Peak what?

Picture this: It's my 34th birthday and I'm feeling every bit of it. My in-laws have generously volunteered to watch our 3 babies so that my husband, Chris, and I can have a date. A date - what is that? You've all heard it before. Another parent bemoaning never having a chance to get out and be an adult. Yeah, well, don't discount it until you've been in my shoes. Of course, let's not discuss my shoes - old, dilapidated, abused, cheap shoes.





Back to the story. My hubby and I have gone to our old haunt - a great little Tex-Mex restaurant we used to go to in our no-child days or BWHC (before we had children) days and our pre-twin days, a/k/a WNDOL (when Neil dominated our lives) days. We pigged out and we drank. It felt great. . . until Chris took the conversation away from the exciting and never ending conversation of what the Hell to do with [insert child's name here] to the topic beginning with "we're going to die."





Maybe that's not bleak enough. Let's see, this should cover it: he didn't expect to ever teach our oldest (2 1/2 years old) to drive and he wouldn't be surprised if our children's' life expectancies would be no more than 50 years old. Whoa! Screech. Where's my fucking margarita?





It wasn't April Fool's Day - he actually missed that this year for the first time. What crazy prank was he pulling? Well, his prank isn't so dang funny and I wish I could pretend his concerns weren't valid. It was at this dinner that he explained to me about peak oil.





Peak what? Exactly. In a nutshell, according to peak oil people (POPs), our oil will max out. Before we actually run out of oil, we will reach a maximum amount of oil we can pump (peak oil). The problem is that demand will continue to rise beyond that which is available. What will that lead to? Mass disruption of the economy, peace, prosperity, etc., etc. All in all, they forecast a pretty grim future, although some are a little more optimistic than others. So where does my husband lie in the continuum of POPs? He's in the "things are going to be horrible" end of the spectrum. The question for me now is where do I stand?



The answer is: I have no idea. Do I believe we'll run out of oil eventually? Yes. It's a finite resource. It's nonrenewable so therefore we will run out. Will it be soon? Likely, yes, unless we make drastic changes which I don't think most of us will be willing to do without a very strong incentive. In other words, when the choice is taken out of our hands because oil is too expensive. I also have some nagging anecdotal evidence: I have a relative who specialized in looking for oil as a geologist for various gasoline companies such as Exxon. I asked him years ago whether we'd run out of oil. He said yes without hesitation and explained that everyone in his field knew that. When I asked when he said in about 20 years. That was around 10 years ago. Hmmmm.



I'm not going to spell out all the technical support for or against the idea of peak oil because there are tons of sites which do that far better than I could possibly dream (or care to do for that matter). I think most credible sources at least acknowledge the reality that oil isn't going to last and we need another energy source. The biggest problem is where is this energy source? Most people, including me, have resolved any rising anxiety by convincing ourselves that some nerd will figure this all out. We all bow to the God of technology asking for this new saviour. "Please, God, bring us a new energy so that I can drive 45 minutes to work while gabbing on my cell phone. Please let my life continue to be easy."

So, where are these nerds? Who are they? Are you one? Do you know someone? I'd love to talk with them. Maybe they can call me and explain to me how they're going to fix everything so that every driver in the U.S. right can relax.

Meanwhile, my husband is acting coo-coo. After my uplifting birthday date, we continued to talk about our future. I began to read. Maybe I'm a little coo-coo too. We have 3 little babies we brought into this world and now we're hoping they won't hate us for it. I've started buying books on how to be more self-reliant. We're starting to garden. We're debating about whether we want to stay in the ugly suburb we're in. My husband feels we need to make changes to get ready. Get ready. GET READY! It feels so extreme and yet, when I read information about it from POPs who seem to know what they're talking about, my adrenaline does begin to pump and I feel like doing something. Anything. I hug my babies tighter. I kiss them more often and I try to not laugh at my husband as he experiments with reading a book by candlelight. Abe fucking Lincoln, man. So, is he crazy? I don't think so but I wish he were.