Current mood: 
amused
Peak Oil is nearly here and no one seems to be too worried about it. Maybe because no one knows what will happen after that - or maybe they don't know what it is cuz the news doesn't make a big deal about it. Or, more likely, everyone figures scientists will figure out something else for us to use instead. We'll all drive electric cars, or cars run on plant oil or solar cells.
As for Global Warming --- this is how real it is --- The US Dept of Energy itself says "meeting this challenge (Meeting the world's growing energy needs while responding to global warming during the 21st Century) will demand 'transformational breakthroughs in basic science,' meaning revolutionary discoveries rather than common step-by-step scientific advances."
"Revolutionary discoveries".
You know what that means in regular people language?
With the technology and knowledge we have right now, we're all pretty much fucked.
They have absolutely no idea how we're gonna handle it, unless a fuckin' miracle happens.
This is the US Dept of Energy saying this!
In their own fucked up corporate doublespeak language that means absolutely nothing to the common man, they're saying "We're all fucked unless we make a world-changing discovery".
Welcome to Peak Oil and Global Warming,
But most Americans say "We'll figure out something. We always do."
Well that's just what the US DOE just said isn't gonna happen.
There are horror stories, like we're gonna run out of oil and the world will be turned into a Mad Max movie. Not likely, though.
Then there are folks who say there's tons of oil, we just need to drill it -- which is true. Rumor has it there's tons of oil in the Arctic Ocean and off the southern tip of South America (which was what the big to-do was about way back when Britain was fighting for ownership of the Falkan Islands ---- bet you were wondering why they were in such a tizzie about some stupid barren islands, huh?
Well, there is tons of oil and we are going to get it out of the ground eventually. With the help of the wonderful Global Warming, the Arctic Ice Sheet could be melted year-round within 4 years they're saying now, so it'll be a little cheaper to extract, once we knock the Soviet Union's flag out of the way -- it was dropped there by an ice breaker of theirs while they were mapping the Arctic Ocean floor - obviously with the same mission in mind -- but I'm sure they'll let us drill there without launching any nuclear missiles at us. They're our friends.
The problem isn't getting the oil. It's getting enough -- and getting it fast enough to keep up with demand. With the New World Order ushering in the growth of a Global Community, nations like China and other growing industrial nations are adding to the consumer's list of oil-dependency, helping to boost demand that's still growing in our own country. Yeah, we're using more, China's using more, all those little factories with little Phillipino children making Nikeys for 80 cents a week are using more --- we're all using more, every day.
As we keep looking and drilling, demand rises faster than drilling can keep up with.
That's what Peak Oil means. Peak Oil is when the rate at which we produce oil starts to decline "in comparison to the rate at which we consume it". In other words, we start consuming more than we can produce.
That's expected to hit us in the Twenty-teens. How old will you be? It's 2008.
Sure, with the record profits being enjoyed by the oil companies right now, they can invest in more drilling and more refineries. They better! Their current rigs are 25 years old, which is usually when they get scrapped. But all that oil is still in less accessible areas -- that's why they're still untapped! That takes way more money to drill than where we're drilling now, and it could take a good 5-10 years to get to the point where oil actually starts to pop up out of the ground and create a profit - once we start building new rigs, that is. And if the price of oil isn't high enough to make a profit drilling those hard-to-reach places, they'll just wait til it is.
So, in the mean time, the only solution is to slow consumption, and to create a profit-incentive that will light a fire under the asses of oil companies to drill.
And since I'm not cutting my driving down or turning my heat down in my house, and I suspect neither are you, there's only one way to really control consumption ---
Jack up the price.
This is where we - the average schmuck, will get fucked. Not in running out of oil, gas, propane and fuel oil, running around like Mad Max stealing fuel from each other --- but in paying a whole lot more for it than we ever paid before.
And not just at the pumps!
Consider that soon gas costs twice what it did. Here's a list of costs that also go up in relation to that ---
- Electricity - takes fuel to make electricity - that price will double, too. Dicked again.
- Driving to the store to get food and clothing - gotta do that. Can't pay UPS's new jacked-up prices to make up for their fuel bill. Gonna cost you money to go spend money. Dicked again!
OK, you make a few sacrifices, cut your driving down by only shopping twice a week, carpool, wear sweaters in winter, buy those little screw-shaped light bulbs. And how appropriately shaped -- who says corporations don't have a sense of humor. Those screw shaped light bulbs are filled with a mercury gas, (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp - end of the second paragraph) which is one of the most potent poisons around, so don't drop it. But I'm sure none of that gas leaks as the electricity burns it while it's flowing through the tube.
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Now consider that corporations that have to pay that extra cost will be dicking YOU for the extra cost, or else they don't make the same profit - they take a pay cut -- and no corporate exec is gonna take a pay cut.
So YOU get dicked for the extra cost.
This is a list of the extra costs YOU will get dicked for - ie - YOU will pay THEIR bills if you want THEM to produce food, clothing, and other basic necessities for YOU.
- Processing the food - gotta pay to heat the buildings and pay the electric bill to run the machines, Dicked again!
- Electric is up, too, cuz you need fuel to make electricity, so you get dicked not only for YOUR electricity bill, but the corporations' electricity bills to run the plants.
- Packaging the food - gotta pay to heat the buildings and pay the electric bill to run the machines, Dicked yet again!
- Shipping the food - You gotta pay for the gas to ship the food -- AND the taxes the trucker has to pay on that gas (both at the pump and however else they pay taxes) for highway usage, which will cost more because the machines they use to keep up the roads will cost more. Corporations will dick YOU with that bill, too.
- Grocery and Department Stores need heat and electricity, too. Ass gettin' sore yet?.
OK, now food, clothing, basic necessities, driving to work, using electricity and heating your home have doubled.
How's your budget looking now?
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Well I ain't done.
Cuz now, mom and pop stores, specialty stores, gift shops, all these little places that eek out a living as it is, get dicked for all their overhead, too. They've been competing with Walmart for a decade and now they gotta double their overhead?
How long do you think they'll stay in business when they start dicking you for their overhead?
In fact, now that people can't afford luxuries because they're all getting dicked by Peak Oil, too, people who sell those luxuries will be out of business too.
Unemployment on top of jacked-up cost of living.
So you ask -- Why not convert to all these alternate energy sources then if fuel is gonna cost so much?
Because those alternate energy sources are gonna cost a bundle, too --- a bundle to invest in initially and a bundle to produce millions of to accommodate the millions of households now converting.
And guess what? -- THEY need fuel to produce those alternate energy sources!
You use almost as much vegetable-oil fuel in the farm equipment that you drive to farm the corn to turn it into vegetable-oil fuel - as you produce the plants to begin with! Also, they've discovered that by using up all the vegetable matter, including the stalks, to produce the vegetable oil fuel, you deplete the soil of all of it's nutrients, because you're no longer turning under the stalks to create the soil you need to grow it in the first place. You're also using up valuable land that needs to be used to grow food in an increasing population.
Even if they get it to work, you have to replace every car in the world with a car that will run on it, or convert every car in the world to run on it. Even if we can make a car to ru on electricity, you have to replace every car in the world with electric cars. That all takes tons of energy to manufacture.
You need fuel to run machines to create solar panels and wind turbines. You need energy to drill to get to geothermal sources. You need energy to run electric plants to power electric cars.
That's all gonna cost more now because
A) they're all gonna need fuel to create, and
B) you and I aren't going to buy that stuff til gas DOES cost more!
So alternate energy isn't likely to help a lot anyway in the short-term -- though in the long run, say 40 years or so after you spend a bundle for the alternate energy source, the initial investments should start to pay off. It's that long wait for payback that keeps most Americans from going Solar or Wind power in the first place. And you'll still need to cut back considerably on use because non of those sources procude as much as we use every day now.
And we haven't even touched on Global Warming yet.
See, climate changes, That's what it does. That's what it's always done. But it changes over thousands of years, giving nature and plants time to condition the soil to adapt to the change in climate. Ecosystems die off gradually and gradually, other ecosystems evolve to replace it.
But because everything is changing so fast -- faster than originally predicted if the Arctic Ocean, that wasn't supposed to become ice free for 80 years, will become ice-free in 4 -- nature doesn't have time to turn Canadian forests into pasture land or farmable land.
They get turned, instead, into termite fields and forest fires as they dry up and die.
Ever try to plow a field full of tree stumps with a horse drawn plow? Cuz there ain't gonna be a lot of fuel to run farm equipment, and even if there is, it doesn't do treestumps very well. But that's what you'll have to do because America's Breadbasket will be a Dustbowl, just like the 30's, only now it'll be in the 2030's. How old will you be?
So now, add all of the above reasons why you get dicked with the high cost of food, then add to the fact that there is way less farmable land, and you get a food shortage. So now we're paying even more for food - assuming you can even get it.
And the only way a corporation is going to produce any food at all is if they make a profit. And trust me -- they will charge "what the market will bear". That means they will charge whatever you're willing to pay to keep from starving to death.
But the people with the big money won't have anything to worry about. They'll be able to afford everything no matter how high the price. They don't even need to live in America if they don't want to, so they don't give a shit if the whole place folds under it's own laziness and hedonism or not. They can move to Dubai and live in Pyramid City.
So in the end -- YOU get dicked.
or to put it more accurately --
YOU get dicked in the END!
Check out this website for more info ---
Life After the Oil Crash
(I wrote this before I found this website)
