Unilateral truths exist in each of our lives. One of mine is that I don’t watch horror movies. No Jaws, The Shining, or The Omen. I read The Silence of the Lambs; three weeks of checking nightly under my bed and in the closets convinced me to skip the movie.
So, when I had the opportunity to watch A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, a 2006 documentary about oil production, I felt I was on safe ground. After all, I’d already seen An Inconvenient Truth and Who Killed the Electric Car? How frightening could talking heads be about the black stuff we all take for granted?
Well, lesson learned. This film haunts me, and not in a nice way. The charts and graphs illustrating the Hubbert peak theory (when demand for oil surpasses the amount the proven oil reserves can produce) invade my dreams with $6 heating oil and global wars over the allocation of increasingly scarce oil supplies. Imagine my relief when I wake each day to a world where the retail price of gasoline is only $3/gallon.
Like usual whenever my core beliefs are challenged, I spent a few days channeling Chicken Little, running around bemoaning that the sky was falling. Everything, from the bags at the grocery store to the food they contained, was impacted. It wasn’t just the energy needed to run my car, but also energy to make that car, and almost everything else I use. Even scarier than oil at a monstrously high price is the idea of no oil at any price. Pushing beyond that initial panic hasn’t been easy; once I did, though, I began thinking about the possibilities in a world without oil.
Now, it is very unlikely that we’ll exhaust the known reserves in my lifetime, so my mind scenarios are unlikely to play out in their entirety. However, I suspect that my world, and yours, is going to look very different in the not too distant future.
Take, for instance, cars. I inquired about an electric car last week. While I didn’t test drive one (current speeds cannot exceed 25 mph, and I need to go faster), I was assured that, within the next two or three years, an all-electric car would be a viable option not only for tooling around town, but also for longer distances. Of course, these zero emissions cars are not the perfect solution – after all, the power plants that supply the juice that charges the batteries are producing greenhouse gases. Still, between what I’ve read, and what I learned that day at the dealer, I anticipate that I will probably purchase one of these sooner rather than later.
And then there was the micro-hydro presentation that my son and I attended a few months ago. While a miniature hydro-electric plant isn’t feasible for my backyard, I have no difficulty picturing many locations where they would work.
If micro-hydro seems far-fetched, hydro-electric power on a larger scale has been with us for many years already, and wind power on a small scale is rapidly gaining speed. Yes, sometimes the turbines are motionless, and they do change the landscape–still, there is little more beautiful to me than the sight of one of these behemoths slicing through the air.
The recent tax season has convinced me that others are also having thoughts of conservation and alternative energy sources. Increasing numbers are moving forward with all of the conviction of the recently converted, and their tax returns claim credits for fuel-efficient furnaces, improved insulation, and new windows, doors and skylights. Some have gone a step further, installing solar collectors and wind turbines.
The doomsday scenario shown in A Crude Awakening is only one of many possibilities, one that is predicated on oil being the only energy source that we have in enough abundance to power all of the developed and developing countries, pushing each of these economies to new heights of production and consumption. As those same oil supplies become increasingly scarce and expensive, though, it’s apparent that we all have to change our expectations.
Many continue to say that, even with oil prices at their current level, most of the alternatives are still more expensive and not economically viable. To those, I would reply that that there are many choices we make in life that are equally nonsensical when viewed in purely economic terms. One need only look at the many ways we spend money that bears no relation to providing for our basic needs. Perhaps we should redefine the status symbol, moving from ones that embody gross excess to ones of absolute efficiency. Investments in alternative energy sources, and in alternative fuel modes of transportation, benefit us not only individually, but also as a society.
I never dreamed I’d contemplate purchasing an electric car, but then, I never anticipated the need while gasoline was cheap.But now, whenever I’m having trouble sleeping, I imagine a future where my electric car is plugged into my solar and wind powered home.
The technology exists to wean us off the oil habit–now all that’s missing is the will.
Unilateral truths exist in each of our lives. One of mine is that I don’t watch horror movies. No Jaws, The Shining, or The Omen. I read The Silence of the Lambs; three weeks of checking nightly under my bed and in the closets convinced me to skip the movie.
So, when I had the opportunity to watch A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, a 2006 documentary about oil production, I felt I was on safe ground. After all, I’d already seen An Inconvenient Truth and Who Killed the Electric Car? How frightening could talking heads be about the black stuff we all take for granted?
Well, lesson learned. This film haunts me, and not in a nice way. The charts and graphs illustrating the Hubbert peak theory (when demand for oil surpasses the amount the proven oil reserves can produce) invade my dreams with $6 heating oil and global wars over the allocation of increasingly scarce oil supplies. Imagine my relief when I wake each day to a world where the retail price of gasoline is only $3/gallon.
Like usual whenever my core beliefs are challenged, I spent a few days channeling Chicken Little, running around bemoaning that the sky was falling. Everything, from the bags at the grocery store to the food they contained, was impacted. It wasn’t just the energy needed to run my car, but also energy to make that car, and almost everything else I use. Even scarier than oil at a monstrously high price is the idea of no oil at any price. Pushing beyond that initial panic hasn’t been easy; once I did, though, I began thinking about the possibilities in a world without oil.
Now, it is very unlikely that we’ll exhaust the known reserves in my lifetime, so my mind scenarios are unlikely to play out in their entirety. However, I suspect that my world, and yours, is going to look very different in the not too distant future.
Take, for instance, cars. I inquired about an electric car last week. While I didn’t test drive one (current speeds cannot exceed 25 mph, and I need to go faster), I was assured that, within the next two or three years, an all-electric car would be a viable option not only for tooling around town, but also for longer distances. Of course, these zero-emissions cars are not the perfect solution – after all, the power plants that supply the juice that charges the batteries are producing greenhouse gases. Still, between what I’ve read, and what I learned that day at the dealer, I anticipate that I will probably purchase one of these sooner rather than later.
And then there was the micro-hydro presentation that my son and I attended a few months ago. While a miniature hydro-electric plant isn’t feasible for my backyard, I have no difficulty picturing many locations where they would work.
If micro-hydro seems far-fetched, hydro-electric power on a larger scale has been with us for many years already, and wind power on a small scale is rapidly gaining speed. Yes, sometimes the turbines are motionless, and they do change the landscape–still, there is little more beautiful to me than the sight of one of these behemoths slicing through the air.
The recent tax season has convinced me that others are also having thoughts of conservation and alternative energy sources. Increasing numbers are moving forward with all of the conviction of the recently converted, and their tax returns claim credits for fuel-efficient furnaces, improved insulation, and new windows, doors, and skylights. Some have gone a step further, installing solar collectors and wind turbines.
The doomsday scenario shown in A Crude Awakening is only one of many possibilities, one that is predicated on oil being the only energy source that we have in enough abundance to power all of the developed and developing countries, pushing each of these economies to new heights of production and consumption. As those same oil supplies become increasingly scarce and expensive, though, it’s apparent that we all have to change our expectations.
Many continue to say that, even with oil prices at their current level, most of the alternatives are still more expensive and not economically viable. To those, I would reply that there are many choices we make in life that are equally nonsensical when viewed in purely economic terms. One need only look at the many ways we spend money that bears no relation to providing for our basic needs. Perhaps we should redefine the status symbol, moving from ones that embody gross excess to ones of absolute efficiency. Investments in alternative energy sources, and in alternative fuel modes of transportation, benefit us not only individually, but also as a society.
I never dreamed I’d contemplate purchasing an electric car, but then, I never anticipated the need while gasoline was cheap. But now, whenever I’m having trouble sleeping, I imagine a future where my electric car is plugged into my solar and wind-powered home.
The technology exists to wean us off the oil habit–now all that’s missing is the will.
