will be massive demand destruction for everything that is not critical.

That is why I can hardly see how we would not have enough oil to feed ourselves AND to build an economy based on new energies.

Efficiencies have contributed somewhat, but for the most part, the US per capita energy consumption has dropped because we have out-sourced much of our industrial production to other countries. Cars, textiles, maungfactured goods, etc. The world's overall energy use has gone up. Your point is a dog that won't hunt.

Not to mention, we have increased oil imports.



And again, peak oil is about price.

Massive demand destruction means massive unemployment. How will you buy your food? How will you repay debt? Where will capital for investment come from?

Will Demand Destruction ever Outpace Demand?

What do you think of this - if the huge sums spent on oil could somehow be "recaptured" by way of windfall taxes and the like and the monies rebated to the population at large to pay for food, mortgages, etc, could this be a "patchwork" solution to prevent total collaspe of the economy? After all the money has to go somewhere....

What you're saying is true.
Nonetheless, we do not need that much more efficiency.
In 2000, there were 6 billion people on Earth, let's say in 2050 it's 8 billions.
So we have:
2000 = 26 GB/Year for 6 billion people = 4.33 GB/Year/Billion people
2050 = 17 GB/Year for 8 billion people = 2.15 GB/Year/Billion people

So we need to divide our oil consumption by 2 from 2000 levels. It sounds a lot, and it's certainly a challenge, but we have 40 years to achieve it.

Here is an example, cars.
Our gas mileage will without a doubt be at least multiplied by 3 from 25 miles a gallon to 75 miles a gallon. Sounds reasonable for 2050. I don't see how we could not live using cars at least 2 times less (for example by living closer to work)
So we can easily live with 6 times less gas for our cars.

That along with a recession could be enough to get as much oil for everything else as we had in 2000.
If it's not, then we can still do the same with planes, and use more nuclear power plants and more (hopefully clean) coal.
If it's still not enough, we can live with less fertilizers, and a more oil-efficient agriculture. Don't forget that up to only 5 years ago oil was less than 15$ a barrel. Let today's price do its work, agriculture can and will become more efficient.



There will probably be a depression, I do not argue with that.
Will we starve and live nude in the forest? I don't think so.

I'm not certain that Peak Oil (alone) will cause a depression. Depressions just happen. They tend to happen more often when the government isn't managing the economy. Perhaps recent government irresponsibility and massive consumer debt might get us into a bit of trouble.

Peak Oil, alone, is going to cause a very nasty version of the '70s. Gas shortages, high gas prices, stagnant markets, nutjobs running around claiming the world's going to end (We had everything from environmentalist doomers to energy doomers to "The Antichrist is Coming" doomers; today, we make jokes out of them.), and a tough job market in the manufacturing sector.

I think that America's debt will be somewhat offset by the fact that we are incredibly defensive against a recession in the manufacturing sector. Our economy rests on food production, medicine, coal production, construction, and the service sector. That stuff isn't going anywhere for a while.

I think we need to characterize the effects of Peak Oil as a very serious energy shock. I mean, I think it's entirely possible that if Peak Oil hits in 2015 and energy prices stay high, we might see 20-30 years of the '70s, starting now, as the U.S. transitions to a combination of renewables and nuclear. Indeed, I think this situation is more likely than the starvation in the U.S. and nuclear war scenarios combined.

To characterize it as a depression, first off, isn't specific enough. We've had depressions where energy became cheap, for example. Second off, the idea of an energy paradigm shift causing a major depression is entirely unprecedented in history. Maybe we should go on something we've had experience with: an oil supply shock causing stagflation, lousy job markets in the manufacturing sector, and a bunch of end of the world freaks running around. Perhaps we should take that situation and extrapolate based on the severity we think P.O. will have.

No, our economy rests upon borrowing money from the Chinese and using it to sell our houses to each other. Then we visit the refi-ATM for money to go to Wal-mart. Wal-mart sends the money back to China from whom we borrow it again.

Hardly a sustainable arrangement.

Yes but Jevon’s paradox is only relevant when there is abundant cheap energy, in other words – on the up slope. As soon as we hit peak and demand begins to outpace supply, any conservation effort does not free up resources to allow an increase of consumption, but will free up resources to meet demand.

Jevon’s paradox is not a physical law but a phenomenon based on observation. And logic should tell us that it does not apply on the down slope.

Therefore as the increasing demand gradually exceeds supply, we can meet demand by gradually meeting the gap through conservation efforts. Given the massive amount of wasted energy currently in the system, surely conservation efforts will allow this process to continue for a considerable time.


In such circumstances described above (where we have no choice but to conserve), how many new comers can we expect? Growth will slow down. Yes, that is called a recession, but it is not a grand depression.

The main point is that post peak, thanks to the massive amount of conservation possible in the current system, there will be a considerable time period between when the reality of the end of the oil age hits the mainstream, and when conservation efforts can no longer meet demand. Over this time period, there will be considerable motivation on all fronts to make a transition off oil.

It's not about doing more with less.

When demand outpaces supply by even a few percent, very few people can afford the product. Within 3-5 years of Peak Oil, oil will be triple digits.

Possibly, although the system may be very dependant on waste. It's still going to mean lots of layoffs.
And I'm not sure I understand the stuff about the upslope. If we start conserving, we're going to find more energy efficient ways to use oil, which may lead to oil getting cheaper (energy use shrinking faster than supplies) which going to lead to us easing off and starting to use more of the energy efficient stuff (demand increasing), leading to oil prices shooting off again (and oil getting depleted faster). This doesn't necessarily require an increasing energy supply, just a quicker demand decrease than supply decrease, no??



So, where going to shred excess waste by concerving, then we're going to shed even more waste (if that's possible) by allocating resources to find out and implement solutions to a shrinking energy base? All this without any problems? Sorry, seems a tad on the optimistic side.

Your logic is wrong. Conserving when there is abundant energy has little effect on the price, so the effect is small. Conversely, conserving when supply is short will have a bigger effect on the price, so in fact the effect will be greater.



You really don't get it do you? Demand reduces when price is too high. 'To meet demand' means reducing price, i.e. making it available to people who can't otherwise afford it. The only reason massive conservation will meet demand is because it reduces prices. Reduced prices will deter investment in alternatives.

Unless you are expecting the free market for oil to replaced with a command economy, which seems unlikely.