we’re eating oil
At the opening of the peak oil conference I attended over the weekend, the host asked everyone to think about all the ways that your life is influenced by oil. Try to identify the ways that you are affected by oil and ask yourself what you would be unable to do if oil was prohibitively expensive, or gone.
By the time I came home I was trying to plan how I would be able to buy a farm with a mountain stream without going seriously into debt in the next five years. why a mountain stream? easy hydroelectricity. i want a veggie patch, with ducks, chickens, cows, and sheep. i want solar water heating and south facing windows. i want to learn how to make soap and spin wool. i want to plant apple trees.
it’s hard for me to talk about peak oil without feeling like i’m scaring people. i think i might need to work on my powers of persuasion. Richard Heinberg suggested that one thing we could do when we went away from the conference would be to tell 10 people about peak oil. He said that telling 2 people would make a difference, but most people won’t actually listen or believe that peak oil is a reality. By telling 10 you might actually get through to 2.
But if people actually looked at the facts, listened to Colin Campbell speak or learned a little more about geology, they would clearly see that a) oil is a finite resource and b) production tends to peak 40 years after the discovery peak. World oil discoveries peaked in the 1960′s. where does that leave us now? right about here:
I’m still processing a lot of what i learned at the conference. there was a good balance of theoretical talks and practical stuff – I learned all about composting and discovered that there was a reason my green bin is full of green fuzz. I’ve been throwing all kinds of stuff in there without any attention to the balance of nutrients. I learned about permaculture, and listened to the story of a man who built his own cob house, and saw that a lot of people have been concerned about energy usage and sustainability for a long time. In the next 20 years the people who have already been working on creating a sustainable lifestyle will have a serious advantage over those who are completely and utterly dependent on oil for heating, food, employment and transportation.
One of the speakers described the “energy descent” as a return to the NORMAL human lifestyle. that really struck me hard. what do you mean? we’re not actually meant to be able to fly across the atlantic ocean in 8 hours? it’s unnatural to spend several hours a day commuting across congested cement landscapes? television is bad for children? i shouldn’t really be eating apples grown in new zealand while i live in ireland? so many of the sessions were proposing a return to a more agrarian lifestyle centered on local sustainability – grow your own food and get to know your neighbours, because you might need each other soon. This change could be better in many ways than the high-powered civilization cranked on amphetemine that we live in now. The main challenge will be getting through the transition with the things that really matter – love, hope and a few solar panels. call me a crazy hippie, i don’t care. i’ll be over there looking at a piece of land with a mountain stream.
