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130 comments on Peak Oil Planning: What Should We Do Now?
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130 comments on Peak Oil Planning: What Should We Do Now?
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Regarding seeing family and friends, maybe what I should say is, "If you would normally go on a vacation, maybe you should go visit relatives or friends instead." As people get laid off work, and have more financial problems, this is becoming possible for fewer and fewer people. I know in the past couple of years, we have gone out of our way to visit some relatives that we might not otherwise have seen. If the relatives are fairly close by, and you can stay with them, the trip need not be terribly expensive.
Don't get me wrong. I think it's great to visit loved ones, in general. But we have a rather skewed idea now about what expectations are reasonable as far as how far and how often we travel.
If everyone who could, even in this economy, took a flight or two or three...in the next year, we would also be using up a lot of increasingly precious oil that could not then be used for growing food, emergency vehicles, and other less discretionary purposes.
There are no happy ways of pointing out that our habits of popping across the country or around the world when we want a vacation or to visit those we love are totally out of whack with the limited world in which we live.
If everyone everywhere did take this advice, then yes, there would be lots of additional flights. Given the number of people who read this blog, the number of additional flights would be close to zero, especially in this time of many empty seats on most flights now.
Building community relations is very good advice, as the coming times of stress will test these neighborly bonds, so strengthening them now indicates insightful proactive planning on the part of the author.
One aspect that will undoubtedly grow will be webcam 'calls' between family members who will no longer be able to meet face to face as often as in the past.
with peak oil i have come to think in a very different way about neighbors; not totally different from marriage.
not easily changed & better work on the relationship for we are in this together; & there will be togetherness like it or not.
Well, yeah, but I think we should try to apply the categorical imperative once in a while. If it's not ok for everyone in the world to do it, what right do we have to do it?
Americans in particular have long since rationalized away any such ethical restrictions, of course. This is because we are pariahs and vermin on the earth, oops, I mean, this is because we are a superior form of life who have the God-given right to consume all things far beyond sustainable levels and far beyond global average. And if you disagree, we will simply invade you two-bit country.
Sorry--haven't got much sleep in the last 72 hours and am starting to channel scary voices.