Posted on 08/21/2005 6:34:20 PM PDT by Conservomax
Farms in Lake Oswego? Community gardens on the Park Blocks? Every day a Bridge Pedal day?
Welcome to the post-oil future. All too soon worldwide oil demand will exceed available supplies -- and gas prices will go through the roof.
Oil's decline will have a profound impact on a society that's based its economy on a single, dwindling resource. Many will be stranded in the suburbs as grocery store shelves empty. Others will lose their jobs as our oil-dependent economy withers.
Oil industry observers say we have at most three years -- some predict as early as this fall -- before gas prices begin a permanent climb.
As those prices move into the stratosphere, petroleum-fueled factory farms will gradually give way to smaller, labor-intensive operations. Increasingly, human energy will replace machine energy. There'll be a greater need for farm workers and craftspeople with time-honored skills: glassblowers, shoemakers, soapmakers, seamstresses and the like.
Domestic oil production peaked in 1970, and last year the government warned that world reserves are being depleted three times faster than new discoveries.
With more than 60 percent of the world's oil concentrated in the politically shaky Middle East, it's easy to see why some observers already are predicting: economic chaos, widespread fighting about limited fuel and food, and the imposition of martial law if we don't immediately begin planning for the transition away from an oil-based economy.
"Without timely mitigation, the economic, social and political cost [of spiraling fuel costs] will be unprecedented," the U.S. Department of Energy warned in a report issued last February.
In his profoundly disturbing book on the post-oil future, "The Long Emergency," James Howard Kunstler predicts we must "downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do."
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
What do you expect from a guy who wrote a book called "Songs of The Simple Life".
This is Marxist talk about returning to human labor. Soon the value of something will mostly be the worth of the human labor that went into it and the worker is entitled to a much higher fraction of the profit.
Yeah. What a genius.
Yes! We'll all have to huddle ourselves together in the great socialist collective farm! /sarcasm
I've seen Mad Max, I already know what is going to happen.
Time-honored skills? Since when? Since Davey Crocket was alive?
BTTT
Permanent climb? Like, to infinity?
I believe talk show host Lars Larson refers to Oregon as the Peoples' Republic of Oregon, for good reason.
LOL - Green headed earth person makes fool of self. - nothing to see, move along.
Like, despite the worldwide recession it causes, the price still goes up. This guy is so dumb he HAS to be a college prof.
Cool!!
A "Road Warrior" kind if future!!! Dibs on the car!
The liberals used to condemn Christians for doom and gloom prophecies. Interesting how the liberals have become what they hate.
So now I'm going to have to run on a treadmill to fire up enough electricity to log into Free Republic? Maybe I could just get some really big hamsters and a wheel.
What this chump is saying is that God was too stupid to make sure there would be enough oil to last us until He decides the final day has come.
I have faith in our democracy, when gas prices go over the limit, it will turn into a campaign issue. The only solution of course will be nuclear power, and once we have the politicians on our side, we can convert within a reasonable time. We don't have an energy shortage, we have a motivation and intelligence shortage , the universe is full of energy e=mc^2, ya know? selah....
We haven't even begun to tap into some of the huge deep oil well reserves. We're just drying up the Arab oil first.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
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