Natural Paints  

The list of oil based products we use in our daily lives is pretty vast. Dealing with oil depletion is going to about substituting non-oil based products for oil based ones as much as possible and using oil much more efficiently where it has to be used.

Paints are one oil based product that can be replaced with natural alternatives in many cases.

The Natural Paint Book, by Julia Lawless, offers an in-depth explanation of the differences between conventional and eco-effective paints. Illustrated with many colorful photographs, the book provides complete instructions on how to make all-natural paints and finishes at home, using readily available ingredients such as clay, gelatin, linseed oil, and artist pigments.

An uncle of mine once had a paint factory, but after a while set up a winery instead and gave up paint making. No doubt after the peak there will be plenty of other people quitting the paint factory.

Now the casual reader may wonder why I've included a link that extols the virtues of idleness and warns about the danger of fascism in a peak oil blog - but these are both pretty common memes in some corners of the peak oil world. One of Jay Hanson's earlier rants ("The Foulest Of Them All") talks about pre-peak western society being based on avarice (greed) and the idea of replacing it with "The Society of Sloth". I think he might have given up on this idea at some point though, and simply decided everyone is going to die.

A sloth based society (or at least one where we all work less) is also behind the idea of Timesizing. Some people might even say that France has already adopted this strategy (in the form of the 35 hour week).

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