major problems of surviving peak oil
Major Problems Of Surviving Peak Oil
Interesting and scary scenario,
regards tallex
Major Problems Of Surviving Peak Oil
By Norman
18 October, 2006 http://www.countercurrents.org/po-norman181006.htm
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - George Orwell
Rob Hopkins says in 'Why the Survivalists Have Got It Wrong' that he has very little time for the survivalist response to peak oil, and refers to 'Preparing for a Crash: Nuts and Bolts' by Zachary Nowak.
Rob may well be partially right but he, like Zachary Nowak and many other 'community' minded people tend to miss or are just in denial with the true reality of what the effects of Peak Oil will really mean.
REPLACEMENT TECHNOLOGY
One of the words that seem to go with 'community' is 'renewable'. These words seem to go hand in hand, so let us take a look at them starting with 'renewable energy'.
There are many fascinating and exciting renewable energy developments from wind turbines, solar energy and biomass etc. These are all important energy sources for the future and they could help keep the electricity grid going to some degree!
The popular assumption is that these renewable energy sources will smoothly replace fossil fuels as these become scarce, thanks to our inherited technological expertise. However, although these all produce electricity they are not liquid fuels.
On top of this we must remember that the energy budget must always be positive and output must exceed input. Too much tends to be expected of renewable energy generators today, because the contribution of fossil fuels to the input side is poorly understood.
For example, a wind turbine is not successful as a renewable generator unless another similar one can be constructed from its raw materials using only the energy that the first one generates in its lifetime, and still show a worthwhile budget surplus.
Or, if corn is grown to produce bioethanol, the energy input to ploughing, sowing, fertilizing, weeding, harvesting and processing the crop must come from the previous year's bioethanol production. Input must also include, proportionately, mining and processing the raw materials and building the machines that do the work, as well as supporting their human operators.
There is nothing that can replace cheap oil for price, ease of storage, ease of transportation and sheer volumes in the timeframe we need.
SO WHAT ABOUT 'COMMUNITY'.
In Powerdown, Richard Heinberg states, "Those who already enjoy a measure of self-sufficiency, such as ecovillages and other kinds of sustainable intentional communities will already have some of the skills and experience needed for re-localization."
He also goes on to say that, self-sustaining communities may become cultural lifeboats in times to come and that "Our society is going to change profoundly-those of us who understand this are in a position to steward that change. We are going to become popular, needed people in our communities."
Now this may be true but no matter how prepared an intentional community or organized neighbourhood may be, it will still be adversely impacted in some way. The changes that are about to effect the world will also affect these communities.
Experts suggest several possible scenarios for the coming energy decline and any of these scenarios will present significant challenges for intentional communities.
Even in the "soft landing" scenario, there will still be massive structural changes in society and being in debt may be the undoing of many. Common advice among many Peak Oil experts is to get out of debt!
Let's say for example, that a community is deeply in debt, and is still paying off its property purchase loans.
Let's say the community loses its financial resource base -if members lose their jobs or if a weak economy reduces the market for the goods and services the community produces -the group could default on its loan payments, and may have its property seized by the bank or other creditors.
A property-value crash may worsen the debt situation for intentional communities. If a community's property value falls below their equity in the property, they won't be able to save themselves from defaulting on loans by selling off their land, which is typically the last resort of farmers in debt.
All the shortages and systems failures that can affect mainstream culture can affect intentional communities as well.
A community may not have enough foresight, labour, tools, or funds to create alternatives to whatever their members use now for heating, lighting, cooking, refrigeration, water collection, water pumping, and disposal utilization of gray water and human waste.
Then there's the matter of community security-a subject many find "politically incorrect" to even consider. If the government fails; if the law and order system falls apart, there can be various kinds of dangerous consequences. Desperate, hungry people can loot and steal and take what they want from others.
So we can see that although 'communities' are all very nice, and lets be honest, if everybody was a nice, honest, law abiding, thoughtful and loving citizens then 'community' would stand a chance. But we are not, we are generally self centred, selfish and only interested in self preservation, so 'communities' are going to be just as susceptible to the same problems others will have during the collapse.
They are also very likely to become the focal point for those who have got nothing or have done nothing and this is when those dangerous consequences may happen.
How reasonable do you think people are going to be when their children are dying of dehydration, they can't take a bath, they can't cook a hot meal? With our interdependent society once the power (electric) goes then other services like water and sewage will be close behind.
Most people have never had to cope with sustained, substantial levels of fear, either in themselves or in others in close proximity. I will say I believe you should be prepared to see and deal with behaviour you would never have believed possible from civilized humans. The reason you should avoid crowds has to do with the fact that individual frustration is one thing, but the frustration of many people feeds individual frustration and fear, which, of course, feeds the frustration of the crowd.
The cycle will feed itself until either the root source of frustration is relieved or there is a catastrophic event, such as a riot or even worse.
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