# Peak Oil: How will our lifestyles change? Or is it Quackery. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 11, 2008, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202 "2008-11-11T16:42:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Phlosphr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Phlosphr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phlosphr)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/1 "2008-11-11T16:42:26Z")
I’ve been doing some research into [Peak Oil](http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4172?gclid=CLmXm7jG7ZYCFRIfDQodEi28rQ) or [Hubberts Peak Theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory)and some of what I have been finding has been mildly alarming, other things I’ve been looking into are encouraging. The [point](http://www.richardheinberg.com/node/282)of the whole matter is not about running out of oil completely, but what happens when our global economic demand exceeds production. The downsides are many $15 dollar gas, food prices, airfare etc all going up exponentially. But what does that mean for the everyday Joe or Jane in the US or abroad, because this issue will effect everyone. The debate being Peak Oil will effect everyone - how will it effect the US economy in the next few decades, and how will it effect global oil production and international relations? I posit that economic restructuring will lead to much more money being spent on alternative fuels and energy sources leading to lifestyle changes that will effect anyone who relies on going to the supermarket for food, or travel for your job. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/2 "2008-11-11T18:43:47Z")
It’s crap. Supply and demand are not points, they are curves. Demand is a function of the price of oil and the supply of oil is a function of the cost of extracting it. There is lots of oil in shale that can be extracted when the price is high enough. Then there are oil alternatives like bio desiel and coal conversion. The point is that there is no “cliff” to fall off, there is just the gradual (over the long term) rise in prices until an alternative is more cost effective. That doesn’t mean we should worry about rising energy prices and plan for it, but creating bullshit economic theories doesn’t help. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/3 "2008-11-11T19:03:51Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > It’s crap. Supply and demand are not points, they are curves. Demand is a function of the price of oil and the supply of oil is a function of the cost of extracting it. There is lots of oil in shale that can be extracted when the price is high enough. Then there are oil alternatives like bio desiel and coal conversion. I never really understood the difference between “peak oil” and what you just wrote. Isn’t the idea of peak oil just that cheaply extractable oil will tapper off leaving us dependent on more expensive forms of energy production? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/4 "2008-11-11T19:12:09Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > It’s crap. Supply and demand are not points, they are curves. Demand is a function of the price of oil and the supply of oil is a function of the cost of extracting it. There is lots of oil in shale that can be extracted when the price is high enough. Then there are oil alternatives like bio desiel and coal conversion. > > The point is that there is no “cliff” to fall off, there is just the gradual (over the long term) rise in prices until an alternative is more cost effective. > > That doesn’t mean we should worry about rising energy prices and plan for it, but creating bullshit economic theories doesn’t help. It’s about physics, chemistry and geology, **not** economics. Your optimism is based on the unsupported assumption that such an alternative exists, or will exist. Technology has limits, those laid down by the laws of physics, and it is entirely possible that it is **impossible** to come up with a non-hydrocarbon-fueled automobile engine – whether powered by electric storage batteries or hydgrogen fuel cells or Mr. Fusion – that is comparable to the IC engine in terms of power, speed, range-before-refueling, and general convenience, to the degree that we can change over to it with no significant changes in our daily lifestyle and transportation infrastructure. Then again it might be possible; but we have no reason, yet, to think so, any more than we have reason to hope for a useful energy source out of [Steorn’s Orbo.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbo) Not all the economic incentives in the world will make it work. Anyway, for a worst-case-scenario answer to the OP’s question see [_The Long Emergency_](http://www.amazon.com/Long-Emergency-Converging-Catastrophes-Twenty-First/dp/0802142494/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226430231&sr=8-1) by James Howard Kunstler, article-length excerpt/summary [here.](http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency) See also Kunstler’s novel [_A World Made by Hand_](http://www.amazon.com/World-Made-James-Howard-Kunstler/dp/0802144012/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226430576&sr=1-2) (reviewed [here](http://www.energybulletin.net/node/41571)) for his literary vision of a post-oil world (hint: it’s **nothing** like _Road Warrior.)_ ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/5 "2008-11-11T19:13:30Z")
Another vote for quackery, although I doubt I can explain it better than **Dan Blather** or many other people here. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/6 "2008-11-11T19:20:45Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > I never really understood the difference between “peak oil” and what you just wrote. Isn’t the idea of peak oil just that cheaply extractable oil will tapper off leaving us dependent on more expensive forms of energy production? Yes. No “cliff” as such, just every barrel of petroleum costing a bit more (in real, inflation-adjusted dollars) to get out of the ground every year. **However.** From Kunstler’s [_The City in Mind,_](http://www.amazon.com/City-Mind-Notes-Urban-Condition/dp/B0000C2W6A/sr=8-1/qid=1166738461/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-9788122-0265632?ie=UTF8&s=books) chapter on Atlanta: > [@](#): > > A current popular belief in America is that “alternative fuels” could replace gasoline in the vehicles we use and that the system could merrily roll along without petroleum as if nothing had happened. This a dangerous delusion. The truth is that no known “alternative technology,” including hydrogen, fuel cell, electricity, nuclear, or alcohol from biomass, can take the place of gasoline in the way we have organized our lives, especially where cars and trucks are concerned. None of the touted alternative fuels is as versatile as gasoline, or can be produced for anything close to the cheap price of gas we’ve been accustomed to, or can be stored or transported as easily. The electric car is not going to save Atlanta. > > * * * > > I believe the world is entering a long era of chronic instability in oil markets that no amount of wishing or pretending will hold back. By the time this book is published [2002] – a year from now – I shall be surprised if we are not experiencing the initial effects. The two oil-producing regions that allowed America to postpone this reckoning for twenty-five years, the Alaskan North Slope fields, and the North Sea fields (belonging to Britain and Norway), are scheduled to pass their production peaks this year, and after that, most of the oil in the world will be controlled by people who don’t like us, or contained in regions too chaotic to engage in the complex business of oil extraction. The Middle East regions containing the greatest reserves will be the last to peak, but long before they do, the oil markets will destabilize. **In the current American mood of narcotized inattention, the point can’t be emphasized enough that it is not necessary for oil reserves to run out before world oil markets are severely destabilized. And when that occurs, industrial economies will be painfully compromised.** > > We Americans cherish a set of delusions to minimize or deflect the seriousness of this. As already touched on, we believe that we can run a drive-in civilization on some fuel other than petroleum. The actual prospects for this are dim, but we base our belief (a wish, really) on the spectacular cavalcade of technological achievements that occurred in the previous century, one astonishing novelty after another: airplanes, movies, radio, TV, antibiotics, Teflon, computers, automobiles themselves. (The lingering “victory disease” from our great triumph in World War Two still stokes our delusions of invincibility.) Alternative energy sources such as natural gas, biomass, coal, nuclear power, solar power, fuel cells, and so forth, will fall far short of compensating for disrupted oil markets. It will be a hard lesson. The world’s fleet of eleven thousand jet airplanes will not run on coal or plutonium. Massive disruptions to transportation and business will occur. The “global economy” as touted in recent years – meaning the long-range transport of enormous quantities of cheap goods virtually everywhere – will join mercantile imperialism in the history books. Food production, which depends heavily on oil-based fertilizers, will be affected by oil market disturbances. The Caesar salad that travels twenty-five hundred miles from California to somebody’s table in Atlanta will become an object of nostalgia. Farming will have to become much more labor-intensive, will have to be practiced on a far smaller scale, and done much closer to market. Half a million other products, from medicine, asphalt, paint and detergent to plastic trash bags, are also derived from oil. As the oil markets destabilize, shortages and fluctuating prices in oil will hinder industry from even addressing the problem of converting societies to other forms of energy. (Emphasis added.) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/7 "2008-11-11T19:21:39Z")
> [@](#): > > The point is that there is no “cliff” to fall off, there is just the gradual (over the long term) rise in prices until an alternative is more cost effective. > > That doesn’t mean we should worry about rising energy prices and plan for it, but creating bullshit economic theories doesn’t help. You’re saying the theory is bullshit at the same time you’re agreeing with it. The Peak Oil Theory doesn’t say that oil will run out - it says that its price will rise as the supply decreases. At some point, oil will become more expensive than other sources of energy and those alternatives will replace oil. But the point that many people are missing is that the alternatives will replace expensive oil not cheap oil. If coal conversion, for example, could produce the equivalent of dollar a gallon gasoline, we’d have already made the switch. We didn’t so it doesn’t. Apparently the coast of fuel produced by coal conversion or other alternatives is higher than gasoline at four dollars a gallon because we paid four dollars a gallon for gasoline and no alternative appeared on the market. Gasoline prices in other countries have risen over the equivalent of six dollars a gallon and people pay it so we know the alternative fuel cost is higher than that figure as well. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/8 "2008-11-11T19:43:13Z")
The idea of peak oil is that at some point we will reach a limit of production and each subsequent year we will produce less. To this point I am sure everyone agrees. The question is what happens then. Peak oil advocates see this as the point at which “supply exceeds demand”. But as I stated, there is no single supply or demand figure. If oil were really cheap we would not have insulation in our homes, more people would use air conditioning, etc. Instead we reach an equlibrium of supply and demand. As prices go up we use double pane windows, 2x6 framing rather than 2x4, people buy more fuel efficient cars, turn down their thermostats, etc. When the price of oil reaches a certain level then alternative fuels become viable. These include wind, solar, nuclear, biomass, shale oil, natural gas, wave power, and on and on. The big crisis we face is that China and India are becoming more wealthy and they will raise the demand curve. To the degree that they do not have existing infrastructure in place they may move more quickly to adopt alternative fuels and transportation systems. We have seen this happen with cellular telephones. In the third world it makes more sense to just skip land line technology in rural areas and move directly to cellular. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/9 "2008-11-11T19:52:55Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Your optimism is based on the unsupported assumption that such an alternative exists, or will exist. Technology has limits, those laid down by the laws of physics, and it is entirely possible that it is **impossible** to come up with a non-hydrocarbon-fueled automobile engine – whether powered by electric storage batteries or hydgrogen fuel cells or Mr. Fusion – that is comparable to the IC engine in terms of power, speed, range-before-refueling, and general convenience, to the degree that we can change over to it with no significant changes in our daily lifestyle and transportation infrastructure. Then again it might be possible; but we have no reason, yet, to think so, any more than we have reason to hope for a useful energy source out of [Steorn’s Orbo.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbo) Not all the economic incentives in the world will make it work. Ummmm, I think you’re missing the point. The ideas that **DanBlather** mentioned and others, specifically oil sands and liquid coal, already exist. Some of the oil sold in the United States comes from Canadian oil sands. Hence it is clearly possible to produce oil from sands at $2 per gallon. Our neighbors up north are currently in the process up setting up more mines for oil sands, and I’ve heard estimates that in total they’ll find as much as a trillion barrels of oil by that method, in Canada alone. We are not going to run out of oil. Nor do I believe that prices will become prohibitive, or that we’ll see major “lifestyle changes”. It’s clear now that last summer’s run-up in prices was caused by speculators. The current price ($2 per gallon) in America probably represents a decent estimate of a market price, and I predict prices will stay in that neighborhood for the next few years. As I see it, certain persons in the USA and elsewhere are upset that so many Americans have fled the cities and moved out to suburbs, ex-urbs (whatever those are) and rural areas. This simply galls some people, who view it as somehow selfish or unethical. Because they can’t stop the migration, they instead resort to imaginary scenarios where the suburb-dwellers are punished by sky-high oil prices. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/10 "2008-11-11T19:55:11Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > You’re saying the theory is bullshit at the same time you’re agreeing with it. The Peak Oil Theory doesn’t say that oil will run out - it says that its price will rise as the supply decreases. At some point, oil will become more expensive than other sources of energy and those alternatives will replace oil. > > But the point that many people are missing is that the alternatives will replace expensive oil not cheap oil. If coal conversion, for example, could produce the equivalent of dollar a gallon gasoline, we’d have already made the switch. We didn’t so it doesn’t. Apparently the coast of fuel produced by coal conversion or other alternatives is higher than gasoline at four dollars a gallon because we paid four dollars a gallon for gasoline and no alternative appeared on the market. Gasoline prices in other countries have risen over the equivalent of six dollars a gallon and people pay it so we know the alternative fuel cost is higher than that figure as well. Gasoline today is [cheaper](http://inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Gasoline_inflation_chart.htm)in real dollars than it was in 1981. The cheapest gas has ever been in the United States was as recent as 1999. Gas is less than 50% higher than the historic average. Thus it is not surprising that we have not reached the point at which it is economically worthwhile to replace our entire infrastructure. That said, I am all in favor of planning for the replacement of our petroleum based infrastructure. I am just saying that there is nothing magic about the point in the future when oil production begins to decline. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/11 "2008-11-11T20:34:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Gasoline today is cheaper in real dollars than it was in 1981. I’ve heard this one before. George Will was beating this drum for a while. The argument is that gas prices have held steady if you adjust for inflation. And what’s inflation? A general rise in prices. Oil prices being central to transportation costs, a rise in oil prices will cause a rise in general prices. So what you’ve done is adjust for a price rise by eliminating the rise in price. Which makes the fact that your figure holds steady much less impressive. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/12 "2008-11-11T20:39:38Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > That said, I am all in favor of planning for the replacement of our petroleum based infrastructure. N.B.: What you are describing is necessary but it requires more than replacing our refineries and pipelines and the apparatus at our filling stations with something else. It requires replacing our whole **built environment** with something that is not designed around the assumption that everyone will drive or ride a motor vehicle for every personal-transportation purpose. ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/13 "2008-11-11T20:51:18Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > As I see it, certain persons in the USA and elsewhere are upset that so many Americans have fled the cities and moved out to suburbs, ex-urbs (whatever those are) and rural areas. This simply galls some people, who view it as somehow selfish or unethical. Because they can’t stop the migration, they instead resort to imaginary scenarios where the suburb-dwellers are punished by sky-high oil prices. I’m not galled, but we do heavily subsidize or incentivize movement to suburban and rural areas, which creates a market distortion that hides the true cost of such movement. ---
**Author:** ![Kokopilau](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Kokopilau](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kokopilau)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/14 "2008-11-11T21:16:21Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I > > Anyway, for a worst-case-scenario answer to the OP’s question see [_The Long Emergency_](http://www.amazon.com/Long-Emergency-Converging-Catastrophes-Twenty-First/dp/0802142494/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226430231&sr=8-1) by James Howard Kunstler, article-length excerpt/summary [here.](http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency) See also Kunstler’s novel [_A World Made by Hand_](http://www.amazon.com/World-Made-James-Howard-Kunstler/dp/0802144012/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226430576&sr=1-2) (reviewed [here](http://www.energybulletin.net/node/41571)) for his literary vision of a post-oil world (hint: it’s **nothing** like _Road Warrior.)_ Kunstler is a crank who eagerly looks forward to the end of civilization, and seizes on any theory that he thinks implies such an end. He wrote the exact same kind of crap with the same kind of “it’s inevitable!” enthusiasm about Y2K. I’ve even pointed this out to you before, BrainGlutton. [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9746442&postcount=53](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9746442&postcount=53) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/15 "2008-11-11T21:26:36Z")
The problem and our best response to it are both continua. Oil prices will rise, eventually: Of that there can be no doubt. No matter how vast the Canadian tar sands are, they too will eventually run low. And as the prices rise, peoples’ behaviour will also be forced to change. Maybe, after a certain point, you can only afford to fly to visit family once a year, instead of twice per year. Maybe you’ll look for a job closer to your home, or a house closer to your job, to cut down on commuting. Maybe you’ll put better insulation in your house. Lifestyles will have to change, but they’ll change over time, not all at once when the magic point of peak production is reached. And we should also be looking at alternatives for some of the things we’re using oil for right now. We can’t replace the entire refinery/pipeline/filling station infrastructure all at once, but we can design and build more fuel-efficient cars, and put in high-speed rail lines to compete with air travel, and add alternative power plants to the existing electrical grid. ---
**Author:** ![mazinger\_z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@mazinger\_z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mazinger_z)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/16 "2008-11-11T21:38:36Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’ve heard this one before. George Will was beating this drum for a while. The argument is that gas prices have held steady if you adjust for inflation. And what’s inflation? A general rise in prices. Oil prices being central to transportation costs, a rise in oil prices will cause a rise in general prices. So what you’ve done is adjust for a price rise by eliminating the rise in price. Which makes the fact that your figure holds steady much less impressive. To be fair, though, inflation is measured by a core set of products of which housing/shelter is the most heavily weighted component. With gas being priced what it is in today’s dollars is definitely impressive, especially given the scale of these crackpot theories. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/17 "2008-11-11T22:03:41Z")
> [@Kokopilau](#): > > Kunstler is a crank … He wrote the exact same kind of crap with the same kind of “it’s inevitable!” enthusiasm about Y2K. Funny, that’s exactly what this reminds me of. ---
**Author:** ![Kokopilau](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Kokopilau](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kokopilau)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/18 "2008-11-11T22:06:01Z")
It’s also important to distinguish Peak Oil as a petrogeological concept (“the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline”, as Wikipedia describes it), and Peak Oil as a term for a geopolitical and economic crisis (as mainly defined by the [Hirsch Report](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirsch_report), which states “As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.”). It’s the latter usage of the term “Peak Oil” that’s most common, and the one used by Kunstler and all the other gloom and doomers (like the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, The Oil Drum, and especially Life After the Oil Crash, which has tons of Kunstler’s essays on the topic and also conveniently sells MREs for all your postapocalyptic stockpile needs), who take the uncontested idea that oil is a finite resource, and extrapolate it to mean that when the petrogeologic Peak Oil point is reached, that our oil-dependent technological society will face massive upheavals followed by a total collapse, and that _this is inevitable_, that _nothing_ we can do or try will prevent this from occurring. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/19 "2008-11-11T23:28:17Z")
> [@Kokopilau](#): > > Kunstler is a crank who eagerly looks forward to the end of civilization . . . :rolleyes: An alarmist, perhaps, but no Luddite. He no more **wants** his prophecies of gloom to come to pass than you do; not a word in any of his books can be taken to imply otherwise. _A World Made By Hand_ is steeped throughout with a sense of regret and loss. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202/20 "2008-11-11T23:31:30Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > . . . and put in high-speed rail lines to compete with air travel . . . [Fuck, yeah!](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=491681)😃 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/peak-oil-how-will-our-lifestyles-change-or-is-it-quackery/472202.md?page=2)