Just ‘google’ peak oil, alternative energies and you will soon find real credible information for what is possible and what is not. It might take you an hour to inform yourself about all the alternatives, but then you would not believe the hype about oil from plants
On a national or state level, there is just nothing that can save the car, or the way the cities are sustained now, that can replace oil. But is anybody doing anything about it? Governments? Congress? Focus groups? Al Gore? Trying to sustain this way of life with hydrogen fuel cells, hybrids and the like is not going to cut it, it will just prolong the decline.
Cooperation on a small scale, just like a village, is the only way to survive, but keep in mind that within a very short time, all the books where you might learn how to survive or make things, will be gone, burnt for warmth in the cities. You really will have to appreciate those who have skills and knowledge that contribute to your future and survival.
I myself have been interested in alternative energy, having lived through the sixties and borrowed a huge book put out by some hippies with instructions on every conceivable cottage industrial process – from methane gas from pig’s manure, wind turbines and all the rest - to how to bury your own with all the legal obligations. It was a great source and I wish I had that now, for my children’s sake. But not having ever put anything into practice, I would probably still be in the dark (pun intended) trying to rig up a wind turbine from a car alternator and battery bank.
But no doubt farmers do that all the time, to pump water, to grind grain, etc. There are a lot of skills that will be useless, and a lot that we have forgotten, which will be essential for survival. There was also another book in the 70’s, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered: by EF Schumacher.
Can you smelt iron to make an axe? Make one out of rusting car parts?
How far down towards the Stone Age do you want to go?
And you wont be reading this on the Internet either.
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