How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Peak Oil

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I’ve recently witnessed a few scenes of life after peak oil, and it isn’t necessarily the Apocalypse.

In Juneau, Alaska, for example, people are proving it’s possible to change our energy-hogging ways literally overnight and still keep a community up and running. The inspiration in their case: an avalanche that severed the hydroelectric power lines serving the remote Alaska capital, cutting off about 80 percent of the city’s available electricity.

With service not expected to be restored for three or four months, residents have responded quickly and creatively, slashing their energy consumption in a wide variety of ways: turning off elevators, leaving airport runway lights on only when needed, turning off electronics displays in stores, lowering thermostats and hanging up clotheslines.

In the words of Sarah Lewis, who chairs the city’s Commission on Sustainability, the lesson has been to “Turn off, turn down, unplug.”

Across the U.S., other people are taking that lesson to heart not out of necessity, but because they want to. The New York Times recently profiled a young family from Austin, Texas, that’s giving up almost everything they own to adopt an organic lifestyle in a small Vermont cabin without electricity.

The article goes on to quote Mary E. Grigsby, who authored a book titled, “Buying Time and Getting By: The Voluntary Simplicity Movement.” Given the current situations with energy and oil supplies, Grigsby said, “It may be the right time.”

Closer to home, I’ve experienced by necessity what life after peak oil might feel like. After each of the Gulf Coast hurricanes we’ve lived through, my family and I spent days — sometimes weeks — without electricity, refrigeration, clean running water, air-conditioning or electronic entertainment. It wasn’t always comfortable — especially in Florida’s steamy summer climate — but it was doable, at least for a short time.

I think not only oil prices and peaks, but the economy in general, will be pushing more people into more sustainable lifestyles in the near future. In my own case, for example, a recent car breakdown too costly to repair has forced me into car-sharing. And, while I don’t want to risk my safety right now biking the main highway that leads to my town’s grocery stores, I’ll be ready to do that when more cars go idle. Plus, my home garden will make those trips less necessary over time as well.

What do you expect life after peak oil to look and feel like? How are you preparing? I’m interested to hear all of your thoughts.