I just want everyone to know that I am ready for oil production to begin its decline. I own a lightweight pickup truck, a motorcycle, and a mountain bike. I’m settling into the town where I live and I have enough money to pick up and move into a major city should things become unproductive here. I have no nostalgia for simpler times, when people actually lived in those “amber waves of grain” instead of them being just a nice place to visit.
The change will occur gradually, but faster than any other aspect of our economic growth. The warning signs are emerging, but we might have another decade of easing into the hot tub of nightmarish gas prices. I have no idea to what degree the changes I am going to describe will manifest, but I am certain they will happen noticeably, and the effect will be only temporary, no longer than a half-century at the most, until the next personal transport device emerges.
The problem is this: China is coming online, and its need for energy is projected to increase by 150 percent by 2020. I think that’s great for China, a people and a country with an admirable industriousness (but a government that could use a little more liberalization). Combine a population as massive as China’s buying more cars (By year 2010 China is expected to have 90 times more cars than in 1990), requiring more electricity from Oil and Coal based electrical plants, and producing more oil-based synthetics, with a world that is within five years of finally beginning that great big slow sucking sound of their Oil Production going into decline.
The problem I have with writing an essay like this is that it sounds as though I am being an alarmist, but I see no cause for alarm. This is a wonderful opportunity for our civilization to evolve. One aspect of our lives, transportation, will become more difficult and we’ll overcome with some easy adjustments to our social architecture. So indulge me this first public venture into futurist thought:
I think we are about to see gradual, but wonderful changes in the architecture of our civilization, as people cannot afford personal transportation. The car People will have to start taking the plane, the ferry, the metro, or the bus. People will start facing their neighbors once again. Or they can ride their bike, moped, motorcycle and become more active and in tune with nature. Cars will become tiny, minimalist and compact. Many people will feel exposed at first, but become acclimated to riding in cramped compartments and begin to enjoy the ride.
People will migrate. The cities will suck up the populations in suburbs. Communities will begin growing up instead of out. Mass Transit will finally bloom. No more traffic jams on the freeways. Telecommuting will become a more viable work environment.
The real nuclear option will reemerge in public debate. The strange allegiance of Oil Industry Lobbyists and Environmentalists against Nuclear Power will crumble. A safer, cleaner, more efficient source of electricity will replace the smoke stacks and antiquated industry of today. Instead we will have the massive towering steam stack and beauty of Nuclear Power Generators. In the interim, solar power will gain more market share as Electric Companies consume the excess energy they produce from homes to combat Oil and Coal-based power prices.
Won’t some people simply pay the higher price? Of course they will! And they will flush their money down the drain, making themselves less economically competitive. They will knock themselves down the market food chain while their neighbors adapt up it.
The same exact thing goes for industry. Where will the money presently stockpiled in oil go? The answer is outward. It will be freed for experimentation. As oil’s monopolization of funding evaporates, new solutions will consume those investment dollars and we will see a brief surge in variety.
The OPEC nations will face transformation as their systems of government lose the only thing ensuring their power: the state-owned oil industry. The Saudi Royal family’s tyranny will evaporate as they are forced to cash out and abandon their country, unable to leverage their resources into any other enterprise because of the way they have abused and oppressed their people. Like a shockwave, the shift of political power will strike America as lobbyists seek to fill the vacuum left by the oil industry.
We’ve been drinking oil en mass for almost a century now. Why? Car companies are only now starting to seriously look into alternative fuels. It’s time for a change, and I applaud the alarmists in our civilization who will act as catalysts for it. The doomsayers foretelling many apocalyptic repercussions of this emerging situation will induce panic in the market, which will drive oil prices higher prematurely, forcing civilization to adapt more quickly.
Ironically, I suspect that Civilization will not collapse precisely because the doomsayers will predict its collapse. A healthy dose of alarm in our world generates the fear necessary to affect change.
Let the evolution begin!!!