Problem and solution

Well, here’s a thing: the Post Carbon Institute has produced a poster of ‘The Oil Age’. I guess it’s kind of like the posters we used to see on the walls at school, showing everything you need to know about the ‘Stone Age’ or the ‘Iron Age’ or the ‘Bronze Age’. And now here we are, coming to the end of ‘The Oil Age’…

The poster is pictured to the left, and you can click to view it in more detail.

The poster shows in stunning technicolour detail how oil supplies peaked in 2010, which is next year.

This ties in quite well with a presentation I gave at the UCA yesterday, which included a chart from Peak Oil Consulting that says the best we can hope for is that oil production will not peak until 2013. It says that 2011 will be the final year in which global oil production is enough to meet global demand for oil.

So, some time soon, maybe next year, maybe the year after, there will not be enough oil to go around. What happens after that is anybody’s guess.

Well, someone has been looking in detail at what might happen next.

In a new Transition book, about to be published, author Shaun Chamberlin describes four possible scenarios for the UK and the world over the next 20 years.

They range from Denial, in which we reap the consequences of failing to acknowledge and respond to the challenges we now face, to Transition Vision in which we shift to fit our circumstances and move into a more fulfilling, lower-carbon world.

As Barack Obama has recently demonstrated so clearly, we have the power to choose and shape our futures. Indeed, it is our actions in the past that have exactly brought us to this point now.

You can read the foreword to the book here.

And if you would like to buy a copy contact me here. If there is enough interest I will be able to make a bulk order direct from the publisher at significant discount.