The End of the Age of Oil

[nadinbrzezinski]

Many of us have pointed out that our civilization is based on oil. We have also pointed out that sooner (and we are there in my opinion) or later, we'd reach Peak Oil. This is the stage where extracting oil becomes extremely hard and expensive (we are there, see deep ocean wells, and other places). So what happens next? As I was telling my mom this morning, as she got ready to fly home, air travel will come to a halt. SO will other things. Our houses are not designed for things like NOT needing AC. So increasingly, we will have to make some hard decisions.

Oh and this will include the old Malthusian population bomb. We have been able to more or less prevent it through the Green Revolution, which relies on... OIL. So yes, the disaster in the Gulf is bringing it closer to consciousness, not that most people realize this. So enjoy the plastics and your cars... the age of oil will come to an end, I fear, in my lifetime. And rather sooner than later...

[liberal N proud]

1. With the catastrophe in the Gulf it could be Oil, the end of the Ages.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. I don't buy it that this will be an extinction

level event. We would need a LOT MORE OIL to do that. That said, it could (and will) lead to huge dead zones in the Gulf, for at least a couple generations. Life is far more resilient than people believe it is.

[Vincardog]

2. SAD but TRUE K & R

[RKP5637]

3. Yep, just a matter of time. The group consciousness of huge groups of

people is hard to swing, often it takes a disaster. The US is often not very big on being proactive, generally it takes a disaster for things to happen... generally because of profits and money. The change will be forced, it will not be optional, because oil can not go on forever.

[Warpy]

4. I just hope we don't return to animal transport.

Just think of all that animal waste in the street...in August.

As awful as petrochemical pollution is, it smells a lot better than all that waste turning into ammonia.

Rational people would be using the end of the fossil fuels to produce the next generation of power equipment like PVCs, fuel cells, wind turbines, and other ways to harness the energy that's all around us.

Unfortunately, we'll continue to waste it producing plastic kiddie crap in China.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Some of it I fear, will be horses

[Warpy]

18. That makes sense for farmers

Not so much for the cities.

[The2ndWheel]

11. Harnessing the energy around us always leads to the same place

[pretzel4gore]

5. Maybe oil was incidental...

if one stands inside a dark building, and looks outside through a small door from the back wall, obviously the perspective is worse then that of a person standing on the roof. Our society/culture has developed according to designs, some natural but too many made of artifice. Humanity exists ONLY in a collective, SOCIALIZED way, even if one is a hermit (a hermit is hapless if some goons decide to build a walmart/garbagedump/parking lot in place of his cave)...yet, since the AGEOFREASON, or wtf, we've been told private interest drives progress, and must take precedence over communal interest. That's the right wing curse of our specie. The problem with the right wing is they scheme to own everything and control the power- using family wealth or religion or pure brute force to become #1, and in order to remain #1 they then scheme and...lie and cheat and even murder to stay #1. That's cool, and life proceeds, with the people eventually standing up and making laws and establishing moral codes etc. BUT again the rightwing curse causes the reactionary right to oppose ALL EFFORT to limit the stupid bastards....thus they lie like rugs and distort history and falsify the record and undermine truth and war on drugs and terror and god knows what else. IOW, the rightwing must be cruashed. JEsus of Nazerath taught us that 2k milleniums ago (and notice mR pig, the reactionary rightwinger, USES the good news of God to defraud and destory humanity!) 911 was an inside job, and THAT says everything that's necessary. Our planet will die, within 200 years.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Actually the ME and I centric society is more recent

than Rousseau and the rest of the crowd. In fact, we do not live in anything close to what those people envisioned.

[RKP5637]

10. I recall well when the ME generation started. Now, most can not even properly

construct a sentence. I really get tired of hearing sentences start with ME ME ME. It is so telling of the state of our current society... ME first, F the rest. What an awful recipe for the future.

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. I remember too

when I was going to school we still talked of the WE... not the ME, and I... I'd place it oh circa 1984... and that is not a coincidence either... as to who was President.

[pretzel4gore]

21. The Big Lies....warping understanding of truth, drive me nervous!

the react right supported hitler in leadup to WW2, and only by happenstance (hitler's idiotic greed and violence) did circumstance FORCE the allies to stand up to the fascists and fight them- the foxnews/cnn crowd of the day 'passed gas and giggled' at sight of 500 thousand Spaniards slaughtered by general franco, who they armed while denying the elected 'republican' government any help (though vast majority of westerners were sympathetic to the revolution)...in the end, the rightwing hid their true sentiments even as they sorta faught the fascists (D-Day happened only few months before hitler's death in april '45 -which USSR had caused by over running berlin!)
The same guys (greatest generation) who foolishly cheered nixon and reagan and then the bushes and mccain etc were supposedly against hitler, but the rightwing was hitler, in plain naked form, and they went along when smarter fascists tricked them....they also ignored evidence big oil etc was a con job, until too laTE. The old 'g gen' guys probably don't even know what they did...

[skeptical cynic]

9. I believe what you write is true...

Here is some good reading:

"Why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller" by Jeff Rugin
"Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil" by Peter Maass

[RKP5637]

12. Here is an interesting video with Peter Maass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DQtF30rmQ8

[branders seine]

14. There will be blood

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. That there will be

[yurbud]

16. k & r

[yurbud]

17. people will die because the wealthy prevented us from switching soon enough to preserve their

monopoly on energy so they could accumulate more wealth.

It is probably the greatest crime against humanity in history.

[RKP5637]

19. It well could be the one that takes us all down. I can just imagine the Wars for Oil,

the destruction and hostilities. Already we've seen that with the Iraq war... that will be nothing when China, the US and others start the Wars for Oil. I can see that easily happening in my lifetime. As you say, those with the wealth and power in oil energy will hold back change until it's too late... probably.

[FBI_Un_Sub]

20. The Eisenhower Prosperity exceeded our ability to sustain it.

We have outlived the age of oil, MacMansions, turnpike cruisers and other aspects of cheap energy. See Christopher B. Leinberger, Here Comes The Neighborhood, Atlanic Monthly, June 2010.

The increasing costs of misallocation of resources will drive us to high density housing in walkable/bicyclable urban neighborhoods connected by mass transit, and a locavore cuisine.