Mervyn Peak Oil

[bcholmes]

Wow. Want a really depressing documentary? Try The End of Suburbia. It's about the problem of peak oil and its tie to the North American way of life. Key ideas:

1. Economic growth is dependent on increased consumption of electricity.
2. We may already have passed peak oil production. If not, the most optimistic outlook is that we'll hit peak oil by 2010.
3. Every calorie of food we produce requires 10 calories of energy from hydrocarbons, often in the form of pesticides and fertilizers.
4. Because transportation has been cheap for the last 60 years, we need to re-learn how to have local food growth and local economies
5. The struggle to control the last of the world's oil will constitute a war that will never end in our lifetimes
6. Once people begin to understand the peak oil problem, they will demand our governments to make extremely bad decisions to protect their complacency

Here's an interesting quotation from David Suzuki (who isn't in the DVD):

To me, a hope is that we are going to hit peak oil [when oil resources begin to decline] -- and some geologists say we already hit it last year. The business community is now starting to take this very seriously.

The first thing to happen would be the big-box stores, like Home Depot and Walmart, collapsing because they are dependent on cheap oil to ship cheap goods. Also, in the suburbs of Canada we have these gigantic homes with two or three people in them, and the heating and cooling bills are enormous, and they depend on cars.

But the big thing is food. In Canada, food travels an average of 5,000 miles (8,000 km) from where it's grown to where it's eaten. This can't go on.

Comments

Thoughts on some of the factors you mentioned

[caydenza.livejournal.com]

I was going to comment in detail here, but it grew into a monster, so I put it up in my own journal here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/caydenza/88300.html). In summary, I would contend that all of the problems you listed have simple, if not easy solutions.

Does the movie give any plausible solutions to head off these problems?

Re: Thoughts on some of the factors you mentioned

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

I think that the primary message of the film is that we need to be talking about the problem a whole lot more. It also dwelt on a few other themes:

1. Consuming less

2. Returning to the cities, rather than the suburban sprawl, and designing new housing developments differently. They talked a bit about New Urbanism.

3. Reinvestment in rail and mass transit, rather than trucking and cars

4. Restoring the local economies that the Mall-warts of the world have essentially destroyed in their rise to power.

Re: Thoughts on some of the factors you mentioned

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

I would go one step further than New Urbanism and say that living near both work and shopping areas can go a long way towards changing your outlook. I can walk to work in under an hour, and save the $12 a day parking costs. There is a farmer's market on Saturdays a few blocks from home. Grocery stores, yes, I have to drive to those. But being able to do so much without a car actually causes me to not want to have to drive anywhere. We average about 3,000 miles a year of driving, and at least half of that is road trips for vacation.

Of course, I'm in an apartment, and there is zero chance of owning a house in the area I live in. And it is noisy. So there are definitely tradeoffs. I would love to live in the middle of nowhere, with nobody around, telecommute to work, but I would dread the hour-long car trip to the store once a week.

"6. Once people begin to understand the peak oil problem, they will demand our governments to make extremely bad decisions to protect their complacency"

Ah, but they already are. Unless the governments are just making those decisions proactively...