When the oil runs out...

Dear fellow suburbanites,

We will be so fucked when the oil runs out.  (Not if, when).  In every apocalypse movie I've seen, the grass is still cut, the traffic lights still work, you can still find working cars, and the toilets still flush.  We will be worse off than African countries that get water from a "watering hole".  Many, many people will die.  

I've had people tell me that I need to become a "prepper".

No.

Guns won't help either, you will run out of ammo sometime, and you can't eat or drink ammo. (and unfortunately, bears are still pretty tough to kill (and apparently taste gamey).  Hunting takes skill, and if everyone is running after Bambi in suburbia?

How are you going to heat your homes?  Or even get to a farm to get vegetables?  If you plow up your land to grow food, you still have to water it. Where's the water going to come from?

On this Climate Strike Day, we need to demand better options.

We need to figure out how to retrofit suburbia, NOT build new/more suburbias that are "eco friendly".  We need to figure out how to use existing systems and yet get rid of the oil.

For example, I have an oil burning furnace that creates hot water and heats the house with hot water with cast iron baseboards.  My furnace actually needs replacing.  And yet I am hesitant, because I keep hoping an eco friendly option will show up to replace it, that will still use the hot water and the baseboards, but not use oil.

My house also tends to have pretty decent crossbreezes with open windows.  But growing up in Egypt, some houses had "windows" that opened above the doors to be able to have a crossbreed, yet keep the doors shut.  

In Ancient Rome, they had fountains spaced around, fed by aqueduct.   You still had to carry your water home and up the stairs (if you were poor or middle class).   They had public baths.

In Old London Town, there was a lot of filth.  Privies that leaked into wells, sewage tossed into the Thames.   We do have a decent sewer system, but...what happens when the plant breaks down?

We need to start thinking and talking about these large scale options.   Because right now, suburbia is so precarious.    We have these huge grocery stores, warehouses, full of food.  But so dependent on oil.   Oil to grow the crops, to ship them, to keep them refrigerated.  

Go look in your fridge...I'll wait.  Where do your avocados come from?   Your watermelons in the dead of winter?  Even if they are "American" they are probably from California.   That takes at least two or three days of driving cross country to get the food to you.  And even then, it is mass-produced.

I'm scared.  I am genuinely scared.  Our lives are unsustainable.

Just think about this as you go through your day, your week.  How much of your life depends on oil?

It is almost too late (but not quite)