Addicted to oil

Yesterday we watched a youtube video about Transition Towns and one of the key points raised was that as a society, we are addicted to oil.

The large majority of us rely on oil being available for our current standard of living to be maintained, and most of us haven't spent a great deal of time really considering just how addicted we are.

The question posed, that got the juices going with all of us in class, was "What would life be like without oil?"
It's seriously not that far off in our future. The days of cheap oil are already behind us, and we face ever increasing costs for oil, therefore every part of life that currently relies on oil will be impacted. The cost for foods will go through the roof, the cost for travelling by car anywhere will be prohibitive, the option of jumping on a plane for a trip somewhere will also be cost prohibitive and so many industries and places rely heavily on tourism and the availability of affordable travel... and that's not even scratching the surface.

It's got me looking more deeply and consciously at a part of my life i've already been trying to take more responsibility for.

My current car is a big old 4wd, a seven seater i got when i was still with the father of my children, and we needed that many seats to fit three carseats in.

Every second weekend i travel to Brisbane and back home, then back to Brisbane, then back home, clocking up over 600kms in the process. This costs me a fortune, takes hours and hours, but it's an area i'm not negotiable on at the moment as right now it's the only way i can see my kids. Where i can reduce my petrol consumption is with my travels to and from school.

I live 32km from school, and travel there and back four days a week, so it's about 260km per week i'm travelling, on my own, in my huge car.

There are no other students living out this way for me to carpool with. I've considered staying a night or two a week at school, but while i'm setting up my vegie gardens, I'm reluctant to miss out on the valuable daylight saving daylight hours after school at this moment. In winter it gets dark at around 5pm, so i'm making the most of the length of the day at this point in time, in preparation for winter.

So i have made a commitment to getting to and from school without driving myself.

In the area I live, like many places around the northern rivers and the Tweed, it's really common to hitchhike. I regularly pick up hitchhikers and hitch myself. It's a part of the culture here. Every time i hitch, i am picked up by interesting people who are often permaculturalists, Osho devotees or musicians, and invariably during the trip, we discover we have mutual friends to go with our mutual interests.

On rainy days, i have really been struggling with my commitment to leaving my car behind. It requires some serious dedication to get out the door and hitch in the rain when a car is sitting in my driveway, and it strikes me that in the not too distant future, it may be one of the only ways people are able to afford to get around, rain or shine.

So far on rainy days I have driven instead, but i am committed to hitching as often as possible through the winter when it's the dry season.

I am currently in the market for a 4cyl diesel car to trade my monster in for.. which i then hope to convert to bio diesel. Funnily enough the fella who picked me up yesterday was a scrap metal dude, who regularly picks up perfectly running small cars, so he's got his eye out for a car for me too :)

So I'm looking to not only reduce the amount of petrol i consume, but also make a greater effort in my commitment to buying local food that hasn't been shipped in from miles away.

How would your life look without oil? Could it be possible that you would actually enjoy a better quality of life than you currently experience.. if you connected locally to skillshare and trade with other members of your community.. reducing the need for so much travel to and from work each day, to and from the gym, to and from major shopping centres... if you found meaningful employment in your community, reducing the need to be away from your family, reducing the stress of isolation from community support and enjoying the health benefits of enjoying fresh locally grown produce? Sounds too good to be true.. but it's our imminent future because the end of the oil age as we know it is inevitable... :)