Burning Over Oil - Peak Oil and Climate Change  

I'm not quite sure exactly what "libertarian communists" are - it sounds like a contradiction if you think of Stalinism as Communism, but maybe they are a variety of Chomskyite Anarcho-Syndicalists. Whatever they are, they too have discovered peak oil - there are a few errors in the numbers presented, and its at the gloomier end of the scale.

Concerns about human survival in the coming century are all too realistic. The ten years between 2005 and 2015 could be the most critical in human history. If we are to have any serious impact on the problem, we need 80 percent cuts in carbon emissions within 20 years, and starting now…rather than 5 percent cuts by 2012, as agreed in the Kyoto treaty.

The current battle is over control for dwindling oil in the immediate future, with no thought for the long term. The suicidal policies of the governments and corporations are leading us into further conflict, environmental destruction and an increasingly bleak future.

Unfortunately the available alternatives to fossil fuels may be insufficient for supporting the transport, infrastructure, food, housing and waste that we have now. Even with huge technological breakthroughs, tremendous international cooperation and investment in sustainable energy, modern society will simply have to adapt, somehow.

There is much that individuals and communities can do to prepare for the coming energy crisis (home grown food, energy conservation and austere living.) However, the unsustainability of the modern world is not just due to individual’s choices and behaviour; it’s a result of fundamental socio-economic and political structures, of conscious and deliberate policies- that can, and must be changed. So long as we have a monetary system based upon debt, and locked into a reliance on fossil fuels, there will be no way out of this conundrum.