Peak oil is a topic that hasn't been discussed very much in the past, but is starting to be noticed by the mainstream media.  Most people think Peak Oil means that we have run out of oil, but that is not true.  In a nutshell it means that we can no longer produce enough to meet demand.  There is plenty of evidence to suggest that we have reached that point.  For more information about what Peak Oil is, see the Peak Oil Primer

This is going to play a major role in what happens in the next few years as we approach 2012.  Oil is what drives modern society.  Without it, we revert to the 19th century, and that means that a lot of us are going to die as 19th century technology cannot support the 6.6 billion people now living on planet Earth.

Modern farming requires vast amounts of oil to run machinery, and to produce fertilizer.  Without oil, crop yields will plummet, and food shortages will ensue.  Also, we are accustomed to eating a meal where the average distance each morsel traveled to get to our plate is 1500 miles.  That cannot be sustained without oil.  I recently bought a jar of peaches in my local store, which were grown in Peru, canned in Thailand, and consumed in the USA.  No doubt the transportation cost more than the peaches. 

Without gasoline, people cannot drive to work.  People no longer live close to where they work in many places, and in my area, many people commute 100 miles one way each day to work in New York City, and Philadelphia.  If people can't get to work, they can't pay their bills.  Expect a lot of home foreclosures, and bankruptcies because commuting to that high paying job will no longer be possible.  With the rising cost of energy, a lot of manufacturing will be forced to shut down, which will exacerbate the employment problems even more.....  major depression will be the result.

A walking beam pump also known as a pump jack or nodding donkey is used to lift oil from a well which does not have enough pressure to push the oil to the top. About 80% of the US wells are produced with this type of pump.

Without oil, a lot of people cannot heat their homes.  Winters in the cold parts of the countries will be especially cruel without sufficient oil supplies.  Expect a lot of people to die from the cold.  Even if people were able to convert to electricity for heat, it would put a rather large burden on the generating plants, and they may have trouble supplying their present loads due to shortages of natural gas, coal and oil.  Whether heat is supplied by electricity, oil, propane, natural gas, or coal, it is going to get a lot more expensive in the years ahead, which means many will have to do witth much less energy consumption, or even none at all.

The economy of the western world is very tightly coupled with oil consumption.  Any decrease in consumption due to shortages will certainly affect the economy negatively.  As prices rise, many will not be able to afford other consumer goods, causing a decrease in sales and a shutdown of many businesses.    

All of these issues will culminate in a lot of civil unrest.  War may be the result as the population demands that the government take action and we try to grab what oil resources remain.  Because of the civil unrest, martial law may be instituted.  Much of the social and economic stability we have known in the past will quickly vanish.  Expect food and gas rationing as supplies diminish each year.  This could happen relatively quickly or could take several years, depending on how the world reacts to diminishing energy supplies.  In short, Peak Oil could destroy our civilization.

What about new technology?  Won't that save us?  No it won't.  It is too late to bring any new technology onboard in time to save us.  In fact there is no technology even being explored which could put a significant dent in the problem except perhaps biodiesel.  Biodiesel made from algae has the potential for huge production levels without destroying our food production capabilities. However, the technology is not yet ready, and given the available time to bring this technology to market, it will probably be a non-starter.

Hydrogen is often touted as the wave of the future, but the truth is that it takes more energy to make hydrogen than it gives back.  Its a good carrier in that it is portable like gasoline, but produces no new net energy.  Biofuels are also talked about a lot, and biodiesel holds some promise, but we do not have the infrastructure at this point to make use of it.  It would take over 3 billion acres of oil seed crops to make enough biodiesel to meet our transportation needs based on a yield of 30 gallons net biodiesel per acre.  That would require land acreage larger than 100 times the area of Pennsylvania to actually replace the energy loss from the increasingly nonproductive oil fields.

Bioalcohol (made from fermented corn) produces a pitifully small net energy gain, and functions more as a farm subsidy than a solution to the energy crisis.  Growing corn to produce ethanol will also remove a lot of acreage from food production.  The price of barley has already risen appreciably as farmers switch to growing corn and soybeans hoping to cash in on the new biofuels market. 

Ok, what about windmills?  Well, windmills are great, but they don't produce near enough power, and they are continually fought by the environmentalists.  Solar?  Solar cells are extremely expensive for the amount of power they produce, and require a lot of energy to manufacture.  So they are not the solution either.  That doesn't mean we should not build windmills and solar plants; just that they alone will not replace the oil energy we are losing.  Every home that is equipped with solar water heaters, and a small windmill connected to the energy grid would be a help.

That leaves nuclear.  That is our best hope (there is always hope isn't there?).  Nuclear has proven itself to be the safest, lowest pollution energy we have ever had in the US (fortunately, we were smart enough not to build graphite reactors like Chernobyl).  There are much better designs now than there were when the last ones were built.  However, we haven't built a new plant for over 30 years.  We may not even have the  manufacturing ability to build new plants in the short term, and the lead time for planning and permits etc makes nuclear out of the time frame to save us.  There is some concern about the availability of sufficient nuclear fuel also as uranium mining may have also peaked out already.  Even if uranium mining has not yet peaked, it is still a finite resource, and eventually like oil, it will run out.   

A very good candidate for a modern nuclear reactor design is the pebble bed reactor.  It has the advantages of self limiting reaction (no chance of melt down), modular scalable design so one basic reactor would fit more requirements, the same design could use multiple radioactive fuel types, and it doesn't have to be shut down for re-fueling.  See the Wikipedia entry for more information about pebble reactors.

Ultimately though, we are going to have to learn to live within a much tighter energy budget, until we reengineer our lifestyles, and our energy policies to make sensible use of all the currently available alternatives, as no single one will be able to replace oil.  It may not be possible to ever again live the energy intensive lifestyle we currently enjoy.  It is probably not possible to even support a world population of 6.6 billion people without the large amounts of cheap energy we have enjoyed in the past.