Sustainability is becoming a bit of a buzz word these days. Lots of people saying we can't go on living the way we do as we are running out of fossil fuels and trashing the planet to boot! Oil prices are now on the cusp of 100 dollars a barrel, a far cry from the 20 dollars it was when I worked in Saudi. I have heard that petrol price could jump to 2:50 pounds per litre in a very short space of time. How would that affect most commuters! As the poulation increases past 6.6 billion people on a world only able to support a couple of billion at best, demand for energy will only increase as the supply runs out. This means only one thing, massive price increases. I can see a day not too far away when most ordinary folk will not be able to run their cars, air travel will be only for the mega rich, food becoming really expensive and a worldwide recession which we may never recover from. When I say never recover, I mean in the world as we know it today. When fossil fuels have all but gone, a new reality will have come about, a much lower population living in a much more localised world. Working locally within biking distance, buying only locally grown food, only travelling by train as that would be the only option for long distance. If we are really lucky, electric vehicles will get better and be charged by solar panels. What wories me most are the possibilities of societal breakdown between the here and the now and the future sustanable world. There are a few steps we can take to make the transition easier for us. Reduce our need for energy by living near where we work and look at energy saving in the home. Reduce debt of all kinds. Grow some of your own food. Stockpile enough food and water to last you at least a month. I would like to recommend you read a novel called
Last Light by Alex Scarrow. It explains this much better than I and is a good read too.
