An American financial crisis threatening the Canadian economy and fluctuating gas prices may have spurred you to take action to save energy and cash, but do you have a plan in place if the situation gradually gets worse?
There are many Torontonians concerned about how the city and its citizens will fare in a peak oil scenario when our demand for energy outweighs supply, resulting in big price increases and possibly other consequences.
Randy Park chairs the group
Post Carbon Toronto, whose goal is to spread the word and raise awareness about peak oil, a problem it claims the world will start to experience in the next few years.
"Every oil producing region and every oil producing country ... they see their production rise initially ... then it reaches the peak or plateau and then it starts to decrease as the oil fields get older," Park, a professional public speaker with a background in physics, told
CityNews.ca.
"Peak oil doesn't really mean that once we hit peak oil it's all gone. It means that each and every next day we won't be able to have as much oil as we did the day before."
For a more detailed explanation of peak oil, click on the video link.
Many of the major oil fields in the world are now in terminal decline, according to Park. The United States reached its peak in the 1970s, despite new discoveries in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, and production in the North Sea reached its peak in 1999, Post Carbon Toronto says.
Park claims the issue is gaining more and more acceptance. He cited American oil tycoon and corporate raider T. Boone Pickens, who has spoken out on the issue and is calling for greater investment in wind and solar power. The 80-year-old sunk billions into building the world's largest wind farm in Texas and is urging Americans to check out his
Pickens Plan in an effort to end their addiction to foreign oil, and oil in general.
So when will GTA residents start feeling the effects of peak oil? Park claims we're already beginning to experience the pinch of declining production.
"I think you only have to look back a month or two to see the effects. I mean, we've had record high gas prices and the reason we've had record high gas prices is because we have such a tight relationship between supply and demand with oil and there's a lot of factors involved ... but underlining all of that is the fundamental decline in production," he suggested.
Post Carbon Toronto is a group comprised of about 100 people, with many senior members who have expertise in physics and geology. It's loosely affiliated with an international group called the
Post Carbon Institute.
" ... people are very predisposed to short-term thinking and it takes extra effort to look past the next day, or week, or year and say, okay, what are we going to do now that's going to affect our lifetime or our children's lifetime," Park said, adding the concerns expressed about the peak oil situation are very similar to those raised in regards to climate change.
In order to deal with rising energy costs due to declining production, Park said Torontonians and should start retrofitting their homes to increase efficiency, reducing their addiction to cars and supporting public transit initiatives.
"Ironically, even though it's a very big problem a lot of the solutions are very locally-focused and one of the reasons is because it's the local governments that make the decisions that do have a long-term impact, like building codes and zoning regulations and transit planning," Park said.
Some Torontonians are preparing for more than increased costs to fill the car and heat their home. Graphic artist Laurie Varga runs the newly-formed
Toronto Survivalism meetup group where people share survival skills and do-it-yourself techniques.
"I'm actually surprised at the number of people who are aware of what might be going on underground and are reading alternative news sources and are finding out about things like peak oil," she said, adding she became interested in the topic after watching the documentary "
The End of Suburbia".
"There are a number of, what some experts are calling, converging catastrophes that could affect us either individually or simultaneously. I think a surprising number of people are aware of that and ... we're finding each other so we can form communities, because I think communities are a really important way to help combat that."
The prospect of peak oil has prompted some groups to urge people to reconsider not only how, but where they live if energy stocks decline and prices for many goods and services skyrocket.
"Some people say the cities are going to be a horrible place to live in a few years, they're going to become violent and very disruptive and dangerous to live in and so you need to move out to the country. But then other people are saying, well, living close to downtown, close to services where you can walk or ride your bike, is going to be beneficial," she said.
"I think community building will be key in a place like Toronto ... I guess less centralization and less reliance on the government. It doesn't seem like they get it or are going in the right direction."
shawne.mckeown@citytv.com