What is peak oil and why does it matter? And what effect will it have on the Western lifestyles we take for granted? These are not questions that many people are asking themselves yet, but this decade is going to change everything. Peak oil is upon us.
Peak oil does not mean that the world is about it run out of oil. It refers to the point at which the supply of oil can no longer increase. There is lots of the stuff left; it's just getting much more difficult to find and extract, which means it is getting very hard, and perhaps impossible, to increase the overall ''flow'' of oil out of the ground. When the flow can no longer increase, that is peak oil. Supply will then plateau for a time and eventually enter terminal decline. This is the future that awaits us, because oil is a finite, non-renewable resource.
Peak oil probably means ''peak globalisation''.
This may well result in the localisation of economies – not as a top-down initiative, nor as a grassroots uprising, but simply as a consequence of markets reacting to high oil prices.
Although energy supply issues undoubtedly have the potential to cause great human suffering, if handled wisely the forced transition away from energy-intensive consumer lifestyles could lead humanity down a more meaningful, just and sustainable path. We need to reimagine the ''good life'' beyond consumer culture. But it is important to understand that we must leave consumer lifestyles before they leave us, because if we wait for them to be taken from us by force of circumstances, the transition beyond them will not be a blessing but a curse.
theage
