Oil. It runs our cars, it puts food on our tables, and it creates many of the machines that our society today takes for granted. But oil is a finite resource, and eventually we must face the inevitable question: What happens to us, and the rest of humanity, when oil runs out?
The concept of Peak Oil is based on the premise that at some point in the near future, oil production will reach a climax, after which dwindling resources and increased demand will raise the oil price to the point where it will be too expensive for the majority of individuals and business entities to afford to buy it. We've already seen what effects spikes in the price of oil have had on the daily lives of Americans and others; many of the Baby Boomer generation can still remember waiting in line to get gas for their cars. While lately we've been spoiled by reasonably cheap gasoline and diesel prices, it is foolish of us to expect those prices to remain stagnant for much longer. Increasing demand in China, India, Indonesia, and elsewhere will begin to raise oil and gas prices for all of us in the next decade or sooner.
If this trend continues, cars will eventually be too expensive to drive around. Law enforcement, fire, ambulance, and supply trucks will all cease to function, which will cripple the effectiveness of such services. Without the supply trucks to bring food, medicines, and consumer items to stores, Americans will not have any readily available means of feeding themselves, clothing themselves, or keeping themselves healthy. The fact that many Americans are living in car-driven suburbs only exacerbates the problem: because they have to drive everywhere to obtain essential services, Americans in the suburbs will be effectively stranded once their cars cease to run. Even our technology will become ineffective extremely quickly: computers and microchips require oil to produce. I'll leave you to your imagination as to what would happen next. This breakdown will, of course, not come peacefully, and it will not be limited to the United States. Other developing nations will be affected just as much, if not more so, due to more limited resources. I imagine that if a crisis like this were to unfold, the death toll would be astronomical before things began to stabilize.
So, what are we to do about this coming crisis? Believe it or not, we already have a blueprint for success (and for failure) in the event that oil becomes cost prohibitive, and it comes from a place that most people would not ordinarily think to look to for inspiration. In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union suffered from massive budget imbalances and subsequently collapsed, and two countries that had become almost completely dependent on Soviet oil suddenly were nearly completely without that resource. Those countries were North Korea and Cuba.
(I'm going to turn the next two paragraphs over to mental_floss' blogger Ransom Riggs, who can explain what happened far more succinctly than I can)
"North Korea froze. Their political structure was far too rigid and they didn’t move quickly enough to address the crisis. They had this top-down food distribution system where most people got their groceries from the government — and when the oil stopped, and their economy collapsed, the food distributions stopped, too. People starved to death at an amazing rate. Something like three million people died. Kim Jong Il stationed army units in every town in the country just to collect and dispose of the bodies, but even they were overwhelmed. And even while this was going on, the North Korean government ordered many of its farmers to grow non-food crops, like opium poppies, for export.
Cuba, on the other hand, responded quickly. Food production went local. It was mandated that every bit of arable land in Havana be used to grow crops. As a result, they made it through the collapse, and now the Cubans are eating better than ever — they have plentiful, organic, locally-farmed food, which is more than even many Americans have."
To be fair, however, the story of Cuba's success does come with one major caveat: that Cuba is a relatively small island nation. While it is restricted from trade with the US, Cuba was able to receive aid from other nations to help smooth its transition after it lost its source of oil. But in a worldwide crisis, who is there to provide aid to other countries when every country on the planet has to deal with its own set of problems?
Regardless, it seems to me that a reasonable solution in the event of an oil crisis is to downsize: make communities more walkable and accessible, rely on local produce and livestock to provide for community needs, and become more self-sufficient. The communities that manage to convert to a more sustainable lifestyle sound like the ones who will best be able to weather this crisis and prosper afterwards.
In the end, whether you believe in the Peak Oil crisis or not, we can all agree that downsizing certain aspects of our lives would probably be beneficial to us in more ways than not. If nothing else, more exercise from walking more places and less time spent on phones, computers, ipods, and televisions would be beneficial to our mental and physical well-being. Interaction with others on a personal level, rather than through video screens and audio devices, may also help to foster communication and more cooperation between community members. These changes are well within our means to achieve, if only we put our minds to them.
Hmm. Looks like Karl Marx might have gotten something right after all.
