I guess I’m not the only one concerned that the Peak Oil message gets misunderstood as one propounded by an apocalyptic cult. Just this afternoon, an old friend lamented “how the world is coming to an end” after my sharing of Peak Oil with him.

I guess many of us (peakoilers) never got to the part of the sharing where the world becomes a better place to live in when humans start to work with nature rather than against it. Here are some points I want to make about the side most PO newbies tend to miss:

  1. Peak Oil does not mean we run out of oil. It means we literally used up half the world’s endowment of oil and from thereon, production of oil will fall year on year, no matter how hard you try to get better at extracting oil.
  2. Peak Oil does not kick us back to prehistoric lifestyles. We do have to live a lifestyle that is more sustainable. Living sustainably simply means we take less than we give back to nature. PO will also mean our economy has to be more localised, meaning your chicken might come from Lim Chu Kang instead of Brazil.
  3. Peak Oil means you simply travel less using fossil-fuel driven modes of transport. With oil prices going nowhere but up, more drivers are going to trade in their cars and use public transport instead. And given that public transport rates aren’t staying put either, more will start looking for jobs within walking/cycling distances from their homes.
  4. Peak Oil means there will be a comeback of agriculture. Today, Singapore imports >95% of its food from abroad. Higher oil prices mean these imports will cost more to ship. At the same time, because PO is a global phenomenon, net food exporters might be reconfiguring their own agriculture to be more self-sustainable. This means the price of food itself will rise too. At some point, it’s going to make sense again to grow our own food right here in Singapore.
  5. Peak Oil means less waste. Remember how your mom always cringes at you when you throw stuff out? She didn’t live her life that long ago, right? In fact, she probably learn all that attitude during the last oil crisis in the late 1970s.

I hope this clears up some of the apocalyptical images (Mad Max) that you might have of a post-peak-oil world, always look on the brighter side of change because that’s where you’d find hope and strength to see through the change.