Peak Oil and Permaculture  

The Indymedia network has a new article up by Tim Winton on peak oil and how permaculture is one mechanism for adapting to declining energy availability (once again using his "dark twins" metaphor for global warming and peak oil).

Peak oil: you may have heard the term a few times lately or this may be a first, but it is unlikely to be the last time you come across the idea that global oil production is about to start its terminal decline. In the last two or three months this issue has left the confines of a small but committed community of peak oil analysts and leapt into the mainstream press. Analysts are warning that peak oil will be the defining event of this century, that it will rival climate change as the focus of sustainability, and that the world as we know it will change beyond recognition in a very short period of time. How could an event of this magnitude have remained outside mainstream awareness for so long?

If you think back to the first time you heard about global warming, it probably didn’t register all that highly on your list of impending global catastrophes. But, once the concept was explained as the ‘Green House Effect’, where increasing concentrations of industrial gases like CO2 turned the atmosphere into a gigantic hothouse, it probably became a little clearer. Peak oil, the dark twin of climate change, has no such easy metaphors, however it does require understanding a few unfamiliar concepts.