Fossil Fuels

The post-oil novel revisited!

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Unlike the other post-oil novels published so far, Ill Wind isn’t about peak oil. In those other novels, oil has gradually dribbled away while we’ve steadfastly ignored the warning signs. But in Ill Wind, the world’s oil vanishes suddenly after some bizarre, experimental oil-eating microbe is unleashed on a massive tanker spill, and then runs amok. What Ill Wind and those other novels do have in common, however, is that they imagine a future world without oil.

Timing is everything

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The key question is whether we have the time for said gradual energy transition. … Should the analogy be the American entry into World War II which led to a command economy directed by the federal government with the aim of winning the war? One could certainly argue that the United States did not make optimal use of its resources during World War II. But, it did win.

Book review: Plan C

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In Murphy’s typology, Plan A is “Business as Usual”- which will be prevented by absolute resource and environmental constraints; Plan B is the proposed switch to “Clean Green technology”- which will not be able to replace oil in time; while Plan D is “Die Off”. Thus we are lef twith Plan C which the plan of “curtailment and community”- the kind of responses being explored in the Transition movement, as well as our own Powerdown Community project, for which this book is a key resource.