Bethany Dutch wrote:The other day I got to chatting with my Dad about a few different predictions about climate change, etc.
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We don't have an adequate substitute for oil just yet. We have a few potentials, and maybe some things that will work on a small scale, but nothing on a big scale.
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What would life look like for the people who are left? How long would it take before civilization would sorta somewhat recover? Or would it ever?
The Hubbard curve is a real thing :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_curve ,
If you'd like to look at a post petrol plan, look at Jeremy Rifkin's The third industrial revolution (
https://www.foet.org/books/the-third-industrial-revolution/ ) and zero marginal cost society
https://thezeromarginalcostsociety.com/ .
Or read Paul Wheaton and Shawn Klassen-koop's building a better world in your back yard (
https://permies.com/w/better-world )
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Elan Musk forced the auto manufacturers to go electric by building a better car. Trucks and farm tools are next.
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Most of the arguments around "we can't without oil" or "an adequate substitute" is really PR from the involved industries. A more correctly stated version might be "There is no adequate substitute that is cheaper, and is already done for you without any effort on your part... keep buying our oil!".
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Coal / gas and petrol. it is currently cheaper to decom a coal plant and install wind power than to simply pay for coal shipments. Gas power plants are being shut down and replaced with battery farms. we are well on our way to the electrical systems being off petrochemicals. The rest of it is a question of gumption and pricing rather than technology.
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For some insight into the entire collapse issue, one can look into the Seneca Effect / curve / trap. (
http://thesenecatrap.blogspot.com/ )
The short answer is diversify and understand where one is on the curve.
Note, we didn't run out of whale oil because we ran out of whales. We stopped killing whales when they got rare enough to be cost prohibitive compared to this new thing oozing out of the ground ( only some what true, but a good start) .
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The scarcest thing about the end of oil isn't the oil. It is the end of the Petro-Dollar. This is _very_ important. The USD is the defacto world currency, and the US gets away with lots of shenanigans because it can just go and print more money when every other country in the world can't ( technically its more complicated than that... but not by much ).
I can't tell you exactly what'll happen or how it'll go. ( and with an Iranian conflict possibly rising up and blocking the straits of Hormuz
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Hormuz , maybe we'll find out about that sooner rather than later. ) There are general responses and planning that we can individually do that will decrease the suffering around the time that it happens.
e.g. Permaculture! Gert doesn't much need to care too much about outside inputs (
https://permies.com/t/gert ) . If everyone were Gert'n through life, we'd be much less effected by monetary system changes.
Way to long, sorry about that.
