Peak Oil featured in Rolling Stone.

The Long Emergency

What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?

By JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER

A few weeks ago, the price of oil ratcheted above fifty-five dollars a barrel, which is about twenty dollars a barrel more than a year ago. The next day, the oil story was buried on page six of the New York Times business section. Apparently, the price of oil is not considered significant news, even when it goes up five bucks a barrel in the span of ten days. That same day, the stock market shot up more than a hundred points because, CNN said, government data showed no signs of inflation. Note to clueless nation: Call planet Earth.
Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, famously remarked that "people cannot stand too much reality." What you're about to read may challenge your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the kind of world into which events are propelling us. We are in for a rough ride through uncharted territory.

It has been very hard for Americans -- lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment, recreational shopping and compulsive motoring -- to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in our technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America is still sleepwalking into the future. I call this coming time the Long Emergency.

Most immediately we face the end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era. It is no exaggeration to state that reliable supplies of cheap oil and natural gas underlie everything we identify as the necessities of modern life -- not to mention all of its comforts and luxuries: central heating, air conditioning, cars, airplanes, electric lights, inexpensive clothing, recorded music, movies, hip-replacement surgery, national defense -- you name it.

more...

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633?pageid=rs.NewsArchive&pageregion=mainRegion&rnd=1111686680548&has-player=true

Kunstler is a great writer and it is great the this topic is getting out. Many people who read Rolling Stone are probably not aware of this issue since they are caught up in the American Idol/Survivor world we live in.

I have been a Kunstler follower for several years now and visit his website once a week for his weekly column posted on Sundays/Mondays.

www.kunstler.com

Thanks for the more comprehensive link. Have you seen the movie The End of Suburbia? Great documentary explaining Peak Oil, and Kunstler is great in it.

but it was 2 hours away and I thought that was kind of hypocritcal for me to drive that far to see a movie abouta movie the end of cheap oil.

I was going to go for a day and see some friends, go shopping too, but my wife talked me out of it. I will probably order the video online now. That way I can educate my friends and family too!

I'm not even halfway through it, but it's a great opener for people who don't know too much about it (me included). I know it's coming, and that the implications mean that everything will have to change, but that's about it...

Here's another good Peak Oil site:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Introduction.html

I have to say, as a diabetic, the prospect of losing Pharmaceuticals is the scariest for me. I can see adjusting to farming and living in small communities. Hell, my inlaws have 50 acres, streams, farmland... we could move out there. But without insulin, I die, no two ways about it. That's a thought that keeps me up at night, when I read about it :( And I know it's coming, and it scares the shit out of me. I can see learning to give up 'stuff', comfort, the internet, etc., etc. But dying because I can't get something that is so easily available right now... I know, it's gonna happen for a lot of people. Damn scary. :scared:

My best friend from college is diabetic. We still keep in touch, and I know he has read a lot about this, he hasn't owned a car in 5 years. But he has not mentioned how he plans to get his insulin. Hopefully the government will enact a plan to help people, but they still act like ostriches about this.

I think what's scariest is that it's not something I can learn to do on my own. I can learn to grow food, chop wood, cook from scratch over a fire (in fact sort of know how to do all those things, already), raise and kill animals if desired, etc. But I do not have the resources to produce insulin, period. It's so black-and-white. I hope you're right, and that the gov't will do something toward helping people with chronic conditions that are fatal if not treated, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Maybe they'll find a stem-cell cure by then... they've already cured some mice in Canada with stem-cell therapy.

hopefully nothing made from petrochemicals...

The centerfold is to die for.

I'm familiar with many of the issues that he touches on, and he's written a most likely vision of the future. And, he doesn't even touch on some of the graver issues of starvation throughout much of the world where over population is straining most of the local resources of food, water, cooking fuel, disease, etc.

We have lived in a time of hedonistic surplusses for a long time. While historians have noticed the profound changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, just a bit over a century ago, few have heeded some interpretations of possibilities.

While many have focused on "nuclear winter" scenarios for either nuclear warfare disasters or comet-impacting disasters, few have taken that data and applied it to peak oil conditions. While the decline isn't as "overnight" as nuclear winter types of visions, it is still far more rapid and incipient than most want to confront.

We're grasshoppers fiddling our way through the summer and facing a long winter of insufficient resources to maintain our standard of living on all levels. High prices at the gas pumps is the first wake-up call that will impact any and everyone who drives. It will not only impact each commuter's disposable income budget, but will cause prices to rise for most goods and commidities.

Skills that many have failed to learn will become increasingly important: such as cooking from scratch, sewing clothing for family members, foodstuff gardening on the family surburban plot, etc.

There is a reason that most township development had towns placed approximately 20 miles apart, it was the distance for a one-day trip by horseback. As metroplexes have grown to fill in the blank spaces inbetween and automobiles have expanded a day's range, it's still new to human productive development. One of the major causes of the Great Depression of the 30s was the profound changes caused by going away from a horse-based society to an gas-driven one. Thousands of people lost their means of employment in the vast infrastructure that supported horses during the 20s.

Several things can be done within a short period of time that would drop our immediate consumption of oil by about half:

1) Within cities, tax personal automobiles to the point that only one per household will be possible and that would be an energy-efficient one and use a WWII type of rationing per household. If a household had only 20 gals of gas allocated to them per week, a entire series of reallocation of personal choices would have to be made. For those who choose not to drive regularly, they would create a family "energy" budget for vacations, or would be able to sell their allocation to someone else.

2) Create non-automobile streets criss-crossing the city where only bicycles or electric-vehicles would be allowed -- none of which could exceed a 20 mph speed limit.

3) On highways, change the diamond commuter lanes over to being at least half of the lanes. With gasoline rationing and fewer lanes, people would be forced to carpool.

If we can break the the back of personal automobile gasoline consumption to at least half, there would be enough resources available to build a new infrastructure that might not have to be a return to conditions prior to 1900.

I think President Carter might have implemented some of the things your are advocating if he had been re-elected. He tried to tell Americans the truth about their wasteful ways and got burned. The Onion made a joke headline about it asking, "Which Message Will Resonate With Voters?" Under a picture of Jimmy Carter, it said "Let's Talk Better Mileage". Under a picture of Ronald Reagan, it said "Kill the Bastards".

As long as Dubya continues to fight the onset of Peak Oil in the tradition of The Gipper, some of the sensible ideas you are suggesting will only be a "What if?" scenario for those of us who cling to optimistic ideals.

Well, if gasoline prices continue to rise, some of this will happen automatically. With California showing $3/gal gasoline right now, it will continue to rise. Carpooling will become a necessity and/or use of rapid transit.

recreational shopping and compulsive motoring" . . . if that doesn't describe this country to a tee, I don't know what does . . . might also add "and praying to Jesus to help them win the lottery" . . .

I'm not optimistic about the Southeast, either, for different reasons. I think it will be subject to substantial levels of violence as the grievances of the formerly middle class boil over and collide with the delusions of Pentecostal Christian extremism. The latent encoded behavior of Southern culture includes an outsized notion of individualism and the belief that firearms ought to be used in the defense of it. This is a poor recipe for civic cohesion.