The complexity of the peak oil issue - a confluence of issues involving geology, infrastructure, and geopolitics, to name a few significant players - invites a level of critical and holistic thinking that continues to boggle the mind, resulting in many heads in the sand and as much scrambling as you'd find in a henhouse if you moved a chicken off its roost. Cries of “it’s the Saudis!” “No! It’s the speculators!” now rise alongside long-standing arguments that improved technology, the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace, and a lifting of bans on drilling in environmentally-sensitive areas will reduce woes as well as prices at the pump. No one seems to want to do the math. Speaking of numbers, someone is currently advancing the theory that due to faulty mathematics, the amount of recoverable oil in the ground has been underestimated by half (http://www.thestar.com/News/article/447057). Good heavens, asks Paul Roberts, author of The End of Oil -- how easy is it, given today’s high-stakes international competition for oil, to hide an extra trillion barrels?

As Jim Kingsdale, Energy Investment Strategist recently quipped: "Oil and Gas: What mortals these fuels be." Clearly, news of their mortality has pushed some formerly-comfortable little hen right off its perch, much to the increasing distress of every other chicken in the coop. This is not necessarily a bad thing … let’s just hope that not all the eggs are scrambled before they’re hatched.

The full story about peak oil -- its causes and consequences -- may elude us until well after the dust (and feathers) settle. What we do know is that we should expect - and plan for - a period of discomfort. The lives of all but approximately 2 billion of the world's people are underwritten by oil and other fossil fuels. Those of us who depend on them do so for every economic decision we make, from boardroom to breakfast table. Renewables are not going to ramp up in such a manner as would sustain our current way of life (though this shouldn’t prevent us from investing in them). Ours is a culture that will have to shift from energy arrogance to modesty. The difficulty we have in picturing such a shift points to a failure of imagination, misplaced notions about achievement, and lack of leadership. It is not an impossibility.

And, by the way, those other 2 billion folks? The decline of cheap energy impacts them, too: the cost of their food, related to mounting oil and natural gas prices as well as biofuel cultivation, is rising even in places where the main sources of energy are wood, straw and manure. A lack of visible reliance on oil is no indication of protection from hardship. It’s disingenuous for any of us in the 1st world to assume that the rest of the world will be “protected” from the dire affects of rising energy prices and the desperate measures by which we will try to off-set them.

It will take willingness and ingenuity on our parts to identify and meet our true material needs closer to home if we hope to prevent further ills. Right here in Vermont this past winter, people reportedly burned furniture to stay warm (see: http://vtpeakoil.net/community/document.php?id=298). Why would we allow this? Presumably, we have enough wood (http://vtpeakoil.net/community/document.php?id=301) to sustainably heat all Vermonter’s homes, assuming proper cultivation and harvesting. An increase in every Vermonter’s knowledge and application of energy conservation/efficiency practices would give this renewable resource, and other resources, even more utility. A local investment in keeping Vermont Castings open and retooled would be prudent, anticipating the likely use of biomass to heat more of Vermont’s homes in the future. Such hands-on measures would create sustainable jobs, something we must encourage in the Green Mountain State (or nation, as the case may be). Vermont needs leadership on these issues. Note to Golden Dome: "Anybody home?"

Like it or not, the rising price of energy and everything energy underwrites is here to stay. It’s never too late to be prudent, unless you are not prudent enough.

(For an interesting discussion of how various countries may fare as the era of cheap energy declines, see: http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/mainpages/countries.html. The availability of arable land, fertilizers, fossil fuels, renewables and the resources to scale them up, energy consumption, and form of government will all have an impact; the results are not necessarily what you’d expect.)