The case for alternatives.
Greystoke, I know you know why and it's frustrating !
There will be no more fossil fuels one day, maybe sooner than we expect and maybe not, but it will come. I think what brought the situation home to me is the standard line of Richard Heinberg "Have you ever pushed your car 10 kilometers ?? (he deals in miles but you know what I mean).".
I have.
It's a sad story but I had just been retrenched from the military establishment and made a failure of running my own truck - I was in serious financial trouble. I was cutting everything close to the bone and so my old 1971 Datsun 1500 bakkie was running on fumes and it refused to go any further. At the time I still had some youth left (very little) and still had the courage to push the bleeding thing to the next petrol pump about five k's further on and there were no gradients inbetween. Those vehicles were the one's that carved a name for Japanese vehicles with South African farmers - they were relatively light on fuel, could carry a true metric ton and they were tough !! Still had a steel chassis like a truck and bloody heavy. I pushed, I cried, I vomited and then repeated the formula many many times. I got there - put in petrol - went home and cried myself to sleep. The memory haunts me still. That effort was what a half a litre petrol does for us.
From that day I knew I was in a deep dark tunnel and the world, mostly unwittingly, was in there with me. No fossil fuel means no car means no personal transport for the most of us.
My younger brother phoned me from Kempton Park plots the other day and the electricity had been down for a day already from all the rains and flooding they'd had up there. He was so dejected - the phone felt heavy in my hand. Would the plots get enough priority so that the electricity would be restored before he lost everything in his fridge and deepfreeze ?? Fortunately that had a happy ending and he phoned me real chipper the next day to tell me that only minutes after talking to me the electricity was restored but the damage had been done.
I knew then that the same applied to the electricity. No fossil fuel means no mod cons for the most of us.
I'll support any alternative to fossil fuels - that's a dead end - literally !!!!!!
Intermitantcy is far better than total deprivation.
I hope we've got enough time to change and the courage to do so. Maybe it doesn't matter so much for me but what about my children and grandchildren ????
Maybe the answer is whispering in the wind ! Just maybe ! I hope so.
