Our civilization runs on fossil fuels. They are limited to what is in the ground and they will eventually run out. This is not debatable. It's a cold, hard, fact. By 1964, it was getting harder and harder to find oil when looking for it deliberately. Discovery peaked then. By 1970, we started importing oil into America instead of exporting it because we were then using more than we could produce as our oilfields started going dry. This was the actual moment of peak oil, not 2006 like we pretend. The moment a military empire with nuclear weapons has to import the energy that keeps its empire going? That's the moment its all over. We started contracting then, and that surged around the world. If you look at the evidence, its plainly obvious Peak Oil was 1970.
The Russians lost the cold war over peak oil. They had to sell it cheap to meet the Saudi price in order to get hard currency to buy the technology for stealth aircraft and missile defense systems, both of which were overstated for the explicit purpose of scaring the Russians into thinking we could sneak attack them without warning. They needed to keep up and they couldn't. That trick, combined with bankruptcy also crushed the oil barons in Texas and destroyed oil exploration internationally. The "glut" as they called it was a huge wartime con-job, and it bankrupted the USSR by 1988. Something they're still recovering from.
A year later Japan suffered a real estate crash that they haven't recovered from either. And the USA had suffered a terrible stock market crash in 1987. We held out long enough to see the USSR collapse, and that was the end of the Cold War. The waiting had paid off and we didn't have to nuke each other to do it. The economic destruction has been severe, however, and I think what the USA is going through now is the actual fallout from the Cold War, just delayed by bubble economics for 25 years. Now we're stuck in it, just like Russia, just like Japan. This is the inevitable consequence of spendthrift govt, outsourcing jobs, greed, and bad investment and an entire generation raised on bad monetary policy. We really should have been planning for the eventual end of oil a long time ago, but its a hard sell that expense and inconvenience when the "glut" of artificially cheap oil and legal loopholes make fake-tanks (SUVs) the primary "cool car" to own in the 1990's. And supercommuting to overpriced rural suburban home developments? Not good for your fuel use. It just used the oil we had left up that much faster.
America has painted itself into a corner. Even California which could have rebuilt all the nice streetcars ripped out in 1925, and the very affordable taxi services of the same era bought out and scrapped by Standard Oil to sell cars and gasoline. Oil we had to start importing since 1970. If our parents had been more careful on how govt authorizes development. Things like massively expanding cul-de-sac developments which are a nightmare to do public transit in. Screwing up schools with racist bussing programs which promoted exurbs so your kids weren't murdered by inner city drug-thugs between classes. Those vicious environments in San Francisco (an other places like it), largely defunded the inner cities by causing white flight. Living beyond the bussing areas normalized the idea of very long commutes. Employers kept locating in city centers, expensively, rather than relocating to small rural areas where real estate was cheaper for everybody and the impact on development and resources is considerably less. I still don't get that. Employers had the freedom to be anywhere. Why be where nobody who mattered lives? Bragging rights on the golf course? That's insane. If you walk a block off the Pixar campus you can find dead hookers. Market Street is at one end of the Mission District and getting shanked by a hobo is a real possibility. Much of San Francisco is horrible, dirty, and full of crime. Only a person who hates children would allow theirs to be raised there. This is what Liberalism has done.
California is still wasting oil pumping most of LA's water over a mountain pass or three, because there's a bunch of votes there in the LA basin, because they pump water to allow the big population. If there was no water, there would be no votes. LA only gets 15 inches of rain a year, normally. That's only enough for a small population, around 100,000 people, as it was during the 19th century. Instead of 12-15 million, thanks to all the illegals, squatters, "relatives visiting" etc. All of those people are using water, subsidized by the rest of California's taxpayers and cheap oil, which isn't cheap anymore. The entire region is a total disaster. Building a multi-hundred billion dollar train from LA to SF is really really stupid. There's nothing being done to make the water get there without using oil for the pumps, so when the oil runs out, the water stops, the people leave, and the train goes to a ghost town. What's the point?
Instead of wasting California tax dollars on stupid crap doomed to fail for obvious reasons, the state continues to deny experimental vehicles, deny 2-wheeled vehicles, deny licensing reciprocation for scooterists and their vehicles on California streets, and basically act as a barrier to fuel economy. This is seriously F'ed up. Honda would like to sell diesel Accords and Civics in the USA, but they can't because CARB won't allow it. Audi and Renault would too. Subaru has a really nifty clean diesel for their Outback and Forester models which would be excellent in my state, but they can't sell it here. Between the DOT of the Fed and States, none of those vehicles are allowed, and VW is quite smug about their far too expensive Jetta diesel. They love their monopoly. And its holding us back.
Why Diesel? It lacks the expensive and volatile compounds of gasoline so you can have a big tank, store the fuel for years and it doesn't go bad. Stored gasoline spoils in a couple or three months. This is why motorcyclists and boaters either run them dry or add "sta-bil" to the tank. Failure to do that means they get to clean their carburetor next spring, and drain jellied gunk out of the tank. A diesel can also run on biodiesel made from home-grown or waste vegetable oil or farm diesel which is technically illegal but still works. The oil companies want to supply biodiesel at the pump, but it doesn't work economically yet. And the coolest and most stable algae diesel plants can barely get the cost down to $33/gal, which is ridiculous. Until or IF fuel prices reach that point and stay there, algae just isn't happening.
Even with all these hindrances, peak oil is a particularly complicated problem. The economic crash has massively dropped oil use around the world, even here. People don't just go driving. The car romance is over, even in California. We now see fuel and car payments as costs instead of lifestyle choices. This is a huge big deal because in 2005, when our Peak Oil community on LJ was hot and heavy discussing the threat, we never expected the public to take giving up fuel with no shots fired. We all thought there would be rioting. And we were wrong. Thanks to years to get used to it, the public is shifting from fuel waste to fuel saving. Big cars are now a sign of unfortunate choices, of being a loser compensating for a small p%&^s. In California, the car of choice is the Subaru Outback or WRX, depending on mountains or flatland living. There's also millions of Hondas. My big Accord gets 33 mpg freeway thanks to efficient fuel injection and EGR valve. And SUV is lucky to get 18 mpg, and 14 mpg is much more common since the jerks who drive them are always flooring it, because they want to convert that power into accelleration but that only happens with low weight, thus small, cars. Inside every SUV is a driver who wishes there were behind the wheel of a race car. And car makers are selling lots of hot-hatches in California, disguised as bubble cars but able to chirp their tires at the stoplight and have a kickin-stereo. And get 36 mpg. That frees up a lot of money for better things.
Wasting fuel is also wasting money. People know this now. When two gallons of gas costs the same as a six-pack of really good microbrew or a couple steaks, you start looking at your fuel economy a bit differently. You start asking what you're giving up to drive a huge monster truck/SUV or muscle car, and start getting lighter on the throttle and combining trips as much as possible. We're making those adjustments because we have to. Wages certainly aren't rising in the crap economy of today.
Even the liberal economists like Robert Reich are getting really nervous about the lack of disposable income stifling economic growth. Extra money should be going to toys and vacations which provide jobs. There isn't any extra money anymore. Wages are falling and inflation is eating up what little people get paid. The new health care law is going to take everything families have and put them in the poor house. For most, the cost of Obamacare is $800-$1200 per month, per person, and $2500-4000 for a family. And there's tons of exemptions so its making it a lot worse by cost shifting. The people who voted for it are exempt. It's a massive tax on the poor, basically. And anyone with a company under 50 employees, so it will crush small business and cause even greater unemployment.
You couldn't come up with a better (legal) weapon to destroy America than Obama-care, short of rationing gasoline or shutting down food shipments to non-agricultural cities. Those would be marginally worse. In 2014, Obama-care is law and America will suffer for its indifference and (drug) fantasies of free healthcare. It's not free. Maybe this time there actually will be riots. Or maybe not. After all, America is ruled by cowardice and greed these days. Unfortunately, since govt wants you as poor as they can get you without actually committing suicide (probably), viciousness and greed may be necessary survival traits. If you think people are worse than ever? You might be right. Being nice to your neighbors just means they're taking advantage of you and voting for the villains running the show. How does that feel?
The slow creep of oil running out and higher prices has done a good job destroying demand internationally. People are hunkering down, some of them waiting it out in blissful ignorance, others grumpily paying the higher prices and adapting to miserly lifestyles. It's not very nice, but it works in these circumstances. Its not like we really have any choices anymore. The Totalitarians running everything made sure of that. It makes me very worried when I think about the businesses based on selling luxuries to people who still have enough money to buy them. Those are shrinking markets because "a fool and his money are soon parted". That will always be true. No amount of hate from Liberals can change that fact.
Makes me wish I was a heavy equipment operator so I can get in on the Grand Canal contract. Running giant diggers and bulldozers on govt diesel? A nice distraction from everything those fools are doing wrong Back East, where the backwards people try to turn America into Europe and fail. The East is all about the Failure. They just can't seem to see it.
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