3. Post-Peak Transportation Solutions, or The Myth of the Oil-Starved Marauding Gangs of Mad Max

I just got back from the supermarket, with my bi-weekly supply of mass quantities of cheap foods.

After moving in with my friend Jason a couple days ago, I'm now about 2 miles away from the supermarket, which used to be literally across the street.

This made hauling my groceries a little more interesting than usual because I had to bike there. I ended up stuffing all the heaviest things into my backpack, balancing the rest between bags on my two wrists, and carefully riding my bike up the 2-mile-long hill back home.

To today's Americans my actions are silly and stupid. Why not use a car? I've lived here less than a week and already the neighborhood kids I ride by in the alleys everyday have taken to calling me "bike guy."

But more and more we are beginning to see the lifestyle sacrifices made because of the interminably rising oil prices after peak oil.

And while sweating and panting my way up the hill with a sack of potatoes, a carton of soymilk, and a giant can of beans dangling from my wrists, I pondered what kind of inventive and imaginative ways people will find to cope with $10-per-gallon gasoline, when they absolutely have to.

Beyond my kind of biking heroics there will certainly be a much greater push for carpooling, use of mass transit whenever possible, and most of all: eliminating unnecessary travel.

This does not in any way preclude the very real likelihood of impending social unrest and upheaval, and no doubt when gas reaches $10 people will take to the streets...

Good!

We've been conditioned to fear what was once our greatest source of power as a population - social unrest. As recently as the early 20th century, taking it to the streets was the only effective way to present our demands and display our grievances against the powers-that-be. Benjamin Ginsberg's book The Captive Public describes how the mass media, interest groups, public opinion polls, and other devices of the state have stolen that power from us, turned our attention spans to mush and sold our politics to the highest bidder.

Today even our protests are a mockery of their former selves... we march from point A to point B, surrounded at every moment by steel guardrails backed by police in riot gear, hoping to at best get a few pictures of the crowd and an estimate of the crowd size broadcast (in 30 seconds or less) on the news. Does anyone feel empowered by these spectacles?

We have been conditioned to demand order (whose order?) above all else and to fear unrest of all forms, whether looting, rioting, or outright rebellion. Remember Katrina? The media went on and on about the horrible looters to justify shoot-to-kill responses by law enforcement. But ask yourself what you would do if you were trapped in a disaster area, when order has broken down, there's no electricity, you're thirsty and hungry, and there's a Walgreens or some other corporate store just sitting there with everything you need waiting inside. Any sane person, regardless of race, would break in.

Last night I watched the film The Road Warrior, the second of the Mad Max trilogy.

The premise of the film is that in a future of oil shortages, civilization has collapsed into war, nuclear holocaust and barbarism. Mel Gibson plays the lone hero, who shows up in his turbo car and leather "heavy metal" outfit, to rescue a band of embattled strangers defending a remote oil refinery in the middle of the wasteland. The "good guys" all wear white, have blonde hair and beautiful faces, and are rich - with the only commodity that matters anymore, gasoline.

On the outside of the compound, all the "bad guys" - those with black clothing, mohawks, dirty skin and ugly tempers, are desperate for gas, and will rape, murder, and torture all who stand in the way of them getting it.

The film ends with a dramatic chase scene, as Mel drives a tractor trailer of the remaining gas, under attack by a steady stream of motorcycle villains who fight to the last man for a few drops of sweet sweet oil.

Welcome to the future?

Ran Prieur has already discussed the absurdity of this apocalyptic view of the future in a great article called "The Slow Crash." What he explains, and what I want to repeat, is that when people can no longer live the way we do now, the result will not necessarily be violent chaos, anarchy (the bad kind), and mass rape and murder. These are the fears put into us by decades of propaganda and brainwashing. (Even from our very own peak oil fearmongers).

People are not inherently vicious, selfish, and evil. They are that way now because our socio-economic system demands these personality traits of them.

No doubt there will be gangs of oil-starved villains in the future. But when we fear one another as citizens we fail to understand that our real enemies are not those in the streets but in the halls of power. If anyone is going to commit mass murder, it will be the same people who always commit genocides, the state, the armed forces, the police and the business interests.

As for your neighbors, the best way to make sure they don't come for your gasoline and your life late one night is to get out of your house and introduce yourself to them...

Once outside, why not start talking about solutions to the impending collapse? Because when we can't drive to our jobs, and we have no jobs to drive to, we're still going to need to get food from the supermarket (until that closes too) and until the government is overthrown, the only affordable way to get there will be to share cars, bikes, horses, mules, and whatever else we've got.

When we get back from the store, we'll probably want to share the food with one another also for dinner, because without electricity we won't have our attention stolen by the television anymore, and we'll want to talk to someone about our worsening situation and figure out some kind of solutions.

Whatever those end up being, they already sound a hell of a lot more democratic than what we've got now.