{"id":993,"date":"2011-04-28T14:12:45","date_gmt":"2011-04-28T21:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/?p=993"},"modified":"2011-04-28T14:12:45","modified_gmt":"2011-04-28T21:12:45","slug":"oil-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2011\/04\/oil-consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil Consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know a couple of people who are on the pess\u00adim\u00adist\u00adic side of the Peak oil<\/a> hypo\u00adthes\u00adis, and a couple who are equally fer\u00advent in their optim\u00adist\u00adic belief (the idea being that we\u2019ll always find more and\/or tech\u00adno\u00adlogy will save the day). As is my wont, I\u2019m some\u00adwhere in the middle, think\u00ading we\u2019re likely to find more oil and nat\u00adur\u00adal gas, but that it should still be con\u00adserved, at least until we have more pro\u00adgress on the vari\u00adous replace\u00adment tech\u00adno\u00adlo\u00adgies. Someone (I for\u00adget who) recom\u00admen\u00added I read James Howard Kunst\u00adler\u00ad\u2019s book \u201cThe Long Emer\u00adgency\u201d (Amazon US<\/span> link<\/a>, Amazon CA<\/span> link<\/a>). It\u2019s an inter\u00adest\u00ading read, albeit a little dated (it was pub\u00adlished in 2006). He tends to skim over some issues such as the import\u00adance of the trans\u00adition from lots of oil to little oil, and the writ\u00ading does tend to the breath\u00adless (although it\u2019s far bet\u00adter in the book than on his blog). I\u2019d recom\u00admend at least skim\u00adming through it if you\u2019re inter\u00adested in the issues, maybe bor\u00adrow it from the loc\u00adal lib\u00adrary as I did.<\/p>\n

What the book did accom\u00adplish was to make me think about the con\u00adsequences of a world in which oil is much more expens\u00adive than it is now. It does\u00adn\u2019t need to be the case that we can\u00ad\u2019t find any more; a ser\u00adi\u00adous insur\u00adrec\u00adtion in Saudi Ara\u00adbia that caused major dis\u00adrup\u00adtions to the flow of oil is not out of the ques\u00adtion these days, and China is using an ever-increas\u00ading pro\u00adpor\u00adtion of the world\u2019s oil<\/a>, which will auto\u00admat\u00adic\u00adally res\u00adult in price increases.<\/p>\n

Some of the ques\u00adtions are easy to ask: What hap\u00adpens if the cost of ship\u00adping cheap goods from China trebles, or quin\u00adtuples, or worse? What hap\u00adpens to com\u00admuters when the cost of get\u00adting to work is mul\u00adti\u00adplied by 3, or 5, or 10? As the cost of heat\u00ading goes up, how many more people will die of the cold in unheated, unin\u00adsu\u00adlated, houses? What hap\u00adpens to the cost of food (a large factor of the Tunisi\u00adan upris\u00ading) as the cost of the fuel rises, giv\u00aden that the Green Revolu\u00adtion that saved so many lives depends on cheap pet\u00adro\u00adleum-based fertilisers?<\/p>\n

The price of oil has\u00adn\u2019t gone below $50 per bar\u00adrel for the last 5 years (accord\u00ading to http:\/\/www.oil-price.net\/<\/a>). We don\u2019t know what\u2019s next: it may hov\u00ader around $100 per bar\u00adrel for a while, or leap to a much high\u00ader level; either way there should be at least some dis\u00adcus\u00adsion of what oil is best used for, what we can sub\u00adsti\u00adtute oth\u00ader tech\u00adno\u00adlo\u00adgies for, and an invest\u00adment in those tech\u00adno\u00adlo\u00adgies before we need them. There are options already for power gen\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtion, even if most of them also have issues, but there seems to be less focus on food and trans\u00adport (both people and goods), and if any\u00adthing, there seems to be an ever-increas\u00ading use of pet\u00adro\u00adleum-based plastic mater\u00adi\u00adals. I don\u2019t see much pro\u00adduct\u00adive dis\u00adcus\u00adsion around these issues \u2014 any\u00adone got good point\u00aders that don\u2019t veer off too much into apo\u00adca\u00adlyptic fervour?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know a couple of people who are on the pess\u00adim\u00adist\u00adic side of the Peak oil hypo\u00adthes\u00adis, and a couple who are equally fer\u00advent in their optim\u00adist\u00adic belief (the idea being that we\u2019ll always find more and\/or tech\u00adno\u00adlogy will save the day). As is my wont, I\u2019m some\u00adwhere in the middle, think\u00ading we\u2019re likely to \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cOil Consequences\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=993"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":999,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993\/revisions\/999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}