If you are reading this blog you have already figured out that I am a peak oil advocate. I'm not a fanatic, you understand, but I have come to the conclusion that we are going to reach a point of diminishing returns with our hydrocarbon supply very soon and we are going to have to learn to live on much less of everything than we have now. I have talked about this before. I am not going to hammer on it right now.
I've just read a book, however, that has jostled my pat little peak oil view a little. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is a science fiction book. It is the first book that I have read that takes a serious, new look at society's possibilities after the loss of hydrocarbon energy. It takes place after the Industrial Expansion, even after the inevitable contraction, in a world where industry has still found a way to survive. Methane from recycling is there, in a limited supply, and electrical power for small devices is generated using springs, hand cranks and the like (think treadle-computers). Even a few pre-contraction tools of destruction are still laying around to be used by those in power when needed. It is a unfamiliar and frightening world he puts together but it is believable.
Mr. Bacigalupi is not predicting, he is conjecturing. Like all good Sci-fi authors should be doing. The genius of this particular piece of work is that he has arrived at a place that I had never been able to get to in my contemplations of the peak oil problem. When I think about the problems that society would face following a loss of hydrocarbon energy, I always end up assuming the end of industry, and most of the population, because of the extreme dependence that industry (including food production) has on hydrocarbon power. My vision has always been sort of a return to pre-hydrocarbon times circa 1700. Not Mr. Bacigalupi. He has conjured up a society every bit as technical and power hungry as our own but based on bio-engineered beasts of burden, laborers and foodstuffs. It is going to take me awhile to digest all of this new insight. It might end up changing the way I think about the future. In the mean time it was an amazing read.
