Petroleum is a finite resource. It won't last forever. The world's annual petroleum production will begin declining sometime soon. This hurts the economy and it's only going to get worse. Getting gas for our cars will be the least of our worries - we'll be worrying about keeping our petroleum-dependent jobs and paying bills. There are no alternative fuels that will allow us to maintain our consumer culture. The fossil fuel bonanza was a one-time deal, and we're simply going to have to get by on less energy from now on. We must move promptly, seriously, and graciously towards serious fuel conservation and major changes in our economy. This starts with parking our cars, planting gardens, and working to reduce our population.
I've compiled a partial set of documents and websites for understanding the problem. Before 2007 or so there were very few or no sites that detailed the whole peak oil problem in one place, and only recently are new websites popping up that tell the story in a coherent and readable way. I made this site a few years ago to provide links to useful information, and I'll leave it here as long as it seems useful.
The oil depletion problem - which is part of the bigger resource depletion problem, which is part of the problem of trying to sustain the entire modern industrial economy - is massive, complicated, and terrifying in its ramifications. It also threatens the interests of the wealthy and powerful, and therefore we get misinformation, news suppression, and outright lies about it. Plus famous government inaction. This page links to information that I believe to reliable, plus it may provide access to tiny bits of wisdom. It's time to park the car and start relocalizing, folks.
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken
Billing itself as "a beginner's guide to Peak Oil", this well designed site makes things very clear and it's more optimistic than I am. (So you might want to ease in by reading this first). It also offers a great glossary of terms. If you want to understand the arguments about oil production, you may have to know about conventional vs. nonconventional oil, EROI, and maybe even NGLs.
The US Dept of Energy commissioned Robert Hirsch and his consulting firm to study the issue of oil depletion. Hirsch found plenty to be worried about. Their report, "Peaking Of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management" is reasonably concise and coherent. Here is a quote:
"The problems associated with world oil production peaking will not be temporary, and past 'energy crisis' experience will provide relatively little guidance. The challenge of oil peaking deserves immediate, serious attention, if risks are to be fully understood and mitigation begun on a timely basis."
Hirsch's report to the Atlantic Council is shorter and more to the point, with fewer details. Time is wasting on this problem, and the DOE has not been forthcoming with efforts to publicize the situation or to improve on it. Instead they buried the report for a long time.
This is a good place to start. Download this PDF file and read it. This booklet briefly summarizes the main points in the book The Party's Over by Richard Heinberg. Heinberg's other books - Powerdown and The Oil Depletion Protocol are full of useful information as well. These books detail the problem and the issues facing efforts to mitigate the impending energy shortage.
A collection of evidence supporting the claim that we are very near or at the peak of oil production right now (or actually two years ago). It was a response to the March 1 2006 New York Times article on peak oil that startled a lot of people. Nothing much has changed in the oil patch since 2006 except that even more supergiant oil fields are going belly up.
A dozen questions on the major issues surrounding oil production. Don't worry if you get some of the answers wrong, since correct ones are farther down on the same page. But try to answer first anyway. It's supposed to be educational, and nobody is grading you. But there will be a final exam in, oh, about 2010.
I presented this paper at the International Business Conference in Rapid City, Oct. 10, 2008. It describes the problems with oil production, briefly details why alternative liquid fuels will not solve the petroleum problem, and projects some of the likely difficulties that international businesses will encounter. The main point is that globalization depends on cheap oil, and will reverse itself when oil is expensive.
Draft 4 of my Oil Depletion presentation
Keynote (ZIP: 7 mb) Powerpoint (ZIP: 7 mb)
I started presenting this in 2006. This is the latest version with presenter's notes. Please send me comments if you look at this or use it. I'm still trying to figure out how to tell this story in a way that people decide to do something about it. (Maybe I should do like Kris Can, below. Then again, maybe not).
In July 2006 the Chicago Tribune published an extensive "travelogue of addiction" about the human impacts of oil production and our economy heading towards crisis. A great read.
Natural gas may seriously run short in the US before oil will because of the difficulties of transporting methane across oceans. This book, written in 2004, is not a Pulitzer prize winner, but it is informative and (as of this writing) it is still the only book of its kind. I find this astonishing. Am I on the same planet as everyone else? - - As of summer 2008, we still have a reliable supply of natural gas, mainly because gas companies are drilling more wells than ever to get at scarcer supplies of gas. If it weren't for horizontal drilling in tight gas shales, we'd be in a pinch already. How much longer can the industry keep pulling out new technological miracles? My gas rates are going up this winter. How well insulated is your house? Got Solar?
"An online funhouse of video, info and opportunities to make friends, fun and trouble while saving civilization!" If you need to laugh at your predicament, then it's time to watch the "Corporations Uber Alles" presentations on this website. And there's a lot more here too.
How did we get here?
M. King Hubbert's original paper Download (PDF: 2.6mb)
In the middle of the last century, M. King Hubbert - a highly regarded petroleum geologist - predicted that US oil production would reach a peak and start declining in 1970. He made an accurate prediction 14 years in advance of the actual peak. People didn't want to believe him at first, and when it turned out he was right, well, we didn't hear much about that, now did we? Similar calculations using geological and production data are predicting the peak of worldwide petroleum production sometime between "now" and 2010. (And it looks like "now" is the most likely).
This is Hubbert's original paper. It is a piece of history that, unfortunately, too few people today even know about.
In 1970 a group of scientists developed an extensive computer model of "the world system" which accounted in a general way for population, food production, industrialization, capital flows, pollution, natural resources, and other variables. When running this model they found that it nearly always showed a population crash before the year 2100, often as early as 2030. They published their first book in 1971 detailing the logic behind the model and the "systems thinking" that is necessary to understand the world's economic and physical status. The public response to this book involved a lot of reaction but very little positive action.
In this summary document, the authors lay out their main points. Read it. Then find the original book "Limits to Growth" and read it, because everything in that book is still valid today, and even more pertinent than it was in 1971. The problem in a nutshell is that populations and industries grow exponentially, while the planet we live on is not increasing in size or capacity. Hmm.
The authors have written followup volumes which give updates and detail more of the issues than did the original book. They regretfully admit that the projections of the 1971 model are still valid more than 30 years later. All that has changed is that we now have less time to try to change things. Their computer model, which once required a mainframe computer, now can be run on any desktop computer, and it is still making dire projections. Sorry, but things don't look so good from here.
A revealing and frightening BBC documentary on Google Video. It details the rise of psychologically based marketing that was based on Freud's theories of the mind. Powerful people (big corporations) figured out ways to take advantage of our darker emotional urges and promote non-rational consuming behavior. In particular, we're being cajoled into buying more stuff through being convinced that it will somehow make us happier. (What? McBurgers make me happier??) To what degree have we been manipulated for the last three generations? And how are we being manipulated today?
This great web movie finishes a connection that The Century of the Self begins. It explains the consumer situation, in particular, our vast and unquestioned consumption of a lot of - well - stuff. Nearly all of which we don't need. So where does all of it come from? Why do we keep buying more? Is this normal? (The only reason we have so much stuff is because cheap petroleum made it inexpensive to extract, process, manufacture, and transport all of that . . stuff. This is definitely not normal in the long run).
This movie is for PO and CC groupies. If there is a "solution" to the Peak Oil problem, it begins with totally rethinking our place in the universe. Of the Peak Oil documentaries now available, this one goes the deepest in explaining how we got here, why we are so reluctant to change, and if we were to change what this would entail. We would have to completely remake most of our culture. And we probably will, or else we will die trying not to. The producers have powerfully summarized a lot of very important and useful (and countercultural) ideas. You might want a friend with you when you watch this - it is intense. Whether you agree or not, we have to be talking about this.
Speech by George Monbiot, environmental journalist, on the difficulties of publishing the truth about environmental issues in media. I put this here to draw attention to the political realities of modern news media. There are reasons why we haven't heard about the incipient decline of petroleum until very recently. As of the Spring of 2008 - way too late to make the needed changes - PO appears finally to be poised to break onto the mainstream.
I wrote this series of seven short essays on the issues surrounding the impending peak and decline of petroleum production. I wrote about oil production, the inability of biofuels to support our driving habits, and the economic consequences of running out of oil.
Now What?
Resilient Communities: A Guide to Disaster Management.
Richard Heinberg, one of the most well-published writers in the area of peak oil, is now thinking that we no longer have time for negotiated powerdown scenarios. At this point we need to be preparing for a declining economy and its attendant hardships. Communities need to be able to meet the minimum needs if the "standard system " breaks down due to the cost of fuel or the failing economy. Communities should be positioning themselves to deal with this. Don't wait around for someone else to work on this because nobody else is doing it. Written in 2008.
Lots of people give sustainability lip service, but few take the trouble to think about what it means. In its strong sense (the only sense that has any meaning) "Sustainability" has to mean that you can do it basically forever. This excludes "growth" which, at its root, is fundamentally unsustainable when you live on a non-infinite planet like ours.
Before he started worrying about resilience, Richard Heinberg compiled a list of axioms of sustainability. This is my own more loosely defined version of his list, rewritten to hopefully make it easier to uderstand. I hope Heinberg doesn't mind. Written in 2007.
Similar in spirit to the Kyoto Protocol (but simpler and more effective,) this is the only reasonable way to avoid utter disaster for the majority of humans now alive. The world's governments must begin seriously considering this protocol immediately. Even the good old US of A should get on board this one ASAP. Ask Dubya to sign on, will you? An idea from 2006 or before.
If we can't move stuff around so much (can't get food shipped to us), then we're just going to have to get most of our needs met where we are. We need to know how to build viable economies that are reasonably self-sufficient within their locale. Relocalization groups are working on this.
Cuba used to depend on petroleum imports from the Soviet Union. It was a fairly typical small industrial nation. When the soviet government collapsed in 1991, Cuba's economy had to adapt overnight to relying on much smaller amounts of fuels. Most Cubans lost weight - but they survived - and they eventually learned how to live happily with less oil. This website is the result of a study on how Cuba survived and is now doing pretty well, considering. The lesson of Cuba can help us make plans for our own oil depleted future. The DVD that this group is offering is incredibly valuable.
Founded by retired petroleum engineer Colin Campbell and others, ASPO is a source of information that does not seem to be driven by corporations or similar powerful interests. ASPO is becoming more and more effective at raising awareness of peak oil issues. This links takes you to the USA branch of ASPO.
Essay by activist Derrick Jensen on the reasons why "hope" is maybe not what we need when instead we need action. Jensen says that hope kills personal gumption and he has a good point. If you 're going to act, you have to first give up on hoping and decide that you're going to deal with the problem yourself. Which, by the way, you will have to do at some point in the future anyway.
I never thought that gardening could be so - well - revolutionary and important. "Use your hands as weapons of mass creation". Related to the Pasadena homestead site.
Soviet lessons for a Post-American Century by Dmitri Orlov
Darkly humorous recommendations on what to do / expect - if / when the US economy fails. Maintain a garden. Stockpile small useful items to sell. Read a book. I recommend having lots of warm clothing around and making friends in your neighborhood. Oh - and think twice - and twice again - before having children. By the way, Orlov has just written a book about this.
Peak Oil - A new genre
Luz - Girl of the Knowing - a nice web comic. Written by Claudia Dávila, Luz is a young girl who is thinking about the end of oil and how things are going to change. So she's working on The Knowing, in which gardening looms large. Luz and I agree about certain things.
We have problems visualizing this different world that is coming, so James Howard Kunstler envisioned it for us. A pretty good book, and even if you disagree with Kunstler's vision, you have a place from which to start your own imagining.
Kris Can decided that it's going to take drastic measures for people to become aware of Peak Oil (and she's right). So she's working on getting some viral videos on YouTube. Just be careful that you don't watch "Public Service Message " or "Kris Can does HotForWords" on your work computer.
Robert Newman is a great standup comic who is worried about peak oil. This video is fun to watch just for laughs. IMHO, it never made sense to me that nations would start WW1 just because somebody bumped off an Archduke, no matter how important he was.
Kunstler doesn't have a trademark on the Peak Oil genre, but he is busy informing people about the situation. Here is the Kunstlercast, a weekly conversation about "The Tragicomedy of Suburbia". A lot of the discussion is about our petroleum-dependent living arrangements and the importance of good urban design. If you can stand how Kunstler talks, he's fun to listen to.
How to boil a frog 
Have you Heard About Peak Oil?
