What will the world, and American society, do without oil? Will we achieve a planned, relatively gradual shift to a life without it, or will we face the shock of sudden depletion, with industry and transportation paralyzed, food distribution uneven and unreliable, and conflicts, including armed conflicts, on every hand?
No one has been more courageous in bringing these questions before the public in sharp relief than Richard Heinberg, a member of the Core Faculty of New College of California and author of several books, including The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies; Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World; and, most recently, Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines.
When Heinberg published The Party's Over just three years ago, the concept of "peak oil" – the idea that soon the world will have used up most of its finite legacy of petroleum, and from then on oil will become ever scarcer and more costly – was not widely disseminated. Now we are in what some experts believe to be the "peak oil" period (2005 to 2010) and, partly because of growing demand for oil in Asia, we are beginning to feel the tremors of coming scarcity; one sign is the move to take oil from the tar sands of Canada, a source that used to be considered virtually inaccessible.
So what, asks Heinberg, are we going to do? How are we going to cope in what Russell Brown of Argonne National Laboratories, a source quoted by Heinberg, once described as a world with the population of the 21st century and the energy resources of the 19th?
The choice, says Heinberg, is between a controlled shift in technology and a worldwide battle for resources that will take its murderous, ecology-destroying course until very few winners are left. But Heinberg has constructive suggestions to help us toward a measured, intelligent transition.
Heinberg will give a public lecture entitled "The Looming Crisis in Oil Depletion and How Pioneer Valley Towns Can Prepare For It" in Franklin Patterson Hall, Hampshire College on Sunday, April 27 at 7:30. Hosting it will be Hampshire Professor Michael Klare, a renowned expert on the politics of energy. Earlier, Heinberg will be at the Pratt O'Connor Commons at Amherst College from 3 to 5 p.m. for an invitation-only Power Point talk with present and former Valley municipal officials. For more information, call the Pioneer Valley Relocalization Project, 413-256-6044.
