| November 22, 2007 |
Handy Hints For Post-Petroleum
by Peter Goodchild , Countercurrents.org, petergoodchild@interhop.net
The priority of these "hints" will vary as the years go by, but most of
them will remain relevant over the course of the century. The slight bias
toward northern North America is partly due to the fact that the area
meets most of the criteria.
Everything in the modern world is dependent on hydrocarbons. From
hydrocarbons we get fuel, fertilizer, pesticides, lubricants, plastic, paint,
synthetic fabrics, asphalt, pharmaceuticals, and many other things.
When oil goes, our entire industrial society will go with it. We must
therefore look to "primitive" technology. On a broader scale, one could can say that modern industrial society
is based on (1) hydrocarbons, (2) metals, and (3) electricity. The three
are intricately connected; each is only accessible — on the modern
scale — if the other two are present. Electricity, for example, has been
possible on a global scale only with hydrocarbons. The same is true of
metals: most metals are now becoming rare, and the forms that remain
can be processed only with modern machinery — which requires
hydrocarbons. There is no way of breaking that "triangle." What we are
then looking at is a society far more primitive than the one to which we
have been accustomed.
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