c9 | What would you do if there were no cars, and no computer chips?

I've posted on Peak Oil before, but I've been thinking about it more lately and a couple facts bear repeating, and disseminating widely.

Some points to ponder:

The construction of an average car consumes the energy equivalent of approximately 27-54 barrels, which equates to 1,100-2,200 gallons, of oil. Ultimately, the construction of a car will consume an amount of fossil fuels equivalent to twice the car’s final weight.
The production of one gram of microchips consumes 630 grams of fossil fuels. According to the American Chemical Society, the construction of single 32 megabyte DRAM chip requires 3.5 pounds of fossil fuels in addition to 70.5 pounds of water.
The construction of the average desktop computer consumes ten times its weight in fossil fuels.
The Environmental Literacy Council tells us that due to the "purity and sophistication of materials (needed for) a microchip, . . . the energy used in producing nine or ten computers is enough to produce an automobile."

Numbers Here

The 'lower 48' US states reached their peak oil point (meaning they've used over half) in 1972. The US has been running out of oil for your entire life. I'm not even going to go into what some people claim this proves about US foreign policy, you can do math. But separate from that, think about what's happened in the past 30+ years: increased population, increased production of *everything*, increased consumption of *everything*. Now think about how much of the stuff you buy has plastic (petrochemicals), how much power you use (to run the computer you're sitting at right now), how much you drive... this affects you, is the point I'm trying to make.

Anyway, that first chart is production over time, and the bell curve is obvious. If we look at worldwide production, it's not as clear, as you can see. The problem is that pictures speak far louder than words, and at least a few of you looked at that and said "he's just making this shit up, you can't tell the bell curve from those points!" And I agree, it's not valid in and of itself. So here's something better:

In the 1980's OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) started to tie their quotas (and therefore production, and therefore income) to their known reserves of oil. So there's an incentive to lie. And lie they do! Check out these numbers (numbers are in billions of barrels) from the BP Statistical Review. From An Introduction to Peak Oil:

As soon as it became economically expedient to exaggerate the size of oil reserves, OPEC nations immediately claimed a doubling - even a trebling - of proven reserves. And rather than run the risk of losing a share of their quota, there’s a curious reluctance to admit that producing oil actually depletes reserves. Kuwait, for instance, throughout the nineties was pumping between of 600 and 750 million barrels of oil per year (according to the same source… the BP Stat Review) yet saw no commensurate reduction in reserves. Presumably they coincidentally discovered exactly the same amount of new stock as they produced each year. It seems like a lot of OPEC nations do that.
Either that, or the BP Statistical Review is a tissue of lies.
Well, based upon the evidence I’m going to make that call… the BP Statistical Review; the “official” reckoning of global crude oil reserves; is a tissue of lies. And it is obscuring the imminent approach of the peak availablity of hydrocarbons.
The rig count over the last 12 years has reached bottom. This is not because of low oil price. The oil companies are not going to keep rigs employed to drill dry holes. They know it but are unable and unwilling to admit it. The great merger mania is nothing more than a scaling down of a dying industry in recognition of the fact that 90% of global conventional oil has already been found.
- Goldman Sachs, advice to investors, August 1999

So the question becomes, what do we do now?