Calm before the Storm

Peak Oil? You wouldn't know it. People are talking all over the place about the promise of tar sands, ethanol, and wind power. Gasoline is dropping in price. I had predicted before the summer that oil would hit $95 a barrel and gasoline $3.50 a gallon. Summer is nearly over. The price of oil at its highest was about $78 a barrel and right now it is struggling to hold onto $70; gasoline is tumbling rapidly from a high of $2.95 a gallon to today's $2.56 a gallon. Iran's dictatoriot Ahmadinejad seems all huff and puff like a wolf that can't blow the house down. There's been a war between Israel and Hezbollahia, cohabitant of Lebanon, but that appears to be blowing over. The far prognosis for natural gas is grim, but right now there is a tremendous glut of the stuff. Hurricanes? This has been a dud of a season. Only now are threats coming up, but the latest one, Ernesto, has diminished from a potential Gulf rig and refinery whacker to just another thunderstorm with rain and tornado threats here in Virginia. So where's the peak oil? Where even is global warming?

It's coming. We don't know exactly when, but there will come a time when the world will not be able to increase oil production. Someone at the recent ASPO convention says that will occur 1500 days from 2006 July 26 or so; that's in the year 2010. Others say 2008. When it happens, they say, only "tremendous demand destruction" will cause demand to meet supply. In the past few months, oil production worldwide has stayed steady at 84 million barrels per day, but some of that could be the result of refinery destruction. But it also suggests we may be nearing the peak. We have trouble with the Alaska pipeline, although half of it is back up. They say that Saudi Arabia is experiencing trouble trying to match oil output with its rhetoric.

So this makes us all feel uneasy. What to do now? Move to the city? Grow a vegetable garden in our yard? Buy a Toyota Prius or a bicycle? Move closer to work? Stock up on food? Is this a disaster or something? It will be, but not of the kind that stocking up for disasters will help, because it will be long lasting. My thoughts are that we should reduce our output - take out all that is unneeded for fulfillment in our lives. Cut the lights. Ride the bike. Take the train. Move to the city, or even better yet, to a self-sufficient urban village or cohousing project. We do what we can, and we will just have to see what happens.