First Post - Here is what I have in mind...
Let me talk briefly in this first post on what I have in mind for the Post_Oil_Geography blog site.
As I say in the description to this blog site, big changes are coming. We won't be able to avoid these changes, although we may be able to mitigate the extent of change if we begin to act now.
Oil is going to run out. It is a finite resource. So is natural gas. Experts say that we may have already passed the point of what is known as the Hubbert Peak (named after King Hubbert, who researched this subject in the 1950s), or simply identified as "Peak Oil." This peak is the point at which most known (and likely unknown) sources of oil have been found, and the point after which we are extracting more oil that is being added by additional wells and discoveries. In other words, less oil will be available in the future than has been available and used up until this point. If we haven't passed the peak for oil for the world, then it will be soon.
So much of the U.S. and world economy has been based on oil as a ready resource. Besides its use as a very powerful and portable fuel for transportation is its use in manufacturing, farming, chemicals, and a myriad of other uses. Much of our food is the result of the heavy use of petroleum - in many respects, we eat petroleum, or at least food products that are largely dependent on petroleum for their growth, processing, and shipping. Although it started earlier, our petroleum-based economy has been going full swing for about the past 80 to 100 years, with particular growth since World War II.
At the same time we have a huge population (over 6 billion) on an Earth that experts claim otherwise has a carrying capacity of only 1.5 to 2 billion at its maximum. We passed the 2 billion population mark back around 1930. In other words, since 1930, the additional 4 billion people we've added to this earth have largely been as the result of good health, food, and economic resources made possible by the use of petroleum products.
Is it a coincidence that these two periods overlap - the oil-based manufacturing economy and population beyond the Earth's carrying capacity? I don't think so. We will now be headed into an economy of decline.
But the importance is not on focusing on this past, or even the present, but in looking toward the future. How are we going to live tomorrow after the oil that we've come to rely on becomes too expensive to use, let alone is even available? How many people will be able to live when the resources they are depended on to survive are removed from their grasps? Good questions. And there are many more that can be asked.
Through this blog site I hope to explore this future, the geography and way of life that will be there in this post-oil future. I hope to have discussion and present papers, lectures, and possibly even courses, that will explore the skills and knowledge we will need to know to deal with this new world. I do not plan to talk too much about how we got to this point, or in trying to prove that peak oil has happened - I leave that to historians and to scientists to do - except in how this information could help others accept the situation we are now in.
I look forward to many good discussions on this topic as we explore what to do and how we will live.
Kevin Anderson
Saturday, 20 August 2005
Eastern Iowa
As I say in the description to this blog site, big changes are coming. We won't be able to avoid these changes, although we may be able to mitigate the extent of change if we begin to act now.
Oil is going to run out. It is a finite resource. So is natural gas. Experts say that we may have already passed the point of what is known as the Hubbert Peak (named after King Hubbert, who researched this subject in the 1950s), or simply identified as "Peak Oil." This peak is the point at which most known (and likely unknown) sources of oil have been found, and the point after which we are extracting more oil that is being added by additional wells and discoveries. In other words, less oil will be available in the future than has been available and used up until this point. If we haven't passed the peak for oil for the world, then it will be soon.
So much of the U.S. and world economy has been based on oil as a ready resource. Besides its use as a very powerful and portable fuel for transportation is its use in manufacturing, farming, chemicals, and a myriad of other uses. Much of our food is the result of the heavy use of petroleum - in many respects, we eat petroleum, or at least food products that are largely dependent on petroleum for their growth, processing, and shipping. Although it started earlier, our petroleum-based economy has been going full swing for about the past 80 to 100 years, with particular growth since World War II.
At the same time we have a huge population (over 6 billion) on an Earth that experts claim otherwise has a carrying capacity of only 1.5 to 2 billion at its maximum. We passed the 2 billion population mark back around 1930. In other words, since 1930, the additional 4 billion people we've added to this earth have largely been as the result of good health, food, and economic resources made possible by the use of petroleum products.
Is it a coincidence that these two periods overlap - the oil-based manufacturing economy and population beyond the Earth's carrying capacity? I don't think so. We will now be headed into an economy of decline.
But the importance is not on focusing on this past, or even the present, but in looking toward the future. How are we going to live tomorrow after the oil that we've come to rely on becomes too expensive to use, let alone is even available? How many people will be able to live when the resources they are depended on to survive are removed from their grasps? Good questions. And there are many more that can be asked.
Through this blog site I hope to explore this future, the geography and way of life that will be there in this post-oil future. I hope to have discussion and present papers, lectures, and possibly even courses, that will explore the skills and knowledge we will need to know to deal with this new world. I do not plan to talk too much about how we got to this point, or in trying to prove that peak oil has happened - I leave that to historians and to scientists to do - except in how this information could help others accept the situation we are now in.
I look forward to many good discussions on this topic as we explore what to do and how we will live.
Kevin Anderson
Saturday, 20 August 2005
Eastern Iowa
posted by Kevin Anderson K9IUA at 4:15 PM
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