The author looks ahead to post-petroleum living with considered conclusions: "Biofuels have yet to be proven viable, and mechanization may not be a great strategy in a world of declining energy." And, "…only a small amount of biomass (is) unspoken for" by today’s essential economic and ecological activities. To top it off, she points out, "Crop production is reduced when residues are removed from the soil. Why would farmers want to sell their residues?" Here’s an Oh- god-she-nailed-it zinger: "As prices of fertilizer inexorably rise due to natural gas depletion, it will be cheaper to return residues to the soil than to buy fertilizer." Looking further along than most of us, Alice has among her conclusions: "It’s time to start increasing horse and oxen numbers, which will leave even less biomass for biorefineries."
[Link: Culture Change]
You should read this article if you believe that Peak Oil is real but that we will come up with a technical fix that will allow us to continue living our lives of consumption, but in a different way. The only technical fix that will be viable will be high speed down-scaling combined with massive population reduction. There is no way to suck enough energy out of the world to support even a fraction of our present global population at a level of existance remotely approaching today's western culture without access to the billions of barrels of oil we have been using up to now.
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