John Michael Greer -- The Archdruid Report
Sept. 27, 2006 -- The end of the age of cheap fossil fuels heralds a total revolution in economic affairs worldwide. For the last three hundred years, the key to prosperity has been the replacement of human skill with mechanical energy. The steam-powered factories of 18th century England heralded an economic order in which technological progress and soaring rates of fossil fuel extraction went hand in hand, and success went to those who pushed mechanization into new economic sectors –- replacing sails with steam, farm horses with tractors, local theaters with movies and TV, folk culture with mass-produced pop culture, and so on.
Hubbert’s peak marks the limit of this process. Mechanization depends on massive infusions of cheap energy, and that combination of abundant energy at low cost is exactly what won’t be available in the future. If the last three hundred years funneled wealth to those who could exploit fossil fuels to the fullest and build centralized, technologically driven economic structures, the next three hundred years will see exactly the opposite; success will go to those who get ahead of depletion curves by reducing their reliance on fossil fuels further than others, and relying instead on human skills and sustainable, low-intensity energy inputs.
These changes won’t take place overnight, though. Hubbert’s peak occurs when approximately half the world’s accessible petroleum has been pumped out, and so the slope down from it will more than likely parallel the slope up to it. This means that in 2030, for example, the world will be producing about as much oil as it produced in 1980, and very significant amounts of coal, natural gas, hydroelectricity, and other energy sources will also be available. All that energy will still be available to power factories, fuel transportation, and fill other economic roles. It will be more expensive, less reliable, and spread more unevenly among a larger world population, but it will still be there.
Thus the survivalist fantasy that peaking oil production will lead to sudden collapse can’t be justified. What we face instead, as I’ve argued elsewhere, is a long period of economic contraction and technological decline. There will be plenty of bumps and potholes on the long road down, to be sure. Systems failures like the one that accompanied Hurricane Katrina last year, and reduced large portions of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi to a Third World level from which they show no signs of recovering, are likely to be regular occurrences. Still – and this has to be grasped in order to make any sense at all out of the future – systems failures don’t automatically spiral out into total collapse.
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