So now we've talked about peak oil and global warming and our declining mental, physical and emotional well being. So lets add it all up.
So trying to figure out how you will get by, now while we still have all the stuff we need and love, would be much easier than realizing a week after the oil runs dry that you are screwed.
If you install solar panels and wind turbines or water turbines or whatever, then theoretically you can heat/cool your home without grid power. The problems are that not every part of the country can really use these resources year round to generate enough power. Installing any of these systems is beyond the financial reach of most people. And even if you can install them and they will generate all the power you need, they are reliant on a battery pack that stores the energy that will be converted into AC/DC power that your appliances can use. The batteries apparently need to be replaced after 5-8 years. That could be a problem at some point. Some country - India? - can't remember which right now, has a lot of the ummm, titanium? whatever resource we need to use in batteries. However, imagine the prices you would need to pay if suddenly parts of our world were totally dependant on battery power. And if the oil crisis is true, how would we even import them? So it's not a perfect solution either. I guess that knowing how to chop wood and having a fireplace or wood stove would be an important thing as back up. But in that case, you would need to figure out how to refrigerate with no power or how to eat without one. A root cellar? That weird clay pot with sand and water thing? I've read lots of blogs about people living without refrigeration and obviously many parts of the world do this already. But I am a pampered American and I like my dairy cold and wouldn't know what to do without a fridge if it was suddenly gone. So that is something to learn. You can cook on a wood stove or in a fireplace and there are solar ovens, cob ovens, etc that you could use. So having some of those things or at least knowing how to use them would be good.
The global warming is going to change the ways we do things to. I don't understand enough about this yet, but suffice it to say that experts seem to think that the climate will change enough in the next 20 years that the way that we farm right now will not produce the same results - even if we could still use the same amounts of oil. So in thinking about how to have the skills to deal with those climate changes, I think it's important that we investigate various ways of growing food.
Obviously keeping livestock like chickens will provide some food. Learning to hunt and clean and store animals would likely be a good skill. (eek)
But if the oil stuff is true, how will you get enough food to feed that livestock? Chickens are pretty easy because they will eat all of your food scraps and bugs and indigenous vegetation. But goats? Cows? Horses? How will you feed them?
Growing food would be a vital skill in this imagined different world. But if the soil is ruined, you don't have access to fertilizers and the sun is too strong, how will you grow? You can compost your food scraps and the chicken poop and all that to create fertilizer for your plants but its not always the fastest process. Would you produce enough compost to feed a big enough garden? Would a green house with sunshades work to keep plants the right temperature if the sun were hotter? I've recently been looking in aquaponic gardening. Which is a sort of circular system. Basically you put some fish in a big tank - edible fish if you want - and rig it up so that their dirty poop water goes from their tank through your edible plant garden. Their waste water fertilizes the plants. In return, the plants clean their waste water and add oxygen to it and send it back into the fish tank all clean and healthy for the fish. It's one of those perfect cycles that I just love. It's great for you too because you don't need to use much water on your garden, in fact you'll just have to add a bit to the fish tank every once in a while. You can eat the fish and you can eat the fruits and veggies. These systems can be installed anywhere, even your basement or garage so even the north and northeast can use this year round. But, if it were inside you would need artificial sunlight for it which would be power dependant so that would need to be figured out. However, it seems like a great system should we need to do things differently. Another thing to think about is that it takes a long time to build up a garden that can feed your family year round, so starting one sooner rather than later would be smart.
And medical care - don't have that one figured out at all. The best I can come up with is learning some basic skills like cleaning, closing and dressing a deep wound. Learning about plants that have medicinal uses. Like cranberry for UTI's or all those plants that act like antibiotics or those cute little bacteriophage's - which are virus' that only eat bacteria. How you would locate the right bacteriophage is beyond me but they do exist. Best bet is to get a doctor to live with you I would imagine, easy as pie. My friend Mirja is preparing her family for this stuff by attempting to build up their immune systems with unpastureized dairy products and game meat. Check out her blog: http://brooklynbumpkin.blogspot.com/
Though I'm not ready for those things, between our dogs and my dislike of being wet, I'm certain we have encountered a tremendous number of bacteria and surely have pretty strong immune systems.
Okay - enough with my doomsday prepper impersonation. To end this on a positive note -
It does seem that the doomsday sayers believe that we will survive this period. Not fully intact, a lot of people will die, but a lot won't. They believe that we are in the "Age of Cheap Oil" right now and headed for the "Age of Expensive Oil" followed by the dark time of "No Oil". But that slowly, we will develope new means of meeting our needs that are sustainable. I guess this is our chance to try to be among those that make it to "The Age of Green Technology Post Oil".
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