Futurismic

It may be mercifully low again at the moment, but it’s safe to assume that once the global economy adjusts to recent events, the price of oil will obey its historical trend and start climbing once again.

Over at The Guardian, Charles Arthur suggests one of the major outcomes of increasing oil prices will be that travel – be it for work or pleasure – will become much less of a reflex action, at least for those of us who aren’t ridiculously wealthy:

If you need a shorthand for thinking about the future, then, it’s this: analogue will be increasingly expensive; digital will be increasingly cheap. Getting in a car or on a train or a plane? Analogue. Expensive. Non-renewable. By contrast, downloading an album, watching a webcast concert, watching TV: digital. Endlessly replicable, virtually instantly transmitted, cheap.

What, in turn, does that mean for our society? Apart from fewer cars on the roads (though possibly with more people sharing rides in them), it means more time working at or near to home, if your work involves things that can be done digitally. For all those jobs that need to be near to physical things – that is, where you make things like cars or food or whatever – you’ll have to be based nearer the place you work.

I hasten to point out that this is not exactly a new suggestion, but what would have been delivered as a slightly comedic tongue-in-cheek piece of journalism ten years ago (doubtless complete with a reference to “sci-fi futures of virtual travel”) seems much less ludicrous in the light of our new-found interest in frugal living. [image by Atli Harðarson]

I seem to remember one of Stephen Baxter’s Destiny’s Children books featuring a very-near-future Earth where travel is achieved by a kind of mash-up of telepresence and VR technologies. Can anyone think of any other sf stories or books with a similar theme?

As you may know, as a writer and blogger, Peak Oil is one of the topics that fascinates me, ultimately leading to the 30,000 word fictional blog miawithoutoil I wrote earlier this year for the World Without Oil project. This editorial from the Buffalo News is a great summary of Peak Oil as it enters the public consciousness. Another good frontpage diary at Daily Kos yesterday detailed a few excellent potential strategies from the Energize America project, which emerged from Daily Kos to be a major player in alternative energy related politics.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that sooner or later the resources of the planet will run out. Finite oil was always on the case, even when I was at school. But according to some writers like Richard Heinberg, we may be very close or even just past the peak in global oil production, even if it takes a few years for the news to filter down the supply lines and alert the wide world. A former Canadian oil CEO thinks we’re pretty close too.

We are already being encouraged to cut down on fuel use by environmental campaigners and everyone concerned with global warming. Peak Oil presents a natural brake on the climate change bandwagon but in a sudden stop, things will get very unstable. By encouraging smaller cars and smaller commutes, alternative fuels and increased public transport, as well as building shops, jobs and facilities closer to home and utilising the great advantages the internet gives us with telecommuting and virtual goods, we could create a world that would ride out the shrinking resource climate without capsizing. We’d better start soon.

[photo by Boback]