It's just a phase we're going through...

Saw an article in the newspaper the other day about how we are running out of helium. My sympathy to Simon, Theodore and Alvin. The funny thing was, as I read the surprisingly lengthy article, I could see where you could easily cross out “helium” and pencil in “oil” and the article would be just as valid. It’s always seemed odd to me that the fact that we are running out of oil has never really been big news. No idea why. You’d think it would. It should.

The thing is, what was being said about helium, and what could be said about oil, could also be said about every non-renewable natural resource on, or in, earth. With seven billion people milling around on the big blue marble, we are using up stuff like mad. So yeah, a lot of it is going to run out. Not just the oil and helium.

Richard Heinberg did his very best to warn us with his book, Peak Everything (New Society Publishers, 2010). Obviously, Mister Heinberg is not one to beat around the bush. Rather than try to list everything that we risk using up without replacement, it might be easier to list the stuff we won’t run out of. Let’s see… I’ve got that short list here somewhere… on a very small piece of paper. Ah, here we go:

Solar power, wind power, and, um, yeah, well, I told you it’s a short list. There are many things we do and use now that we will always be able to do to some degree, but maybe not to the huge degree we do now. Like travel. Like farming. Once we use up all of the natural non-renewable resources, human enterprise will sort of stumble into its next phase: The “re-use it or lose it” phase. We are currently wrapping up the “we got it all!” phase, having managed to drag ourselves out of the “hunter-gatherer” phase awhile back. Don’t worry, it’s just a phase we’re going through.

With few exceptions, earth’s natural resources are a sort of use-once proposition. Oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, helium, you name it, you use it- but only one time. After that, it’s gone forever. We do have some stuff we can reuse, like water. And we can plant more crops to grow more food, but with less help from oil, et cetera, we’ll get less food with every round. We are running headlong into an era of less, even as we demand more. It’s going to be an epic train wreck. Assuming we’ll still have fuel for the train. (Okay, so maybe it won’t be a train wreck. Maybe the train will simply roll to a silent halt.)

There’s really no way for you to truly prepare for this sort of thing. We will deplete our natural resources over the years, decades and centuries. But we already see it begin. We are about out of helium. The Chipmunks will finally reach puberty. Oil will get iffy and the ten thousand other things we extract from the earth will be a little less plentiful every year. Little by little, over time, we will be nibbled to death by ducks.

But hey, did we have some fun there for awhile or WHAT?!

That oil-free life.

And you ain’t living it, Roscoe. Trust me. No matter what, if you are reading this, you are using oil. Now, I know, if you are living in a solar-powered cabin in the woods or maybe in an apartment in New York City, you might appear to not be using any oil. You don’t have a car, you don’t have a lawn mower. You, personally, don’t have to buy anything like oil or gasoline or any oil-like product. Or so you say. But you still use oil. That is, oil is used on your behalf. Oil is used to grow the food you eat and to get it close enough to you so that you can buy it. And you’d better believe that uses oil. Using electricity uses oil. (Making solar panels uses oil.) You even have to oil your bicycle chain from time to time, don’t you? I know I do.

Unless you are part of an indigenous tribe in the upper reaches of the Amazon or the Congo, you use oil. And even then, I have to wonder. Any contact with the outside world, and ta-da! You are using oil. Now, it’s true that as that oil starts to go away, you will use less oil, and less oil will be used on your behalf, but trust me on this one: You use oil. Even the Amish use oil, and they are about as oil-free as it gets in the first world. That’s what’s going to make this peak oil thing so very annoying. It’s going to mess with everyone – some more than others, but all us before it’s over. Peak oil is very democratic. Universal, you might say.

I own several gasoline-powered items. I do use electricity. I like to eat. I use oil. I know that the time will come when there will be less oil for me to use, so I plan accordingly, or at least try to tell myself that I do. Still, even I have to admit that it is very easy to just jump in the truck and go. Or turn on a light or get a quick bite to eat. And all of these things take oil. All of these things are why we use so very much oil in our day to day lives, even when we try not to. We just can’t help ourselves. Some day we’re going to have to scale back.

I hope you're ready.