Daily Peak Oil Rant

I received the DVD of The End of Suburbia today, and watched it this evening. It basically describes how cheap oil made suburbia possible, and how expensive oil will turn suburbs into slums and then ghost towns. The film features some of the usual peak oil suspects: Richard Heinberg, Michael Klare, Colin Campbell, Kenneth Deffeyes. It also features From the Wilderness' Michael Ruppert (whose book and DVD I haven't received yet). Also contributing is James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere.

Maybe the most intriguing contributor, however, is Matthew Simmons. Simmons is an investment banker, a Republican, and was supposedly a member of Veep from the Deep Cheney's 2001 energy task force. Simmons knows the energy business, and though he's on the other side of the political spectrum from many of the contributors to the film (I get the feeling that Heinberg is pretty much a socialist, for example), he is in complete agreement with all of them as to the imminence of peak oil and the coming of a severe energy crisis within the next ten years. There's a Powerpoint presentation (pdf format) on his web site which outlines his opinions on the subject.

In any case, I recommend The End of Suburbia as an excellent introduction to two issues important to me: curbing sprawl and peak oil.