Summary: QUICK SUMMARY: Oil guru Richard Heinberg on life after fossil fuels. Marjory Wildcraft: why you may want to grow your own groceries. Radio Ecoshock 150408 Five percent of the world's oil tanker capacity is waiting to load up near Basra Iraq, where production is way up. The United States has only one month of oil storage capacity left. After that, what comes in must go straight to market, likely for as little as $20 a barrel. Is peak oil dead? And why isn't the economy responding to cheaper oil? We'll ask the guru, Richard Heinberg. He's one of the people who popularized the oil squeeze, with his book "The Party's Over". Heinberg has a new book out: "Afterburn, Society Beyond Fossil Fuels". After that, during this Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, a couple of us hope to persuade you to grow some of your own food. Marjory Wildcraft, from growyourowngroceries joins us. There's a lot of reasons we need to pay attention to the food supply. Locked and loaded, this is Radio Ecoshock. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) Or listen on Soundcloud right now! RICHARD HEINBERG: AFTERBURN "We live in the time of what might be called the Burning" - Richard Heinberg. In 2003, his book "The Party’s Over: Oil, War & the Fate of Industrial Societies" turned Peak Oil from an insider worry to a popular movement. Twelve years and eight books later, Richard Heinberg is still the go-to guy for what's happening with world energy - and there's a lot happening right now. Richard's post in California is at the Post Carbon Institute. Of course everyone wants to know what happened to Peak Oil and the way out of this fossil fuel mess. Richard gives us that update, and whole lot more, in his latest book just out, called "Afterburn, Society Beyond Fossil Fuels". "As energy issues become more critically important to society’s economic and ecological survival, they become more politically contested; and as a result, they tend to become obscured by a fog of exaggeration, half-truth, omission, and outright prevarication." - Richard Heinberg, "Afterburn" We all thought high oil prices would grind the economy into a crash. Now oil has fallen to less than half price, and it looks like THAT could trigger some very bad things. What's happening out there on the oil fields? I've been reading that some big energy companies hedged their production at over $90 a barrel. There's no way some Wall Street betters can pay half the world's energy bill. Something has to give, yes? Richard wrote about the fragility of the oil industry and it's massive debt, especially in the fracking industry, in his recent book "Snake Oil". Our second guest Marjory Wildcraft, who lives in West Texas, says she's toured around in Texas, seeing exactly the oil blight, abandoned rigs, and depressed towns that Richard Heinberg wrote about. I can remember, just five years ago, a big debate about climate change and peak oil. Some Peak Oilers said we'll never get to full-blown climate catastrophe, because the oil will run out soon, very soon. Now we know humans can find and burn enough oil to wreck the climate. Heinberg compare our rivers to the "rivers" of gasoline that flow along our highways, and throughout our society. I was struck by his observation on how open and visible water is, and how hidden the gasoline flow is at every stage. It's underground, in pipelines, in our tanks, and never seen. In his new book "Afterburn", Richard Heinberg writes: "Quite simply, we must learn to be successfully and happily poorer." Somehow, I don't think we'll hear that in the upcoming American election campaign... Stanford professor (and Radio Ecoshock guest) Mark Jacobson and Amory Lovins of Rocky Mountain Institute say we can continue growing the economy powered by renewable energy. Why is Heinberg so gloomy? Can he really be sure we won't find ways to continue the current wealth of civilization? WHY UTILITIES AND GOVERNMENTS FIGHT OFF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY In the ne
