Rachel’s News #828, October 13, 2005
By Tim Montague
A cleaner, brighter future for our children — who doesn’t want that? Urban areas that are more livable, free of smog and congestion. High- wage jobs in manufacturing, transportation and energy industries that are greener and more sustainable than ever before — sign me up!
More than 350 people from 39 states and five countries gathered in Yellow Springs, Ohio in late September 2005 to learn how to prepare for the end of cheap oil. That’s right, arguably global oil production has peaked, or soon will, meaning that oil will become increasingly scarce and expensive. No one knows whether peak-oil predictions are right, but the 5-fold increase in the price of oil in the last 5 years — from $10 per barrel in 2000 to $50 per barrel in 2005 — gives credence to the peak-oil theory. Expensive oil poses a major challenge for the U.S. where 36% of our energy comes from oil.[1] Rising oil prices will affect every aspect of life — food, drugs, transportation, suburban sprawl, the globalized economy (which manifests itsel
f as cheap goods shipped from China to Wal-Mart) — all depend on cheap oil. And though we gripe about paying $3 a gallon for gasoline at the pump, the true costs of an oil economy go much deeper — global warming, massive pollution of our air, food and water, and foreign wars that are costing us upwards of $75 billion dollars a year. All the costs of our oil-based economy are rising steadily.
Just as American consumers and industry made the transition from whale-oil to petroleum over a century ago, an exciting — if somewhat daunting — transition lies ahead. Today we derive 80% percent of our energy from coal, oil and natural gas — these fossil fuels’ overwhelmingly power our economy. We’ve built a comfortable lifestyle on these cheap and abundant sources of energy but at tremendous cost to the environment, public health and national security. Now that oil production has arguably peaked, the question is not if we will find a better way of powering our economy, but when
