Has only one else been reading anything about peak oil and what will happen after cheap oil runs out? I have and it's been seriously freaking me out. From nearly everything that I have read it looks like we're headed towards a global depression, even worse than the world saw after the crash of the stock market in 1929. I think this fall and winter I am going to spend my time learning how to do things without electricity, like doing my laundry by hand and learning how to knit. Next spring hopefully I'll be in a better place where I can start my own garden so all of our food is organic and homegrown. Ugh, I had more to say on this, but I don't have the time to finish typing it out right now. But I wanted to leave with one more idea. Wouldn't it be nice if a lot of us got together and started an intentional community, where everyone in the community worked together to farm, build houses, raise animals, and raise children. Meals would be cooked and shared together and we'd all live within walking distance of each other. Some of us would know how to work with iron, others would know how to build furniture, etc. And of course we'd all smoke together at night after dinner and after the children of the community were sleeping. Oh, what a nice dream. A completely self-sustaining community.
Its going to be weird when there is not very much crude oil in the world, everything will go very bad after all the natural resources will BE GONE FROM THIS WORLD FOREVER
MAN! everytime i get stoned i think about shit like that and how great it would be if people worked together like that! i would definately join! if the world goes bad and we have to start farming and goin without cable and cars as long as i had bud that would be a pretty neat experience. no more GC though!!!
Honestly I think the Quakers have a lot of good ideas. I'm totally into the whole circle of friends thing. Well, minus the religion. I'm agnostic myself.
Well, if people would stop being greedy and realise that it's not an endless supply, then investment into new fuel technology (hopefully one with an endless supply) could be done before the actualy event happens. I highly doubt that we'll see any of this any time soon. Although I do imagine that as it currently stands, oil can't hold up much longer. I mean in a year we've seen about 75 cent rise in price per gallon at the pumps with no real end in sight. I wish I understood economics a bit better so I could understand what's happening or what will happen to the world.
Call me a pessimist, but I don't think a lot of people will care soon enough to change the direction we're headed in. Not when owning a Hummer (which gets maybe 9 miles to the gallon) makes you cool and the lastest craze in consumer goods is disposable anything and everything.
ya i agree with you there, but im not totally down with hundreds of years of regretion lol, but if its gotta be done, ill be first in line no doubt. Way to go hemprress, keep addin info, maybe itll sink in for some people on a side note, my family is kinda like that, we try to conserve alot, but we dont recycle i wish we did though. But my dads got a desiel truck and this year hes going to start powering it with vetgtable (sp?) oil, because of gas prices and just enviornment issues, and we got lots of solar powered things around the house n all...
even when they announce that the world has encountered an oil shortage, there will still be 20% of all the oil left. i don't remember why, exactly, but i think a highschool science book once explained that the U.S. government plans to recognize the end of accessible oil when it has been 80% depleted... so, i think that's a good thing.
Sorry, but I think we should've been looking into this as soon as we found out that oil wasn't in endless supply. No?
Hey Mike, I've been reading about running diesel engines with veg oil. It's Greasel, right? Hopefully next year when we get our income tax return we're going to trade in the car we have now for a diesel car and get the conversion kit. I'm so excited!
Oil consumption is on a bell curve. After the peak year is over there will be a steady drop off of oil. We'll never run out completely, but in a few years there won't be a large enough supply to support the kind of lifestyle we're accustomed to. I've also read that just a 3-5% drop in oil production can cause a price increase of 400%. Think of that. Gasoline could easily raise in price to $8.00 a gallon. We need to find a source of alternative energy, and we need to find it fast. EDIT- I wanted to add a link so anyone could read up on this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
To quote South Park: "We already have that... it's called a town..." I kid, I kid. It's not a bad idea, I just think it would be nearly impossible to keep going for a variety of reasons.
Diesel cars rock! They get awesome gas mileage. I suppose you could convert it, but 40+ mpg is pretty good.
ya, regardless of veggy oil or desiel, desiel engines get incredibly good milage, and the cars themselves just last a whole lot longer than other cars run by gas. btw- hempress, i think you got something going here, we should defintly inform people, if not us, then who? good work hempress
I'm really not trying to be a jackass-- mike & hempress I respect you two a lot and you've written so much good stuff on this forum-- but.... this idea is quite old. They're called Communes, and some hippies back in the day tried to start them up. I have no idea how successful any of them were, other than I know some people whose parents have lived in them. Here's a couple pages that mention them: http://www.wtv-zone.com/moe/moesboomerabilia/page3.html http://users.rowan.edu/~lindman/hippieintro.html http://www.communa.org.il Hope this helps. Maybe you could start one, who knows?
I already knew about communes, and that little blurb at the end of my first post wasn't even the main point of my thread. It's just that so many people commented on it :shrug: I'm not sure why. I think Mike was talking about getting people aware of the energy crisis.