Peak Oil means a thousand
Peak Oil means a thousand times more problems than just pricey gasoline.
Today, in June of 2011, there are 7 billion sets of hands cupped upward into the air in anticipation that today's allotment of oil will be filled for them. And today it probably will for all 7 billion of them. But if Peak Oil kicks in, then tomorrow perhaps only 6.3 billion will get their daily allotment while the other 700million get turned away. So, some will get to drive, and others will have to want and come back the next day to see if they can maybe drive then. But beyond just the automobiles ........
Peak Oil means not all of the plastics manufacturing plants around the world (many of them in China) will have access to the needed shipment of the petroleum feedstock that they ordered last month I order to convert that feedstock into plastic.
It means an entire highway department somewhere doesn't get a delivery of hot asphalt for the day (or the week) because there wasn't enough asphalt coming out of the bottom-end of the nearest oil refinery this time around to satisfy the asphalt orders of all the different DPW's in the region.
It means a farmer cannot plow his field because he has no diesel for his tractor this week.
It means a crop dusting pilot cannot spray some other farmer's field with pesticides because there is no aviation fuel available in his region this week.
It means a pharmaceutical manufacturer cannot ship this month's supply of latex gloves to a hospital because there was no plastic latex available this week for them to synthesize the gloves into existence.
It means the mayor of a mid-sized town cannot supply the needed fuel for all the police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, school buses, sanitation trucks, and other municipal vehicles in that town because their regular fuel vendor came up short this week on bulk deliveries.
It means a regional electrical generating plant which runs on diesel cannot supply enough electricity for the whole region because they didn't get this month’s diesel delivery, so they must now stage "strategic load sheddings" (pre-planned brown-outs staggered throughout the day) upon different parts of the grids they service.
It means the just-in-time (JIT) trucking system which endlessly and reliably delivers food and goods to the many thousands of supermarkets and retail stores across the country will start to become tragically unreliable as truckers wait for days at a time at truck stops across the country for the next tanker load of fuel to be delivered to the empty pumps.
It means perishable food will sometimes arrive at the market rotten because a trucker wasn't able to keep the refrigeration on in his refrigerated tractor trailer for the full duration of the trip.
It means "up-stream" parts manufacturers that normally create sub-components and ship them to "down-stream" assembly plants will come up short in their ability to fill orders for their "down-stream" customers.
It means those "down-stream" assembly plants, where the workers normally put together perhaps three or more different sub-components purchased from multiple "up-stream" manufacturers to complete a finished product will have substantial down-time waiting for all the needed parts to arrive from the no-longer-reliable “up-stream” plants, and also have to wait upon the no-longer-reliable trucks.
It means sporadic shortages of vital goods.
It means half-empty supermarket shelves and half-empty big box-store shelves.
It means parts and supplies needed for cars, plumbing, electrical work, roofing, carpentry, telephones, appliances, electronics, computers, etc, will be on perpetual back-order.
It means certain key medicines will start to become scarce.
It means a domino effect of financial mini-collapses of whole segments of certain industries.
It means a domino effect of financial mini-collapses of whole regions of the USA.
It means even the ability for a given municipality to keep their sewage treatment systems going could very well be threatened.
It means the spread of disease, the overburdening of under-stocked hospitals, the shut-down of power grids supplying those hospitals, the failure of diesel-run emergency backup generators that are supposed to help keep those hospitals online, and an overall downgrading to our quality of life.
To claim that we will simply switch over to natural gas misses the importance that oil plays to so much else in modern society. Oil is the key to the entire technological platform holding up our whole civilization. And that claim also overestimates how much natural gas we currently have in the ground, and also overestimates our ability to suddenly triple how much we are able to take from the ground each day. And worst of all, it assumes that converting to natural gas whole segments of deeply-embedded and many-generations-old societal infrastructure will be as quick and effortless as changing a few light bulbs, when it will take easily 10+years and trillions of dollars.