[Graeme]

I found this story at the Energy Bulletin site. Thought I would share it with you.

Fixing Peak Oil Is Easy

That’s right, I said it. Peak Oil is a straw man argument.

If you want to understand what I mean, watch this alternate ending to “The Lord Of The Rings”. You will quickly understand.

See what I mean?

What it sums up is that fixing Peak Oil all comes down to the community’s decision to follow a smarter plan, act accordingly, and share collective resources and talents with one another. That is how you win.


And this is our society’s problem. We love thrillers. The story of “Peak Oil” is currently being presented as a potentially cataclysmic global energy problem. It is not. Peak Oil is a communications problem among a spoiled, techno-zombie culture. We have communicated with one another for so long about the story ending, we can’t decide what our global population’s story of continuity should be.

So until local communities start firing up moonshine and having their local farmers plant sorghum as a better feedstock alternative than corn, we aren’t really serious about fixing our problems. Until we each begin to learn about the soil food web, we aren’t serious about fixing the problem. Until we each accept one another’s faiths, and work together to improve earth’s life support systems, we are not serious about fixing the problem. If we aren’t willing to help more than just ourselves, our family, and our friends, we aren’t serious about fixing the problem.

It’s going to take collective action from each of us, as well as the truth to emerge about certain solutions that have been suppressed, to implement desperately needed changes. Changes that allow us to continue to live happy lives, eat better, and travel from one place to another. Changes that are possible, given that we take away so much power from corporations and weapons companies that run the world.

lawnstogardens

Interesting comments at the end too. What do you think?

[MD]

That’s right, I said it. Peak Oil is a straw man argument.

If you want to understand what I mean, watch this alternate ending to “The Lord Of The Rings”. You will quickly understand.

See what I mean?....What do you think?

Yeah. I see. There is an easy and obvious solution that everyone has missed.

*headslap*

How could we have been so foolish?

Good grief...

[Aaron]

The very first thing you do when planning a new project is to approach all the principals and get their "buy in" for it.

Good luck with that.

Your dog wants Hobbits.

[Graeme]

I was thinking that this idea would have some support in this group because I suspect that a few may already be living in such communities, like the Amish, who shun vehicles for the most part.

[Fishman]

Fairyland fluff. "If we would only live closer to the earth all our problems would be solved". Some maybe, all, no way.

[ROCKMAN]

Graeme,

I do appreciate your thoughts and am jealous of your hopefullnes (although I'm not a doomer by any measure)

But there are several factors that play against youy plan, IMHO. The principal impass: the need for a group effort to "fix" the system has been needed for over 30 years. But since there was little motivation folks stuck with their self interests. Now that the situation is coming to a critical point it's difficult for many of us to see self interest (as opposed to solutions beneficial to all) not gaining even more control of our actions. It would be fair for you to view this as pessimism but unless you can offer a method of changing basic human behavior (of the majority) we'll just have to call our expectations reality.

[smallpoxgirl]

What it sums up is that fixing Peak Oil all comes down to the community’s decision to follow a smarter plan, act accordingly, and share collective resources and talents with one another. That is how you win.

If I'm not mistaken, that's been tried. It was called the Soviet Union. It didn't work out so well.

[Ludi]

Fairyland fluff. "If we would only live closer to the earth all our problems would be solved". Some maybe, all, no way.

We've certainly discussed on here plenty how difficult it will be to achieve this vision of "The Shire."

See the Planning Forum for tales of woe from folks trying to actually do it. Jdumars posted recently in the Peak Oil Discussion forum about his difficulty producing just 10% of his calories from farming.

Very very easy to talk about, extremely challenging to do. Simply a complete upheaval of our society! No problem.

(btw, as you all know, I am very much in favor of this "solution" to peak oil, but I don't think I'm confused about how nearly impossible it will be to achieve)

[Revi]

Holmgren, the founder of permaculture said a very interesting thing. The best strategy as a resource is growing is competition, whereas as the resource shrinks the best strategy is cooperation.

The solution is going to be community. The Amish and folks like that cooperate and make their economy work without a lot of energy from the wider world. They don't need the inputs we do.

The solution is to become mildly Amish. We use half the fossil fuel we used to now, mostly through efficiency.

http://www.msad54.org/sahs/appliedarts/ ... /index.htm

Click on the pics for more explanation.

However, there are still all those people in the cities and suburbs who are living off of cheap hydrocarbons who can't be integrated into our cooperative communities.

It's a problem.

[sciencegirl]

Fixing peak oil is indeed simple, all we need to do is NUKE India, China, and Africa. Then we will have a 200 year supply of oil. Simple when you think about it.

[ROCKMAN]

Not really that simple sciencegirl. Launch all those nukes and the residual radiation would wipe us all out...except for those that went in the initial counterstrikes.

Nope...we'll just have to take over the oil fields with boots on the ground. Rut row! Just remebered those 3 billion pair of Chinese boots.

[lorenzo]

Fixing Peak Oil is not exactly easy, but it is of course entirely feasible.

We made the transition from photosynthesis and carbon dioxide (when we were cyanobacteria) to biomass and carbohydrates (which we digested as apes) to dung and wood (when we, as Homo sapiens, invented fire) to coal, and eventually from coal to oil.

Now we make the transition from oil to direct solar energy (i.e. wind, biomass, solar, etc...), and to nuclear fission and fusion.

If we want to call ourselves decent human beings who fulfill their cosmic duties, then we must use up all easily accessible resources of energy on this earth.

According to the Kardashev-scale, we are now a 0.72 society. Within a few decades (perhaps a century), we will be a Type 1.0 society, that is, on which uses up all the energy available on a single planet.

This is the beginning to our quest to become a Type 2.0 society (one which uses up all the energy available in a solar system). Type 3.0 (all energy available in a galaxy) will take a little longer, but eventually we will get there.

In short, the Beginning is Near!

[Ludi]

Sorry. It is much too late for that now. The suburbs mowed over and paved the permaculture garden. You are trapped. There is no escape.

And we're still busily paving over the best agricultural land, every day.

Busy busy busy!

[Ludi]

Isn't that nice?

That would be keen, except the land they're left with after depaving is sterile subsoil.


Takes awhile to fix that up so you can grow stuff in it, as you know.

[Specop_007]

Ah, so if we all become peace loving hippies sitting around holding hands singing kumbaya and sharing we will be saved??

Funny, I aint buyin it.

[mos6507]

Fixing peak oil is easy. Fewer people, less oil demand.