Energy Descent Pathways. Evaluating Potential Responses to Peak Oil

12 Comments on "Energy Descent Pathways. Evaluating Potential Responses to Peak Oil"

rockman on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 10:00 am 



“For Western societies dependent on supplies of cheap oil and gas, a rapid and unplanned for discontinuity in supply could be disastrous, affecting everything from food distribution to transportation”.

Again I’ll play the same worn out record. But the above statement makes it so easy. It implies that we haven’t reached a critical point of not having “cheap oil and gas”. But beware: when we reach the day of “rapid and unplanned for discontinuity in supply” we’ll no longer have the cheap oil we enjoy today. LOL.

Again this piece highlights what I consider a foolish obsession with PO dates.

Nony on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 10:55 am 



I downloaded and skimmed this thesis. It is from 2006. Why tout this now? BTW, Hopkins also had a 2010 Ph.D. thesis (can Google for the pdf).

The document is pretty readable, but dated. The discussion of food localization looks rather “off” in retrospect. I’m still finding my multi-pack chicken breasts at the freezer in the Safeway. 😉

There is one interesting discussion of how geologists predict an early peak and economists a later one. Looks like the economists are winning. 😉

‘Porritt (2005:160) sums up the debate between the two main schools of thought;

“…geologists involved in the debate tend to incline towards an earlier date (perhaps as soon as 2008), principally on the basis that overall discoveries of oil peaked in the 1960s, with just one new barrel of oil being discovered today for every four that is consumed; economists incline towards a later date (2015/2020) given that there has always been more in the ground than the experts have historically predicted and that extraction techniques just go on getting better and better”’

JuanP on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 11:09 am 



My principal personal response to Peak Oil was to lower my expectations for the future and try to live more in the moment.
I have been a prepper since I was a Boy Scout as a child, so nothing much changed there.

ronpatterson on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 11:44 am 



Rockman, I agree… somewhat. We may have already passed peak oil, and didn’t even know it. But when the peak does occur, if it hasn’t already, we will not know it then either. But what we will notice will be when most of the world suddenly says, “Oh crap, world oil production seems to be in steep decline”!

At that point stock markets all over the world will crash and all kinds of other economic disasters will happen. That date will come to pass and that date is very important.

My guess is that date will be sometime during 2017. But it could be as late as 2020 but I seriously doubt it.

Calhoun on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 11:45 am 



I sometimes wonder if Hopkins is a well-intentioned fool or a mendacious self promoter. Does he really believe that we can offset the impact of peak oil by growing food in our front yards and riding bicycles? Maybe they could pull that kind of thing off in England, but in the U.S.A.? I just came back from a vacation in Phoenix — the zombie city of all zombie cities — it’s dead but doesn’t know it yet. How are those 8.5 million people going to plan for sustainability? While I was there it rained a whole 3/10 of an inch and the local news treated it like a cause for celebration since it hadn’t rained at all in the previous four months. Sustainable? My arse.

GregT on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 12:32 pm 



“economists incline towards a later date (2015/2020) given that there has always been more in the ground than the experts have historically predicted and that extraction techniques just go on getting better and better”

Never let the experts get in the way of willful exuberance. That would just spoil the party.

J-Gav on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 12:49 pm 



Ron – Yes! When several large stock markets crash, that will be an important date! as many sectors of economic activity are likely to be severely impacted. And my reckoning as to timing is pretty close to yours.

Calhoun – Yes! The Southwest is in a pickle – cities like Phoenix, Vegas, Albuquerque NM, Las Cruzes NM,El Paso TX (a bit later perhaps since the recent discovery of an aquifer north of town and an ambitious new water management plan) – are hardly sustainable in the middle term. That’s several million people in a big fix!

But England is indeed a different kettle of fish, and though they also have their own major problems with energy supply etc. I wouldn’t call Hopkins either a well-intentioned fool or a mendacious self-promoter. Well-intentioned, yes, self-promoter to some extent, certainly, but mendacious fool, no.

I think he’s sincerely trying to spread the “reduce your footprint now before you’re forced to” message in a national context which is not particularly receptive.

Sure, the Totnes Transition Town movement launched by Hopkins does look a bit like a well-heeled, bourgeois do-gooders version of the ‘Big Shift,’ but has nevertheless inspired a number of different initiatives around the country (and abroad) which could be useful in the coming years.

Nony on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 1:04 pm 



I am in San Diego, looking out at the ocean right now. This town would be untenable in the localized agriculture vision many of you have. It has grown from 20 years ago…and even more from 40 years ago. I will be back in another 20. I expect Sand Dog to be the same or bigger. No Chicken Little, no apocalypse.

Go Padres, go Navy, go surfing. 🙂

Calhoun on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 2:09 pm 



I spent a week in San Diego last winter. Or more accurately, I spent a week in my car in San Diego last winter. Because it is a relatively affluent city, it will be able to command resources when other places can’t. Still, the S.D. economy relies on gasoline as much or more than most other places in the U.S. You can’t get past that one too easily.

Joe_D on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 8:00 pm 



Go Albert Bartlett 🙂 “The Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race is Our Inability to Understand the Exponential Function”.

longtimber on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 9:07 pm 



“My principal personal response to Peak Oil was to lower my expectations for the future and try to live more in the moment… been a prepper since I was a Boy Scout as a child, so nothing much changed there.”
** Amen … Credo ** Says it all…

Makati1 on Sun, 6th Jul 2014 9:35 pm 



“Transition” the new “IN” word for the yuppies or whatever the upper middle class are called today. What’s left of them, that is. Nice for the still semi-affluent to pretend to be current and progressive. However, none of the articles I have read describe reality very well. There have always been do-gooders in the world, but few, if any, are successful at taking whatever they are preaching, into the mainstream. They preach to the less than 1% that already are converted.

How many of us can afford to go to seminars, buy books and the materials/tools needed to ‘transition’? Most in the uS are trying to pay the bills and keep their homes.

How does someone who has never held a shovel in his/her life suddenly transition into a successful truck farmer/gardener in less than a decade or two with a family to take care of and bills to pay?

How does someone who thinks of worn clothing as being the meaning of dirty ever understand that ‘dirt’ is the life giving necessity of all of us. That it is not just the minerals but the thousands of different organisms it contains that makes it into productive soil. The very organisms we seem hell bent on killing with the help of Monsanto or Dow.

Transition is what we all should do. But, I think it is too late to turn the herd from the cliff.