We MeLoids all keep track of the Peak Oil meme. If you're not familiar with the Peak Oil phenomenon, please take a minute to go read about it on Wikipedia. Different people make different predictions about how our lives will be different in a post Peak Oil (PPO) world, ranging from "we're totally fucked, society as we know it will end" to "no big deal, we'll adjust". Personally, I think it'll be somewhere in between.
The one thing we know about a PPO world is that oil will be much more expensive, and we use oil profligately for everything: the obvious energy uses but also fertilizer, plastics, most non-natural fabrics and food (yes, you eat petroleum). And complex manufactured objects like iPods use barrels of oil per unit. The raw materials for each component have to be extracted and processed and then transported several times through stages of distribution to reach assembly. Then the components have to be transported to the place of their final assembly into the device, which is then packaged and transported again through multiple links to the point of sale. Food is another issue. The commonly cited estimate is that the average food item eaten by a US consumer has been transported 1,000-1,500 miles.
I find myself trying to imagine the PPO world several times a day. Pretty much any time I purchase something or unwrap something or throw something away, I wonder whether I'll have access to that item PPO or if I do, how it will be produced, packaged and distributed. For example, last night I used some plastic cling wrap. When oil is $200 per barrel will it still be economical to manufacture and sell cling wrap? The wide variety of produce we have available year round will almost certainly go away, but what will be available? Will local farmers figure out ways to use greenhouses or other solar heating to grow lettuce in northern climes in the winter?
It's possible we could maintain some of our "food on wheels" lifestyle if we did as James Howard Kunstler is always harping: rebuild our rail systems. But since we won't start doing that until it's way beyond obvious that we need to, there are going to be many years without Tropicana fresh squeezed OJ in the interim. We certainly won't be able to manufacture and distribute 116,000 iPods a day [Apple sold 10.5 million iPods in the first quarter of 2007].
What kinds of things will be economical to distribute on a national scale? Laundry soap? Bicycles? M&Ms? And which will fall away or be produced regionally or locally?
Vacations will certainly change dramatically. Fuel costs are already a major component of airline fares, so big increases in oil costs will immediately make air travel unaffordable to all but the rich. And you won't be driving your 8 mpg RV to Yellowstone, either. If you're lucky, maybe you can take a train to many places. Will greyhound experience a huge revival?
By the way, if you're new to this topic the first thing you should do is disabuse yourself of the notion that biofuels or hydrogen are going to save us. Corn prices are already skyrocketing due to diversion of corn to biofuel production, and so far those biofuels are making an almost unmeasurably small contribution to overall energy needs. It is just simply not possible to grow enough biomass to replace a significant amount of petroleum and still have land to grow any food. And hydrogen is not an energy source. It takes large amounts of energy to produce the hydrogen (for example, by extracting it from seawater); by some estimates more energy than the hydrogen stores. So hydrogen is merely a new way to transport energy, not to produce it.
What do you think? How fucked will we be? What products that you use every day will no longer be available? And for those you think will be available, how and where will they be produced?
