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The age of Less refers to this reality called "Peak Oil," which as James Howard Kunstler summarized it in Rolling Stone Magazine,

The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world's all-time total endowment, meaning half the world's oil will be left. That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there's a big catch: It's the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of much poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us. A substantial amount of it will never be extracted.

After peak, oil supplies will decrease by 3-8% annually, even as our growth-oriented economies ratchet demand for oil ever upwards. Anyone who’s taken Econ101 knows what happen next: gasoline prices skyrocket. To boot, oil becomes increasingly expensive to extract. Thus, $7-10/gallon gasoline can come about relatively quickly.

This peak is expected by 2010. Even scarier, we may already be there.

This isn’t just bad news for your commute. Peak oil will affect every part of how we live. Necessities like food, water, clothes, & shelter, and fun stuff like Halo 2, Heineken, & Big Macs all depend on cheap, reliable oil. The American dream depends on it. Whether we want it or not, peak oil is going to permanently awaken us from that dream.

An oil-based economy such as ours doesn't have to deplete its entire reserves of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 5-10 percent is enough to totally shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty.

Don't miss the scope of petroleum's reach: petrochemicals are vital to more than your car. Roughly 10 calories of fossil fuels are required to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten in the US. The size of this ratio stems from the fact that every step of modern food production is fossil fuel and petrochemical powered: pesticides are made from oil; commercial fertilizers are derived from natural gas, which is also about to peak; tractors and trailers are constructed and powered using oil; food distribution is entirely dependant on oil. In the US, the average piece of food is transported 1,500 miles before it gets to your plate.

In short, as one Peak Oil researcher notes, "people gobble oil like two-legged SUVs."

Hydrogen won’t save us: it’s an energy medium, not an energy source. Neither will biodiesel: it takes more fossil fuel energy to grow the crops than what we’d get out of it. Additionally, no combination of alternatives can even begin to replace the role of cheap, abundant oil.

Peak oil is an incoming tsunami for the American way of life. It will become increasingly cost-prohibitive to drive to work, school, church, and the store. Consumer goods produced out-of-state or made of plastic will increase persistently in price. Crippling prices for food production and transportation threaten the convenience and low prices of the supermarket. Globalization will be forever reversed.

Our survival depends on our ability to live on less and work together.

Next week, I'll start to unpack what influences cheap and abundant energy has had on our faith.