We could MAYBE mitigate this problem if oil were only wearing ONE of our many crucial and civilization-sustaining hats. But sadly, oil actually wears SIX such hats:

1) Transportation fuel (cars, trucks, trains, aircraft, and marine craft)

2) Electrical generation (especially in Third World nations and island nations)

3) Feedstock for plastics manufacturing (as well as most chemicals and pharmaceuticals)

4) The key input that drives the entire agricultural industry (petro-based fertilizers, weed-killers, and pesticides, and also the fuel for large mechanized farm equipment)

5) Heating fuel

6) Machine lubrication and other miscellaneous liquids needed for machinery

Trying to come up with an overnight (10 years or less) replacement for just one of the above already presents a mighty tall order. But trying to come up with a replacement for all six –in just 10 years or less– is a feat that stands firmly in the realm of the impossible. This is not merely a “problem” it’s actually a “dilemma.” A “problem” has a solution, but a “dilemma” has no solution. We are staring down the barrel of our global shipping network shutting down, of stores constantly being out of stock, of regional brown-outs, of disruptions in water pumping and sewage pumping, of disease and hunger, of scarcity in medical supplies, of economic atrophy, and even all-out war.

Maybe if we had 50 years we could try to mitigate this, but there’s no way we can do it in just 10. And the really sad thing is that we already knew about this 50+ years ago — check out what Shell oil geologist M. King Hubbert had to say about oil back in 1956, and then check out Admiral Hymen Rickover’s speech on energy and fossil fuels back in 1957. We knew about this OVER 50 years ago, yet we’ve done nothing all these long decades except burn even more oil. So we did this to ourselves.

We are now facing the end of our current way of life. I do not know what our new way of life will look like, but it definitely won’t be a Star Trek/Jetsons utopia. It will be harsh, and full of hard work and strife since there will be no more magical machines to do hard work for us. Actually there will be machines, it’s just that there will be no energy to make them work, so all our once-brilliant machines will do nothing but sit around lifeless and rusting.