Imagining life without oil and preparing for worst

Imagining life without oil and preparing for worst

June 07,2010

John Leland, New York

**************

Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has given birth to a group called 'peak oil' who are looking for alternative means of survival.

Website Post peak Living offers telephone class and online courses for life after a collapse

*******

Jennifer Wilkerson's preparations for a post petroleum world include growing food and stockpiling supplies against any shortages

As oil continued to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, Jennifer Wilkerson spent three hours on the phone talking about life after petroleum.

For Wilkerson, 33 a moderate Democrat from Oakton, Va., who designs computer interfaces, the spill reinforced what she had been obsessing over for more than a year - that oil use was outstripping the world's supply.

She worried about what would come after: maybe food shortages, a collapse of the economy, a breakdown of civil order. Her call was part of a telephone course about how to live through it all. In bleak times, there is a boom in doom.

Americans have long been fascinated by disaster scenarios, from the population explosion to the cold war to global warming.

These days the doomers, as Wilkerson jokingly calls herself and likeminded others, have a new focus: peak oil. They argue that oil supplies peaked as early as 2008 and will decline rapidly, taking the economy with them.

Located somewhere between the environmental movement and the survivalists, the peak oil crowd is small but growing reaching from health food stores to Congress, where a Democrat and a Republican formed a Congressional Peak Oil Caucus.

Many people dispute the peak oil hypothesis, including Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power and chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a company that advises governments and industry.

Yergin has argued that new technology continues to bring more oil. Andre Angelantoni is not taking that chance.

In his home in San Rafael, Rafael, California, he has stocked food reserves in case an oil squeeze prevents food from reaching market and has converted hes investments into gold and silver.

Transition US, a British transplant that seeks to help towns brace for life after oil, including a "population die-off" from shortages of oil, food and medicine, has 68 official chapters around the country. Group projects range from community vegetable gardens to creating local currency.

The effects of peak oil, including high energy prices, will not be gentle, said Angelantoni, a web designer whose company, post peak Living, offers telephone class and online courses for life after a collapse.

"Out whole economy depends on energy supplies," he said. "So it's hard to see the whole country transitioning to a low-energy future without people becoming angry. There's going to be quite a bit of social turmoil on the way down."