PEAK OIL AND GREEN VALUES

Energy is an integral part of our lives, and everything that we do or use consumes it. The cars that we drive use energy; the food that we eat takes energy to grow and bring to the store; the lights on in our buildings take energy; everything that we buy takes energy to produce; even the water that we drink requires energy to transport and purify. Just think about the amount of energy that we use as a society:  the average American uses three gallons of oil per day, which may not seem like much until you multiply that by the number of Americans (at 300 million Americans that makes almost 1 billion gallons of oil used per day); imagine if everyone on Earth used oil like we do.

            The majority of this energy, about 63%, comes from oil and natural gas (oil provides 39% of our energy and natural gas provides 24%); coal is a major source of electricity and accounts for another 23% of energy consumption. Since oil and other hydrocarbons are non-renewable, that means that they are a limited resource that is subject to constraints in supply; essentially, you cannot take more oil out of the ground than is actually in the ground. This concept, however simple, somehow manages to elude even our most astute politicians and economists.

            The problem with the current system of energy supply and consumption is that it is based primarily on cheap oil, or oil that is plentiful and easy to get out of the ground. What happens if oil and natural gas become more and more scarce? What happens if the price of oil reaches $100 dollars per barrel or $200 dollars per barrel? Will we be able to drive as much if gasoline costs ten dollars per gallon? How will we eat well if the price of food in the grocery store is several times what it is today? Would we still watch TV at night if our electricity bill was $500 dollars per month? Why aren’t Bush or our other rich friends in government and business worried about these questions? Well, their personal fortunes may keep them from worrying about high electricity bills or food prices, but the rest of us Americans can’t afford not to.

            Many groups who seriously look at the data believe that we will run into an energy crisis in the next ten to twenty years; one that cannot easily be solved. Currently there is no replacement for cheap oil, nor are any new technologies likely to replace cheap oil in the future. The transition from a hydrocarbon-based economy to whatever we will have after will likely be drastic; our American lifestyle will have to change. This is where our green values can be of help.

            The ideals of sustainability, ecological wisdom, and decentralization of politics and economics can greatly aid us in our transition away from fossil fuels. If implemented these values would lead us to greatly reduce our level of consumption and to search for healthy alternatives (such as wind and solar power) to provide much of the energy that we need. The post-hydrocarbon world will need green values just as much as we do today to ensure that the current cycle of boom and bust isn’t repeated again for our grandchildren and their grandchildren. We can each participate in general education, direct action, and even electoral politics to work towards bringing both the problem of peak-oil and the wisdom of green values to light. In doing so we will all be working on what could be the biggest problem facing the world today and at the same time spreading a set of values that can help to ensure that the world will continue to work for some time to come.