Peak oil can be scary and complicated. But don’t worry — help is on the way.
How do you talk to your brother-in-law from Tucson who thinks that peak oil is bogus because there’s plenty of oil in the good ol’ US of A if only the treehuggers would just let us drill it?
You may have decided that it’s not worth spoiling a tolerable Thanksgiving dinner with yet another argument about energy and politics. Or maybe you only talk about it with people who seem more receptive. Or more rational.
At the same time, maybe you also feel a bit guilty that you’ve gotten discouraged from trying to chat up folks new to the issue.
So why not take this opportunity to re-affirm your commitment to talk with more people about peak oil and to engage them intelligently about the role of energy in the economy?
There’s often a lot of heat when people talk about energy these days. It’s easy to get in arguments about the merits of nuclear power, tar sands, offshore drilling or bombing Libya to keep their exports of crude flowing.
To replace some of that heat with light, the editors of Transition Voice have created a Peak Oil 101 that we hope will be accessible and readable.
To that end, we’ve left out are all the graphs of Hubbert’s Curves and all the charts of oil depletion rates in Saudi Arabia or Venezuela expressed in millions of barrels per day. There are plenty of places on the net where you can find those and we even point you there.
A Snarky Guide to Peak Oil takes an irreverent look at energy depletion and what it could mean for the economy and for society.
Just one of the pearls of wisdom you’ll find in the Guide: “Because money talks and BS walks, if the hydrogen economy was an apprentice working for Donald Trump, it would’ve been fired in the first season.”
In a Q&A format, the Guide answers key questions, including:
- Why should you care about peak oil?
- Why is oil so important and can’t we find more of it?
- What is “net energy” and what level of energy return does industrial society require?
- Where to find more info, starting with our Picky List of Peak Oil Resources.
Check out the Guide now and if you like it, send it to your friends or even to that brother-in-law in Tucson. We promise it will make your next family gathering not only more fun, but more satisfying too.
[Click here for “A Snarky Guide to Peak Oil”]
— Erik Curren
