The New World

For many of us, when our ancestors came to this country it was with the hope of finding a better a life. There is no doubt that many of us have lives that our ancestors could only dream of. We have comforts and luxuries that would make us appear to live like kings. We have grown up with these things without ever believing that one day they may not be available. We have all had to deal with periods of inconvenience due to some sort of natural disaster or storm but this usually only lasts a few days to a few weeks. What if a few weeks stretched on indefinitely? What if the amount of electricity that was available to you was limited to just a few hours every day? These are some of the realities of a world after Peak Oil.

Now I will admit, when I first began to really think and learn about Peak Oil it freaked me out. My initial thoughts were we needed to move to the country where we can grow our own food, learn skills such as making cloth so we can make our own clothes, and how in general to live without all the things we have today. Granted, this is a knee jerk reaction and one that I am sure is quite common. However, now that I have had time to think about it and absorb some of the information, I can begin to see that there are some positive things happening out there.

One movement that is gaining ground is Transition Town. This is a grass roots effort of people coming together who have a shared concern over Global Warming and Peak Oil. The purpose of this movement is to help communities prepare and make a plan for the decent from oil. It focuses on re-localizing and finding ways to meet a communities needs that are less energy dependent than what we do now. Go to www.transitiontowns.org to find out more. There may be one near you or you may be inspired to start one yourself.

Permaculture is another movement that is growing in awareness here in the U.S. Permaculture is a system for designing sustainable communities and environments. I actually came to an awareness of Permaculture through my concern for the environment but it goes hand in hand with the issue of Peak Oil. Personally, I feel that Permaculture is the key to coming off of our dependence on oil.  I plan on using Permaculture principles as we develop our homestead so I will be talking more about that as things develop.

I'm sure there are other initiatives out there but these are the two that I am most familiar with. We can't keep living in the dark about these issues so once you get past the initial shock, start looking around your state and your community to see what's going on. You may be pleasantly surprised at what you find.