Fred First, best known for his Fragments from Floyd blog, has initiated another blog Nameless Creek, intended to give a home to the "...more sober, less ethereal side of my writer’s mind...."
On Nameless Creek, he has posted Peak Oil Primer. And Take-Home Tests, in which he writes the following.
Forgive me, this is not an easy demon to confront. But soon, we will enter detox from many decades of ignorant, euphoric addiction to cheap oil. While there will continue to be oil in the ground, much of what's left will stay there. The time has come for us to imagine how we will get on in a world not fueled by a carbon economy.
Fred proceeds to provide three scenarios for consideration:
Scenario #1: Gas is in short supply. Each person in the U.S. of driving age is issued a permit to get a maximum of 10 gallons of gas a week, and only on certain days of the week based alphabetically on your last name.
Scenario #2: Due to geopolitical circumstances (a 9-11 magnitude attack but many times more serious--say, a dirty nuclear bomb detonated under the Arch in St. Louis) we're told that all ports will be closed and gas deliveries will be interrupted across the country for 4 to 6 weeks and thereafter hopefully restored.
Scenario #3: Gasoline becomes both very scarce and very expensive--say $12-15 a gallon if you can get it. Not only that, but things made from petroleum--plastics, fertilizer--can no longer be manufactured at affordable prices due to gas costs, and moreover, there is no longer international shipping via air or sea or interstate commerce via tractor trailer trucks to get those things where they are needed. When something breaks or runs out, it stays broken and empty.
Fred continues, as below.
If you walk through these scenarios, it becomes quickly clear that as individuals, and especially if reacting after the situation is upon us, we're not going to live as we have always lived. We may be struggling to survive. Period.
Our best and perhaps only hope is to start as soon as possible--as families, neighborhoods, towns--preparing contingencies for life in the Post-Carbon age. This will necessarily mean living less wastefully and way more locally and cooperatively. It means re-inventing ourselves within a generation. It is a predicament of enormous complexity because we have chosen to ignore the obvious until the last minute before midnight.
This elephant in the room is not a new guest. Some folks have seen it coming for decades. Ignoring it will not make it disappear. And there is good that can come from meeting the matter with courage, skill and cooperation. Some things can be better than they were; almost everything will be different.
For the rest of Fred's posting, please follow the above link (also posted in the right hand sidebar under For Fun and Enlightenment). Very thought-provoking.
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