The Oil Drum

>This will inevitably happen if you give credence to Westexas & Khebab's theory as I do-- it is much better for the US to be proactively prepared for this situation by biosolar Powerup

Sorry, I have to disagree. As soon as the US gov't publically acknowledges Peak Oil virtually all exporting nations will nationalize energy access and virtually stop exporting in order to make their own preparations. Since US domestic production in nearing heavy depletion there would be insufficient resources to make that transistion. Much of the industrialized world would also endure the same suffering. Undoubtedly chaos and perhaps even a collapse of the United states is likely.

The US faced a near crisis during the Oil Embargo when the US only needed to import about 7% of its oil. Today, the US imports about 60% of its oil. We also need to consider Natural Gas imports from Canada, which was not a factor in the 1970's.

The best policy the US can proceed which is to begin a large scale domestic energy development program under the umbrella of "National Security" and "Geopolitical Instablity" as a reason to motivate the US public to ween its self off foriegn oil imports. The rest of the industrialized world could also make prepations without fear of being suddenly cutoff. Unfortunately it may be too late.

Recently, I been concerned that we are already past peak energy production. Increasing we can see that the oil production is increasing only from non-conventional sources of oil (Tar Sands & GTL) and Heavy Crude, which has a lower EROI. If we consider the amount of energy extracted per investment in infrastructure and processing, I believe we might see a decline in over all energy production.

A barrel of Light sweet crude delivers more useable energy to the consumer than a barrel of heavy crude. Even if global production continues to rise, if we include the refining and extraction losses, its quite possible global energy production is already in decline.

> the Sun will keep shining for the next few billion years.

The problem is that the industrial world consumes approximately 400 years of stored sunshine every day (from fossil fuels). In order to reach a sustainable energy consumption the entire globe would need to reduce its energy use by a factor of over a thousand.

In my humble opinion the best course of action is for people to assume responsiblity for their own welfare instead of waiting for gov't to take action. Peak Oil isn't just a gov't problem, it is your problem too. I believe it would be easier to convince the entire world abandon all monotheistic religions and begin worshiping pagan gods again, than it would to convince the population to abandon their energy consumption and lifestyles forever.