Entries Tagged 'Solutions' ↓

We are likely at or near peak oil. The effects will be devastating, including a permanent recession/depression and a major scaling back of civilisation-as-we-know-it. The current recession may well be as much due to high oil prices – now ~$80 per barrel, or quadruple the price of just a few years ago – as to the banksters.

Note: This article is aimed at people with some awareness of peak oil. (It has been increasingly in the news lately.) For a frightening and well-sourced look at expected outcomes, check out Life After the Oil Crash. If you don’t want to ‘believe’ that site, there are plenty more where that came from; I’ve sourced a few reputable sites at the end of this post along with some good peak oil books.

The key points are these:

• Our economy requires continuous growth. Our economy runs on oil. Oil substitutes are nowhere near being ready in sufficient quantity to take over, if that is even possible. Therefore, a reduction in oil supply/increase in prices means an economic contraction.

• Because oil is used for virtually every single thing in our society, from factory-farmed food, to our entire transportation system, to even building alternative energy systems, price increases will ripple through the economy and bankrupt countless people and companies.

What I want to talk about here is the expected response of various governments, especially mine (Canada) and the U.S. Given a serious depression brought on by spiking oil prices and a shortage of supply, what will governments do? Continue reading →

Ok, the short answer is no, because solar greenhouses are not going to be powering someone’s commute anytime soon. However, they could just be a big part of the solution to heating homes, which makes up a very large part of total energy use and will take an increasing chunk of the family budget as oil prices increase. To those who say they will be unaffected because they don’t heat with fossil fuels, think again. Solar greenhouses could also be used to grow food, another major chunk of the family budget and also highly susceptible to oil prices.

In this solar greenhouse (not pictured), the homeowners spent $1,000 and their labour to create a simple but very effective solar greenhouse that reduced their heating consumption – for a 100-year-old, 1,800 square-foot* house in Wisconsin! – “…to less than one cord of firewood and about $50 worth of natural gas.” That is remarkable. If it can work there, it can just about anywhere. Continue reading →

Steve Savage has written a very interesting analysis, complete with very helpful charts and tables and such, explaining clearly Why Most Food Could Never Be “Local”. This should scare the hell out of anyone aware of peak oil concerns and everyone who likes to eat. Let me briefly and grossly oversimplify Steve’s analysis:

• Most areas cannot grow everything locally; this applies not only to avocados and oranges, which require a certain climate, but also to wheat and many other crops for various reasons. (Read Steve’s article.)

Let me add the peak oil problem:

• Given that much food cannot be grown locally, an advanced transportation system is required to bring prairie wheat, Florida oranges, and California-everything-else to New York.
• Our entire transportation system runs on oil. All of it. We have no electric trains or trucks, no hydrogen-powered tractors and combines.
• Given that we appear to be in or very near peak oil, how exactly is food getting from farm to table?

Some will say, No problem, as the price of oil goes up alternative transportation methods will be devised. I say, How’s that working so far? The price of oil has gone up, considerably, including a very worrisome spike last year to $147 per barrel, and still no push to rebuild the rail system, no serious effort to figure out how to move essentials like food without diesel-powered trucks. Continue reading →

There is no shortage of evidence that we have the technology we need to ‘green’ our energy supply. From Pacala and Socolow’s Stabilization Wedges to 100 Miles of Mirrors, we have what we need to drastically cut carbon emissions and get off oil. The cost of acting now is vastly less than acting later – an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure – and there could even be a huge net savings. The United States, for example, would no longer need a military ‘presence’ in the Middle East. So why aren’t we taking serious steps in that direction?

Why aren’t we moving? The answers, I believe, are denial and vested interests. Continue reading →