Nice web site. You remind me of Obama girl for some reason. Go Peak Oil Girl!

LOL, the peak oil strip video was my favorite, I didn't understand a single word she was saying... lol, just kidding, it is nice to see women so passionate about a subject like this.. All the college women my age are too into getting wasted at frat parties to consider, much less understand, such issues. Good work though

Kris,

I run a Peak Oil website (http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net) and am starting a cult . . . excuse me - "post oil sustainable commune" - in the woods here in Northern California. Perhaps you'd be interested in being the cult's . . . excuse me "community's" Alpha-Female. If so, feel free to contact me via the website.

http://tinyurl.com/6mzwkm

Best,

Matt

Well, now you've done it!

As a good looking intelligent women in a room full of nerds, it is only a mater of time before the marriage proposals start.

Hey Kris;
Thanks for posting here. Sorry to see that noone really tried to give you any Kunstler Questions.

I don't know what to ask him myself. I don't really find his tone useful.. while he does get a lot of attention with it. There's something to be said for that, I guess.

I've heard him say he lives in, if not suburbia, then a populated area. Aside from his writing, what does he do to get his household AND his community more prepared for what might be coming?

Good luck with the interview.
Many Thanks for your efforts to get the word out.

Bob

Robert, lots of people can cut lots of spending and lots of driving. The problem is that lots of people will then no longer have a job. I fear that anything other than exponential growth in energy usage and spending will almost immediately result in a depression or worse in the United States. This country will not cope well with a economic collapse.

It is still not clear to me what you mean by "the Doomers are right". Is it:

A) that declining oil production must of necessity cause the industrial revolution to unwind, meaning people must either starve to death (due to declining food production) or freeze to death. Or,

B) that human mass psychology will lead to societal failure as fear grips large groups of people (regardless whether their homes can still technically be heated, or food delivered to them) and the resulting chaos leads to collapse of governments?

On the $100/gal mind experiment:

Afraid I may not help your mood much here, as I've already eliminated virtually all automobile use (thus reduced my gasoline consumption to a few gallons per month.) Plus, since I live in California now I do not do any cooling in my abode, thus my electricity consumption is not very large. Part of this is purely choice of lifestyle (and being single allows such), part is due to force frugality in order to plan my future better.

If gasoline be $100/gal I'd be much more concerned about the social fabric around me falling apart enough to greatly increase crime. Also that commerce around me would fail. For example, I don't live too far from a small produce market owned by a farmer who hauls in the produce three times a week, from his farm some 30 miles away. I doubt he could continue to do that if gasoline rises to $100.

My hope is that we will muddle through this, and while we no doubt have some difficult times ahead of us, we have a massive amount of fat to cut.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "muddle through," but one of my greatest fears is that we do just that, muddle through. For me that implies doing just enough to get through without actually collapsing. But that would imply that fossil fuels continue to be burned and that CO2 keeps rising, even if more slowly.

And that is a recipe for disaster if the new thoughts on climate sensitivity are correct. We'd be looking at a world minimally 3C warmer than pre-industrial days. And that would look like this:

3C Warmer

What people need to realize is that we really don't have a choice, even if you discount Peak Oil completely. No matter what, we have to transform the world economy, and that almost certainly means eventually arriving at a new paradigm not driven by growth. And *that* means an end to fractional banking, conglomerates, etc.

I do think we can downsize and keep connections alive, thus avoiding a New Dark Age, but it will require cooperation.

And that thought sends me into waves of despair. I don't see it happening if it must rely on human cooperation on massive scales.

Cheers

Wow. Someone must have taken a LONG damn time to write this. This is worthy of being over here in full.

Anonymous post over at R^2's blog in response to $100/gal gas

Anonymous said...

I would move south. Living north of roughly 40° would be untenable energy wise. A reasonable assumption would be that the Canadian border would probably move south to the Mason-Dixon line. Because transportation costs would be extremely high, I would sell or abandon all personal property.

I believe that I would not be the only one moving south. It's highly likely that the authorities would respond to this migration by encouraging the development of 250 sq ft flat projects. Note, they're now doing this in LA today and this tiny square footage living space is becoming more common in other urban areas as well. The big question is would be more like college dorm or more of a slum. I suspect slums would be more common. Because this tiny space is something I would not be able to share (hell, I found 850 sq ft tough to share), I would either have a partner in a different one somewhere else or become single again...

[edited by Leanan. Please don't post other people's work in entirety without permission.]

cheery future rr
May 25, 2008 1:52 PM

What worries me from a UK perspective is the casual violence and vandalism that is virtually endemic in our society. When this is happening in the 'good' times what the hell are things going to be like when times get tough?

As an example of the mindless society we now have, in this city on Friday night in one area thirty youths went on a rampage and slashed one hundred cars tyres. Just another typical nightly 'monor' incident in England.

The analysis I read a few years ago by MI5 that the UK is 3 meals from anarchy I believe is very true. I think it is inevitable that things will get bad.

It's good to know the numbers, and TOD certainly provides that. The only relevant facts are those which can effect us personally, and a large detailed scenario driven map allows us to plan more effectively.

The worst case scenario for me and my family is to become homeless and destitute. Of course we don't need PO to cause that, but that scenario firms up 2 - 3 years ahead.

So the issues of population, industry, and national energy tend to pass beyond my horizon when one accepts that; people will kill you for no reason, let alone a bite of food; industry is virtually non-existent; and the electricity and gas is off. WTF do you do then?

My current endeavours are totally geared toward making enough money to be able to afford to buy a smallholding and become as self-sufficient as possible, I admit to a twinge of jealousy of those who have that lifestyle already, and I wish them fair fortune, they'll need it.

My view is powerdown voluntarily before being powered off in-voluntarily.

regards

The suffering will be unbelievable

I think people are overestimating how difficult it would be to remove 90% of their energy consumption.

I use no gasoline, no air conditioning, no heating, and no incandescents, and yet I could reduce my energy needs by 90% without much trouble. If I, who already have a low-energy lifestyle, can do that, almost anyone can by accepting similar levels of inconvenience. Here's how it works:

First, about 1/4 of my raw btu usage is due to flying; in this scenario, teleconferencing and local vacations would take that to zero.

The rest of my energy use is overwhelmingly electricity. The major components (including work) are:
1) Refrigerator
2) Washer/dryer
3) Hot water heater
4) Cooking
5) Computers

What would I need to do?

1) Switch to non-perishable foods and turn off the refrigerator. Canned meat instead of frozen, canned or fresh vegetables instead of frozen, water instead of milk, olive oil instead of butter, etc.

2) Handwash clothes in cold water.

3) Heat water as I need it, and only for 3-minute showers.

4) Lots of healthy, tasty recipes can be prepared in a short time on a single burner. I'd miss tea, though.

5) One laptop instead of multiple desktops.

Given those five changes - none of which would be all that painful - my electricity use would go down by around 90%. It'd be a sacrifice, certainly - there's a reason I haven't made those changes already - but I think people enormously underestimate the scope of relatively painless changes that are possible (or maybe people trivialize what "suffering" actually is). The six changes above would leave me much, much closer to a modern lifestyle than to how my grandparents grew up, and they didn't do that badly.

Using drastically less energy would be a hassle, but it just wouldn't be as big of a deal as a lot of people are making it out to be.

Anyone who says people wouldn't make the above changes and also move to a small apartment close to work or spend twice as long to bike/transit/carpool, give up most of their hobbies, stop travelling, and deal with almost all temperature by sweaters or sweating in order to survive a serious energy crisis is simply fantasizing that they're somehow better and more knowledgeable and more noble than "those people" are. They're not.

The thing is, it's not even a matter of whether people will want to make these changes or not; they wouldn't be able to afford not to, if energy prices started rising to $100/gal. The massive amount of merely-inconvenient demand destruction that would ensue from these measures would keep plenty of energy for truly necessary parts of society, and would hugely accelerate the buildout of alternative energy sources. $100/gal-level prices simply aren't sustainable, not when current technology can give us wind/solar/hydro baseload at 20c/kWh.

In the West, at least, enough alternative energy sources already exist and enough demand can be removed without real pain that there's no plausible scenario where critical functions like agriculture wouldn't be able to get energy. Moreover, fossil fuels are currently abundant, and their production is large enough that their availability has a limit to how quickly it can decline; getting down to 25% of current availability for the West will be a period of decades, not years, and it's again fantasy to think people won't spend those decades building replacements.

A near and rapid peak wouldn't be much fun, but even tiny apartments and no cars or AC isn't "unbelievable suffering". The worst plausible scenario is a return to the economic malaise of the 70s.

But hopefully not bellbottoms. *shudder*

Well Robert, I won't partake in your exercise for gas at $100 per gallon because it is a non-sequiter. We should be focusing on gas at $10/gal or $15/gal, or more importantly in N. American anyway, diesel at $8/gal.

After all, for many parts of the country diesel = food.

(Hope some journalist picks this up, it is simple and poignant)
Diesel=Food

I can't imagine for all of you that live in densely populated areas how you must feel? It must be disheartening to take a look around in your every day life and ask yourself, "Just how is this going to continue?"

Do you feel like you are watching the build up scene in a horror movie? "Don't go into the room innocent and attractive young lady!!"

So PO hits the mainstream and we find out we are not delegates for the short bus anymore - now what?

P.S. I hate being on the West Coast because by the time I get involved the cocktail party is long disbanded. Makes for some tragic artsy film construct really...

Siwmae Robert,

If you and spouse are carrying small children, can I suggest that the Archdruid is very comforting for people's Worst Fears.

JM certainly thinks that industrial civilisation is probably doomed, but that we will by declining in a series a steps, with respites, and even rallies, in between.

Dmitri Orlov is quite comforting too about the chances of holding the decline at not worse than the third stage of collapse -- though I have to say that my intuition has been for some time that the US's collapse will be quite a bit worse than the SU's, and might go deeper down the five stages.

My only dependents are my dear dogs, so I sympathise with younger people caught in this mess with small children. Best wishes.

Yeah, we spell better on our LOLcats.

I think it's just as well they linked to PeakOil.com instead of there. The traffic is killing PO.com. There's a flood of newbies asking things like what kind of gun to buy to hold off the zombie hordes, or saying peak oil is nothing to worry about, we just need to buy Priuses or stop drinking bottled water.

And there's a truly unbelievable amount of spam today. Fairly on-topic spam, like ads for wood stoves, renewable energy stock tips, and perpetual motion machines, but still...holy crap.

It is not too far off that TOD, Peakoil.com, etc...will no longer be needed...as we all migrate to survivalist.com, http://frugalfolks.com/, etc.

There is a plaque at the Frnaklin D. Roosevelt Memorial in Washington D.C. quoting the late president:

"I see one third of a nation ill housed, ill clad, and ill nourished."

Rampant real estate speculation with the use of interest only loans (balloon notes) coupled with rampant stock speculation, followed by bank failures, and a terrible drought on the plains led to the Great Depression. Oil production was increasing as the nation emerged from the Depression in the late thirties.

Currently there are forecasts for an above average wheat harvest in Kansas and the United States this year. Some have speculated that it may take four years to rebuild grain stocks. On the other hand the future of corn is not certain as fewer acres were planted this year and more ethanol distilleries were being built. Some areas such as parts of Australia, the Texas Panhandle, and Pakistan were reporting drought if not emminent disaster.

But "survivalism" does mean something specific - it means solutions that are primarily about personal protection, rather than community oriented strategies.

I don't think that is necessarily true. At least, Wikipedia leaves room for the more community-oriented definition.

That is the kind of neighbors we all need to have and the kind of relationship with our neighbors. Thanks for being a role model, Burgundy!