Living with Peak Oil awareness

I’m a little concerned about my brother’s state of mind these days. He’s convinced that our way of life is doomed to a collapse which will leave innocent people in danger of starving while they spend every waking moment trying to ward off hungry bands of desperados determined to rape and pillage. He’s convinced that this is all going to happen quite soon, not just in the lifetime of his children, but in his own time – possibly in just a few years. I sympathize with his plight because I was going through the same torment a relatively short time ago.

It all began with a visit to a website call LifeAfterTheOilCrash.net, created by Matt Savinar, which began with this startling paragraph:

Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse bible prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, most widely-respected geologists, physicists, and investment bankers in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by a phenomenon known as global “Peak Oil.”

Peak Oil refers to a theory advanced by the geologist Dr. Marion King Hubbert that a natural resource like oil follows a bell-shaped production curve over time. When it reaches its peak and begins a downward trend the price and availability of this resource gets out of hand quickly. In a much shorter time than required for the upward curve, the resource becomes extremely scarce and its continued production becomes prohibitively expensive. Hubbert had calculated in 1956 that American oil production would peak in 1970 and he was dead on in this prediction. He also said that world-wide production would peak in the late 90s, failing to take into account the adjustments to the consumption rate occurring with the oil shocks of the 70s. These effects, and other more recent shocks like the Middle Eastern wars, should delay the peak by at best a couple of decades. In other words, we’ll probably reach the peak within a decade, give or take a few years. Some think we’re already there.

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