Passing the world oil peak means the world economy will disintegrate. In fact, the unraveling of the industrial economy is already underway, as marked by a high rate of unemployment and rapid evaporation of capital.
When the collapse is complete, non-industrial cultures and non-human species will be relieved of tremendous, ongoing oppression by industrialization. Growth of the industrial economy is tightly linked to extinction rates and loss of extirpation of cultures, so the forthcoming Greatest Depression is great news from the perspective of most occupants of planet Earth.
Complete collapse of the industrial economy clearly is necessary, but perhaps insufficient, to save our own species. We have failed to voluntarily reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and have therefore failed to prevent frying the planet beyond the point of human habitability. The economic consequences of passing the world oil peak oil force us to stop burning fossil fuels, which might give us a chance, as a species, to squeeze through the global-change bottleneck.
Thus, humans who care about other species, or even about the persistence of Homo sapiens, view peak oil as good news. However, evolution requires humans to care a lot more about themselves and their loved ones than about people they don't know and especially future generations. And that's how the industrialized world got into the dual predicaments of the fossil-fuel coin: Peak oil and runaway climate change are driven by short-sighted consumption.
Preserving western civilization or its apex, the industrial economy, likely are impossible at this late date. On the other hand, there are many options available to individual humans who are willing to make fundamental changes in how they live. These individuals will thrive in the wake of economic collapse.
Comments
Since I knew (or realized) about peak oil I started to read a lot about it and life after oil, my plans are to “leave” this society and have a self-sustainable small farm hopefully in a community with similar ideas.
Although I don’t think that the evolution of the world (western world) to a non oil addicted society is going to be peaceful, even for those communities that are already living a low carbon life, I think there will be wars and lots of hungry people, without oil we can not produce enough food to feed the amount of people we do now, therefore I think that maybe these hungry people will try to get food from anywhere, and those self-sustainable no-oil dependents communities will suffer and eventually could be attacked by those hungry people (or armies).
This actually quite scares me, what do you think about that scenario?
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