When the dust settles in 50 years, or sooner perhaps, the world will have changed, and what no one will expect is its beauty. Roads will crack and fill with grasses and flowers. Fields will erupt in the place of parking lots. Cities will lose their hard edges, and shine more modestly, connected once again to nature, her streams, rocks and country mice.
It's easy to listen to the warnings about Peak Oil and feel a sense of gloom. But it doesn't have to be a gloomy destiny. I strongly believe that it can usher in a wonderful and balanced era, and a more beautiful and comfortable world than people have lived in for centuries.
Oil Depletion implies:
1) an end to rampant consumption - a way of life that has us chasing after our own tails, driving around to afford homes we never rest in and appliances we seldom have time to use
2) an end to inequality - remember that Globalisation is really unsustainable colonialisation based on cheap oil
3) the avoidance of the infinite war - the war on terror is really a competition for less and less (oil) resources, and the favorite, the USA, competes using unfair means - steroids, false starts, changing the rules to suits its purposes. When fellow competitors appeal (whom we call 'the terrorists'), they get disqualified.
4) the beginning of climate restoration.
5) saving our freedoms:
Do we want a free world or an SUV?
Are we going to consent to pre-emptive wars, and nuclear acts just so that we can eat at Burger King and drive on a highway? Are we going to support fascism, the way Germany supported their leaders, when our lifestyles come, seemingly, screamingly, under threat. Or will we say, "You know, it's okay. I'll get a bicycle. We'll adapt, we'll change, we'll do something else."
Will we insist on our way, and place that insistence on taking the lives and freedoms away from others in faraway countires with faraway gods?
Currently 27% of Americans believe that torture should be used as a basic policy (towards achieving their policies)
6) to leave resources to our children
7) health and wellbeing
But I'm not suggesting a dreamy fairy tale ending. I'm suggesting it is a possibility, and a more likely one if we remain alert, and alive. We also need to prep ourselves to recognise what is coming, or risk being swept up in a tide, where what we do won't matter.
Here's some background:
Contradictions Between OECD (USA and its Main Allies) and the Rest Of the World:
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) advocakes democracy, yet democracy is not permitted (but sanctioned by the US) in Saudi Arabia.
Compromise of basic American principles: freedom for us, but torture for others, democracy for us (so-called) but imperialism for others
Early Peak Oil (now) likely to be a time of imminent crisis, including major terrorist attacks, nuclear attack on Ghawar.
Strategic shifts could occur rapidly and unexpectedly. Russia is currently rapidly arming itself, perhaps because it sees that after Iran, it may find itself as the USA's next target. Russia may join OPEC and protect it.
Future Scenario 1
OECD Prevail by force
- Middle East is completely conquered and subjugated
- US/Europe produce its oil at record pace
- Enormous profits based on this conquest
- World Oil Peak accelerated, decline occurs even sooner
- Inequality accelarated, rich get richer, poor poorer: wealth is based on oil consumption
Future Scenario 2
Persian Gulf Suppliers Prevail: by war or by bluff
- Middle east profits, huge $ transfers to Middle east
- Probably cause World Depression
- Poorer nations priced out of the market - rich get poorer, poorer get poorer, and the middle class survive.
- Middle East won't prepare for a post oil era
Here's why I suggest that Peak Oil may be a blessing. It relies on our involvement, yours and mine, as consumers, as people who are participants in world markets, taking an ACTIVE role in directing our spending decisions with intelligence and intuition.
Now that you know this, use this, or be accountable for not doing so:
Future Scenario 3
Consumer Restraint
- alternative to Middle East or OECD options
- Based on Uppsala Protocol (Google this, as it refers to Colin Campbell)
> importers cut imports to match depletion
> importers allocating taxes, pricing, rationing
> transparency returns to trade
- world prices brought in line with production costs (why do we pay 5 times the value for a t-shirt or a can of cola?)
- poor countries given a larger share of the world market as their costs come into line with real world prices
- profiteering from shortages (and ghetto life) is avoided
Here the poor get richer, the middle class may maintain themselves, and the super rich get poorer.
It's a choice we all have to make. You can start changing the way you consume today. Consume less, and don't buy things you don't really need.
If you could have the whole world, where would you put it.
So from here on out, learn to travel light.
Please note: Much of the information here comes directly from The Geopolitical Implications of Peak Oil, presented by Pat Murphy for The Community Solution. This documentary is available for free, and can be downloaded at http://www.chomsky.info/audionvideo.htm
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