Comments on: Peak Oil, Peak Food and Peak Everything Else

By: Stu

Stu — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:43:56 +0000

Well my family and I all know about peak oil, I've studied global oil production for a while and it is definately shrinking, since 2005, propped up only be tar sands, gas condensate, coal to liquids etc etc. If you take out what those alternative use up in energy to produce, the total net energy is on the decline even though in 2008 all liquids was higher then 2005. There is less energy available for our use, because more if it is going to extract energy.

I'm building solar panels, and a wind turbine, soon buying a property in the country, growing food, wood stove, wood heater, dam and water tanks. My solar panels and wind turbine and my wood fired boiler with mini steam engine will give us all the power we will ever need. I'm hoarding everything, spare parts, pipe, scrap metal, batteries, plastic bottles, paper, you name it, books on every aspect of sustainable living. I figure we can make it through the die off, and my kids and even my grandkids will be able to have power for lights, refrigeration etc.......but in the end......it's all to get through the adjustment period..........we are heading back to the 1850s life....the human race I mean......I figure thats about the era where humanity is sustainable at a population of about 1.5 billion and a lifestyle that can be sustained.

Never again will the human race be able to rise to such unsustainable practices.......the resources just won't be there to make it possible.....ever.

By: FARfetched

FARfetched — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:29:39 +0000

Not everyone is sitting back & watching. I was commuting in a small car that gets 40mpg for a long time, but now have switched to a motorcycle that gets 62mpg. I also work at home once a week (as I'm doing today). I make most of the bread we eat (and bought about 40lb of flour on sale a while back, but unfortunately it'll be gone in less than a year), and my in-laws nearby are farmers; we don't buy much beef or chicken, and they grow a lot of our produce in gardens. Good point about poor/no planning. The "free market" is very good at *reacting* to events, but what we need now is *proactive* planning… and frankly, the markets suck at that. Futures trading is the closest it gets, and that doesn't do anything to signal the need for fixing things *now*. Continued, continuous growth is the foundation of the market religion, and it looks like we've run out of room to grow: we've outsourced most of our jobs, run through all the easy oil, made passenger vehicles as large as possible, and overshot on home loans and other forms of debt. I'm writing a speculative fiction novel, "FAR Future," based on a slightly optimistic outlook on how things could be five years from now and beyond. It's available for reading on my blog, the 1/3 or so that's been written anyway.

By: Zeev Reuteman

Zeev Reuteman — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:49:26 +0000

This is an insightful analysis with a pityless and cold look at the real situation.

You forgot to tell us all that the economy we are used to live by will also collapse and that we will have to reconfigure the whole of our lives. Wall St. brokers, computer and petroleum engineers, stock market analysts, economists, high-tech gurus, plastic experts etc. will have to learn some other trade.

The world as we know it will crumble under the greatest crisis of all: the incoming financial crisis. No economy can survive oil depletion, because only now we realize that economists never considered a very important variable which today turned up to be determinant: cheap energy.

Unlimited growth was never sustainable.