Dr. Webber, luv (How I Learned to Relax and Love the Peak) [View All]

...Let’s be honest — although oil has been an amazing enabler for many things we love (mobility, comfort, healthcare), it’s also bad for us in many ways. The rise of our oil-powered modern society has been concurrent with a whole host of problems: divided neighborhoods (split down the middle by highways); asthma epidemics; rampant obesity; petrodollar-funded terrorism; a changing climate. Peak oil might just be the perfect antidote to these social ills.

So although peak oil sounds intimidating and disastrous, if its arrival is concurrent with a change in our consumptive culture, new behaviors, and the development of an abundant, domestic, renewable, clean, low-carbon alternative, then it can also be synonymous with many good things. Peak oil might mean peak smog. Peak water pollution. Peak obesity. Peak traffic congestion.