Comments on: Total boss on why oil production will never top 100 mb/d http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=71 David Strahan is an award-winning investigative journalist and documentary film-maker who specializes in popularizing some of the most difficult and important stories in business and science. Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:28:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: David Strahan | Articles - $100 oil and British energy policy built on sand http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=71&cpage=1#comment-778 David Strahan | Articles - $100 oil and British energy policy built on sand Sat, 24 Nov 2007 12:00:48 +0000 http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=71#comment-778 [...] believe output will never exceed 100 million barrels per day - against 86 mb/d today - including Christophe de Margerie, chief executive of Total, Shokri Ghanem, head of Libya’s National Oil Company, and James Mulva, [...] [...] believe output will never exceed 100 million barrels per day – against 86 mb/d today – including Christophe de Margerie, chief executive of Total, Shokri Ghanem, head of Libya’s National Oil Company, and James Mulva, [...]

]]> By: Greg Yurash http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=71&cpage=1#comment-269 Greg Yurash Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:02:40 +0000 http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=71#comment-269 Thank you David for your many fine articles and keen insight on the subject of Peak Oil. It is my observation though that the subject of both Peak Oil and Climate Change are rarely presented with sufficient ideas about what can actually be done to mitigate them. The trouble is, the real solutions are not the usual global tech fixes, but local social ones. As I see it, there are two crucial issues that define everything else. 1. How we grow/distribute food. 2. How we arrange our daily living. I suspect this will be true not just for top energy users, but just about everybody else too. In my own attempts to come to grips with the idea of Peak Oil, I have been seeking out possible solutions to these two issues, and I believe I have found two answers that could help prevent most of the dire consequences some concerned citizens who are Peak Oil aware have made. 1. We may need to abandon the 7000 year tradition of “Mono-crop Agriculture”. With the aid of cheap energy, it is very “labor efficient”, but the decline in cheap energy may render it unsupportive of the current world’s population. The best shot at changing this I have found so far is Edible Forest Farming. http://www.edibleforestgardens.com This is a far smarter form of food production, and while it is not suited to mechanization and will require much hand labor, among it’s many benefits it is actually easier than traditional farming, because it does not require tilling the soil. It can in fact rejuvenate soil and produce very high yields per acre through multiple concurrent crops. It may be perfect for post peak, as we may have a lot of people looking for work anyway. I am currently building an Edible Forest Garden on my own property to see how it works. 2. Doom and Gloom scenarios are mostly based on the obvious concern that business as usual will not be sustainable. Sure, but who says we need business as usual? Maybe there is a better way to live that also addresses the need for a low energy, low carbon living arrangement. There is! The Village http://villageforum.com. While the social trauma will be great at first simply because people don’t like change, this is very doable. Big cities will have to disperse, and suburbs will have to transform, but Villages could even be made by hand if need be out of local materials. We just need to rethink how we want to live. Personally, the thought of a life that does not require a car at all, sound ideal. Why can’t we build a place that we would actually LIKE living in? The challenge here is that, at the moment, there are too few places like this. But I feel strongly that all it takes is the will. It would only take three or four years to have some Villages up and running if we really want it. Then people all over would say, “Gee, they have it good. Let’s us do that too!” A movie or video about the alternative lifestyle that a Village would offer would go a long way towards promoting this change. Greg Yurash gyurash@mac.com Thank you David for your many fine articles and keen insight on the subject of Peak Oil. It is my observation though that the subject of both Peak Oil and Climate Change are rarely presented with sufficient ideas about what can actually be done to mitigate them. The trouble is, the real solutions are not the usual global tech fixes, but local social ones. As I see it, there are two crucial issues that define everything else. 1. How we grow/distribute food. 2. How we arrange our daily living. I suspect this will be true not just for top energy users, but just about everybody else too.

In my own attempts to come to grips with the idea of Peak Oil, I have been seeking out possible solutions to these two issues, and I believe I have found two answers that could help prevent most of the dire consequences some concerned citizens who are Peak Oil aware have made. 1. We may need to abandon the 7000 year tradition of “Mono-crop Agriculture”. With the aid of cheap energy, it is very “labor efficient”, but the decline in cheap energy may render it unsupportive of the current world’s population. The best shot at changing this I have found so far is Edible Forest Farming. http://www.edibleforestgardens.com This is a far smarter form of food production, and while it is not suited to mechanization and will require much hand labor, among it’s many benefits it is actually easier than traditional farming, because it does not require tilling the soil. It can in fact rejuvenate soil and produce very high yields per acre through multiple concurrent crops. It may be perfect for post peak, as we may have a lot of people looking for work anyway. I am currently building an Edible Forest Garden on my own property to see how it works. 2. Doom and Gloom scenarios are mostly based on the obvious concern that business as usual will not be sustainable. Sure, but who says we need business as usual? Maybe there is a better way to live that also addresses the need for a low energy, low carbon living arrangement. There is! The Village http://villageforum.com. While the social trauma will be great at first simply because people don’t like change, this is very doable. Big cities will have to disperse, and suburbs will have to transform, but Villages could even be made by hand if need be out of local materials. We just need to rethink how we want to live. Personally, the thought of a life that does not require a car at all, sound ideal. Why can’t we build a place that we would actually LIKE living in? The challenge here is that, at the moment, there are too few places like this. But I feel strongly that all it takes is the will. It would only take three or four years to have some Villages up and running if we really want it. Then people all over would say, “Gee, they have it good. Let’s us do that too!” A movie or video about the alternative lifestyle that a Village would offer would go a long way towards promoting this change.
Greg Yurash gyurash@mac.com

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