Where does Peak Oil fit into our current strategies??

Doesn't the impending peak oil time casts a whole new light on globalization issues? Doesn't global trade depend on cheap transportation of goods? Doesn't our military aggression depend on cheap energy? Just as the peaking of oil will limit the impact of global warming, doesn't it also effect other "globalization issues"?

As I ponder how best to respond to the changing world scene, the impending loss of cheap energy seems to materially change many of today's issues so that they will fade with cheap energy. Sorting out practical responses to the anticipated changes seems important: like finding land with your own water source; developing community food sources; supporting alternative energy resources in your own back yard.

Please respond with your thoughts on this. I am struggling to put my energy into useful strategies that match the real issues we will face.

localization is the key
as well as self-reliance

by Jeremy Rifkin. It's an interesting book...

"Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the author of a number of thought-provoking books, including The Biotech Century and The End of Work, explains that the next great economic era will be powered by hydrogen. Drawing on a variety of well-balanced research studies, his basic premise is that the world must switch from a fossil-fuel economy to a hydrogen economy. This must happen soon for three reasons: the imminent peak of global oil production, the increased concentration of remaining oil reserves in the Middle East one of the most politically and socially unstable regions of the world and the steady heating up of the world's atmosphere from fossil-fuel dependency. Detailing the shortcomings of traditional energy sources in light of possible terrorist attacks, Rifkin then covers the merits of hydrogen as a "forever fuel" and offers his own vision of a social revolution that he calls worldwide hydrogen energy web (HEW), much like today's World Wide Web. This revolution will make energy available to everyone, not just the wealthiest nations, and would be the first democratic energy regime in history."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1585421936/qid=1068740473/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-3552184-8235221?v=glance&s=books

To extract it from seawater ain't exactly cheap. To extract it from oil is just as bad as using oil. Same with coal ....

What's the solution?

The alcohol economy is compatible with the hyrdogen economy

"If the entire US automotive fleet were to run on pure ethanol, nearly all of the continental US would be required in order to grow the feedstock. There would be no land left over even to house the American population, let alone feed it." - Richard Heinberg, The Party's Over

When farmers can make a profit growing energy, it will not take long to get 6% of continental American land mass into cultivation of biomass fuel--enough to replace our economy's dependence on fossil fuels. We will no longer be increasing the C02 burden in the atmosphere. The threat of global greenhouse warming and adverse climactic change will diminish. To keep costs down, pyrolysis reactors need to be located within a 50 mile radius of the energy farms. This necessity will bring life back to our small towns by providing jobs locally.

HEMP IS THE NUMBER ONE biomass producer on planet earth: 10 tons per acre in approximately four months. It is a woody plant containing 77% cellulose. Wood produces 60% cellulose. This energy crop can be harvested with equipment readily available. It can be "cubed" by modifying hay cubing equipment. This method condenses the bulk, reducing trucking costs from the field to the pyrolysis reactor. And the biomass cubes are ready for conversion with no further treatment.

Hemp is drought resistant, making it an ideal crop in the dry western regions of the country. Hemp is the only biomass resource capable of making America energy independent. And our government outlawed it in 1938.

http://www.hemp4fuel.com/nontesters/hemp4fuel/link.html

it isn't just energy production that depends on lots of cheap oil, our fertilized, pesticide sprayed agriculture is very petroleum intensive.

what are the viable options for alternative home building?

how will goods and people be moved?

if worldwide oil is peaking within this decade, how will our lives look? perhaps this issue is what drives the secrecy of the whitehouse energy plans? is it speeding up efforts to develop nuclear energy?

what do other duers think about this?

whether it's coal or tar sands or whatever.

This is a BIG BIG problem that's been coming at us like an asteroid for years now. Nobody ever wanted to face it except for Carter, and look what happened to him.

The first thing that will happen: massive inflation. The price of oil is going to rise exponentially as it starts to run out.

Everything, and I mean everything, in our economy is dependent on oil. So the price of everything will go up exponentially as well.

After that ... it's anybody's guess.

Takes more energy to produce ethanol from biomass than is released when used as fuel. Same thing with hydrogen. There's no replacement for oil, unfortunately.

why so little interest in this?

"THE BUSH/CHENEY ENERGY STRATEGY: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. FOREIGN AND MILITARY POLICY (A Paper Prepared for the Second Annual Meeting of the Association for Study of Peak Oil Paris, France, 26-27 May 2003)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4458.htm

The energy context and its looming crisis without parallel is crucial to making sense of the Bush/Cheney madness.

You might also want to check out the website for Tthe Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas: http://www.peakoil.net/ Some interesting material in its newsletters.

the the relationship between current energy policy and the military: one of the points raised was the need to provide security for oil production equipment and people in countries hostile to the US; this security is underwritten by taxpayers to protect the dominence and profit of energy corporations.

so. at the "on the ground level" of day to day life, how can we prepare for the peaking of oil?

Because if you talk realistically about it, you're gonna bum everybody out in a big big way.

Carter tried it. Look what happened to him. Reagan came along with his "what, me worry?" attitude and was quite popular.

People don't want to hear bad news, they want to hear good news.

And this is nothing but bad news. Everybody's got their head up their ass, just assuming that somehow technology's gonna get us out of this fix. Either that or it won't REALLY run out.

But it's gonna.

I studied this twenty years ago and I really didn't think we'd see an oil war for another 20 years or so, probably not until 2020. But we just had the first. Okay, maybe Gulf War I was the first.

It's very difficult to not see doomsday down the road when one studies this with any realism.

it will be, but why doomsday? this will be a very wideranging change, and there will inherently be positive elements; to anticipate and plan seems useful. and to get a sense of which problems will grow and which will diminish. not from panic but from the normal process of adapting to change.

Oh, you meant OUR strategy.

Worst case scenario, we set the clock back 200 years. People did get by then, you know. In preparation, I'll exchange my fireplace for a woodburning one.

I think legislation should be passed to force automakers to make all thier models hybrids before peak oil. In case y'all haven't noticed, Toyota and Honda are gaining market share in the US precisely because of thier gains in the technology of hybrids.

That would leave more oil for the other things that we use it for such as plastics, etc. It won't stop the oil from running out but may hold off the day of reckoning until we can find a suitable technology to replace it.