http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
The above is describe to me as "an interesting read - judge for yourself."
Ah, a challenge. I love a challenge.
I'm going to argue for what the web site says in many ways, but from the point of view of the engineer looking to facilitate the transition.
Let me start by suggesting that the most important factor in how well the world deals with this problem is how fast the price of oil increases. If the price increases quickly, people may react badly and reinact what happened in the US during the 70's: long lines at the gas pump, theft and a bit of violence. If prices increase slowly, then people and businesses will be able to better deal with the problem. Even the American automobile industry can take a hint.
My guess is that there will be an effort to regulate the rate that gas prices will be permitted to increase. Without some form of regulation, you'll see hot spots where prices would shoot through the ceiling for six hours and then drop to normal for the rest of the day. There's a flip-side to that kind of regulation: shortages, because high prices are a different, more local form of regulation: a reaction to high demand for a limited resource.
I don't think there's any question that fossil resource consumption is increasing with Asia booming and our own usage increasing. (Compare the skylines of the three biggest mainland Chinese cities with what they looked like six years ago for an eye opening moment.)
Also, keep in mind that if someone were to invent a really useful replacement technology for gas and diesel powered engines that doesn't use a fossil resource, I think there is a good chance that they will do well selling the product. At this moment, to my knowledge, such a device does not exist.
The most sensible thing people are going to be forced to do is to change everything necessary which they have some control over in a way that will make economic sense. And, you know, the darndest things will happen, just wait and see. You will be surprised how businesses and people react to a permanent increase in fossil resource prices. They did for a brief moment in the 1970s, but they couldn't take it seriously enough since the problem sort of went away, and the way to more efficient use of resources was paved with higher priced cement, so not a lot of folks kept at it.
It isn't difficult at all to see how extravagant the current use of limited fossil resources is here in the United States. How many people leave AC adaptors plugged into wall sockets all day without anything plugged into them? How many HUMMV H2s are actually driving on the road today because of a sweet $25,000.00 tax deal?
My expectation is that when US demand exceeds supply, fuel prices will climb until three things happen: 1) the demand tails off because the cost of fuel exceeds people's ability to afford it, and they therefore use less; 2) different fuels become available at the higher prices that haven't been available at a lower price because they were too expensive to sell and therefore make available. I'm absolutely certain that people will easily find a way to make do with less. People will be forced to look for other forms of fuel, and they absolutely will consume less of it. It will become an interest, a sport, a passion, a preoccupation, a survival trait.
What happens when the price of gas triples? Off the cuff, I'd say that HUMMVs and H2s wind up sitting in a garage somewhere. The out of tune survivalists won't give 'em up. The smart ones don't have HUMMVs, the they instead bought other modes of transport like horses, mountain bikes and other smaller cars, lots of well-stored spare parts, and they've been figuring out how to make biodiesel using crops grown on their farmlands.
Yes, some leaders will react by using military force, but I think what's going to make it all work is taking the time to look ahead and being smart about the use of limited resources.
Losing cheap oil isn't something that can be easily controlled at the head end and that control distributes evenly at the consumer end. In this matter the consumers are in the driver's seat. All government can do is establish initiatives and provide temporary assistance to give people some breathing space to get their ducks in a row. Gas goes from 2 bucks to 6 bucks. What do you do? I think what you do is a lot different when it increases 200% over six weeks versus six years. If it happens over six weeks, you frankly start walking a lot, there isn't much you will be able to do that's going to deal with the problem permanently, you just have to wait for the system to catch up and the price comes back down for a while so that you can move. If it takes six years, you have to recognize the problem and then resolve to take measures as they make sense.
If your business is to survive, you have to be prepared to change everything you do to optimize travel and transport. You'd be surprised what can change if you try, because for one reason you aren't going to be alone, a whole lot of other businesses will be making the same changes.
Coordinating logistics will become more important than it has been. Telecommunications becomes critical. The emphasis has been on Just In Time, but all those logistics resources will make room for large cost increases in fuel and fossil resources. Travel, transport and storage concerns go from a preoccupation to a fascinating and challenging preoccupation.
It isn't true that companies haven't had to do this yet, because there are fuel and fossil resource costs as it is and are an important factor in cost analysis spreadsheets. Every manufacturing business takes travel and transport seriously.
FedEx has a war room where they play with the numbers all day, including manage investments in derivatives like options, futures and commodities which affect fleet operations. M&M Mars, the candy bar company, doesn't have a war room but they do have a bunch of desks in a big room without cubes occupied by people who play with market scenarios to try and anticipate where to get the next 100 tons of flour, wheat, sugar, fructose, chocolate, caramel, and plastic wrap, and enough electricity to deal with it all. Several trading firms and economic doctorates have invested thousands of hours of time building and destroying scenarios where specific resources become scarce as Asia industrializes.
It becomes important to change manufacturing processes to use more locally available ingredients, including fuels. It becomes less important to ship everything from one manufacturing location, because manufacturing is more likely to go where the ingredients are.
You huddle together with your inciteful friends and business colleagues and you redesign what you do to change your life and business. This isn't rocket science, it is easy to figure out that if you want oranges, you're going to have to pay more to get them. If you want apples, you may want to figure out how to grow them yourself on your own land.
Do the same with your business. If your business is building a particular component for computers, you may need to build several different versions of your standard cost analysis spreadsheets to get an idea where things can change and things can't.
Desktop computers are extremely resource-intensive devices to manufacture. The chip foundaries are dependent on a wide variety of weird and toxic ingredients and need a lot of power. They variously require a wide variety of plastics, metal, precision coatings, wire, and so on. Silicon is cheap, but refined silicon isn't. How do you make computers with fewer resources? A whole lot of up-front research and design will hopefully help to let you produce more efficient processors and fewer components that generate less heat, weigh less, and take up much less space. This will save you fossil resources in manufacturing, shipping costs in distribution, and use less power when being used. Look at large web server farms, those suckers draw enough power to drain a measurable percentage of a large powerplant. These companies are fascinated by machines that take up less space, require less power, and can run faster. They can't get enough! They've already run into power resource problems.
It is straightforward for entire industries to rework their innerds given six years, the computer industry has been doing that since the 60s. Six weeks, on the other hand, means that you just work with the best card that you have in your hand.
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