If nothing else, we’ll need to recognize that, like climate change, Peak Oil is not some event looming on a distant horizon. Peak Oil is happening now.
We must guard against the notion that Peak Oil’s impact (like climate change) is just a one-time, cataclysmic episode “scheduled” to happen but only at some random time at an indefinite point sometime long into the future. That thinking suggest we can put off dealing with it until “later.” Conventional crude oil production peaked a decade ago. The short-term bump from tight oil production in recent years changed the totals for a brief period, but the the main issue is unchanged.
Media and industry spin may alter the perceptions of reality, but the efforts won’t change the reality. Peak Oil is already here! It’s not just about barrels of production totals. It’s what happens to a modern society powered by a finite fossil fuel resource drawn down every day to provide energy for a nearly-infinite number of needs, products, and demands.
The B team cannot match what conventional crude oil has provided all of us for more than a century. We’re now cruising along atop a somewhat steady (?) plateau of crude oil supply while feverish exploration continues, but a finite resource is still finite.
And inferior substitutes with their assorted financial and production challenges are still inferior substitutes.
The fact that peak oil’s impact won’t be obvious to all but the most rigidly delusional by next week, or next month, or next year, or for several years thereafter won’t alter the fact that what has powered modern society over these many decades will not be as available, affordable, or plentiful to power modern society in the years ahead. If we’re all waiting for a one-time collapse, then we’ve got a long wait ahead.
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