Peak Oil Production - Happening Now

There will be point where trying to go after the last bit of oil uses more oil then you'll get out. Yet before you even get to that point you will see oil powered farms (as their tractors sit idle) get eaten up by animal powered farms.
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Psy Fox,


I owned a horse once, and I've lived around horses more than I care to remember.
To me, there is nothing romantic about horses; they're just a royal pain in the ass.
Maybe, if we were like the Indians, and rode bareback, and let the horses forage for themselves un-shod winter and sumer, it might be a little more fun.

Still, if I ever woke up in the morning and found myself in the middle of horse-culture, I would be in a state of shock.
For good or ill, I just don't think that's the direction an out-of-oil culture would take.

Let's not forget that between the old horse-culture and our current oil-culture there was a stream driven coal-culture.
Steam driven tractor-combines, steam driven rail-roads, steam driven ships, steam driven factories.

And if we did go back to horses, there wouldn't be near enough horses for everyone.
It would take forty years to breed enough horses, and in the mean time their price would be way high.
Not to mention there are very few hay storage barns around these days.
Everyone would have to have a barn, or live in town near large hay storage werehouses.

Of course we could just scrap Civilization completely, and live wild and free like many of the indigenous peoples did.
But I don't think any of us possess the necessary courage for that kind of fearless freedom.

 

I said farmers. Horses are the logical steep for farmers if oil stoped being an option, unless they want to be hand. For the us Bicycles would be a better solution and as you said steam but there is not enough production or skilled people to build enough steam cars.

N Vietnam moved tons of good via Bicyles during the Vietnam war and foot and China had more mobility BEFORE they started to move to cars.

 

Not to mention that not many people today would be happy with riding horses with so many people who are anti-animal cruelty and what-not.
But I disagree, I think there are some who possess the necessary courage for the kind of fearless freedom it would take to scrap civilization completey. Maybe more than I think...

 

Tamee,

The impression I get from most of your posts, especially the ones in our Communal Forum, is that you're one of the few who might really possess the potential for the kind of fear-less freedom I was speaking of.

Where as myself, even though I live a minamalist lifestyle in a communal wanna-be farm scene, I would have a difficult time adjusting to a post-civilized world.

Though, I think most of our difficulty would come from those even more fear-full than ourselves, and who would submissively support even more repressive and reactionary Hierarchys such as warlords, sheriffs, property owner associations, ect, ect...

 

You're probably right.

 

I hate to break it to you guys but much as horses will be very useful to some, the problem for farming is not only how to power their machinery.

The reason we can produce the kind of quantity of food we can now is because of fertilizers and pesticides. And 99% of pesticides require Oil as a feedstock, and fertilizers require natural gas.

If they were taken away and we were suddenly left with all Organic farming we couldn't produce a quarter of the qauntity of food we need.

This crisis will need government rationing of supplies of oil to agriculture at discounted rates, while a mass upscale of the order of 4 or 5 times the current capacity of agriculture in the western world is tunred into Organic farming.

The US is lucky enough to have spare agrivagricultural land if it can manage the irrigation requirements but the UK just doesn't have the land area to feed its population any more.

I really hate this Idea because it is really against my beliefs by GM might be required to feed our popluations with less oil around. But once you start down that slipery slope, sooner or later it will come back to haunt you.

 

Hi guys, I have found a Book you can all read online, or print off and read on paper if you want.


Its called

The Oil Age Is Over : What to expect as the world runs out of cheap oil, 2005 - 2050.

By Matt Savinar J.D.

I have put the book online at http://www.egreenparty.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Oil/

Or You can visit his site at www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net


Check it out, its a good book and will explain a lot about what to expect as this issue developes.

 

But since oil is going to gradually drop off you could just use the Illich solution. Stop production of comsumer goods, get rid of cars, reclaim farm land for suburbs by then the oil freed would be enough for fertilizers and pesticides till industrial farming is phased out.

Thus you have controlled deindustrialization and a soft landing.

 

Very True Psy Fox, If you or I were in power we could do that.

But who is ever going to get elected on the promise of a reduction of consumer goods and taking away peoples rights to drive.

Exactly what we need is a controlled power down, so that we can save as many people as possible and try to keep an organised society, if somewhat simpler and less power hungry.

But the public won't have that. They will elect many maniacs who promise to do the oposite. eventually we will learn, but in my oppinion it will be the hard and painfull way, with more loss of life than there need be.



Still, the more people who understand what the actual problem is, the better our chances. Most of the worlds current population really doesn't understand how important cheap oil is to maintaining their current lifestyle. So they won't understand what is needed or what went quite so wrong when the crash begins to happen (it is probably just begining now).

 

Yhea there is a Roadkill Bill comic about that SUV scapegoats

Yhea but even if we didn't have a oil problem there would still be the issue of pollution and global warming. This is pretty much the tragedy of the commons

This is a problem of the educational system really just preparing children to be workers. I got in big trouble back in highschool when in a economics class I brought up Ivan Illich, they didn't want "communist" ideas polluting the learning enviorment.

 

id better start becoming more efficiant with my bike

 

Very true Psy Fox,

Although in the UK I have had some Geography and History Teachers when I was younger that were quite on the ball. Sometimes I wish I could go back and talk to some of them again now. Plus I think that Communism is a bit less of a taboo in the UK. Although it is laughed at more and more as time has gone by.

We had a good topic a while ago on www.peakoil.com the message board about how Marx was right. Communism encouraged less consumerism and didn't rely on Ecconomic growth, which is really what has lead us to the problems we are about to face.


PS, I like those comics, very good site there. Thanks for introducing me.

 

I wanna know how you just "get rid" of cars. I don't think they magically disappear. Maybe we'll never be able to get rid of them, but I definitely think we need to stop using them.

 

I haven't read the entire thread, but I'm wonder whether it's occurred to any of you that the price of a barrel of oil, from what I understand, should be at about $80 now. Obviously, the price of oil has been kept artificially low, so this increase should in fact not be all that alarming.

 

If the oil industry was transparent and our view of resources was more realistic, oil should have got more expensive in a linear fashion since the day it was discovered, being extremly expensive at the end. Half as expensive in the middle.


What is actually happening and is going to happen is that it has been kept cheap for all of the first half of the stuff we have got through, then production peaks, and it will be extremely expensive, as production levels fall away through the second half.

The Trouble will be the sudden change that happens when we can no longer increase the production each year. Our entire ecconomy is designed around cheap oil, when it suddenly becomes expensive, everything changes and the western way of life is no longer affordable.

Ecconomic growth needs an expanding energy supply. A contracting energy supply means recession, depression, ecconomic collapse.

We need a new ecconomic model. And we will increasingly need new sources of renewable energy. We will probably need them immediately actually because fossil fuels will go through the roof in price almost overnight.


Oil should probably be around $200 a barrel by now.

 

False logic. Why shouldn't prices rise and fall? Demand does, and suppliers cannot predict demand perfectly, nor can they instantly respond to changes in demand. If your logic were true then the price of every commodity has been controlled by a giant conspiracy all throughout history.

Perhaps that is overly simplistic?

 

In general, though, once a commodity becomes rarer, the price of that commodity increases. Ever since 1975 or thereabouts, known sources of oil have been declining, making it all the more evident that oil is a limited resource. Theoretically, this should have led to a steady increase in the price of oil as oil producers sought to maximize their returns from a supply that was dwindling yet in high demand. Instead, oil was kept at an artificially low price, therefore, instead of making a smooth transition to alternative fuels, we are suddenly faced with a crisis of sorts.

 

No. Simply put, this planet started out with a certain amount of gold, silver, titanium, iron, platinum, oil, gas, etc etc. If your theories were correct every single one of these should have gradually increased in price since they were first discovered. Alternatively, global conspiracies have kept the price down for every single one of these commodities for centuries, conspiracies so powerful that they can subvert the profit seeking multinational oil corporations and mining companies. That's really not convincing.

 

If you want to discuss the issue, that's one thing, but don't be a jack ass by asserting that I have certain belief. I never said anything about "global conspiracies" or any such thing. When I say that the price of oil has been kept artificially low, it simply means that the commodity isn't being valued as though it were a limited resource. There is only a limited amount of oil available, and indications are that during the course of one century, were have significantly depleted this resource, thus likely depriving future generations of this valuable resource.