Microwave Oops

[prog]

Was talking with a friend about Peak Oil the other day. I hadn't pinned down the phrase until then, and now I'm fascinated with the topic. It's the first phrase I've subscribed to via Google News Alerts.

She was invoking SF scenarios where human civilization literally runs out of gas and can't do anything anymore. I don't see that... before the gas goes away, it will become really expensive, and stay that way. I foresee self-correcting behavior among consumers who are forced to finally start adopting some conservation into their lifestyles. For the last 30 years they have avoided or dismissed the the conservation message, since they had nothing drop-dead obvious to gain from it. Now, suddenly, they will. It costs HOW much to fill up my SUV?! And keep the lights on all day, and leave the heat cranked to 80, and...

But all the while a finite resource is still being burned up, so something will have to replace it on a global scale. Mark Frauenfelder and others posted a nice summary & info roundup on Boing Boing about Peak Oil and possible cheap-energy alternatives, including some interesting stuff about modern (post- Three Mile / Homer Simpson) nuclear power technologies.

Comments

[prog.livejournal.com]

You know, I considered plastic, which is now so ubiquitous and important at every level of everything, not just peoples' homes... no news stories seem to mention a danger to plastics production, though, so I've been mum on it.

My implied (and somewhat optimistic) point was that automobile fuel may be the first thing to become permanently and obviously expensive (some would say that it's starting to happen already), and everyday consumers would finally curb their use of it, staving off a scary global oil shortage for a while and allowing stuff like plastics production to continue. But we'd still need to find an oil replacement for that too, I suppose.