Would You Know How to Survive After the Oil Crash?

This is groundbreaking coming from the U.S. government, although don't expect President Barack Obama to mention peak oil in any upcoming speeches.

Determining the peak is not so cut and dried, McKibben points out. In addition, tiny market changes, like a period of economic decline where less oil is consumed can mask depleting supplies. But for those who are convinced of the data, they aren't waiting around for the federal government to jump into crisis mode.

What Will a Post-Peak-Oil World Look Like?

It's an intellectual exercise to even imagine what our lives would look like if oil was no longer cheap and plentiful. Sure, there will always be some in the ground, but when it becomes too expensive to get it out, there will be big changes afoot.

We depend on oil to get us to the store and to get our food and goods there as well. It's a huge component of the industrial agriculture model that feeds most of our country. And petroleum is in just about everything we buy -- from bubble gum to tires to eyeglasses.

And when you consider how oil powers our economy, things look bleak.

"The global-energy equation is changing rapidly, and with it is likely to come great power competition, economic peril, rising starvation, growing unrest, environmental disaster and shrinking energy supplies, no matter what steps are taken," Klare wrote.

Peak-oil prophet James Howard Kunstler, who has written extensively on the subject, echoes his sentiments. In his book The Long Emergency, he cautions: "What is generally not comprehended about this predicament is that the developed world will begin to suffer long before the oil and gas actually run out. The American way of life -- which is now virtually synonymous with suburbia -- can run only on reliable supplies of dependably cheap oil and gas."

And it gets worse in his eyes. "Oil led the human race to a threshold of nearly godlike power to transform the world. It was right there in the ground, easy to get. We used it as if there was no tomorrow. Now there may not be one."

Life After the Peak

But Angelantoni doesn't quite see it that way. There will be life after cheap oil, at least for many of us, but it will be vastly different from what most Americans are accustomed to.

We may crash and burn, or we can aim for something Angelantoni calls "creative descent." This involves teaching people about the coming crisis, retraining them in skills that will be useful and helping communities to be more localized.

"The first thing, really is to figure out where you want to live," said Angelantoni. Some areas, like the Southwest, may prove to be fairly unlivable as climate change kicks in as well. And disaster-prone areas, like geological-fault-riddled California may be dicey, he says.

But it's not all bad.

"There will be a lot of opportunity to start new businesses," he said. "We have to localize."

The relocalization movement has been around for decades but has gotten a second wind as the stumbling economy and mounting environmental pressures have shocked many into action. The basic premise is for communities to become more self-sufficient, and hence more resilient. This often means more local-food networks, more local energy and water systems and robust community businesses.

This idea has recently spun into transition towns, which has spread around the U.S. and in 14 countries. They provide a structure for communities to relocalize. Towns form working groups on issues like energy, food, transportation and local economics.

"It's not a political movement, it doesn't have a political bias," said Transition US Executive Director Carolyn Stayton. "Different types of people can be interested in it -- it is an us, not a them, it is about how we all can together create a future that works for us."

Each town has its own priorities and issues it is working on. For instance, in Santa Cruz, Calif., they are holding a reskilling expo where people can learn about composting, beekeeping, water catchment and nonviolent communication, in addition to workshops about peak oil and local economics.

Folks in Berea, Ky., just held a 100-mile potluck to help promote local food and farmers and to grow community awareness about their transition initiatives. 

It's easy, she says, to become paralyzed by fear -- global warming, economic turmoil and the loss of cheap energy can be a lot to take in. Transition towns examine those issues, but then "imagines what can be on the other side," Stayton said.

"What would our future look like? People imagine it looking like a healthy, wholesome place where people don't have to commute, where neighbors know each other, where business is local and vibrant and people have skills that they are sharing. The vision becomes so enticing that the problems shrink in their power, and people get propelled to create a future that solves the problems."

For Angelantoni, this kind of community resilience is the opposite of many survivalists, who head to the hills to see if they can live independently. His version of surviving a post-peak-oil world is dependent on communities coming together and adapting to new ways of supporting each other -- leaving their big cars and their big houses and their many toys behind.