SemiConscious Dot Org

Now there’s a cheerful title to start off Ought Seven in style, eh?

Today, I’m settling in to my first day back at work (after an infuriating ordeal in which our flight back from Maine was delayed three times, and the airline, a bunch of incompetent asswipes whose name rhymes with “Smelta,” somehow managed to send my luggage to an airport three thousand miles from the one to which I was traveling.) As I slugged back the morning’s first cup of coffee and waded through the mountains of email, newspaper stories, and blog posts that had piled up the two weeks I had been ignoring the outside world, what should appear before my eyes but a story in today’s Seattle Times about a group of people here in the Emerald City who are scared shitless about Peak Oil.

For those of you who don’t know, Peak Oil is the idea that the world’s oil supplies, which are finite, have or are about to pass their peak of production, which basically means that we have pumped out more than half of the total oil in the planet. This may not sound so bad (“hey, we’ve still got half left”) until one considers that worldwide demand for oil will continue to skyrocket as yearly production goes into decline, and that the second half of the world’s available oil is the stuff that’s harder to get to, of poorer quality, and more expensive to refine. The implications of this theory, not surprisingly, run the range from “dire” to “colossal.” Depending on who you believe, running out of oil will lead to everything from major land wars between industrial powers over the remaining resources, to worldwide economic depression as international trade collapses, to outright starvation in poor countries as the food supplies (grown with petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides) give out.

Needless to say, this is a controversial theory, and most oil companies (and the politicians they employ) scoff at it. Personally, I go back and forth on this issue: I certainly wouldn’t put it past the bastards to purposefully create the illusion of decreasing oil supply in order to maximize what they can charge per barrel and increase profits, but I also wouldn’t put it past them (and their pet politicians) to purposefully downplay the oil supply crisis so that the public is in the dark about how bad things really are. If we all suddenly realize how screwed we really are, mightn’t we then turn on the people who’ve known all along and done nothing to prepare for the end of oil? After all, the US passed Domestic Peak Oil in 1970 (our domestic oil production has been declining ever since) and what has been their great solution to that? Rebuild the national rail system? Invest massive funds into alternative fuel research? Aw, hell no. We’ve just been importing more and more oil from overseas (and getting embroiled in more and more conflicts because of that) and drilling in national parks! Considering how badly our leaders have fucked up our national energy problem, how can we expect them to react when the entire world goes into fuel crisis?

Anyhooo. I may not know whether or not the human race is on the brink of a massive energy catastrophe, but merely suspecting so is enough to change my thinking on a number of issues pertaining to my daily life. For instance, the fiance and I are seriously considering leaving the Pacific Northwest this summer and moving back to Maine, to live in the house that she recently inherited from her grandfather. Even if the most dire predictions of the Peak Oil crowd don’t come to pass, there’s no doubt that the end of cheap oil will cause significant economic upheaval. In such a situation, I’d rather be in a house whose mortgage is paid off, with a wood stove, in a small rural state, rather than in a tiny apartment in the middle of massive urban sprawl. My instinct is to get back to that house ASAP, insulate the hell out of it, slap some solar panels on the roof, and start filling the basement with canned food and firewood. Maybe I’ll plant a garden while I’m at it.

If you think this sounds paranoid, read Jim Kunstler’s predictions for 2007, and get a taste of real paranoia. Granted, he ranks as perhaps the most pessimistic of the Peak Oil theorists, but if even a small percentage of what he predicts comes to pass, we’re in for a seriously nasty ride, and sooner rather than later.