Peak Oil is You
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Page added on May 13, 2013
Peak Oil: Our Children
An observation worth noting … and pondering, from John James Audubon:
A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.
Sage advice for those of with children (or just care about them). All the more pointed when those of us who have had opportunities to seriously consider at least some of the major issues of the day appreciate the great likelihood that significant changes loom. More to the point: we also appreciate how widespread the impacts will be, how unprepared most of us are, and how poorly informed most of us are because others are making conscious decisions to keep it that way.
Not a good scenario.
As I and others take great pains to state over and over: the facts under, on, and above ground suggest that declining energy supplies and a warming planet are going to create great burdens and thus great challenges for all of us. Blame, reasons, causes are incidental. The facts are the facts. Cherry-pick what you will; ignore; deny; gloss over; believe what you will about ingenuity and technology. None of it will matter in the long-run (which is now a shorter long-run).
It is high time that those who lead, those who know, and those who care take steps now to begin learning what they must, planning for what they can, and teaching/informing others so that we gradually but surely move the inhabitants of the only planet we have onto paths providing all of us with our best chances to enjoy some reasonable measures of peace, prosperity, and well-being in a future sure to be vastly different from the familiar past.
Idealistic to be sure, but I prefer this approach to guide me: I have great faith in our abilities to do these things, and I remain convinced this is far more an opportunity than a crisis.
But the clock is ticking….
3 Comments on "Peak Oil: Our Children"
Arthur on Mon, 13th May 2013 11:14 am
The term ‘peak oil’ is outdated and should be replaced by ‘peak carbon’ (maybe the webmaster of this site should take note that peakcarbon.com can still be had for 8$.lol). Additionally, although the ‘old school’ peak oil crowd a la Colin Campbell was entirely correct about peak conventional oil, new developments are underway that paint a new picture where fossil fuels are going to be around longer than anticipated. That does NOT nullify the picture of bell curve shaped carbon resource depletion at all, but it does mean that there is extra time for transition (a smooth one afterall?) towards a renewable society at the cost of extra environmental degradation (read: a methane far**ng planet, excuse my french).
peakyeast on Mon, 13th May 2013 11:53 am
Solving the energy problem in any way less than absolutely free energy which consumes no otherwise usefull resources and that can be scaled to infite hights could solve our problems.
Anything less will just manke humankind able to extract every single little piece of biomass on earth – and then collapse.
Why?
1. Climates changing – but civilisation has invested too much to move – and chopped up nature so much they it cant move to new areas either.
2. Polutants in food is now an everyday event. Dont eat fish more than 2 times a week because of dioxin, heavy metals, and so forth. Its the same with most meats. The vegetables has pesticides and other interesting things added to make them look good.
3. The Biosystem is collapsing worldwide – at an increasing rate. Fisheries 30% collapsed – the rest fully exploited except for a few % at very remote places with little content.
4. The fights for resources are on the increase and the situation is desperate in many places. Do you really think its possible for politicians to say: Hey population your money is now worth didley-squat – the economic system is disabled and now we will all work for a sustainable future?
5. How will we suddenly find decades of more resources? Its not only oil and nature. We have a peak of everything. Silver, copper, phosphor and many other things. The oregrades are consistently getting worse.
6. Nuclear power solution: How do you think safety will be on a nuclear power plant when the profit margins are near 0 and everyone is fighting to get a piece of the shrinking pie? Greed is a major driver to slacken on safety. Just look at the current plants which were built in a time of plenty. Plants that should have been dismantled has gotten extension upon extension. There are more and more cases near catastrophic failures because of wear and tear.
And btw. the expenses for dismantling and handling the waste is increasing fast. Just look at the current plants being outphased. They are talking about decades of work and greatly increased costs…
These will in case of private owned plants, of course, be socialized expenses – since its much cheaper just to go bankrupt than fix the problem.
And I could go on all day with more “doomsday” problems.
And remember: Solving one – just means one of the others will get you.
The only chance is to solve ALL the problems – and what are the chances of that – since we cant even fix ONE relatively minor problem?
J-Gav on Mon, 13th May 2013 12:34 pm
“Great burdens and great challenges” is right! though I don’t share Turcotte’s “great faith” in our abilities to do these things (ie what’s necessary to maintain “reasonable measures of peace, prosperity and well-being” into the future). I’d give it more of a “slim chance” probability rating, even supposing the big energy crunch can be pushed out a decade or so on the back of unconventionals. So for me, what we’re coming up to will look far more like a crisis than an opportunity, at least for the 99%.