December 9th, 2008 by Chris Eng

One of the most critical moments for sending me down the path toward self-subsistance was getting my hands on a copy of The Long Emergency by James Kunstler. I plan to review it at length some point soon, but the general thrust of the book is that mankind is headed for a really, really crappy time and it’s going to come within our lifetimes. Kunstler gives a number of reasons for this, but the first one discussed (and the one discussed at the greatest length) is that we’re going to run out of oil.

The phrase used most commonly to describe this problem is ‘peak oil’, and it refers to the point when 50% of the Earth’s supply is used up. The other 50% is the half that’s harder to get out of the ground—in smaller deposits that we’ll have to keep searching for, trapped in hard to extract mediums like the oil sands, etc. Experts figure we’ll hit peak oil somewhere between now and the next 15 years (it will likely be one of those points we won’t know we’ve hit until it’s happened). Meanwhile, the worldwide demand for oil has been climbing ever higher. Both China and India have growing middle classes that want the privilege of driving cars, and the global population continues to skyrocket.

So, what does this mean for the everyman (aside from it being more expensive to drive)? Well, just about everything is reliant on oil. Our food is brought in on trucks; our consumer goods are brought in on tankers; most people commute to work in their own cars. Essentially, the cost of everything will rise. Eventually, when the oil shortage reaches a critical point, the entire system will fail. I’m not going to be some kind of doomsaying prognosticator who lays down an exact date and time when the end of the civilization comes crashing down, but even though I think it’s a ways down the road, that doesn’t mean getting there will be any easier. Society may remain standing in the short term, but if the cost of everything goes through the roof, it’ll be harder and harder to make ends meet.

The tone of The Long Emergency gets a little hysterical from time to time, but its basic arguments about peak oil are pretty sound. In fact, if you distill them to their most basic level, it’s hard to refute them: there is a finite amount of oil in the world and someday we will run out. There’s no Magic Oil Machine to make more when we’re done exhausting our supplies of compressed dinosaurs and algae. Moreover, there’s no eco-friendly substitute to replace oil with. Even if we could make biodiesel a workable option for our cars, we can’t produce it on a large enough scale to power the autofleets of the world. And while hydrogen cells may someday (though not, by the looks of it, any time soon) become viable fuel sources, we can’t retrofit our current cars in order to run off them; we would have to replace all of the cars on the road. On top of that, many of the power plants in North America are run off oil or other fossil fuels like natural gas—which is, itself, running out—or coal. Environmentally-friendly power options like wind, solar and tidal are certainly things that we should be looking to, but we aren’t currently implementing them at a rate that would cover a fraction of our energy needs, and by the time we hit the crisis point it will be much too late. Nuclear energy is a viable option for covering some of the gap, but the concept has essentially become a dirty word and the public doesn’t want it.

So, where will that leave us as supplies dwindle? It will leave us in a world that grows forever smaller. It will become increasingly costly to leave the region we’re currently living in (plane fuel costs grow more expensive all the time, and it’s possible that ultimately none but the richest of us will fly). Prepared food will become more and more expensive, prompting us to grow our own as much as possible. Metropolises will find it harder and harder to support their infrastructure, and small town-life (based on community and local trade) will enjoy a resurgence.

Is there a solution? Not as far as I can see. I don’t think there’s some solution just waiting around the corner that will allow us to keep consuing energy as we have been. Consequently, Carla and I feel its in our best interests to scale back on our consumption (of everything) and plan an exit from Vancouver to our own acreage—growing and raising crops and livestock and taking advantage of small-scale, eco-friendly power generation. Doing so will hopefully allow us to better weather whatever is coming down the road

You don’t have to agree with me on this. I’m not putting this here to enter some kind of protracted argument about whether or not peak oil is a real phenomenon. I know there are plenty of people out there who think it’s a load of crap. That’s fine. They’re welcome to their opinion. I think it’s kind of crazy, but that’s why we live in a society like ours—so we can have differing opinions. Ultimately, peak oil could all turn out to be some horrible dystopian fantasy, but even if it does, the life I have in Vancouver at the moment isn’t the life I want to be leading. Even if it never comes to pass, the race to consume going on every day isn’t what I want to be concerned with. And, ultimately, as long as I manage to get the acreage up and running, I’ll be living the way I want to in a setting I’m happy in.

(Photo courtesy of Michael Foley Photography)