Most of the developed world is now sort of "Out on a Limb with Oil". The reason for this is that we all have to get used to the idea that oil will either be too expensive or gone within at the very least 25 years. What is wrong with this statement is that the human race has had over 100 years to get "Addicted to oil" and now it is going to have to give up its addiction. I think a good place to start would be to sit down and to write a list of what would no longer be available to you if oil is either too expensive to buy or none of it left.
1. Let's start with food grown outside of your own county. There likely would be little to none.
2. next clothes made from outside of your county. There would be little to none
3. gas to drive your car or truck or tractor. Without oil you need an electric motor and batteries and a power source like solar power or wind.
4. the electricity in your home. Unless you have solar or wind it wouldn't be there unless a hydroelectric electrical generation station is nearby.
5. The electricity to power your computers, TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, dryers. Same as 4.
6. Mail, Fedex, UPS without gas or diesel. Battery powered truck so obviously reduced shipping with much much higher costs of shipping.
7. Amazon.com, Netflix, Google, EBay. Solar and wind powered or not there?
8. Department stores that sell anything outside of your county not there(unless the horse driven stage coach or battery powered vehicles bring it or light rail trains)
9. There would be no more planes of any kind because ALL use oil based fuels. So, until there are more Solar electric planes expect planes to end without oil unless they are burning ethanol from corn or cane.
10. Oil based fuels for ships would end. So ships would have to run on steam generated by wood or coal or they would have to erect sails once again. I don't think ethanol would be practical on the scale of being economically viable to move a large ship. It might be more efficient if ethanol heated water for steam, however.
As a result of wind power, solar power and geothermal power and hydroelectric power everything would change and become a combination of the late 1800s with horses and oxen pulling wagons combined with battery powered vehicles and Electric Light rail trains in cities and wherever there was a power source that could sustain that much electricity around Hydroelectric plants.
The main reason that I'm not mentioning nuclear power is that without oil nuclear power becomes about 100 times or more dangerous for a variety of reasons. If you look at the disaster that Fukushima is presently to Japan and all the disastrous effects ongoing there for Centuries and look at Chernobyl and how it was the last straw that brought down the old Soviet Union and how nothing still can live there healthily all these years later, I think you can see like I do that Nuclear power just isn't safe enough to be viable for long (over 25 to 50 years) anywhere on earth. So, the future I envision doesn't include nuclear power. I think Germany's idea to give up nuclear power is one of the wisest decisions they have ever made.
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