Kunstler: Ten Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society

February 10, 2007
From AlterNet.org

This is an excellent opinion piece from earlier this year that I've had bookmarked but have only got around to reading now.

Kunstler lists several ways of life that will change in a post-oil / post-carbon society of limited energy. There is always Cold Fusion to come along and save our bacon. He doesn't specifically mention this though the premise of the article is that we have a limited amount of vast amounts of energy left, and given that the development of the science of developing things like Fusion requires VAST amounts of energy, we might not have time.

His list is made up of:

1. Cars are part of the problem - we shouldn't be trying to find alternate energies to run them;
   
2. We have to produce food differently - the current model relies on large input from fossil fuels including for fertilisers;
   
3. We have to change our town infrastructure since they are currently designed for large amounts of car transport;
   
4. We need to transport people and things differently items due to the high cost (in terms of Carbon cost aswell as energy);
   
5. Retail trade will change due to the cost of transporting items;
   
6. Local production will need to increase due to the great cost of transporting items;
   
7. Entertainment will need to come from local activities rather than distribution through the internet and airwaves since these will be less reliable as energy becomes more expensive;
   
8. The educational system will change due to there being less ability for people to go vast distances to centralised education centers (eg. big Universities);
   
9. The medical system will change due to less emphasis on self-interest medicine (cosmetic surgury);
   
10. Life will become local, much like how our (grand) parents (in the 40's) used to live.
    

Read the article.