Peak Oil: Issues and Strategies

Peak Oil is the simplest label for the problem of energy resource depletion, or more specifically, the peak in global oil production. Oil has powered phenomenal economic growth over the last century and a half. The rate of oil production, meaning extraction and refining, has grown in most years over the last century. Once we go through the halfway point of all reserves, production becomes ever more likely to decline, hence peak. Peak Oil means not running out of oil, but running out of cheap oil. For societies leveraged on ever increasing amounts of cheap oil, the consequences may be dire. Without significant successful cultural reform, economic and social decline seems inevitable. It is inevitable that after the Peak, oil production will decline. There won’t be enough alternative energy available to compensate. We’ll have to undertake a long-range plan to adapt. The Hirsch Report suggests that we need to start preparing 20 years in advance. Well, it’s already too late for that, given that most projections put the global peak some time before 2020. We should start preparing now for an ongoing and gradual decline. Better late than never, but better sooner than late.Peak Oil is coming, maybe now, maybe in ten or fifteen years but no later. And when the feces hit the ventilator, you have to be ready with a plan to deal with it. If you don’t, someone else will, and it may be someone who does not share your core values. So we have to get busy.