Peak Oil’s Impact: The Gym

Oil plays an essential role in almost everything that touches our everyday lives. From the food we eat to the means by which we transport ourselves, our goods, and our services, to what we grow, build, have, own, need, and do, oil is almost always an important element. But the painful truth now and soon is that the ready supply of oil and gas that we almost always take for granted is on its way to becoming not-so-ready—recent production increases notwithstanding.

What happens when there’s not enough to meet all of our demands, to say nothing of those of every other nation—including the many countries seeking more growth and prosperity? What sacrifices will we be called upon to make? Which products will no longer be as readily available? Which services? Who decides? What will be decided? Who delivers that message to the designers and producers and shippers and end users? What’s their Plan B? And how will we respond when decisions are taken out of our hands? Where exactly will the dominoes tumble?

There is nothing on the horizon that will work as an adequate substitute for the efficiencies and low cost and ease of accessibility that oil has provided us. We simply do not have the means to make that happen—not the technological capabilities, not the personnel, not the industries, not the leadership … yet. Clearly, we do not have enough time to do it all with effortless ease and minimal disruptions.

Piecemeal approaches that address some small aspect of need for some short period of time in some limited geographical area for just a few consumers is in the end a monumental waste of limited resources, time, and effort. We can’t wait until we’re up to our eyeballs in Peak Oil’s impact to start figuring out what to do. We’re too close as it is. We’re going to have to be much better, much wiser, and much more focused. **

Here’s the latest contribution to my Peak Oil’s Impact series—observations and commentary on how Peak Oil’s influence will be felt in little, never-give-it-thought, day-to-day aspects of the conventional crude oil-based Life As We’ve Known It. Changes in all that we do, use, own, make, transport, etc., etc., are inevitable. A little food for thought….

New Year’s resolutions all in place? A little work to do now to shed those two, or perhaps three extra pounds from six weeks of holiday splurging at restaurants and family gatherings? Did Santa (or your significant other) leave a gift certificate to the local gym in your holiday stocking as a not-so-subtle hint?

In the fall of 2011, an article in the Huffington Post suggested that more than 50 million Americans had gym memberships. My state of Massachusetts was reported to have the highest percentage of consumers nationwide at 25.1%. Another article from earlier in the year suggested a smaller number of nationwide consumers (15%) have memberships, and more than 90% who do stop using the clubs within 90 days of joining.

So even if we cut down the 50 million figure by twenty per cent or so, that’s still a lot of people exercising at all kinds of facilities, and lot of companies employing a lot of people and purchasing a lot of equipment manufactured by a lot of companies who’ve hired a lot of employees to manufacture that equipment whose raw materials and distribution required a lot of other employed people … and so on and so on.

And the same questions posed in other articles in this Impact series carry just as much weight here [pun intended]: When the price of oil remains high—higher, eventually—and when the availability of that all-important energy source is curtailed because supply diminishes as our resource pool is drawn down every minute of every day by a level of demand impossible to have envisioned just a few decades ago, how many people along that supply and production chain are going to be impacted because every company in that same chain is going to be curtailing its industrial/commercial activities?

What kind of ripple effect rolls out across the economy?

How much worse will it be if we haven’t started engaging citizens, industry, and government at all levels in the planning process for a future on the downslope of readily available, affordable, and high-quality energy supplies? How much longer should we rely on the cherry-picked facts about our “vast” abundance etc., etc. when the facts, evidence, reality all suggest something a bit less rosy? Optimism is wonderful, but if it comes at the expense of telling us all the truth and the full range of facts, its usefulness diminishes—at our long-term expense.

How about this instead: What kind of wonderful, new opportunities are available to citizens, industry, and government who first deal with the realities of fossil fuel production, and then plan and implement new strategies accordingly? The field is pretty much wide open…

Peak Oil Matters