http://hydrocarbonman.com/

Ripe for revolution

...........The "status quo" camp ( Bush and his pals ) gets this fact already. They have been busy creating the Patriot Act, conducting warrant-less spying on American citizens, throwing out habeas corpus, passing new bankruptcy laws, raping corporate pension plans for personal gain, paying Haliburton to build domestic detention camps and concentrating unprecedented power in the hands of the President. They are launching preemptive wars in oil-rich regions of the world to control remaining supplies. They are bullying allies and creating new enemies like never before. They even talk about "limited" nuclear war.

By contrast, those of us who would open our eyes and get ready for the revolution while we still can, have been slow to smell the bacon. We hold conferences and analyze graphs mapping production at Saudi oil fields and read everything we can get our hands on (I know I do). Don't get me wrong. We need to do that. Information is power. But that is not preparation. That is preparing to think about discussing getting ready.

One reason for this is that we don't yet fully grasp the true nature of the coming revolution. We don't really want to see that peak oil is going to cause a dramatic, urgent and relentless de-centralization of our world. Oil has allowed us to compress time and space in a way that is about to be reversed, shrinking everything. The prefix "macro" as applied to politics and economics is going to lose most of its present meaning, to be replaced by renewed power to act on a local scale.

In other words, we don't understand that preparation ultimately boils down to what individuals are ready and willing to do for themselves..........

Hurricane Katrina, and its aftermath, should be taken as an omen of just how chaotic things will get, in the " Long Emergency ", we are now just beginning to experience, regarding the depletion of hydrocarbon energy. In reference to preperations for a " post Peak " world, the Post Carbon Institute has an excellent site full of ideas on ways to prepare for the looming declines of oil and natural gas. This site address is: postcarbon.org