Comments on: What will we do when oil crashes?

What will we do when oil crashes?

graytopia — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:05:19 -0800

and gas rations, what will be next ? I bet you didn't know we gobble oil like two-legged SUV's.

By: DragonBoy

DragonBoy — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:19:09 -0800

Fine, great, I think we've all heard these things before. When is someone going to suggest what we can *do* about these problems?

By: longsleeves

longsleeves — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:25:06 -0800

We must pressure the Pakistanis to give up Bin Laden while at the same time drastically reducing crude oil dependence in the U.S. thus keeping gasoline prices low, without inconveniencing me in any way. Right now.

By: davejay

davejay — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:42:11 -0800

If this is true, I wonder if there will be a plethora of oil-free products sold in stores, the way that organic things are sold now -- people have been willing to pay a premium for organic, so why not oil-free? "Grown locally, farmed manually, transported by hand" or somesuch. Of course, that would be quite a premium price paid indeed, if the products had to be carried further than a few blocks...

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:46:33 -0800

I got a warm fuzzy feeling when I rode my bike past a gas station today and saw that unleaded went up 20 cents in the last two days. Then I almost got hit by a car. Forget oil. It's when water starts running out that things will really start getting ugly.

By: drezdn

drezdn — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:48:40 -0800

In the Milwaukee area, there's a county right next to Milwaukee that, due to overdevelopment, has sucked down its water table to the radon, now it wants a piece of Lake Michigan. Personally, I don't think they should get the access. It's easy to imagine a scenario where armed soldiers would have to patrol the borders of the two counties.

By: PlanoTX

PlanoTX — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:00:21 -0800

We should obviously be opening the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve to production. However, we should not allow crude produced from the SPR to be shipped into any state that has thwarted the U.S.'s feeble attempt at petroleum independence by refusing to allow oil exploration/production in petroleum-rich areas within those states. Furthermore, several U.S. refineries were forced to close in recent years because they could not permits to modernize in a political atmosphere hostile to oil. This has led to a concentration of refineries along the Gulf Coast, in the very area vulnerable to giant storms like Katrina. The use of SNPR in such hostile states should be contingent on the granting of approvals for building new, environmentally-friendly refineries in areas where old refineries once stood. The use of "not-in-my-back-yard" philosophies to shut down oil refineries has clearly been contrary to the national interest.

By: raysmj

raysmj — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:07:48 -0800

Like, oh, the Everglades in Florida and in the Gulf off the Florida panhandle? I'm sure that'll happen, given Florida's governor, and that you'd want it to in the case of the frickin' Everglades, which are sort of important environmentally and already endangered.

By: Mach5

Mach5 — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:19:07 -0800

If we put all the agricultural waste we (the US) produces into TCP's, we could be self-sufficient on our own gasoline. Why are we not giving this company billions of dollars to make these things? Seriously.

By: Mach5

Mach5 — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:32:08 -0800

Looking at my own links, I found this: Can you process municipal sewage sludge? At our pilot plant in Philadelphia, we have successfully applied our process to the waste stream processed at a major city’s bio-solids facility, pursuant to a detailed testing protocol. POO INTO GASOLINE.

By: stenseng

stenseng — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:33:04 -0800

Because that would a: really piss off our existing oil industry buddies/campaign backers and b: really piss off our existing Saudi buddies/campaign backers

By: buzzman

buzzman — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:42:07 -0800

The first two Mad Max movies sure are cool.

By: Mach5

Mach5 — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:44:01 -0800

But if the Saudi/oil industry pisses off the constituency enough, politicians will no longer be able to ignore this. Hopefully. Email your senators and representatives!

By: maggieb

maggieb — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 22:15:40 -0800

God hates Labor Day returns no Google hits.

By: mhh5

mhh5 — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 02:52:27 -0800

Mach5, that's not a complete solution. That's just being more efficient by reclaiming as much energy as we can from what we consider waste material now. What we really need is new energy generation to solve the energy problem. I think we need to look at microbes that can produce fuels from sunlight and maybe fix atmospheric carbon. THAT would be cool. Solar energy powered microbes to suck CO2 out of the air and turn it into hydrocarbon fuels like diesel.

By: tommyc

tommyc — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 03:09:09 -0800

Wicker baskets will be next.

By: Mach5

Mach5 — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 05:52:26 -0800

mhh5: I fully understand that but what i think we need is something on the interim until technology improves. There will be better solutions than the TDP, but the TDP is here now.

By: jefeweiss

jefeweiss — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 06:48:59 -0800

I recommend looking intoCommunity Supported Agriculture (CSA) as a food alternative. Some of these farms are sustainable organic farming outfits, which has the added bonus of not using a lot of petroleum based fertilizers. Either way your food doesn't have to be shipped halfway around the world. It tastes better too.

By: Substrata

Substrata — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 06:57:29 -0800

> I bet you didn't know we gobble oil like two-legged SUV's it's worse (prev discussed here)

By: imperium

imperium — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 07:53:06 -0800

To take a liberty, I recommend a wiki summarising current issues around this: I contributed most of this text. The very important "So what do we do?" section is not yet up and running, but my niece predicts that we'll all live in caves and poke other people with pointed sticks.

By: PlanoTX

PlanoTX — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 14:08:21 -0800

I'm as much for the Florida Everglades as I am for $4.50/gal. gasoline. They go hand-in-hand.