Peak Oil and Personal Preparation

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Technology Thursday

The oil in the Gulf of Mexico continues to gush, some say even worse than before and it has been interesting to watch the notion of peak oil start to achieve more credibility in some of the discussions. To enter, in Jay Rosen's terms, the 'sphere of consensus'. Even the President has hinted at the peak oil challenge in some of his speeches (although I'm told he acknowledged it while campaigning, too). I've read a few books about peak oil - probably the most compelling to me so far was The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies by Richard Heinberg. Apart from wringing my hands, wondering how to live without plastic ziploc bags, keeping a few 5-gallon bottles of water in my cellar, and staying in my relatively small house (instead of heating and cooling and paying for a McMansion), I haven't actually done a whole lot to prepare for transitioning to a post-oil society.

A person who lives in my area, and a friend of a friend, has, however. She was recently profiled in the New York Times.

Mrs. Wilkerson has now read two dozen books about peak oil and related topics. For a while, she became depressed at work and had trouble discussing her feelings with her husband because the conversations were so dire, she said. At work, her colleagues told her directly “that they were tired of hearing about it,” she said. “They felt I was going to an extreme, thinking collapse was going to happen.” She added, “I was ready to move out to the country and be an organic farmer, but I learned that’s not the way to do it. You need a community.”

Now, it's totally legitimate to quibble over how the Times covers this sort of issue. (I mean, there's always soooo much to quibble with the New York Times about), but it's still a thought-provoking piece. As the subject of the piece herself wrote:

I’m glad the Transition Movement is fighting the ‘doomer’ label that was so carelessly dropped near their name in a newspaper read by millions. I represented the average American reacting to all of the available peak oil literature. It wasn’t a pretty process. It still isn’t. I still don’t have time between a full-time job and a commute to attend the transition meetings that are 45 minutes from me, much less try to start a group in my town. I can’t just change my life overnight and neither can the rest of America. But I am inspired to do more every day because I know that large communities of really smart people exist who don’t think I’m crazy for being scared about peak oil, climate change, and everything we’re doing to slowly but surely destroy ourselves.

But this piece reflecting on, among other things, how we talk and think about planning for peak oil scenarios is interesting. One thing that struck me was the line, "most of what peak oil and other environmental advocates do as personal preparations are exactly what everyone did even in the developed world until very, very recently." It is only in the last few short decades that we've been afforded the luxury (at cost to future generations) of not having to keep a root cellar and stacks of personally-canned food and such.

I don't know if I have the energy and time to do what Wilkerson has done. But then I don't know if there's really an option, either. I am increasingly persuaded, much as I hate to give in, that we should stay in our small, manageable, and reasonably energy-efficient house for at least the medium-term. My husband and I both telecommute (he full-time, and me as much as possible) and we are trying to be better about eating locally. And yet, that is just a small bit of what we probably should be doing to prepare for what in 10-15 years might be a very different environment. Much as I am an Internet partisan, the Internet's contribution to the solutions of the energy and climate crises is partial at best. I don't know that technology will save us, and even if it could, it's not clear the leaders we're electing have sufficient political courage to do the right things to enable any such technology-enabled solutions to come to fruition.

Perhaps we'll begin simply - with a herb garden, this summer.

Comments

[MrEnergyCzar]

I've been preparing for Peak Oil for 3 years now...I made some short videos showing things you can do to make yourself less vulnerable...I attached one here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUCl1TruUfo

MrEnergyCzar