It’s now been close to fifteen years since the Peak Oil movement collapsed and lost whatever temporary grip it had on public awareness. We could doubtless have an interesting conversation along the lines of “did it fall or was it pushed,” and there may be a point to that conversation a little further down the road. For now, though, I think something more basic is called for: an update on where we are just now on the long slow slope of Hubbert’s curve, and what we can expect in the years immediately ahead.
Now of course if you mention that possibility among most of those few people who still remember the phrase “peak oil” at all, you can count on a horse laugh. After all, they’d claim, the entire peak oil theory disproved itself in the wake of the 2008-2009 spike and crash of petroleum prices. Peak oil theorists supposedly insisted that sometime very soon, we’d all hear a horrible gurgling noise from deep within the earth as the last barrels of crude oil got sucked up the pipes, for all the world like that disappointing sound that comes at the end of every root beer float.
That, so the theory went, would be the end of petroleum once and for all. Thereafter, since there would be no more petroleum, and the single largest share of the world’s energy consumption (including nearly all its transportation) is still made up of crude oil and its derivatives, the whole world would go hurtling down into chaos and mass death, with or without a plucky band of survivors dragging themselves out of the ruins and striking heroic poses against the sunset as the credits roll up the screen.
That was what the Peak Oil movement predicted, so the claim goes, and it didn’t happen. Instead, the 2008 spike in world petroleum prices sparked a frantic quest for more sources of liquid fuel, and since big profits could be made by coming up with those sources, they were duly found. Thus the whole peak oil theory was based on an elementary misunderstanding of economics, and we can therefore safely ignore it as a guide to the future. Right?
That’s the claim, at any rate. It is certainly true that there were people—some of whom should have known better—who were associated with the peak oil movement, and who retailed some version of the claims just outlined in books, blogs, public events, and the like. Still, the peak oil movement didn’t speak with a single voice on this or any other subject. Notably, there were quite a few people deeply involved in the peak oil movement who pointed out that the believers in this version of overnight apocalypse were quite simply deluding themselves, rehashing Hollywood fantasies and warmed-over Christian apocalyptic tropes under the mistaken notion that they were talking about the real world.
This less gullible group of peak oil theorists pointed to many lines of evidence, from petroleum geology, history, economics, and ecology, that showed that there would be no sudden collapse. Instead, they argued, what the world was facing was a long, ragged descent from the peak of industrial society, taking many generations to play out completely. They predicted in so many words that each crisis brought about by petroleum depletion would be followed by massive and at least temporarily successful efforts to find new sources of liquid fuels, and to jerry-rig industrial society so that the effects of the crisis could be contained.
Furthermore, they argued, petroleum depletion could only be understood correctly in the light of a much broader perspective, in which the depletion of a very large number of nonrenewable resources and the disruption of a good many environmental cycles all played important parts. Our planetary predicament didn’t have a single cause, and therefore it couldn’t be fixed by a single solution—be that some new energy source (cough, cough, fusion power), restrictions on a single pollutant (cough, cough, carbon dioxide), attempts to rebuild community in social contexts that had discarded it (cough, cough, the Transition Town franchise), or any of the other loudly ballyhooed gimmicks that embraced peak oil back then as part of their marketing plans.
So what fix did the thinkers we’re discussing propose? They didn’t. That’s exactly the point. They proposed that industrial civilization was moving through the usual life cycle of complex human societies, at the usual pace, toward the usual destination, and that this movement would define the future in which we all would live.
They suggested that the 2005 peak in global conventional petroleum production (which is what the phrase “peak oil” stood for) was a symptom of that broader process, not an independent variable, and that the various attempts to “solve” the predicament of industrial society had a lot in common with the attempts of guys in their sixties to insist they aren’t getting old by wearing their hair in a combover and going down to singles bars to try to pick up women in their twenties. They pointed out that there were certainly things that could be done to make the decline less steep, the coming deindustrial dark age less bitter, and the rise of successor societies less difficult, and they argued that since governments weren’t likely to lift a finger along these lines, ordinary people might want to get to work in one or another of these directions.
I’m tolerably familiar with this end of the Peak Oil movement, of course, because I was part of it. I got involved in the movement in 1998 when I joined the Running On Empty email list, at that time nearly the only place anywhere that people were discussing the worrying mismatch between the rate of world petroleum consumption and the rate at which new reserves were being discovered. In 2006 I started a blog, The Archdruid Report, which very quickly focused on peak oil, and brought me a degree of attention and notoriety that left me flabbergasted. In 2008 my first book on peak oil, The Long Descent, saw print, fielded rave reviews from within the movement, and started getting me speaking gigs at conferences on peak oil, which began to proliferate at a remarkable pace just then.
That was what landed me in Washington DC at the high point of the peak oil movement, the conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) in November 2009. There I was, an archdruid seated among professors and politicians, talking about the lessons of the 1970s oil crisis and being treated like a minor celebrity by people who apparently had a lot of money to throw around. That money, it turned out, came from (or at least through) NGOs and private donors. How much of it came from the federal budget by way of USAID and similar bureaucratic pork barrels is a question that’s been on my mind for a while, but we’ll let that pass for now.
It wasn’t all that long after that event that word started to spread that the money spigot was being turned off and anyone who wanted to stay on the gravy train had better shut up about peak oil. The new thing was climate change, and it became very clear that discussing this meant parroting the billionaires who were insisting just then that climate change was going to kill us all unless we agreed to quite a sweeping range of changes, most of which had nothing to do with climate. I wasn’t all that interested in staying on the gravy train and I had, and have, serious doubts about the way that the climate change issue was packaged and deployed for political effect—we’ll talk about those in an upcoming post—so I shrugged and walked away. And here we are.
Thus the version of peak oil theory that I was talking about in those days, and have posted about here and elsewhere from time to time, wasn’t disproved by events. It was simply ignored once it became inconvenient to certain wealthy and powerful interests. We are still slipping down the far side of Hubbert’s curve a little at a time, still moving through that long, ragged, increasingly difficult arc my first-ever peak oil essay called the Long Road Down. The United States began its trip down that curve in 1970, when we passed our peak production of conventional petroleum; the world followed suit 35 years later in 2005, when world conventional petroleum production peaked and began to decline.
Mention this among people who keep track of liquid fuels production and you can count on instant pushback. After all, total liquid fuels production is higher than it was in 2005, having peaked in 2018, and it’s still close enough to the peak that it could wobble upwards again and surpass the 2018 figure. For that matter, the fracking frenzy that rolled across America’s oil- and gas-producing regions after the 2005 peak drove US liquid fuel production figures above the 1970 peak. Doesn’t that prove that peak oil is a phantom and not a real menace?
It does look that way, so long as you pretend that every barrel of liquid fuel is the same. In the real world, where oil has to be drilled, pumped, and refined into useful products, things are different, and the crucial difference is net energy: the amount of energy you have left from that barrel, once you subtract the energy you needed to get it. Net energy is to petroleum (and all other energy resources) what profit is to a business. Just as you can go broke while making a very substantial gross income, if your expenses are more substantial still, a nation or a civilization can run short of energy even while it’s pumping vast amounts of liquid fuel, if the direct and indirect energy costs of getting that fuel are too high.
Net energy is thus the joker in the energy deck. Light sweet crude from a shallow well, the sort of petroleum that the United States produced in oceanic quantities a century ago, had a fantastically high net energy rate—oil companies in those days only had to find the equivalent of 1 barrel in 300 or so to cover the energy costs needed to drill, refine, and transport the oil. For obvious reasons, prospectors focused on that kind of oil early on, and it’s basically all gone now. Nowadays what we’ve got instead are liquids and condensates from fracking operations, sulfur-rich tar sand extractives, and sour crude from deepwater wells that require enormous investment to drill and pump. There’s still plenty of that for the moment, but the energy cost to extract, refine, and transport it is many times higher. How much higher? Estimates vary and so do wells, but most fall between 1 barrel in 40 and 1 barrel in 10.
What this means is that with every passing year, our economy has had to put a larger share of its total available supply of energy, capital, raw materials, and labor into keeping the oil flowing. Declining net energy thus places a stealth tax on all economic activity. All by itself, that would be a significant burden—but of course it’s not all by itself. Every other nonrenewable resource our economy uses is being depleted in much the same way, and many renewable resources are being used at unsustainable rates. As a result, he same sort of rising inputs of energy, capital, raw materials, and labor have to go into keeping up production of each of those resources, too.
Did you know, for example, that the world is running out of sand? Absurd as this seems, it’s quite true. Sand suitable for making concrete is relatively rare, and it’s being used at a rate far faster than nature can replace it. There’s plenty of beach sand, but that makes brittle, short-lived concrete. (It seems tolerably likely to me that one of the reasons so many bridges here in the US are in such bad shape is that many of them were made by corrupt contractors who used beach sand in place of the good stuff.) Are there ways around the problem? Sure, but they cost more—more energy, more capital, more raw materials, more labor. All of this has to be diverted from the rest of the economy.
The result is very much like what happens to your lifestyle if your rent, utility bills, and food costs all go up irregularly every year, but your paycheck stays the same. Something’s got to give, and by and large it’s your lifestyle that takes the hit. The same thing has been happening on a much broader scale to the entire United States for the last 55 years. That’s an important part of why a family of four could afford a home, a car, health care, decent clothing, three square meals a day, and the other tokens of ordinary life on a single working class salary in 1970, while a family of four trying to live on a single working class salary today is living on the street. It’s an equally important part of why terms such as “shrinkflation” and “crapification” have become current in today’s society, and why our national infrastructure is such a crumbling mess.
It also helps explain why so large a share of American voters turned to a presidential candidate in the last election who promised to remove bureaucratic obstacles to the frenzied production of oil, coal, and natural gas, and who insisted repeatedly that the entire climate change furore is a scam. Members of our society’s comfortable classes can insist all they want that the poor ought to put saving the environment and pursuing various other moral crusades ahead of feeding their families. The poor see things differently, and these days there are many more poor people in the United States than there used to be. That was far from the only reason for the outcome of the 2024 election, but it was a factor, and Trump’s opponents ignore it at their peril.
So what comes next? Can we expect the sudden apocalyptic collapse that the more clueless end of the Peak Oil movement anticipated so eagerly to show up after all? Once we get within range of another oil price spike, it’s safe to predict that another round of prophets of doom will pop out of the woodwork with the same claims as before. They’ll be wrong this time, too, for the same reasons as before, but that won’t stop them.
It really is remarkable to watch the same shopworn fantasy of instant apocalypse deployed over and over again by people who’ve seen it fail repeatedly, and still can’t draw the logical conclusion from those failures. I still field emails regularly from people who just can’t understand why I dismiss the idea of a sudden fast collapse that sweeps away industrial civilization all at once. I’ve given up arguing the point. Technically speaking, you can’t disprove the possibility of a sudden collapse, any more than you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a chimpanzee banging away on a typewriter won’t type out the first page of Hamlet, or that next Thursday, elves from another dimension will suddenly put bright green rabbits on the doorsteps of everyone named Jane. None of these things are going to happen, sure, but try proving that to the satisfaction of anyone who’s emotionally committed to belief in one of them!
Yet there’s another point to be made here. Apocalyptic fantasies are a standard symptom of extreme social stress, and they’re especially common in periods of serious social and economic contraction. We’ve seen a steady stream of people insisting that nuclear war—all right, the coming ice age—okay, then the Y2k problem—well, in that case overpopulation—if not that, peak oil—make that climate change—or the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012—or, for lack of anything better, Donald Trump—will bring about the sudden cataclysm that features so strongly in the pop culture mythology of our time. As predictions of the future, these are embarrassing flops, but as measures of the sheer intensity of the stress bearing down on people in late industrial America, they tell a story worth taking into account.
What we can expect, though, is something far more terrifying to most people than the most lurid disaster a Hollywood screenwriter ever imagined: more of what we’ve already seen. The long, slow, unsteady descent that’s shaped all our lives for the last half century or more? That’s going to continue along the trajectory it’s already following, for the rest of your life, and into the lives of your grandchildren’s grandchildren.
In the light of that longer view, it doesn’t especially matter who’s in the White House, or for that matter who’s in the doghouse. It matters very little more which policies get put in place and which policies get chucked in the dumpster. There are still things that individuals, families, and communities can do to brace themselves for the future ahead, and some of those things are very important—we’ll get to them in future posts. None of these will affect the overall course of this nation or of industrial society as a whole. That train left the station long ago. Listen carefully and you can hear the distant whistle on the wind, fading to silence.
That doesn’t mean the fine details of the future are fixed in place. I predicted, some years ago, that the next energy crisis would arrive sometime around 2022. That didn’t happen, because we got the Covid crisis instead. Many of the same economic and social disruptions that took place following the dramatic spike in petroleum prices in 2008 had close equivalents in 2021 and 2022, and energy usage lurched downward in a very similar manner as air travel, commuting, and many other energy-intensive activities decreased. That bought some time. The Trump administration’s push to remove regulatory barriers to oil and gas drilling may buy a little more, though that will depend on variables that aren’t yet clear, and will have cascading downsides of its own. As a very rough guess, I think it’s possible that we’ll see another energy crisis (or some comparable disruption with similar effects) before 2030, and fairly certain that we’ll get one before 2035.
The fine details will have to be worked out mathematically by those who are adept at such things, the way Colin Campbell and his associates did in the early days of the peak oil scene, back before 2000. Fortunately there are still some active peak oil aggregator sites and blogs; you can find a more or less current list here. I encourage my readers to visit them and start getting familiar with their contents. We’ll be talking more about peak oil later on—after, that is, we talk about some of the other factors that are pushing our civilization down the same well-worn chute. In two weeks we’ll turn to another of those, and talk about what’s been happening to the climate.
Good to hear you talking about Peak Oil again, I was hoping for an update. The most important thing about Peak Oil is how it can alter our view of the future, so we can plan accordingly. It’s not about the peak oil date. It’s about the direction our society is going.
Unfortunately, most people go down the route of “I just need to make it to 20XX and industrial society will collapse and I finally won’t need to go to work anymore.” This escapism is not only harmful because it’s inevitably going to leave you disappointed, but also because you lose out on making the real changes you can make to improve your life and make it tolerable.
That’s the thing about apocalypses- they don’t ask you to plan or do the work to improve your situation. All you have to do is wait for it to arrive and save (or destroy) you. It’s a popular meme, buts it’s a useless and harmful one.
Good timing, I just wanted to remind you of an event that seems to have been very little publicized, except in the affected areas, the blackout of the Spanish electricity grid, which basically, if I’m well informed, was caused by the intermittent electricity of photovoltaic and wind power, which are directly connected to the electricity grid. Guillem’s blog explains it very well.
https://beamspot.substack.com/p/operacion-salvar-al-soldado-fotovoltaico
Visions of the future? I think it’s accurate
Excellent post, JMG. An accurate checkpoint summary, if you will.
Since I started following the Peak Oil scene and the ADR 20 years ago, a number of things have clarified about our predicament:
– as you point out, people seem to think and understand the issue in binary terms – “we’ve got plenty of oil” or “the world is going to end”. A systems theory viewpoint is not commonly on display.
– among the economic machinations, the variable of “known reserves” seems to be a very squishy number, and credit/debt advantages can be gamed for those who lie the most, and always in one direction.
– the effects of depletion of physical resources with respect to oil and liquid fuels seems to pale in comparison to the magnitude of effects from the human/artificial components like recouping extraction costs and the legal/legislative ideas dreamed up by Congress Critters. We seem to spend much time in “shooting our own foot” mode, not to mention avoiding the idea “it’s a predicament, not a problem” and doing something useful.
– the most sinister thing appears to be how people come to the conclusion we have plenty of oil in the ground, ignore where it is and how much more expensive it will be to extract, believe that it’s infinite in supply because it’s abiotic while ignoring burn rates even if abiotic effects were real, and……how we then should burn, burn, burn because we deserve to keep our wasteful energy habits and standard of living in place because, well, just because.
In other words, the issues that humans bring to the table is the biggest problem of the predicament, and lends support for the crowd seeking reduction to a 500,000,000 or so global population. What a mess.
The Permian is peaking.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-permian-basins-oil-output-growth-slow-2025-despite-trumps-plan-executives-say-2025-02-06/
“Growth in oil output from the U.S. Permian basin, the country’s top oilfield, is expected to slow by at least 25% this year despite President Donald Trump’s vow to maximize production, energy executives forecast on Thursday.
At a conference in Houston, they said production is expected to rise in 2025 by about 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 300,000 bpd from the shale formation spread across Texas and New Mexico, down from last year’s 380,000-bpd increase.”
Rate of growth is moderating, then it will go to zero and depletion curves take over.
https://www.mrt.com/business/oil/article/permian-basin-rig-count-falls-20259480.php
“Oilfield services firm Baker Hughes said Friday its U.S. rig count fell rigs to 590 rigs for the week. That’s down 30 rigs or 5% from 620 rigs last April.”
And up north the Bakken is already in decline. In 2012 they were getting 140 barrels per day per well. Now it’s half that.
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/stats/historicalbakkenoilstats.pdf
As the Rockman used to say on The Oil Drum, “depletion never sleeps.”
It would seem reasonable to project global petroleum usage falling as the global population peaks (or has already peaked) but I wonder if that is too simplistic? Perhaps as the population falls, petro-states with better net energy reserves (Saudi Arabia for example) will simply drop prices to keep the petro-gravy train going a little longer and global usage will stay at or near peak flow just as long as it’s making money for some of the actors? Do you see any way that all the economically extractable liquid petroleum NOT will be burned as we stumble down the stairs to industrial civilization’s exit?
Hi John,
Thank you for this essay! I wanted to delineate my thinking on how what you said applies to globalisation and then what that could mean for us. I’d be keen to hear if I’ve understood you correctly.
From what you write: a rise in the societal cost of materials and energy reduces the surplus in the economy leaving less for consumption, profit, i.e all the necessities and perks of industrial civilisation. This is a global issue but some regions do have temporary advantages, for example when China became a part of the global economy it had lower labour and environmental costs. This temporary situation allowed some extra surplus to be generated (despite rising societal costs of materials/energy) which benefited our consumption (here in the Western world) and profits. However, as labour costs rise in China (shrinking workforce over generations, higher lifestyle/living costs) that temporary benefit is sliding away.
For those, with power, who want to keep the system going without change their options then become:
1. Find a new source of overseas cheap labour, to mitigate rising societal costs of materials and energy. But this isn’t easy as most of the low hanging fruit (i.e. countries) has been used up or is spoken for already.
2. Pray for a bumper stash of cheap materials/energy to be discovered/exploited. At one point this may have been fusion technology. Nowadays I figure this would explain why Russia is valuable (a low population and relatively high unexploited material resources) or Greenland (if we can wait for the ice to further recede to see what’s available).
3. Exploit local (i.e. Western world) labour more to bring down those costs in proportion to the inexorable rise in materials and energy costs.
In terms of the above I wonder if you think that 3. is already happening? Our leadership seems to have given up on a quick collapse of Russia, China is now an adversary, and so what is left is insourcing to friendly countries but these happen to have higher labour costs. So does it follow that labour in Western countries may soon be the next ‘best’ thing to degrade/exploit in order to mitigate the rising materials/energy costs? I see this in the UK where in sectors like adult care the workers are highly exploited (both domestic and particularly migrants brought in to fill vacancies). If so does this suggest, to you, that worker pay, conditions, and other entitlements will be the next target? Grim if so, and would explain why the enforcement and monitoring parts of the state are being bolstered to handle social unrest.
“the fracking frenzy that rolled across America’s oil- and gas-producing regions after the 2005 peak drove US liquid fuel production figures above the 1970 peak. Doesn’t that prove that peak oil is a phantom and not a real menace?”
Not to mention the damage to areas that have been heavily fracked is as depressing as mountain top removal.
“… we’d all hear a horrible gurgling noise from deep within the earth as the last barrels of crude oil got sucked up the pipes, for all the world like that disappointing sound that comes at the end of every root beer float.” Man, you are a good writer.
It seems reasonable to presume that cultures that embrace apocalyptic religions are unlikely to be very good at long term planning. Given that, do you see any currently extant cultures that seem likely to do a decent job of navigating the rest of the 21st century with all it’s converging crises?
Thanks for this post John. As a Christian, I understand the attraction of the Apocalypse, I also understand that no one can predict its arrival and that those who have attempted to have proven to be false prophets. As a geologist, I get the physical realities of petroleum, it’s hard to get people to accept those realities without reference to an Apocalypse. I will continue to enjoy your posts
Here in Australia, 2006-2009 roughly halved the buying power of the AUD, and then 2019-2021 halved it again. The entire establishment is firmly dedicated to hiding that fact. We’ve been impoverished, and yet the first world LARPing continues.
Maybe we can repurpose Cory Doctorow’s word to “Enshaleification” to describe some of what has been going on.
He used his version with regards to the way internet platforms start off all nice and cozy, and then inevitably, with the audience honey potted in, degrade their services to rake up more for themselves. But enshaleification applies to the whole shebang.
The debt most people are in these days is also just another form of indentured servitude , with the corporations lording it over their microserfs.
For the Neverending Story fans: Remember chapter 23? In it Bastian visits a city where people have lost their memories, but they are being watched by a monkey who has them play a game of dice, with various letters on the dice. The people roll and roll the dice. The monkey tells them that this is because they have lost the ability to tell themselves stories. The game however makes it possible for them to eventually produce, say, Hamlet, and all the other stories ever told, including the Neverending Story itself.
It’s interesting to me that this is in chapter 23. 23 is a number associated with William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, The Temple ov Psychic Youth, and their practice of cut-ups.
I do think “chance operations” have a place in the creation of art, but not on the same level as is being done with AI. The latter is a symptom of what Michael Ende was pointing at when people have forgotten themselves and how to tell stories.
Thanks for the infusion of levity into this blog. I too was interested in mostly the community efforts that the Transition Movement afforded and liked the stepwise methodology which results in new ways that community can act to provide lasting fun things to do. Community gardening, the Repair Cafe, as examples of programs still strong and in existence. The higher ups in the peak oil crowd seem to be cashing and jet-setting all over the planet instead of building community. I had a particular affinity with the list of ways the populace can improve and pitch in and the predictive impact of each seemed to give practical ways to pitch in, like supporting anything that increases education of women and seeking ways reduce leaks of refrigerant from major sources like supermarkets, provide programs to reduce roadside abandoned air conditioners, and destroy rather than stockpile reclaimed refrigerant. Reclaiming and destroying refrigerant has not happened; especially in places where there are no educational opportunities to enlighten and energize the technicians to do so or no funded policies and alternatives in place to deal with it. Being in action requires support, and the good intentions of policymakers goes to naught without funding and management and inculcating responsibility to act. We are all on the ride down the gyres of the decline you have captivated us with in your writings.
Enjoying the mordant humour, JMG! You’ve refined talking about grim predicaments with a degree of humour that made me “el-oh-el” as the kids put it.
I noticed my body reflexively closing up as I read your essay, as though it were saying, “Nope! This isn’t true! Life will get better or at least go on as it always has. No need to change or adapt.” Of course, I know that’s all false but it doesn’t make it any easier to face the truth of long, slow and grinding decline.
I known someone who worked as a professional chemist (and perennial believer in Progress) argue that net energy for crude oil doesn’t matter because of something to do with entropy. I wish I could remember the details more clearly, but his basic point was that net energy didn’t matter. Still, it didn’t feel right intuitively. Have you ever come across a similar attempt to argue against the net energy issue?
Thank you for this update, and for the resource list. I find Gail Tverberg to be invaluable.
Might you also share again sometime the reading list you once posted about books that shaped your thinking? I believe you originally posted it in February 2009. I’ve shared it with quite a few people over the years (though I still haven’t read all the titles myself…).
Or, Ecosophia Enjoyer @ # 1, they take the view that my faction is going to be in charge, so we will get to have the goodies, including oil. I don’t doubt that some folks, members of rich guy buying clubs, are indeed only paying $1.99 for gas.
Re: collapse
IMHO, this is what collapse looks like.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=IXXmYkzB_FM
TL;DW – they went through something like 5 different NEW alternators before finding one that wouldn’t die after a week. There was a time when this didn’t happen. That time is now somewhere in the past. You know what’s coming up next, right? No more new alternators to be had at all. Then it’s going to be no more junkyard alternators.
This is just one thing, but if you have enough of similar things going on at once, I wonder where the critical point is, where it all just goes *flump*?
James Howard Kunstler coined the phrase, the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. He was referring to the construction of suburbia in the USA after WWII. While the rest of the world was rebuilding from the desolation of the war, we were having a grand old time building a Disney style world of the future, with flying cars just around the corner. Now our infrastructure is falling apart, mass transit is a joke, and everybody needs a car, or cars, to do anything. And we don’t have the surplus energy, money, or vision to build a replacement system. People are told that we just need some new uber technology to re-energize our life style.
I don’t subscribe to the sudden collapse apocalyptic belief, but more of the rising tide theory. Every time some shock hits the system, the results leave a layer of people who were just above the poverty line now firmly below it. Everybody above shifts down one notch and learns to tie their belts tighter and trade steak for hamburger or hamburger for Ramen noodles and say they can get by. Until the next shock when one more chair is removed and everybody shuffles to occupy what’s left. There will always be a chorus of people on top saying that everything is fine. For them it is.
Dear sir,
A fascinating article. No not this one, if you have been here since 2009 almost everything in it is from an old record. Although I must admit I was fascinated by the ASPO story.
No, the fascinating article is the 2004 one. I just read it, or maybe reread it, with some attention to the themes in it. Firstly dear sir, I feel I must inform you, that you have been unoriginally restating the 2004 article for the last 21 years. it still hasn’t sunk in, has it?
Secondly, going from that, I remembered the statement you made some time ago, that you are switching from ADR to Ecosophia, because you have done peak oil to death. I get it now.
Third. It is fascinating to read the 2004 article with the events of the last 21 years in the rear view mirror. Referring to the y2k instead of the covid crisis, the Iraq instead of Ukraine war. The volume has gone up has it not.
I am minded to reflect on my options for how to act to give future generation a better chance. And after some years I have a garden once again. The corn is just coming out. Might I ask about a suggestion for a book on organic gardening.
Best regards,
Marko
It;s going to be worse because the Diesel decline rates are faster I’ve heard. I can’t find good data to corroborate.
Many of our industrial processes, mining and transportaion depend on it and no substitutes exist.
JMG , could you look at each major petroleum products reserves and consumption.
Also, can you add Lars Larsen to your blogroll. I’d send a link but i think comments block links?
Good post, got me thinking.
I think (definitely don’t know, more or a belief) that the reason that I think that the “Peak Oil” crowd’s flame guttered out was the fact that they tended to obsess on “Peak Oil” rather than “Peak Energy”. I am especially intrigued by electricity production and consumption.
I have personally been obsessing (and not all that productively to be honest) on how to blend the three measures (Oil/total energy/electricity production/consumption).
I think that the main reason that the peak oil group fell apart was the focus on a single variable in a multivariate environment. That and, at the end of the day, it will come down to telling people that they will have to take less.
I am pleased to see the Archdruid back. I have been fascinated with the story how natural resource depletion will impact industrial society since the publication of the ” Limits to Growth” and my days as a student at UNH in Natural Resource Economics.
I leafed through your fine book, “Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush” last night picking off some of your finest essays during the Peak Oil Days. Fine reading, strongly recommended for anyone new to the subject.
There are some interesting mind trips that many folks miss when considering resource depletion. One of the biggest is how exponential growth in oil use impacts demand and cummulative resource consumption. For example, If demand is growing at a modest 2% per year, annual demand doubles every 35 years. During the next 35 year period, the amount of oil consumed will be greater than the total amount of oil consumed in all other previous periods combined. That sentence should perhaps be read again. Because when you have consumed 50% of the available resource, things will become dire rather quickly.
But alas, another mind trip comes into play. Folks seem to easily confuse the amount of resource remaining with flow rates. Flow rates will be highest at the Peak. A graph of annual oil consumption depicts this as a bumpy plateau. That’s where we are now. So prices can be fairly stable or benign when flow rates are highest. As the resource depletes, so do flow rates, price will likely spiral.
I have read your theory of catabolic collapse and agree with it. However, I think that the slope of the descent will likely be steeper than the ascent. The so-called Seneca Effect. The compounding effect of negative feedback loops. We see this in the World 3 models of industrial output and every update of the World 3 model since. The drop is very rapid. What the model does not show or attempt to account for is there exists a very large capital stock of transportation, infrastructure, plant, tooling, farm equipment, etc that will be used and cannibalized for many years after that initial drop in industrial production. This is what your theory does account for, and leads to the stair step decline that modifies the descent.
Can’t wait to read more of your inciteful work!!!
Keeping doing useful things year after year can be hard. I am not having a good year in the garden. First I got a really late start because I was out of town for the first half of April, and now rats have been digging up things before they can sprout. Also, planting keeps hurting a lot and making me unable to do the other things I want to do. And yesterday evening, there was a rabbit in the yard. I scared it off, but honestly? I’m sick of it and don’t want to do it this year.
And the music stuff hasn’t really worked out due to health issues. I gave myself another tendonitis injury playing recorder, on top of all my other problems and it’s taking forever to clear up well enough to play alto. At least its stopped interfering with anything but recorder. A lot of money spent, a lot of fun and heartbreak had, but I don’t think its going to work out for making money rather than spending it.
Frankly, I’ve been struggling with depression on and off for months, and have half a mind to just take a break from everything for a few months. Except wargaming, which is still being fun and is managing to bypass most of my health issues.
I always enjoy reading your sobering and accurate essays on the state of human affairs! Must confess though to my Pollyanna streak which feels humanity will always ultimately adapt; maybe there’s some great energy source in one of those single grains of beach sand just waiting to be uncovered:-)
As long as I’m confessing, lol, being 70 years old with no (physical) children, I selfishly find myself not really caring what happens in this remaining lifetime of mine… I had a good run!
(Ok,ok I know that sounds heartless and I do truly wish the best for those that may suffer).
But for now, I’ve got my fingers crossed for my next reincarnation, and, seriously, all of humanity… I truly hope everyone can/will have such a lucky-stars life as mine.
Thank you always JMG for stimulating and thought provoking ideas clearly and entertainingly expressed!
Jill C yogaandthetarot
I found your blog last month after a long hiatus (reading your books in the 2010s). I’ve enjoyed thinking about the points you bring up, and this post seems serendipitous with me returning to your thoughts. Looking forward to future posts!
Hi JMG,
Thank you for this article. I’m very glad you write about peak oil again.
You mentioned:
“I predicted, some years ago, that the next energy crisis would arrive sometime around 2022. That didn’t happen…”
In 2022, the Russo-Ukrainian/NATO war turned kinetic, which has energy as its root. So your prediction was not that off in my opinion.
Well as Adam Smith said “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation” It will be a gradual decline with occasional sudden dips along the way. I anticiapte a dip sometime in the next ten years. Though I suppose a cataclysmic war could also happen in addition to the ecosystem, resource, economic, social declines. That concerns me more than The Long Descent.
Very timely. Glad you bring that up !
This week there were two news items, released mere days apart, and not from fringe sources, that announced that US shale would peak this year or early next. You may have seen ’em. Of course such announcements may be in part due to the recent price slump. This slump in turn has its own causes.
Many comments under these articles were dismissive, “it’s all a scam”, there’s an ocean of oil under Alaska that “we” stashed for later, to say nothing of abiotic theory. I’m a sucker for a good conspiracy narrative but… Guess I wasn’t in the mood.
Still the news that we may be “there” soon made my heart aflutter, somewhat lol. I still tend to believe that by 2030 something drastic will have happened, thrusting us in a new phase of the larger Descent. To be sure, I may just be recoiling in the face of the slow grind.
JMG, thank you so much for this. My friends think I am nuts for continuing to harp about long, slow energy descent.
Wow, Running on Empty. I haven’t thought about that list in a while. I dug up an email I kept from that list that I saved back in 2006 when I was still afraid of immediate apocalypse. It’s called 100 Things You Can Do To Get Ready for Peak Oil. I am so glad to feel more grounded in all of this now and there is useful stuff in here. Here’s the post which originated on the Energy Bulletin:
To: RunningOnEmpty2@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [RunningOnEmpty2] 100 Things You Can Do to Get Ready for Peak Oil
Spring
1. Rethink your seed starting regimen. How will you do it without potting soil, grow lights and warming mats. Consider creating manure heated hotbeds, using your own compost, building a greenhouse, or coldframe, direct seeding early versions of transplanted crops, etc…
2. Your local feed store has chicks right now – even suburbanites might consider ordering a few bantam hens and keeping them as exotic birds. Worth a shot, no? You can grow some feed in your garden for them, as well as enjoying the eggs.
3. Order enough seeds for three years of gardening. If by next spring, we are all unable to get replacement seed, will you have produced everything you need? What if you can’t grow for a year because of some crisis? Order extras from places with cheap seed like http://www.fedcoseeds.com, http://www.superseeds.com, http://www.rareseed.com.
4. Yard sale season will begin soon in the warmer parts of the country, and auctions are picking up now in the North. Stocking up on things like shoes, extra coats, kids clothing in larger sizes, hand tools, garden equipment is simply prudent – and can save a lot of money.
5. The real estate “season” will begin shortly, with families wanting to get settled in new homes during the summer, before the school year starts. If you are planning on buying or selling this year, now is the time to research the market, new locations, find that country property or the urban duplex with a big yard.
6. Once pastures are flush, last year’s hay is usually a bargain, and many farmers clean out their barns. manure and old hay are great soil builders for anyone.
7. Check out your local animal shelter and adopt a dog or cat for rodent control, protection and friendship during peak oil.
8. As things green up, begin to identify and use local wild edibles. Eat your lawn’s dandelions, your daylily shoots, new nettles. Hunt for morels (learn what you are doing first!!) and wild onions. Get in the habit of seeing what food there is to be had everywhere you go.
9. Set up rainbarrel or cistern systems and start harvesting your precipitation.
10. Planning to only grow vegetables? Truly sustainable gardens include a lot of pretty flowers, which have value as medicinals, dye and fiber plants, seasoning herbs, and natural cleaners and pest repellants.
Instead of giving up ornamentals altogether, grow a garden full of daylilies, lady’s mantle, dye hollyhocks and coreopsis, foxgloves, soapwart, bayberry, hip roses, bee balm and other useful beauties.
11. Get a garden in somewhere around you – campaign to turn open space into a community garden, ask if you can use a friend’s backyard, get your company or church, synagogue, mosque or school to grow a garden for the poor. Every garden and experienced gardener we have is a potential hedge against the disaster.
12. Join a CSA if you don’t garden, and get practice cooking and eating a local diet in season.
13. Eggs and greens are at their best in spring – dehydrated greens and cooked eggshells, ground up together add calcium and a host of other nutrients to flour, and you won’t taste them. We’re not going to be able to afford to waste food in the future, so get out of the habit now.
14. Make rhubarb, parsnip or dandelion wine for later consumption.
15. Now that warmer weather is here, start walking for more of your daily Needs. Even a four or five mile walk is quite reasonable for most healthy people.
16. Start a compost pile, or begin worm composting. Everyone can and should compost. Even apartment dwellers can keep worms or a compost bin and use the product as potting soil.
17. Use spring holidays and feasts as a chance to bring up peak oil with friends and family. Freedom and rebirth are an excellent subjects to lead into the Long Emergency.
18. Store the components of some traditional spring holiday foods, so that in hard times your family can maintain its traditions and celebrations.
19. With the renewal of the building season, now is the time to scavenge free building materials, like cinder blocks, old windows and scrap wood – with permission, of course.
20. Try and adapt to the spring weather early – get outside, turn down your heat or bank your fires, cut down on your fuel consumption as though you had no choice. Put on those sweaters one more time.
21. Shepherds are flush with wool – now is the time to buy some fleece and start spinning! Drop spindles are easy to make and cheap to use. Check out http://www.learntospin.com
22. Take a hard look back over the last winter – if you had had to survive on what you grew and stored last year, would you have made it?
Early spring was famously the “starving time” when stores ran out and everyone was hungry. Remember, when you plan your food needs that not much produces early in spring, and in northern climates, A winter’s worth of food must last until May or June.
23. Trade cuttings and divisions, seeds and seedlings with your neighbors. Learn what’s out there in your community, and sneak some useful plants into your neighbors’ garden.
24. If you’ve got a nearby college, consider scavenging the dorm dumpsters. College students often leave astounding amounts of Stuff behind including excellent books, clothes, furniture, etc.
25. Say a schecheyanu, a blessing, or a prayer. Or simply be grateful for a series of coincidences that permit us to be here, in this place, as the world and the seasons come to life again. Try to make sure that this year, this time, you will take more joy in what you have, and prepare a bit better to soften the blow that is about to fall.
SUMMER
1. If you don’t can or dehydrate, now is the time to learn. In most climates, you can waterbath can or dehydrate with a minimum of purchased materials, and produce is abundant and cheap. If you don’t garden, check out your local farmstand for day-old produce or your farmer’s market at the end of the day – they are likely to have large quantities they are anxious to get rid of. Wild fruits are also in abundance, or will be.
2. Consider dehydrating outer leaves of broccoli, cabbage, etc…, and grinding the dried mixture. It can be added to flours to increase the nutritional value of your bread.
3. Buy hay in the summer, rather than gradually over the winter. Now is an excellent time to put up simple shelters for hay storage, to avoid high early spring and winter prices.
4. Firewood, woodstoves and heating materials are at their cheapest right now. Invest now for winter. The same is true of insulating materials.
5. Back to school planning is a great time to reconsider transportation in light of peak oil. Can your children walk? Bike? If they cannot do either for reasons of safety (rather than distance) could an adult do so with them? Could you hire a local teenager to take them to school on foot or by wheel? Can you find ways to carpool, if you must drive? Grownups can do this too.
6. Also when getting ready to go back to school, consider the environmental impact of your scheduling and activities – are there ways to minimize driving/eating out/equipment costs/fuel consumption? Could your family do less in formal “activities” and more in family work?
7. Consider either home schooling or engaging in supplemental home Education. Your kids may need a large number of skills not provided by local public schools, and a critical perspective that they certainly won’t learn in an institutional setting. Teach them.
8. Try and minimize air conditioning and electrical use during high Summer. Take cool showers or baths, use ice packs, reserve activity when possible for early am or evening. Rise at 4 am and get much of your work done then.
9. Consider adding a solar powered attic fan, available from Real Goods http://www.realgoods.com.
10. Don’t go on vacation. Spend your energy and money making your home a paradise instead. Throw a barbecue, a party or an open house, and invite the neighbors in. Get to know them.
11. Be prepared for summer blackouts, some quite extensive. Have emergency supplies and lighting at hand.
12. Practice living, cooking and camping outside, so that you will be comfortable doing so if necessary. Everyone in the family can Learn basic outdoors person skills.
13. Make your own summer camp. Instead of sending kids to soccer camp, create an at-home skills camp that helps prepare people for Peak oil. Invite the neighbor kids to join you. Have a blast!
14. Begin adapting herbs and other potted plants to indoor culture. Consider adding small tropicals – figs, lemons, oranges, even bananas can often be grown in cold climate homes. Obviously, if you live in a warm climate well, be prepared for some jealousy from the rest of us come February ;-).
15. Plant a fall garden in high summer – peas, broccoli, kale, lettuces, beets, carrots, turnips, etc. All of the above will last well into early winter in even the harshest climates, and with proper techniques or in milder areas, will provide you with fresh food all year long
16. Put up a new clothesline! Consider hand washing clothes outside, since everyone will probably enjoy getting wet (and cool) anyhow.
17. If you have access to safe waters, go fishing. Get some practice, and learn a new skill.
18. Encourage pick-up games at your house. Post-peak, children will need to know how to entertain themselves.
19. For teens, encourage them to develop their own home businesses over the summers. Whether doing labor or creating a product, you may rely on them eventually to help support the family. Or have them clean out your closets and attic and help you reorganize. Let them sell the stuff.
20. Buy a hand pushed lawn mower if you have less than 1 acre of grass. New ones are easy to push and pleasant, and will save you energy and that unpleasant gas smell.
21. Keep an eye out for unharvested fruits and nuts – many suburban and rural areas have berry and fruit bushes that no one harvests. Take advantage and put up the fruit.
22. Practice extreme water conservation during the summer. Mulch to reduce the need for irrigation. Bathe less often and with less water. Reduce clothes washing when possible.
23. This is an excellent time to toilet train children – they can run around naked if necessary and accidents will do no harm. Try and get them out of diapers now, before winter.
24. Consider replacing lawns with something that doesn’t have to be mown – ground covers like vetch, moss, even edibles like wintergreen or lingonberry, chamomile or mint.
25. If it is summer time, then the living is probably easy. Take some time to enjoy it – to picnic, to celebrate democracy (and try and bring one about ;-), To explore your own area, walk in the nearby woods.
FALL
1. Simple, cheap insulating strategies (window quilts and blankets, draft stoppers, etc…) are easily made from cheap or free materials – goodwill, for example, often has jeans, tshirts and shrunken wool sweaters, of quality too poor to sell, that can be used for quilting material and batting. They are available where I am for a nominal price, and I’ve heard of getting them free.
2. Stock up for winter as though the hard times will begin this year. Besides dried and canned foods, don’t forget root cellarable and storable local produce, and season extension (cold frames, greenhouses,
etc…) techniques for fresh food when you make your food inventory.
3. Thanksgiving sales tend to be when supermarkets offer the cheapest deals on excellent supplements to food storage, like shortening, canned pumpkin, spices, etc… I’ve also heard of stores given turkeys away free with grocery purchases – turkeys can then be cooked, canned and stored. Don’t forget to throw in storable ingredients for your family’s holiday staples – in hard times, any kind of celebration or continuity is appreciated.
4. Go leaf rustling for your garden and compost pile. If you happen into places where people leave their leaves out for pickup, grab the bags and set them to composting or mulching Your own garden.
5. Plant a last crop of over wintering spinach, and enjoy in the fall and again in spring.
6. Or consider planting a bed of winter wheat. Chickens can even graze it lightly in the fall, and it will be ready to harvest in time to use the bed for your fall garden. Even a small bed will make quite a bit of fresh, delicious bread.
7. Hit those last yard sales, or back to school sales and buy a few extra clothes (or cloth to make them) for growing children and extra shoes for everyone. They will be welcome in storage, particularly if prices rise because of trade issues or inflation.
8. The best time to expand your garden is now – till or mulch and let sod rot over the winter. Add soil amendments, manure, compost and lime.
9. Now is an excellent time to start the 100 mile diet in most locales – Stores and farms and markets are bursting with delicious local produce And products. Eat local and learn new recipes.
10. Rose hip season is coming – most food storage items are low in accessible vitamin C. Harvest wild or tame unsprayed rose hips, and dry them for tea to ensure long-term good health. Rose hips are delicious mixed with raspberry leaves and lemon balm.
11. Discounts on alcohol are common between Halloween and Christmas – this is an excellent time to stock up on booze for personal, medicinal, trade or cooking. Pick up some vanilla beans as well, and make your own vanilla out of that cheap vodka.
12. Gardening equipment, and things like rainbarrels go on sale in the late summer/early fall. And nurseries often are trying to rid themselves of perennial plants – including edibles and medicinals. It isn’t too late to plant them in most parts of the country, although some care is needed in purchasing for things that have become rootbound.
13. Local honey will be at its cheapest now – now is the time to stock up. Consider making friends with the beekeeper, and perhaps taking lessons yourself.
14. Fall is the cheapest time to buy livestock, either to keep or for butchering. Many 4Hers, and those who simply don’t want to keep excess animals over the winter are anxious to find buyers now. In many cases, at auction, I see animals selling for much less than the meat you can expect to obtain from their carcass is worth.
15. Most cold climate housing has or could have a “cold room/area” – a space that is kept cool enough during the fall and winter to dispense with the necessity of a refrigerator, but that doesn’t freeze. If you have separate fridge and freezer, consider disconnecting your fridge during the cooler weather to save utility costs and conserve energy. You can build a cool room by building in a closet with a window, and insulating it with styrofoam panels
16. Now is a great time to build community (and get stuff done) by instituting a local “work bee” – invite neighbors and friends to come help either with a project for your household, or to share in some good deed for another community member. Provide food, drink, tools and get to work on whatever it is (building, harvesting, quilting, knitting – the sky is the limit), and at the same time strengthen your community. Make sure that next time, the work benefits a different neighbor or community member.
17. Most local charities get the majority of their donations between now and December. Consider dividing your charitable donations so that they are made year round, but adding extra volunteer hours to help your group handle the demands on them in the fall.
18. Many medicinal and culinary herbs are at their peak now. Consider learning about them and drying some for winter use.
19. If there is a gleaning program near you (either for charity or personal use) consider joining. If not, start one. Considerable amounts of food are wasted in the harvesting process, and you can either add to your storage or benefit your local shelters and food pantries.
20. Dig out those down comforters, extra blankets, hats with the earflaps, flannel jammies, etc… You don’t need heat in your sleeping areas – just warm clothes and blankets.
21. Learn a skill that can be done in the dark or by candlelight, while sitting with others in front of a heat source. Knitting, crocheting, whittling, rug braiding, etc… can all be done mostly by touch with little light, and are suitable for companionable evenings. In addition, learn to sing, play instruments, recite memorized speeches and poetry, etc… as something to do on dark winter evenings.
22. While I wouldn’t expect deer or turkey hunting to be a major food source in coming times (I would expect large game to be driven back to near-extinction pretty quickly), it is worth having those skills, and also the skills necessary to catch the less commonly caught small game, like rabbits, squirrel, etc…
23. Use a solar cooker or parabolic solar cooker whenever possible To prepare food. Or eat cool salads and raw foods. Not only won’t you heat up the house, but you’ll save energy.
24. A majority of children are born in the summer early fall, which suggests that some of us are doing more than keeping warm ;-). Now is a good time to get one’s birth control updated ;-).
25. Celebrate the harvest – this is a time of luxury and plenty, and
should be treated as such and enjoyed that way. Cook, drink, eat, talk, sing, pray, dance, laugh, invite guests. Winter is long and comes soon enough. Celebrate!
WINTER
1. Your local adult education program almost certainly has something useful to teach you – woodworking, crocheting, music training, horseback riding, CPR, herbalism, vegetarian cookery… take advantage of people who want to teach their skills
2. Get serious about land use planning – even if you live in a suburban neighborhood, you can find ways to optimize your land to produce the most food, fuel and barterables. Sit down and think hard about what you can do to make your land and your life more sustainable in the coming year.
3. The Winter lull is an excellent time to get involved in public affairs. No matter how cynical you tend to be, nothing ever changed without engagement. So get out there. Stand for office. Join. Volunteer.
4. Now is the time to prepare for illness – keep a stock of remedies, including useful antibiotics (although know what you are doing, don’t just buy them and take them), vitamin C supplements (I like elderberry syrup), painkillers, herbs, and tools for handling even serious illness by yourself. In the event of a truly severe epidemic of flu or other illness, avoiding illness and treating sick family members at home whenever possible may be safer than taking them to over-worked and over-crowded hospitals (or, it may not – but planning for the former won’t prevent you from using the hospital if you need it).
5. Most schools would be delighted to have volunteers come in and talk about conservation, gardening, small livestock, home-scale mechanics, ham radio, etc…, and most homeschooling families would be similarly thrilled. Consider offering to teach something you know that will be helpful post-peak (although I wouldn’t recommend discussing peak oil with any but the oldest teenagers, and not even that without their parents permission
6. Now is the time to convince your business, synagogue, church, school, community center to put a garden on that empty lawn. If you start the campaign now, you can be ready to plant in the spring. Produce can be shared among participants or offered to the needy.
7. The one-two punch of rising heating oil and gas prices may well be what is needed to make your family and friends more receptive to the peak oil message. Try again. At the very least, emphasize the options for mitigating increased economic strain with sustainable practices.
8. Get together with neighbors and check in on your area’s elderly and disabled people. Make a plan that ensures they will be checked on during bad weather, power outages, etc… Offer help with stocking up for winter, or maintaining equipment. And watch for signs that they are struggling economically.
9. Work on raising money and getting help with local poverty-abatement Programs. After the holidays, people struggle. They get hungry and cold. Remember, besides the fact that it is the right thing to do, the life you save may be your own.
10. Get out and enjoy the cold weather. It is hard to adapt to colder temperatures if you spend all your time huddled in front of a heater. Ski, snowshoe, sled, shovel, have a snowball fight, build a hut, go winter camping, but get comfortable with the cold, snowy world around you.
11. Have your chimney(s) inspected, and learn to clean your own. Learn to care for your kerosene lamps, to use candles safely, and how to use and maintain your smoke and CO detectors and fire extinguishers.
Winter is peak fire season, so keep safe.
12. Grow sprouts on your windowsill.
13. Now is an excellent time to reconsider how you use your house. Look around – could you make more space? House more people? Do projects more efficiently? Add greenhouse space? Put in a homemade composting toilet? Work with what you have to make it more useful.
14. If a holiday gift exchange is part of your life, make most of your gifts. Knit, whittle, build, sew, or otherwise create something beautiful for the people you love.
15. If someone wants to buy you something, request a useful tool or preparedness item, or a gift certificate to a place like Lehmans or Real Goods. Considering giving such gifts to friends and family – a solar crank radio, an LED flashlight, cast iron pans, These are useful and appreciated items whether or not you believe in peak oil.
16. Do a dry run in the dead of winter. Turn out all the power, turn off the water. Turn off all fossil-fuel sources of heat, and see how things go for a few days. Use what you learn to improve your preparedness, and have fun while doing it.
17. Learn to mend clothing, patch and make patchwork out of old clothes.
18. Write letters to people. The post is the most reliable way of communicating, And letters last forever.
19. Make a list of goals for the coming year, and the coming five years. Start Keeping records of your goals and your successes and failures.
20. Keep a journal. Your children and grandchildren (or someone else’s) may want To know what these days were like.
21. Wash your hands frequently, and avoid stress. Stay healthy so that you can be useful To those around you.
22. For those subject to depression or anxiety, winter can be hard. Find ways to relax, decompress and use work as an antidote to fear whenever possible. Get outside on sunny days, and try and exercise as much as possible to help maintain a positive attitude.
23. Memorize a poem or song every week. No matter what happens to you, no one can ever take away the music and words you hold in your mind. You can have them as comfort and pleasure wherever you go, and in whatever circumstances.
24. Take advantage of heating stoves by cooking on them. You can make soups or stews on top of any wood stove or even many radiators, and you can build or buy a metal oven That sits on top of woodstoves to bake in.
25. Winter is a time of quiet and contemplation. Go outside. Hear the silence. Take pleasure in what you have achieved over the past year. Focus on the abundance of this present, this day, rather than scarcity to come.
In terms of the question of “peak energy”, there has been a bit a furor lately regarding the construction and successful activation of the first “meltdown proof” thorium reactor in China, and how thorium could serve as an almost “inexhaustible” resource to rely on in the future:
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/China-Unveils-Worlds-1st-Meltdown-Proof-Thorium-Reactor.html
I have to wonder exactly how viable the notion of thorium reactors will prove in the long run? Certainly, I have my doubts it would be enough to make up for declines in oil supply, but I also wonder with China specifically whether it will be able to withstand most of the shocks as industrial civilization continues its decline, particularly given how heavily invested they are in industrial policy.
I’ve always been of the opinion that apocalyptic thinking is just people outsourcing the fear of their own inevitable demise. The only difference is that we can fantasize about averting the apocalypse with the right tech or policy. Death, sadly, countenances no surrogate or solution – industrial scale protestations made by the MechaMuskrat be damned.
You know that feeling when you see someone else say something that you’ve always thought, but rarely ever gets mentioned? You feel vindicated.
I saw this recently, on Elonbook. The gist was, someone was saying: Alberta beware, separatism may be a mirage, because Peak Oil was real and you’re going to run out sooner than you think, and what then?
After all, my region was wealthy until they hit Peak Fish and then it all fell apart. These things do happen.
But you don’t see anyone acknowledge it, very often.
A root beer float! I haven’t had one of those for a long time. With proper root beer, proper vanilla ice cream and frosted glass mug. Delicious!
JMG,
What is your take on the abiogenic theory of oil?
I recently read that Antarctica has perhaps the largest remaining petroleum reserves in the world and the confirmation of that nugget is well under way. How it plays into the world of power politics is an interesting mental exercise. The potential net energy estimates are a wildly volatile consideration as well given the remoteness and the weather of course.
JMG, Silicone Guy, et al
I see that the CEO of Diamondback energy has just announced that the Permian has already peaked this year and will start to decline. The Permian has been the only thing preventing greater world decline since 2018. The prevailing opinion seemed to have been that there would be another peak a wee bit higher than 2018 before 2028 and then a plateau into the early 30s.. The main reason seems to be geological, but$50 per barrel oil also makes most new drilling unprofitable. I suspect economics is going to be a big decline factor going forward, as well as people having less money reducing demand. My guess would be that reduced supply, reduced demand and higher operating costs are going to make a clear picture of peak oil very cloudy for a few years, especially if deliberately muddied by governments and companies. I don’t think there is enough new oil to find, especially at $50. or less per barrel, for Trump’s promises to have any meaning.
Stephen
LATOC (Life After The Oil Crash); great community. shared so many resources for free both online and in person. probably one of the greatest fully functioning online communities.
I discovered the Archdruid through James Howard Kunstler. Which actually gave my long standing interest in occultism structure and clarity. As far as Kunstler goes, today I think he’s gotten totally lost in boomer-esque politics. I wish he’d come back to critiquing urbanism and architecture.
Regarding climate change, there is an Orthodox Christian Youtuber who did an incredible highly organized breakdown on how climate change is a religion. Set aside his own bias, his analysis is actually very objective. David Patrick Harry is his name for anyone interested in looking up that particular video.
what’s your opinion on net zero energy? california is pushing to eliminate all non-renewable fuel sources. and low and behold, spain and portugal just achieved 100% renewables, followed by black outs.
One final question; in the “conspriracy” realm, there are people who asser that “fossil fuels” is a misnomer, and that oil is not dinosaur juice (Sinclair is an adorable mascot). what do you think oil “actually” is?
Hi JMG,
The mention in this essay of how the peak oil scene fell under the sway of murky NGO financing and then how those same NGO’s and their backers pivoted to ‘climate change’ reminded me of an offhand mention in Lewin and Galbraith’s satire of post WW2 managerialism The Report From Iron Mountain. I don’t have the exact quote in front of me as it has been years since I’ve read the book. I recall, as an alternative to the war economy, the satirical white paper proposed the possibility of of using the threat of environmental catastrophe as justification for keeping the masses mired in a state of self sacrifice “for the greater good” that in practice would work to maintain the current social order rather than do anything for environmental issues. Much as Cold Wars are designed never to be won.
Given that Lewin and Galbraith (particularly Galbraith) spent a lot of time in the very same elite policy circles they were lampooning, it makes me wonder how long some flavor of what became the “Davos climate change policy” has been floating around in think tanks and with cynical policy wonks and the like. It’s worth noting that in the mid 2000’s when peak oil and later climate change began to get elite attention and backing it looked like cold war style geopolitical arrangements weren’t going to come back and the stop gap measure of “The War on Terror” was rapidly becoming massively unpopular. Now that a more traditional cold war with Russia and China has come back climate change and other forms of elite backed “environmentalism” seem to be taking a back burner.
Thought provoking stuff as always JMG,
JZ
Speaking of apocalypse-du-jour tendencies in our culture, I check in with several subreddits on preparedness, economics, geopolitics, etc., and this thread has gotten pretty active: https://www.reddit.com/r/economicCollapse/comments/1kerdgt/how_can_you_tell_we_are_headed_for_a_recession_or/
This post stuck out in light of our host’s discussion here, though: (edited just to give you the relevant parts). Each bullet point is a new comment:
“•3d ago -Upstream oil and gas service company, we are closing a couple stores next week. These are bases that have been in business for over 30 years.
• 3d ago – Are you talking about oilfield service companies like wireline, tools, that sort of thing? “Stores” meaning branches that personnel and equipment are run from?
•3d ago -Yes, servicing drilling operations, the stores are exactly what you said, where the equipment and the personnel mobilize from, it’s a bummer.
•3d ago -My sympathies. We had our careers derailed by downturns in the patch many years ago.
•3d ago – What does “upstream” mean in that business?
• 2d ago – It’s basically where in the “supply chain” of O&G production. Here’s an overview:
Upstream refers to exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas, midstream is the transportation and storage of crude oil and natural gas, downstream refers to the conversion of crude oil and natural gas into thousands of finished products.”
Upstream is turning into a trickle in some locales…
@Ken #5. Yeah, I think that the population peak is going to happen soon and will relive a lot of the strain on resources. I also wonder if humans in the developed world have hit their limit for consumerism? I mean, how often do you need new countertops or new dishes?
@JMG and JillC #24 I also have no children and find myself becoming more entertained by the little crises, a stock crash here, a possible war there than concerned by it. At this point in my life, perhaps I’m cynical, or perhaps I’ve realized that the social order has already broken down and maybe it’s not worth the effort to worry about it or try to work for a better future and just enjoy the time I have left. I’ve never been in any debt in my life, but there are a lot of cool things I could buy on credit! I also started growing popcorn if anyone wants to watch with me….
Marko @ 19, the organic gardening bible is by John Jeavons, https://johnjeavons.org/books-and-videos/#BOOK‘
Do keep in mind, that the methods used at Ecology Action were developed in Coastal California, with the fantastic year-round growing season, and will need to be modified for your particular climate. That said, what he describes is the best way to get started gardening I have yet found. For one example of local modification, I needed to water twice a day in the CentraL Valley and use a mulch. The problem with most of the no till methods is that they use A Lot of off site inputs, which are increasingly expensive. Now, in Upstate NY, I dig ditches beside each garden bed to receive the water from the heavy summer rains we get here. Now that I have a compost pile going, I can pile 4″ compost–less doesn’t help much–on top of the beds and the double digging isn’t needed, unless I have some twigs and such I want to bury in the soil. Organic ferts are wonderful if you can afford them, but if you can’t, do what you can with what you have. Nothing organic should be put out on the street; it all makes good compost. Cooled water from noodles, potatoes, rinsing dishes, etc. can be used on plants that need babied. If you can afford ferts, the best I have found come from an organic chicken and egg operation in the MidWest, who found a creative way to use up their waste. I forgot the name. They were being sold by a chain called Running.
For seeds, the two go to places to start are MIgardener and Baker Creek, IMO, and for next winter, do check out winter sowing. I hope this helps and good luck with your gardening.
Galerkin @ # 34, I believe the notion of oil having abiotic origin came about when some Soviet scientists figured out a way to tell Stalin what Stalin wanted to hear. There was, and still is, oil in Russia, but I doubt it is of abiotic origin.
Bofur, about Alberta: I’ve thought that too. You are not alone. Though they should at least still have farming provided climate change doesn’t go completely insane.
The other thing I notice is that they talk about ‘the west’ but don’t consider coastal BC’s interests or inclinations at all, and just assume we’ll want to leave with them and then agree with them on whatever they want for policy. The BC coast is actually the most densely populated part of ‘the west’ with the biggest city, and has very different opinions from Alberta on a lot of things.
And without it, they would be landlocked, which generally is not great for a country.
The needed vast re-engineering of how things are done is mind boggling. I teach an environmental science class to high schoolers. In America we are surrounded by a miasma of anti-life built piece by piece since the 1800’s, in the water, air, soil, food, “medicines”, electromagnetic radiations, what we sit in, live in drive in, walk in, what we wear, plastics and forever chemicals, herbicides, pesticides. The asphalt roads exude chemicals. Human sperm counts have declined by 50% – a canary in the coal mine indicator that something is very wrong indeed! Add to that that a culture and social arrangements that do not promote positive human connections and relationships Yet this death is an intrinsic by product of the present system we use to provide stuff and services! None of the competing factions in the power structure squarely faces and understands the decades long deep restructuring that must happen. So The Long Descent will relentlessly continue.
In 1991 I sat for three days watching in horror the 24 hour/day embedded BBC and CNN Shock and Awe Show/slaughter of the Mesopotamian peoples to control and burn the mineral biomass in their land. The Anglo military-industrial-media complex’s astonishing, precise orchestration of the event shocked me to the core. By day 3 the manifestation of this terrible psychopathy generated in me such a prophetic vision of dystopia that I vowed to never own another car or fly in a jet again.
At age 77 , this rates the best, most liberating decision of my life though since then I have lived the life of an alien trapped in our hopelessly car-jet-war addicted Crown New Zealand culture. Indeed, even the good JMG ridiculed me on this forum.
What liberates and sustains these days is a wonderful experience of “energy” being as vital and bounteous as all the potential of the universe, the miracle of “global warming” and “climate change” and, in my dying days, a sense of privilege and relief of being freed of my addiction to cars and jets and the mayhem they generate for Mankind, which includes needless, dangerous “human-induced climate change”, “global warming-up” and continuous wars to maintain the Anglo “Petrodollar” hegemony.
No man (human being) can know when “peak oil” occurs. However we can have shrewd idea that our capacity to cheaply extract and combust mineral biomass passed decades ago.
These are subtle matters involving the ego that are best understood with compassion.
Hi John Michael,
Haven’t all these years been a fun ride? 😊 Whilst writing for the hippy press back in the early 2000’s, I came across the concept of Peak Oil, read a few books on the subject. It was in the newspapers of the day back in 2005 that conventional oil extraction had peaked – there was no great secret to the news. Thought about it a bit. Watched the Global Financial Crisis unfold in 2008, and then went off and did something different with my life which sort of responded to some of the new knowledge gained – and always recalled to work hard, but also have fun with the process. People waste a lot of time, energy and resources arguing, which is basically all an attempt to hold things together as they are, and that’s cool – it just ain’t me.
If I may say so, it takes a lot of time, energy and resources to hold entropy at bay. Our society isn’t even remotely focused on that possibility or outcome. Ah, another lost opportunity don’t you reckon? So many lost paths, that the field of options narrows. Oh well, shrug shoulders, movin’ on.
Having read your words for a very long time now, over the years your essays have developed a lovely cadence to them.
Cheers
Chris
Enjoyer, that’s one of the reasons apocalytic thinking is so popular. It allows people to claim that they won’t have to live with the consequences of their decisions.
Zarcayce, it’s astonished me to see how quickly that got swept under the rug, so thank you for this.
Drhooves, nicely summarized. Yeah, that’s just it — what transforms peak oil from an interesting situation to a calamity is human stupidity.
Siliconguy, if that turns out to be true, we may get the next oil shock sooner than I’d expected. Cue some other even more expensive and uneconomical source of liquid fuels, propped up by even more bizarre distortions of the world economy…
Ken, the peaking of global population is a natural consequence of the peaking of energy availability. Petroleum usage will fall, all right, as production declines in step with population, but I still expect all the economically extractable oil (along with some that isn’t economically viable, but gets extracted anyway) to be pumped out of the ground and burnt. Two hundred years from now, when global population is at 10% of current levels and most of them are subsistence farmers, there will still be a few wells pumping out a trickle of oil.
Vivek, there’s a fourth expedient, and we’re seeing it in the United States right now: eliminate excess consumption via economically unproductive areas such as government and corporate bureaucracy. If twenty million upper middle class cubicle jockeys get driven down into poverty, that will free up a very large amount of energy and materials, and it will also free up a large domestic source of unskilled labor. We’re already starting to see freakouts in the media as reporters (who belong to the surplused class) begin to realize that large language models (“AI”) can replace them and most other exployees in their category; expect this to continue as more elite classes catch on to the potential benefits.
Justin, yes, and we’ll get to that!
Alan, thank you!
Ken, we’re currently in a complex situation in which nearly every other culture on the planet has undergone what Spengler called a pseudomorphosis — the imposition of cultural forms from outside — and the source of that is precisely the European/Faustian civilization that’s heading straight for decline and fall with the pedal to the metal. As a result, everyone else is caught up in the same pell-mell rush toward the abyss. The question is purely whether any of them extract their heads from their (ahem!) in time. What I’m seeing so far is not promising, but the story’s not over yet.
Raymond, I have no objection to Christians waiting prayerfully for the Second Coming, as long as they remember that not even Jesus knows when it’s going to happen (Mark 13:32) and that the Kingdom of God is primarily an internal spiritual state (Luke 17:21). The problems usually pop up when spiritual pride leads people to think that they know better than Christ!
Synthase, that’s happening across much of the world, and for good reason: the artificial token economy of money is increasingly disconnected from the real economy of nonfinancial goods and services. The banknote below is a useful reminder of one way things could go:
Justin, “enshaleification” is certainly appropriate here. (For newcomers to this blog, quite a while ago I agreed to modify my no-profanity rule to permit the expletives “frack,” “shale,” and “borehole” here.) As for 23, as you may know, it’s also an important number in Discordian gematria: it’s a basic rule therein that the number 23 can be found in all phenomena, if you’re clever enough. 😉
Larry, the Transition Towm movement had good ideas, but those don’t mean much without adequate implementation! That’s been the great challenge all through this process: getting people to realize that good ideas without some way to get them put into practice is just cerebral flatulence.
TimPW, no, that’s one I haven’t encountered, and I’d like to see it argued sometime. In point of fact, net energy is a measure of entropy: the more complex the process by which an energy resource has to be located, extracted, processed, and transported, the more of the energy it contains is lost to entropy, because every step in the process has an entropy cost: you always lose at least a little energy at each stage.
Alison, easily done. I’ll consider a new reading list as we proceed.
Other Owen, yep. Specifically, that’s catabolic collapse in action. Expect much more of it, and a lot of “flump” sounds, as the scrambling begins.
JonL, exactly. Frantic jerry-rigging becomes the order of the day. I have to say, though, that how much you need a car really depends on where you are and how you live. At 62, I’ve never owned a car or had a driver’s license, and it’s never been a problem for me. Of course I’ve always made sure to live in places that had the resources I need within walking distance, and functional public transit is still available in some parts of this country, but you make your choices depending on what matters to you. Suburbia? I grew up there and I’d sooner live in Hell.
Marko, not everyone here’s been a reader of mine since 2009. Be prepared for a lot of other recaps of past material while we get up to speed.
PaleoTaoist, I’ll see what I can find. As for links, just type it in as plaintext and it’ll get through.
Degringolade, those were factors, sure, but I thought at the time there was much more going on than that, and at this point — as it’s become clear how much of the US federal budget was being turned into a slush fund for various unsavory social-engineering projects — I’m even more convinced of that. But we’ll talk more about that in future posts.
Tom, thank you! I’ll be discussing the so-called Seneca Cliff as we proceed. Like most fast-crash arguments, it only pays attention to one set of feedback loops — the set that accelerate decline — without dealing with the other set of feedback loops — the set that delay decline. The rhetoric of progress, amusingly, does exactly the opposite. I sometimes wonder if I should lock the two theories in a hotel room, wait nine months, and see if they give birth to common sense.
Pygmycory, I’m very sorry to hear this! Life in a society in headlong decline really can be difficult, especially for those of us who are getting on in years. May I request Quin to put you on the prayer list?
Jill, oh, of course humanity will adapt. Many of us will adapt, as you and I have, by not having children, doing our best with the rest of this incarnation, and letting the process of rebirth get us a childhood and education that will fit us for the deindustrial future. Others will adapt in other ways. Industrial civilization? It’s a brittle, ramshackle structure that’s already falling apart, and — well, let’s whisper this: flashy as it was, it never did a very good job of meeting the needs of the human spirit. The (much smaller) generations to come will try other things.
Trevor, welcome back to the three-ring deindustrial circus!
Foxhands, maybe so, but I insist on judging my own predictions with a sharp eye for evasions; predicting an energy crisis and getting a war doesn’t really seem to count, at least to me.
BeardTree, there will be wars; it’s quite possible that a really messy one is about to break out in South Asia right now. I suspect, though, that a truly cataclysmic war won’t happen, for the simple reason that the people in power will have run the numbers six ways from Sunday and determined that there’s no way they can benefit from it.
Thibault, yes, I’ve been watching both the signs of peak shale liquids and the frantic attempts by people to insist that no such thing can happen; the latter’s as good a sign of approaching trouble as the former. Here we go!
Angelica, good heavens, that’s a blast from the past! Thank you.
N, now let’s see if it’s economical to run. The thing the pro-nuclear lobby is never willing to ta;lk about is that fission power is technically feasible but an economic white elephant, and the more complex a nuclear technology is — and thorium reactors are pretty complex — the more unaffordable it is. Look into the history of nuclear powered commercial freighters sometimes if you want an unsparing look at just how unaffordable nuclear power is.
Mark, bingo. Elon Musk, and a great many people like him, are busy trying to pretend that they don’t have to abide by the limits of the human condition, using clichés from the science fiction of the last century to do it. The apocalypse lobby is trying to do the same thing with clichés that are even older. Hope springs infernal, and all that.
Bofur, I wonder if Canada will let Alberta go once the tar sands run out and it’s no longer profitable to the rest of the nation…
Bird, I have that very much in mind for this summer.
Galerkin, it doesn’t matter. Do you remember when the price of oil went soaring into triple digits for the first time in 2008? When that happened, hundreds of oil wells in the old Pennsylvania oil fields, some of them shut in for a century, were reopened. If oil was abiotic, and was produced at rates high enough to matter, those wells would have been brimfull of light sweet crude. They weren’t — they were down to the dregs, just as they had been when they were shut in. Thus, wherever oil comes from, it doesn’t regenerate at a pace fast enough to help.
BrianDamage, oh, you can be sure that Antarctica and Greenland will be plundered before all this is over. I’ve been saying for years that I expect to see the Sierra Club advocating for the strip mining of the US national park system if that’ll prop up middle class lifestyles for a few more wretched decades.
BeardTree, exactly. We’re already well along the course of decline, the brakes have failed, and the steering wheel has locked up. Enjoy the ride!
Chris, thank you! Yeah, it’s been a long strange trip, and the friends and readers I’ve collected along the way are the best part of it.
Us clever little thinkers predicting a future with the great tool of logos. Its funny how these things can change over time if we live long enough to see and discern what influence we are have in the present. Glad you brought this back in the light of an elemental. It is something to contemplate.
Thinking that one can approach this oddly abundant time from many perspectives, and realize that this might be a matter of the haves or have nots when it comes to the subject of energy and how one uses it as well. Finding that this is a time when one can really do inner work with a whole lot less distractions even if there is an abundant amount of distractions going around. That is something to behold, but i digress. Thanks for your work JMG. Its truly amazing!
Sometimes we don’t realize what we have till its gone!? What a cliche’
Ah, The Oil Drum. One of the many peak oil sites I used to read and which lead me to the ADR in ’07 and I’ve been reading you ever since. The Peak Oil conversation mostly disappeared but Peak Oil is still with us. One thing that I’ve noticed is whenever barrels of oil is mentioned, it’s never stipulated whether or not it’s gross or net amount. The Tar Sands (I refuse to call it Oil Sands) is a case in point. It’s EROEI is apparently 3 barrels of oil equivalent for every 4 mined, but there is no mention of the gross or net when amounts are mentioned. I suspect that the figures used are the gross to make it sound better.
Peak oil, as you mentioned, is only one thing that will have to be dealt with. Two others I have first hand knowledge of are mining and farming. There will be ores left in the ground simply because they are too far underground to extract without the energy which is no longer available. And farming: all of the heavy equipment is compacting the soil and the chemicals used are killing the tiny soil inhabitants that help to rejuvenate the soil. It will take decades, centuries maybe, to rebuild healthy soil that modern agriculture is destroying.
Pygmycory, take care of yourself. I’ve noticed a lot of burn out with people I know. It seems a lot of people try to do too much and can’t handle the strain. Cut back on whatever is not necessary and which you can do without for the time being. But keep doing the gaming if it gives you a lot of enjoyment and doesn’t cause any problems.
Fascinating subject. I’m 60, so I only have a couple of decades to worry about (give or take a couple of decades), and neither the ability nor the inclination to make big changes. (I may feel differently after the war starts.) But it boggles my mind to think that my preschool-age nieces may–if they’re lucky–live to see the year 2100. God only knows what that will be like.
Regarding Abiotic Oil;
I find that topic fascinating, as it appeared as a sort of Fourierism of the 20th century. Rather than make lemonade oceans, socialism would produce infinite oil. Assuming the People’s Commissariat for Oil was correct and oil was created in the mantle and percolated up to fill voids in the crust, it apparently occurs on geologic timescales so at current production rates any oil produced by the abiogenic process would happen at too low of a rate to matter.
What interests me about it is the migration of the idea from the hardest of hard left to the right recently. I’m not sure why this has happened.
Cheers,
JZ
I have often found myself impatient with notions of instant apocalypse. A long slow decline by attrition has seemed the more likely scenario to me. I expect that hunger, disease and violence will play the biggest roles with exposure playing a distant fourth except when the power grid goes down for whatever reason.
Hi JMG and all,
Michael Every of Rabobank has been commenting for a while about the trend towards Mercantilism, which (for those like me who don’t know the term) means states manipulating their economies for political gain. This was apparently standard practice in the 19th century. His writings and presentations are worth a read, IMO, and it will be interesting to see how “economic statecraft” evolves as fossil energy supplies dwindle.
Another thing I’ve been wondering about Trump: as an outsider (non US), it seems to me that he wants to eat his cake and have it too. On the one hand, he wants to basically levy other countries for the privilege of selling goods to the USA in exchange for US dollars, but on the other hand he’s taking a highly transactional approach to foreign affairs (including with allies). I’m not making a value judgement here, and realise that the US is probably over-extended militarily — what I’m wondering is whether Trump can pull this off? Can the US maintain its “exorbitant privilege” of printing US dollars to buy global goods (other countries send their savings to the US) or will other countries end up saying “we really don’t need the US to buy our goods when they don’t really produce anything we need”?
I guess this question boils down to whether the US military is powerful enough to coerce other countries to accept the US dollar as payment for goods (unless I’m missing something?). I’m interested to hear what people think about this.
Cheers, Gus
It’s great to see you returning to these themes JMG. I’m not entirely sure when I started following the Archdruid Report, I believe it was around 2008-2009. From that era I remember an interview you did on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory where you set him straight on the definition of a vampire, which was fantastic. So I came for the monsters, I stayed for the peak oil, and I went home with druidry.
The Winter’s Tale series you did back in the day was a particular favorite of mine. Somehow the episodes capture the multi-generational time scale of civilizational collapse in a way that other fiction does not. If we as humans were better at thinking over those sorts of time frames we would not be in the mess we are in right now. Anyway, I hope you do something like that again. It was also really fun to see it adapted into a graphic novel format in Into the Ruins.