by Chip Haynes
Thirteen years ago, in 1996, I bought a small folding bike and sold my old truck. On the first Monday in January of 1997 I began riding my folding bike to work, and still do, some thirteen years later. Fairly early on, as I searched for information on car-free communities around the US (I really got into that bike thing), I stumbled across information on peak oil instead. Now, you have to understand: in the late 1990's, peak oil was an event only a few fringe types were predicting would happen far, far into our misty distant future. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to see here. Just keep driving.
Oh, and by the way: the only car-free community I found in the US was Mackinac Island. Venice, Italy looked pretty cool, though.
Fast forward ten years. I wrote "Ghawar is Dying" for The New Colonist in the summer of 2001 and "60 Days Next Year" in 2004. "Ghawar" got a big response world wide, and not all of it good. I was accused of breaking into the very restricted oil field areas of central Saudi Arabia and of dissing Africa by predicting its demise. That shows you how much trouble you can get into with an over-active imagination. And although "60 Days" was made into a radio program for Maine Public Radio in the summer of 2004, it never did get the internet search hits I had hoped for. Nowhere near "Ghawar is Dying". I guess I should have used "Ghawar" in the title. My bad. I still think it's a cool story.
The thing is, in the last ten years, peak oil, that event we've all been waiting for, seems to have passed us by. Now, instead of arguing about when it's going to happen, we argue about when it did happen. Past tense. And our future looks pretty tense as well. No, we haven't seen a return to gas rationing or closed stations. Not yet anyway. But we have seen much of what Jim Kunstler has been talking about for a very long time: the speed wobble of our economy with rapid highs and lows, the credit crisis, the money crunch and the burst of the housing bubble. We saw oil and gas prices go sky high last summer and into the basement this winter. Can't wait to see what happens next spring. Sure smells like peak oil to me.
So what happens in the next ten years? Are we really headed over the falls? Dodge has just brought back the Challenger. Chevy is bringing back the Camaro. Both are huge, heavy, powerful cars at a time when we need the Fiat 500 and the Citroen 2CV. We're still building big roads around our cities when we need trolleys built to go right through them. We're still breeding like rabbits and driving like maniacs. We still don't get it. Peak oil has been all but forgotten as we "deal with the economy," and the idea that the two might be somehow linked has escaped that vast majority of Americans who never bothered to link them to begin with. Bad news, guys: it's all about the oil. Always has been. No oil, no economy. No oil, no food. I won't say no oil, no future, but I will say this: with no oil, you're future ain't what it used to be. You might want to hold off on that Camaro.
If the peak of conventional crude oil production was, as many are starting to believe, somewhere back around 2005 or 2006, then we are about to begin that great, long descent into the Dim Ages just as predicted. At some point over the next few years, you can expect to see the pace of the slow down speed up (huh?) and it's all downhill from there. This coming summer, 2009, should set the stage.
As I write this, in early February of 2009, the winter weather up north is brutal. Even where I live in Florida has seen some mighty unseasonably cool weather. We were sorely tempted to turn the heat on at home there for a day or two. As it was, we closed the windows. Oh, the price we pay to live in Paradise! But once it starts to warm up north of the equator, once we get this planet over on the other side of its orbit, the northern hemisphere warms up. The snows melt and the cars come out. It will be driving season once again. Maybe.
Will we see five dollar gas in the summer of 2009? I expect we might. Will we see gas rationing and more closed stations? My Magic 8 Ball says, "VERY LIKELY," but it's been wrong before. We'll get what we get. I tell people to be ready for change. It keeps them from talking to me at parties. (It keeps me from getting invited.) The impact and effect of peak oil begins ever-so-slightly, and hardly at all here in America. We still have the money to buy the oil. Other places won't have that money, and will feel the peak oil pinch first. Still, we are creatures of habit. We do what we do, and we are loathe to change, even a little bit. And yet change is coming. Change is here.
Look for our lives, ten years from now, to be very different from what they are now. Look for yourself to be far more fit, a result of less driving and more walking and more cycling. And less food. I joked recently about "the oil 20"--that is, the 20 extra pounds we all carry with us as a result of cheap, abundant oil making or lives so much easier. Look for that to go away in the next ten years. You will be in better shape. If you're in any shape at all.
Ten years from now, our lives will not be the free ranging, gas-fired joy ride it is today. Every trip will be scrutinized and planned and deferred if at all possible. We will all be homebodies, if not homeboys. Look for a new golden age of television, whether you watch it or not. Look for books to make a big comeback. You heard it here first! Look to live closer to work and work closer to home. Look to know your neighborhood, and your neighbors, better. Travel will take on a whole new (smaller) dimension. And that is not entirely a bad thing. I still do really enjoy bicycling. I hope you do, too.
If you live in the city, you're really about to get to know that city, up close and personal and close to home. If you live in the country, you're going to be spending more time at home, really enjoying that country life. If you live in the suburbs or exurbs, you are so totally pooched it isn't funny.
Sorry. I ran out of ways to make that sound like fun quite some time ago. Me? I'm a city mouse. We are what we are, and I will say this: over the next ten years, you really want to get yourself, city or country, where you want to be. Time is running out, as is the oil.
Each decade brings change. Each decade leaves its mark on both history and the future. This next decade will be one of great change and challenge. We will have the opportunity to prove that we have learned something from the preceding decades, and that we can be taught. I hope to see you all happy and healthy ten years from now, getting by and making do, living a life of less wherever you live.
Keep your bike tires pumped.
