I have been gathering information lately on the subject of peak oil and energy decline. My sources have been varied and I am wondering what you have learned, how it strikes you, what your approach to the changes will be. I invite you to share your comments concerning the post-industrial age, as it might be called.

For those of you who have never heard of peak oil, and who aren’t aware of an impending energy decline, I will share briefly the small amount of information I have learned. For a good many years, this country has been dependent on cheap fossil fuels to carry on our convenient way of life. There is a limited supply of fossil fuels, as it it a nonrenewable resource, and this means that we will eventually will run out. When oil is extracted from the earth, the easy part is extracted first– the oil that is near the surface. This rate of extraction follows a bell curve, in which more and more easy-to-get oil is extracted…until a certain point (the peak) at which oil is extracted at a lesser rate (by more expensive and difficult means) until the end of the now downward sloping curve, the end of which is the end of oil.

We’re now at the peak, give or take a few years. This means oil will start becoming harder to extract, more expensive to process, and this, dear friends, is what will make life as we know it very very different. When I heard about peak oil, I thought, “well, we’ll just get a hybrid or something, and we’ll have to drive less.” But then I realized that gas in my car is not the only thing oil is used for. Let me ask you some questions. Where did your supper come from? The grocery store? How did it get there? How was your conventionally raised food grown? (With natural gas fertilizers and petroleum pesticides applied by gas powered tractors?) Do you have any plastic items or conventional cleaning supplies, in your home? (Made from petroleum byproducts) Does your job (or your husband’s job) depend on some form of oil/fuel? Are you on medication that is made somewhere other than your town? Do you have a local source of toilet paper? Do you have a local source of anything? (Do not be offended: I am lacking sorely in local sources for most things.)

As I said, this is simplified– the implications seem to be far deeper than I am getting into here, but I just don’t think people are aware., so I wanted to open it up for discussion and get a conversation going. (If not on this blog, then in your homes.)

Here is where my information has come from:

The End of Suburbia
Casaubon’s Book
Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash
Peak Oil Primer
Post Carbon Institute
relocalize.net
Blue Letter Bible

I am not advocating some sort of panic attack crazy hysteria stockpiling Wal-Mart plastic stuff frenzy. Energy decline is something I am taking seriously, but you know the One to Whom I am taking it seriously first. I believe with all of my heart that God cares for His children and that nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. I believe also that God gives the wisdom and abilities to prepare for things as He sees fit. I am reminded of Joseph, who prepared for the seven years of famine during the seven years of plenty, and was used to save Egypt and his family from starvation. I am reminded of the ant who works for the harvest in fall that she may be filled in the winter. Sometimes God gives us a plate of food, sometimes He gives us a packet of seeds and a bit of earth, and sometimes he just takes away our hunger.

Chad and I are praying about what God would have us do, that we may be equipped to be salt and light to those around us, come what may. (This is not much different from our normal prayers.) If the experts are wrong and peak oil happens in fifty years instead, what better time than now to begin changing our consumptive lifestyles! (For Oliver’s sake, please.) I encourage you to pray, also, and discern what God has for you. Hold fast to the hand of Christ, because things are going to become difficult. Energy decline paired with the effects of climate change make for a very unstable global situation. Please be in the Word and keep your eyes fixed upon Jesus.