Peak oil...I didn't know...did you?

Here's what I learned this morning:

Remember Dick Cheney? Yes, the Dick Cheney who was VP under Bush and also the Chairman of the infamous Halliburton. It seems that in 1999, at the London Institute of Petroleum Autumn lunch, he made a speech. Evidently, Cheney was fully aware that the world's oil supply was being depleted at an alarming rate. In a key passage from his address he says: “That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.”

In 1999 Index Mundi indicates that 27,700,000 barrels of oil per day were consumed world wide. The U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that in 2010 that figure grew to 86,700,000 barrels per day. The world is consuming on the average of 9,000,000 more barrels a day than Cheney predicted we would need. Houston...we have a problem.

What strikes me as sad...no, let's say flagrantly negligent, is the fact that in 1999, Cheney, and the U.S. Government, KNEW that we would reach a point of peak oil consumption by the year 2010. Yet in those ensuing 12 years, what has been done to curb our voraciously expanding oil appetite? Not much, other than the fact that rising oil prices caused sales of the Toyota Prius to jump by 52% in March says Melissa Hinch-Ownby of Mother Nature Network.

Attached is a graph shown at the April 2009 Energy Conference in Washington, DC, by Glen Sweetnam, of the EIA (Energy Information Agency) illustrating the sobering reality of disappearing oil.



So how much time do we have? If we look at the right side of the graph 2030 is a grim picture. We are almost half way into 2011, one year AFTER peak oil, and there is no viable alternative energy plan in place. We are, in fact, more dependent than ever on oil to support our gluttonous lifestyle. "Global warming will never bring a "doomsday scenario" a team of scientists says -- because oil and gas are running out much faster than thought." The "team of scientists" is a group lead by ASPO President, Kjell Aleklett, Professor at Uppsala University of Nuclear Physics in Sweden. ASPO is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas. It is an informal network that can tell the truth freed of all the political, legalistic and commercial constraints that most organizations face.

Let's take a closer look at that quote: "Global warming will never bring a "doomsday scenario"...because oil and gas are running out much faster than thought." In other words, the depletion of oil will deal the death blow to human life so we don't have to worry about global warming. That's how I read it. Just about everything we need for survival is dependent upon oil: our heating systems, our cars, the transport of our food, the machines that prepare the fields and harvest our food, pesticides, preservatives, the production of electricity, the list is endless.

It appears that there is a huge task before us. In her 2011 predictions, Lindsay Curren, editor of Transition Voice tells us that a cultural shift is happening. Government and huge corporations are becoming less relevant. Rampant unemployment will soon force people to depend more upon one another and their communities. Bartering will re-emerge as a viable economic model. Community gardens and individual "yard gardens" will appear in neighborhoods. Living, as a matter of necessity, will become simpler and more localized.

This time the answers are not going to come from the government. I think this quote from Reading The Coca Leaves: Climate Change, Cancun And Bolivia by Medea Benjamin pretty much sums up that state of affairs: "If we are to avoid ecocide, we cannot rely on government officials meeting in plush golf resorts...."

From what I'm seeing we don't have a lot of time to make some pretty huge changes in the way we live. The way we live is going to change whether we do anything or not. Our resilience as we transition will depend upon the degree to which we have mentally, emotionally, and physically prepared to meet the coming challenges. We need to take off the blinders and lean into our lives with creativity and purpose.