I Love Oil (and Other Uncomfortable Truths)

By Wade Wiebe

My wife and I had just been discussing the fact that the ability of oil to do work for us is unparalleled, when I stalled the car at about the 60m mark of our country driveway. We decided to get out and push - just to drive the point home. The energy available in a single barrel of oil is equal to 25,000 hours of human labour – or 12.5 years at 40 hours per week! Yet all that work is sold (at the time of writing) for $53USD. To conceptualize this for yourself, consider the amount of human work it would take to run along a highway at 100km/hr. Imagine manually rotating an engine, powering an alternator and water pump while carrying a couple of kids in car seats, a cooler of drinks and a hockey bag on your shoulders. Now add a 1,200 kg metal frame on wheels and you’ll have a sense of the work you’re not doing when you comfortably press the accelerator. Nice!

Anyone would agree that a liquid that can do these things for us is unfathomably valuable. I know, because when we decided to get out and push the car the rest of the way, I stepped into my “slave’s” shoes for a brief moment.  Two things strike you when you that happens: 1. how valuable the work is to you, and  2. how you would change your requirements immediately if you had to do it yourself. Just the thought of someone pressing the brake or accelerating unnecessarily was enough to make me gasp for air. But oil isn’t a person, and with oil prices the way they are, why not just enjoy it? The reason is as difficult to understand as it is straightforward:

Dependency.

A total dependency on oil means that our society literally needs it to survive another day. Any risk in our ability to access or use this resource is a direct threat to everything. Farms, police, ambulance & fire security and armies - not to mention basic conveniences – would instantly cease without it. But although we understand that we would be devastated by being deprived of oil for only a short time, we fail to imagine that it is a possibility. Nevertheless - whether by war or politics, economic or environmental disruptions - it is, and always will be.

So what to do?

Reason through and understand the result of less oil

This is the first and most important step. Mentally reduce (or eliminate) oil from your world. Transportation, delivered goods, infrastructure maintenance. If all of these slowed or stopped, what else would change?

Identify solutions ahead of time

Changes are easier to make when they aren’t necessary. Choose where you live & get your goods, how you run your house, and what resources you use so that you need oil less. You can’t eliminate it, but that’s not the point. Less dependency is better than more, so every small step you take is a big deal.

Build resilience

This is by far the most fun. Think of the skills that make your family less susceptible to change. Gardening, collecting and saving energy, building and fixing and making things, canning food... all these are rewarding in themselves, even beyond the benefits they yield!

Share your learning

Don’t imagine that you’re better off on your own! Your community needs you to share your ideas and knowledge so that we can share ours with you.

 If nothing else, push your car into your garage the next time you arrive home... if you can.

Comments

[Gabe]

Good column Wade!