[Eli]

I was wondering what the hell are we going to do in a post peak world?

I just heard the term Hubbert’s peak a few days ago over a couple of beers but since that time I have been reading all that I can about it on the internet.

This is without a doubt the most serious problem we will face in our life time. IMHO
I have come to realize that our whole economic system is built on cheap energy. Without cheap energy that is easy and as stable as light sweet crude and natural gas there cannot be growth in our economy.

The problem is this most of us make a living doing something that is not necessary. The Airlines are already on the brink fuel costs are killing them and will kill them one little push and they are dead and that is a huge sector of our economy alone. Tourism will sink fast. The auto industry will be up a creek with losses even if they do manage to start producing efficient diesel and alternate fuel vehicles. Wal-mart will be destroyed praise God. And real-estate will go tits up and fast once a 15 min commute sounds too long.

I think peak oil will be called the greatest depression. There is not an easy way out as I see it. There are going to be millions of unemployed people who are hungry and pissed off. I am thankful that I live in America it will suck here big time but not like in Taiwan or Japan they have no natural resources and there economy depends on us buying stuff we don’t need they are little Islands with way too many people on them.

China and India are the last ones to come to the table and they will be fighting over the scraps while billions of there own people starve in the street. I can easily envision a central committee meeting in which they come to the conclusion that they have billion too many people and it is time for some them to go.

I think we will all just be doing good to keep things going and to have job so we can afford the finer things in life like food, water and shelter.

What say you?

I really think a hard crash is very likely. Have you ever looked at photos from the depression everyone looks like they just got hit by a truck.

My Grandfather stole milk to feed his starving baby brother, there plates were the tops of crisco cans and the drank out of tin cups. That is hard to imagine amongst all this wealth but soon it may be that way again.

[savethehumans]

I say, go to the Planning For The Future board, and read what people who are preparing for post-peak are doing. They'll be happy to advise you on anything you have a question about.

A lot of post-peak will involve growing our own food, fetching our own water, and fixing up existing residences/buildings ourselves to maximize things like passive solar and natural (via shade & trees) cooling. You won't be bored, I promise!

[Eli]

Thanks for the reply.
I will check it out.

After I posted I realized it was just a rant and I need to calm down and relax.

I love working with my hands and already have a garden so I am set and a large yard with great soil. I live in the burbs which does suck but I do live very close to what was once a great local agriculture center. The town I live in is not massive by any means and we have not destroyed are surrounding farmland yet.

I know the burbs are not the place to be but there are suburbs and then there are suburbs where I live it is nothing like the massive sprawl of say Houston or LA. We also have great natural resources.

[spot5050]

After I posted I realized it was just a rant and I need to calm down and relax.

Hi Eli, hope you're not getting too freaked out by PO.

The problem with understanding PO is this;

The concept of PO attracts a lot of doomers, therefore most of the comments and posts in here are overly pessimistic regarding when the peak will occur, how fast the decline will be and how dramatic the effects will be, IMHO.

Most people here are convinced that we are at peak now, that the downslope will be fast ie. >5%pa, that the social effects of the reversal will be immediate and that there are no mitigating factors eg. efficiency.

However none of those claims have been proved, yet most people here don't seem bothered by the fact that none of them are proved - they are much more comfortable just accepting what that majority says without question.

From some posters here you would get the impression that the world is going to end next wednesday, but if you ask them to backup their claims with evidence, they get rather annoyed for some reason.

[clv101]

I just heard the term Hubbert’s peak a few days ago over a couple of beers but since that time I have been reading all that I can about it on the internet.

Fantastic!

I mention peak oil all the time, 9 times out of 10 people ignore it, smile politely before quickly changing the subject. Sometimes I only mention it in passing... someone mentions the high price of fuel or something and I make some quip about peak oil, or say "try googling peak oil"... three days later that guy is totally hooked having read dozens of websites.

Some people just "get it" in seconds and others I feel will never understand.

It's very like choosing to take the red or blue pill from the Matrix film.

[Eli]

Thanks for the reply i am not getting too freaked out.

But I guess you would have to call me a doomer. I think it is a very real possibility that things could get very ugly very fast.

Lets say for any reason take your pick terrorism, political upheaval in Nigeria, or comrade Hugo gets a wild hair and decides to cut of his oil to us.

Hell, everything could just keep going like it is and demand will just keep getting higher and higher and supply is not keeping up. (If you have not noticed the Saudi's are boosting there production with heavy sour crude which most refineries can't handle thats the 1.5 mb that they keep pushing) they are at the top of their capacity now.

Any way higher fuel prices are going to hurt the airlines here is a recent quote that illustrates the point. And Higher prices are what they are going to face in the near future.

“The crisis in our industry continues. Our fuel bill this year will be US$ 83 billion—equal to the GNP of New Zealand and US$39 billion more than 2003. The Fifth horseman of the Apocalypse—the extraordinary price of fuel—is destroying our profitability. In 2004 alone airlines lost US$4.8 billion and we expect to lose another US$6 billion in 2005,” said Giovanni Bisignani, Director General and CEO of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) at the opening of the IATA Annual General Meeting and World Air Transport Summit in Tokyo.

So bang. The airlines are bleeding to death and hemriging cash. They are going to start laying more people off left and right.

Tourism and travel which are huge sectors of our economy are going into the toilet if the high per barrel price works its way to the pump. More people out of work they will have to get in line behind all the people who used to work for the airlines.

GM alone employs 1.1 million workers in the auto industry. They already are trying to remove health benefits from there employees because they can't build a decent car let alone a good hybrid or diesel. If gas goes to just 3.00 dollars a gallon how many people are still going to want to buy a hummer or Suburban? Again more huge layoffs in the auto industry.

Inflation is assured and all those people who bought real estate in CA and Las Vegas on interest only loans (which is friggin insane) are in for a real wake up. The real estate market is one of the main reason this economy has been sputrtering along at all. The word on the street is that bubble is popping as we speak.

Just turn HGtV on for your evidence they have a show called "Flip it" where people buy houses in California on credit they can't possibly afford do 10,000 dollars of work on the thing then sell it for 80,000 dollars profit to an even bigger stooge. Foreclosures will go through the rough as the job market sources and interest rates climb.

The only reason the stock market is not in the toilet is because they are the biggest dildoes of all. They keep on dancing to the same tune until the music stops. They are waiting for the music to stop, until the economic indicators come in and are negative they live in the world of numbers not reality and then like a heard they turn at once.


Ok now tell me why this won't happen.

Amen to my bruda in the Uk clv I get it. I wish some one would convince me that I am just talkin crazt talk. I would much rather be crazy then right in this case.

[halfin]

PO could be a real boon for the car companies. Sure, people won't want Hummers, but they'll be dying for hybrids and other high mileage vehicles. I'd bet that we will see the fastest replacement of the car fleet in history, if gas prices double or triple.

According to an article last weekin the L.A. Times, Brazil has gone through an amazingly fast switchover to alcohol fueled vehicles. Two years they were only 4% of new cars sold. Last month, 50%! That's how fast the public's taste can change in response to new economic conditions. Of course there is still a fleet on the road, it takes more time before those get retired and replaced.

Ironically, I predict that 10 MPG SUVs will mostly end up in the hands of the poor while the rich drive compact 70 MPG vehicles. The SUVs will be dirt cheap because it costs so much to operate them, but the poor can't afford to pay more up front for greater savings down the line, they have to save money today even if it costs them tomorrow.

Beware of forecasters who don't take into consideration how the world will change in response to oil shortages. People don't just sit there and take it. They will change their lives, their lifestyles. They will be flexible and adaptive. It's really impossible to predict all that will happen. Doomsayers tend to have a pretty much one-dimensional view of the future.

[clv101]

PO could be a real boon for the car companies. Sure, people won't want Hummers, but they'll be dying for hybrids and other high mileage vehicles. I'd bet that we will see the fastest replacement of the car fleet in history, if gas prices double or triple.

Replacing the fleet faster than it would be otherwise uses more energy in the short term not less. Since we are not going to do this until we have less energy than we previously had it doesn't sound likely.

Looking at Cuba, they lost 50% of their oil over a period of just a few years. They didn't replace infrastructure, didn't build/buy better cars, didn't build wind turbines... they couldn't afford to build or buy anything extra, different or new. Their lifestyles changed, flat bed trucks were used to move 20 people at a time. That's some crazy miles per gallon per person. It was still an old truck though not a fancy new efficient vehicle. Cuba didn't build a national rail system when they lost their oil, they didn't have the energy to.

If we wait and react to the problem it'll be too late since there won't be enough energy to build the new infrastructure. Unfortunately I think we might have waited too long.

[jato]

But I guess you would have to call me a doomer. I think it is a very real possibility that things could get very ugly very fast.

Welcome fellow doomer! I have been researching Peak Oil for a year now. I have come with an answer for peak oil. My answer is: No answer exists and our current way of life will be over soon. It is kind of like predicting your own death. You know for a fact that it will happen within a certain time frame, say within 110 years, but you don't know exactly when. Of course a mad scientist COULD develop a "fountain of youth" techno-miracle, but the odds against it are astronomical.

Doomers get a bad rap sometimes. Sometimes we are accused of wanting our future to come true. I can tell you that although it is not perfect, I love our current civilization. I want to drive my car whenever I want and retire fat and happy. Most doomers that I have seen that WANT our civilization to end are the radical environmental whackos. I try not to tangle with the environmental types here on the board since they might be right (we won’t know until it is too late, but there is a lot of environmental hype that has yet to be proven). Personally, I think Peak Oil will cause a die-off which will subsequently bring us back into a balance with nature (whether we want to or not).

[savethehumans]

Eli, if you're that close to the countryside, and you know something about growing crops, you are one of the luckiest of humans! I envy you.

Our entire society is on such fragile ground (made of eggshells, IMHO) that depletion of oil, economic collapse, climate change--any or all of these will send our house of cards tumbling down. If that's true--and I think it is--then we "doomers" should really be called "realists." And if we're trying to do something to prepare, we should be called "common sense realists." Your home gardening and current location tell me that you are a CSR. You just needed to hear about PO to realize it.

What do you do for "a living" in the current society? It's not likely to be something you can do in another 2-5 years, and keep yourself fed, clothed, and sheltered--at least, not adequately. Look how hard it is for people to do that NOW, and the crash hasn't (quite) happened yet!

We all need to take the Boy Scout motto seriously, and Be Prepared! Do visit the Planning for the Future board regularly. And do some serious thinking about your future--your SHORT term future. Don't be fooled into thinking this may happen in a decade or three--we don't have that kind of time. That's not doom and gloom, that's reality. And keep coming here to post. Read the Current Events and Geopolitics boards. Get informed there and on some good sites any of us could give you. It won't take long to realize that's the cliff right ahead. It's called "the truth," and it's why they'd rather you focus on the latest celebrity scandal or sports season. (Hummmm...Current Events and/or Geopolitics should have threads on the Downing Street Memos. That'd be a good place to start finding out what's REALLY going down!)

Godspeed and good luck to you, Eli. We're all gonna need it!

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

One little addition about life in Cuba: they made it illegal to drive past someone on the road. You have to give people a ride.

i think people go through stages then waver from doomer to optomistic and back again. Not all of us actually wind up as optomistic or conucopians but I think we waver back and forth until we find our own outlook where ever that may be on the spectrum. your outlook may still change a couple of times. welcome to the board.

[nocar]

Why do so many Americans think that it is the end of the world, or at least end of civilized society, if you have to live without driving cars?
Of course in Europe, most people have some hunch about how to live without a car waiting in the driveway, while Americans have been driving and owning cars for as long as almost all of those who now live can remember.
Just to inform those of you who think that life has to end when you can not longer have a car: Before 1890 noone had a car, and there is evidence of human civilization before that time. And "oil" mostly referred to olive oil, occasionally whale oil.

nocar

[Novus]

Of course a mad scientist COULD develop a "fountain of youth" techno-miracle, but the odds against it are astronomical.

I am a mad scientist and I might just have that techno miracle you are looking for.

[julianj]

Before I discovered PO last year I would say I was a happy-go-lucky generally optimistic person.

However, examinging the facts dispassionately:

IMO in my lifetime we are going to get clusterfucked.

As has been mentioned, PO, economic collapse, and Climate Change are going to ream us. Yes, I'm a doomer. I think I'm a realist, in that I am preparing to do the best I can myself, and also alert other people to the problems so they will have a chance to survive. Share knowledge with the people on this forum, and others.

I agree broadly with Jato, STH and CLV.

[RockHind]

kind of like predicting your own death. You know for a fact that it will happen within a certain time frame, say within 110 years

You must be eatin real healthy

[ubercrap]

PO could be a real boon for the car companies. Sure, people won't want Hummers, but they'll be dying for hybrids and other high mileage vehicles. I'd bet that we will see the fastest replacement of the car fleet in history, if gas prices double or triple.

Regarding the U.S. auto companies, I don't know what the hell they are doing, but if they don't have an ace up their sleeve that the public doesn't know about, they are screwed. It looks like they are making a massive bet on fuel-cell vehicles in the future that are unfeasible barring a miracle. In the meantime, they are in real trouble, as their vehicle lineups are pitifully inefficient. Last time I worked in the auto industry, serious development still often took half a decade. Vehicle platform strategies span decades. What are they placing their bets on now I wonder? As for foreign companies, yes we have some of the larger TDI VW's, and a couple of Japanese hybrid cars offered in the U.S. that get relatively good gas mileage, but for the most part, foreign companies that already have excellent very-high mileage cars already don't offer them here. In fact, they have recently cancelled plans to do so- like Mercedes and the Smart car. VW has some outright awesomely efficient small TDI cars that, as far as I know, have absolutely no prospects of ever making it here officially. If there is any hope of them doing something, it is going to have to be the biggest push the industry has seen since switching to war machine output during WWII in my opinion. Crash testing, safety regulations, and other things will have to be rushed through, exempted, etc... or laws repealed indefinitely or at least temporarily. It would require a lot of clear, rational thinking and cooperation. When was the last time that happened globally? We'll just have to see.

[Kez]

Why do so many Americans think that it is the end of the world, or at least end of civilized society, if you have to live without driving cars?
Of course in Europe, most people have some hunch about how to live without a car waiting in the driveway, while Americans have been driving and owning cars for as long as almost all of those who now live can remember.
Just to inform those of you who think that life has to end when you can not longer have a car: Before 1890 noone had a car, and there is evidence of human civilization before that time. And "oil" mostly referred to olive oil, occasionally whale oil.

As an American, I think it is simply because of our way of life. A lot of roads aren't set up for bikes. People commute 20 minutes or so on average to work, and don't carpool. Houses are spread out. We do have small cities with nice European type settings, with plazas and markets and whatnot, but they are only a small percentage. Most people live in suburbs far away from work or apartments in the city. People like the freedom of a car. No married couple I know has only 1 car. They all have 2 cars, but not necessarily 2 jobs.

Americans are also extremely spoiled. We have been spoiled by having a comfortable life up to this point. To suddenly take away cars, or air conditioning, or ice, or who knows what, half the population will freak out. Very few people know how to grow food, let alone grow enough to feed themselves and their family year round, and even fewer have the land to do it anyway. I can just picture carpooling every day with my wife. I will lose 1 hour every day and many more if she has to go somewhere. I can tolerate that, but most Americans will have a much harder time coping.

We are spoiled. We get food from boxes and throw it in the microwave. People at my office eat out for lunch every single day. People here leave their computers and T.V.s on all the time. They drive like maniacs at a whopping 18 MPG. They are oblivious to any concern of energy.

It is very hard for many people to go from a comfortable, free life to a different lifestyle. People and generations will always adapt, but if this issue of Peak Oil, along with terrorism, the housing bubble, social security, national debt, etc. etc. come too swiftly, then it will cause extreme problems for everyone, even those who have already adapted and are ready for the very worst.

[ubercrap]

kind of like predicting your own death. You know for a fact that it will happen within a certain time frame, say within 110 years

You must be eatin real healthy

That's interesting actually- the oldest completely verified person was 122 when they died, but there was woman in Chechnya who was supposedly 124. There was that fellow in Egypt who claimed to be extremely old a few years ago (2000?) He said remembered his family fleeing from being forced to work on the Suez Canal! For those of you unfamiliar, the canal opened in 1869, shortly after the end of the Civil War in the United States.