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Page added on December 5, 2013

Which Sectors of U.S. Economy Will ‘Peak Oil’ Imperil?

This is what I’ve been talking about here, over and over again. We are not paying attention to this, and yet it’s the most important concern we are facing in Hawaii today.

The Big Island’s anti-GMO bill, Bill 113, is just moving chairs around on the deck of the Titanic. The issue is so much bigger:

According to a press release from the University of Maryland:

“Researchers from the University of Maryland and a leading university in Spain demonstrate in a new study which sectors could put the entire U.S. economy at risk when global oil production peaks (“Peak Oil”). This multi-disciplinary team recommends immediate action by government, private and commercial sectors to reduce the vulnerability of these sectors.”

The study looked at how vulnerable different aspects of the U.S. economy are to the effects of Peak Oil. In the United States, the research concludes, such sectors would include iron mills, chemical and plastic products manufacturing, fertilizer production and air transport.

It’s almost like we are getting ready to launch the canoes from down in the south Pacific, in order to find another island home. That’s how significant these threats are.

I wrote the following back in 2007. It’s been six years now and we’re at risk of going backward with taking care of our people and food supplies, not forward!

…I told them I had a nightmare that there would be a big meeting down by the pier one day, where they announce that food supplies were short because the oil supply was short and so we would have to send thousands of people out to discover new land.

I was afraid that they would send all the people with white hair out on the boats to find new land — all the Grandmas and Grandpas and me, but maybe not June.

Grandmas and Grandpas hobbled onto the boats with their canes and their wheelchairs, clutching all their medicines, and everybody gave all of us flower leis, and everyone was saying, “Aloha, Aloha, call us when you find land! Aloha!”

I spoke about where we want to be in five, 10 or 20 years. We know that energy-related costs will be high then. And that we need to provide food for Hawaii’s people.

It’s as though soon, we’re going to have to go.

But where will we go?

Huff Post

13 Comments on "Which Sectors of U.S. Economy Will ‘Peak Oil’ Imperil?"

Bob Inget on Thu, 5th Dec 2013 9:22 pm

Go ahead eliminate GMO from ‘Big Island’.
Go back to oil based pesticide use and doubling the number of trips a farmer needs to make round and round her fields.

But don’t go crying “Oh dear me, we ran out of diesel”

Northwest Resident on Thu, 5th Dec 2013 10:11 pm

I believe that Peak Oil, in the truest usage of that term, has already imperiled ALL of the American and world economy. We see this in the huge increase in the price of a barrel of (conventional) crude oil, comparing today’s price to the price from say, just ten years or so ago. That huge price increase has crept into the general economy, which has led to massive deficits, QE, layoffs, sending production overseas to take advantage of cheaper labor, to increases in food costs — the list goes on and on. Wondering which specific sectors of the U.S. economy will be hammered by “Peak Oil” is pointless — ALL sectors will feel the pain, and already are. Except, perhaps, the undertaker…