by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The more conversations on the subject of peak oil and changing climate and such I am having the more I am coming to realize that there are “ordinary” people out there that are of my generation or old that, in fact, are getting the message that life is going to change and that drastically, from what we have known in the last 50 years or so.
Like myself they realize that the time of cheap oil is over and many even welcome that fact and the fact that we will have to get back to horse and such for much of what we have to do and to a future “made by hand”.
This is not just the result of a few conversations but more and more people agree when this is mentioned and here especially those that have lived through World War Two and the lean times afterwards and they can all see it, including our need to go back to using horses in farming and transportation.
In early January 2011 industry has now told the world that the affordable electric car is still going to be a fair way away and as far as I see it it probably will never ever arrive due to the increasing costs with cheap oil running out.
What does cheap oil has do with the electric car and its affordability, you ask? The answer is that without cheap oil the manufacture of the car will become more and more expensive, as will be its transportation across the globe, and thus the price will get even more expensive.
Thus, as far as I can see it, and as far as I can see I am not alone there, that we may have to rethink how we are going to get about.
In another article I have already mentioned the issue of the affordable electric car and the truth is that, for the ordinary you and me, I believe, the electric car, especially the like of family saloon cars, will not come to pass.
What will that mean to the ordinary you and me and our families as far as transportation goes?
The answer here must be that, unless we have the funds for horses and horse and cart, it will be Shanks' Pony and the iron steed, the bicycle.
I even have a problem to see public transport to still be in existence as we know it today. Human power and thus human-powered vehicles, that is to say bicycles and their derivatives, will be the order of the day.
But transportation is but one issue as regards the end of cheap oil and other aspects will be even more difficult for many of us because so much today depends on oil, on cheap oil.
Profound changes will come about and we will have too return to ways of our forefathers in doing and making things. Finally, as well, the throwaway economy, -society and -culture will some to an end and certainly not before time.
Natural materials than can be forked by hand in old ways will come back to the fore, such as wood, linen, leather, etc. and I am waiting for the vegan to say that he or she will not wear leather, as regards to shoes or whatever, as not substitute will be available.
In a way life will get back to normal as it was ordained by the celestial powers and we will, once again, come to value Nature for the gifts that we will need to live.
However, for those that are not prepared it will be a rather rude awakening and especially to those that have become so used to the modern way of instant gratification of any want and who have to come to see things as a entitlement, of having a right to this or that and that immediately.
It is those that will be in for the rudest of awakenings and the rest of us will have to find ways to defend ourselves against those of that group that refuse too understand that the entitlement state never existed.
© 2011
