Well, without quantifying the issue it's pretty hard to say. How many of the 85 million barrels a day are for non-energy uses?

I am not a chemical engineer, but anyone who has taken a materials course knows that petrochemicals are a major ingredient to society's goods. For example, polyethylene for plastic. Put simply, there is NO way we can live the way we do without petrochemicals. However, why bother asking the question posed by Gail when we will never live in a world of no petrochemicals. We currently use 20 mbpd for petrochemicals. That means long past peak we are okay, I'd say indefinitely too. I think if we taxed plastics we could be using them more wisely. For example, my dental floss is mounted on a plastic frame but must be tossed because I can't change the floss on the frame. Anyways, petrochemical uses of petroleum will always outbid transportation. So there really isn't anything worth talking about here.

I think the reports of the pending death of plastic have been greatly exaggerated. True, we make most plastics from petroleum feedstocks right now, and true, we use an awful lot of petroleum for those purposes. A grossly unsustainable amount, to be exact.

But a future with NO plastics? Forget squandering plastic on the soda bottles and plastic toys, there are many high-value uses for which would justify much higher prices - and thus options for making the required plastic stuffs out of bio-feedstocks. Take the contact lenses I'm reading thru right now. At $100 a pop the material costs could go up a hundredfold. Meanwhile they are enormously beneficial. The same could be said for many medical uses of plastics.

Again, there is an enormous difference between consuming billions of pounds of plastics per year - mostly for single-use, low-value packaging - and not consuming any. This is something the market will sort out just fine.

I also dispute arguments that we will loose the technical and organizational abilities to make plastics out of bio-feedstocks (not to mention the dregs of petroleum with an EROEI far below 1. Refineries need not be that large or high-tech to crank out high-value plastics. I figure our collective chances for being able to manufacture plastics in the future are comparable to our chances to make ball bearings and Vise Grips.

And God help us all if we don't have Vise Grips in a significantly de-industrialized future! Would life be worth living?

Perhaps we should express the question differently:

Can we keep making stuff without oil based transportation?

I see this as being worthy of discussion from two basic perspectives:

Without oil based transportation, can we maintain bau and therefore continue to manufacture all the stuff made with hydrocarbons?

Can we make the stuff presently made out of hydrocarbons cheaper and more easily than we can make them out of alternative materials,in a hydrocarbon constrained world?

In the first case, I think that technically we could do it, but as a practical matter we will crash and burn as a result of petroleum,credit,leadership, confidence,and other essential resource shortages.

In the second case, I have no doubt that numerous products made from oil are essentially priceless in terms of thier utility versus the amount of petroleum used in thier manufacture;insulation for electrical systems, rubber seals and hoses for machinery, lubricants,pesticides, and many other such products are absolutely necessary to our industrially based existence.

Surely we can somehow manage to reserve enough petroleum for these essential uses-if we can preserve bau and our lives.

Just as surely, we can easily get by without throwaway plastic food containers by using refillable glass,and hundreds or thousands of other throwaway oil based products.

Some of the ones that come to mind quickly include plastic decorative trim on consumer goods,asphalt based shingles, synthetic fabrics used for clotheing,toys,
sporting goods,most rubber tires(by switching to rail based street cars and railroads using steel wheels),storage containers, carpet and padding,foam cushions and mattresses.

In general nearly every cheap throwaway oil based item could be replaced with one made either from other materials , or else made from oil but made well enough to last a very very long time.There is no real reason, other than holding down initial cost, why a plastic plate or canister or chair should not last indefinitely.

And when such items do finally wear out, there is no real reason why the plastic should not be easily recyclable.

You don't need petroleum to make plastics. You can derived the ingredients for making plastics from plants. They're called bioplastics! There's even a magazine dedicated to producing plastics from renewable resources.

http://www.teamburg.de/bioplastics/index.php

Marcel F. Williams

Check out www.ecovativedesign.com

Growing materials with a substrate of local agricultural byproducts, bonded together by mycelium ( mushroom "roots"). It grows in under a week and is already replacing some petrochemical based packaging foams.

Is there any way we can keep hydrocarbons for "making stuff," while giving up transportation and other uses?

Higher prices for oil and natural gas so that they become too valuable to burn. Replacing coal fired electricity with nuclear and renewable electricity, so that coal can be used to produce petrochemicals presently made from oil and NG.

In many cases, small consumer products are packaged with very large plastic covers. This is quite often done to prevent shoplifting. This has an interesting ripple effect which results in extra energy usage:

1. Energy required to fabricate the plastic packaging.
2. Energy required to transport the plastic packaging to the product manufacturer.
3. Energy required to transport the larger packages to distribution and retail outlets.

Of course, with smaller packaging, distrubution centers may not require the same footprint, resulting in lower energy usage. Also, items with large plastic packaging require more plastic bags for the consumer to take them out of the store. Then the consumer uses more plastic trash bags for further transport to landfills and on rare occasions recycling centers.

Just some food for thought....and I'm sure a missed a few energy consuming steps along the way.

I'm just glad toilet paper isn't made of plastic.

Yeah, I know that it takes petroleum to harvest trees and make paper, but I'm sure they'll think of something (besides the hand ;-)

I just don't see that much of a problem assuming that the transition is slowish. Vast amounts of residual organic waste is burned or plowed under in farm fields. There is no lack of hydrocarbon feedstock available. It might require some new infrastructure to process it, and may alter ultimate costs, but it is available. Will we die if coke comes in cans instead of plastic bottles? Will we die if plastic lawn chairs cost $20 instead of $4 because they are made from processed farm waste?

The argument that the Market will solve all problems fails to reassure me.

I have the distinct impression that the Market is at the heart of most of the problems that beset us : financial meltdown, ecological catastrophes and global warming, gross inequity, and more.

I cannot trust the Market to work for the good.

To answer the question, 'What do we do without hydrocarbons?' I have a very incomplete list:

For one, elastics become hard to get. Which means underpants and socks will have to be held up in different ways. Condoms can be made from natural rubber, but may still become rare. The Pill will mostly disappear. Contraception will have to revert to old-fashioned techniques.

Foam cups and barquettes, cellophane wrap, milk cartons, plastic liquid containers, etc. disappear and have to be replaced by metal, glass and (oiled?) paper. Cans will not have a plastic coating.

Paints, colors and ink have to revert to plant or animal oils, quite a few modern pigments will go the way of the dodo.

Bank cards will have to be made out of paper or wood or metal.

A computer could be built without plastics, but it wouldn't have an LCD screen. Ivory would do for the keyboard, but where have all the elephants gone?

Luckily, we still know how to make a watch from metal and glass. (wouldn't it be strange, if our most enduring archeological remains were to be watches?)

Naturally occurring oils, resins and lacquers can replace a lot of the hydrocarbons we use today, but certainly not in the amounts we need today.

If we lubricate all of our mills and drills and machines and machining with organic oils, will we have enough left to fry chicken wings?

lukitas

shoulders back and balls up front. don't lose your dignity in the face of death.

Friends, I come before you now to discuss a matter of extreme urgency and importance. My only hope is that we still have time to address this new crisis, which far outstrips peak oil in magnitude.

For years, we have sat idly by assuming that we would always have it. Our factories are all set up assuming that it will continue to be available. Every economy on earth is critically reliant on it. If it ever ran out, every country on earth, every city, every company, and everything would soon crumble into dust. It is all the more desperate now that it's starting to disappear.

We have reached the tipping point of peak water. Every year there are more thirsty humans, more industrial humans, more agricultural humans that are hogging up the world's water supply, and yet every source of water is already tapped out almost everywhere around the world, except in inhospitable places like Devils Lake, glaciers up north, or Bangladesh. Every year, there is less fresh water, drinkable water, potable water, and everything else associated with water such as wetlands, sea life, wild rivers. Mankind has an unquenchable thirst for water, and all of the products associated with it.

Imagine if we solved the Peak Oil problem, but let the Peak Water problem linger. The result would be disaster. It is time for us to recognize that two trends are at fault here: human overpopulation, and human waste of resources, including water and for that matter, oil.

What do we do without all of the things that are made from petroleum?

Well, whatever the answer, it will be tad long time before we do without them. Apparently, the worlds largest landfill is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Ocean-Plastic-Landfill-Algalita1n...

Because of the stability of this gentle maelstrom, the largest uniform climatic feature on earth is also an accumulator of the debris of civilization. Anything that floats, no matter where it comes from on the north Pacific Rim or ocean, ends up here, sometimes after drifting around the periphery for twelve years or more. Historically, this debris did not accumulate because it was eventually broken down by microorganisms into carbon dioxide and water. Now, however, in our battle to store goods against natural deterioration, we have created a class of products that defeats even the most creative and insidious bacteria. They are plastics. Plastics are now virtually everywhere in our modern society. We drink out of them, eat off of them, sit on them, and even drive in them. They’re durable, lightweight, cheap, and can be made into virtually anything. But it is these useful properties of plastics, which make them so harmful when they end up in the environment. Plastics, like diamonds, are forever!

What's more, this garbage dump poses a quiet threat to human well-being.

It’s not just entanglement and indigestion that are problems caused by plastic debris, however. There is a darker side to pollution of the ocean by ubiquitous plastic fragments. As these fragments float around , they accumulate the poisons we manufacture for various purposes that are not water-soluble....

....These are not like heavy metal poisons which affect the animal that ingests them directly. Rather, they are what might be called “second generation “ toxics. Animals have evolved receptors for elaborate organic molecules called hormones, which regulate brain activity and reproduction. Hormone receptors cannot distinguish these toxics from the natural estrogenic hormone, estradiol, and when the pollutants dock at these receptors instead of the natural hormone, they have been shown to have a number of negative effects in everything from birds and fish to humans....

....A trillion trillion vectors for our worst pollutants are being ingested by the most efficient natural vacuum cleaners nature ever invented, the mucus web feeding jellies and salps (chordate jellies that are the fastest growing multicellular organisms on the planet) out in the middle of the ocean. These organisms are in turn eaten by fish and then, certainly in many cases, by humans. We can grow pesticide free organic produce, but can nature still produce a pesticide free organic fish? After what I have witnessed first hand in the Pacific, I have my doubts.

As my grandmother used to say, "what goes around, comes around."

The 1950's mantra, "better living through chemistry" takes on a whole new dimension fifty years later.

I've always tended to place my bets on good ol' Tom Malthus, I don't see us "engineering" our way out of this one, and unlike times past when large City States and their populations thought they would go on forever (you know like now...), history proved them very very wrong.

Unlike any other time in history we have one item that is different (human psychology has not really changed), when we REALLY start to fight over the scraps, we now have the capability to ensure that not one group dies, but all of em'. The "Bang" will be quick, but the "whimper" will take a while...

Humans did OK without plastics until a hundred years or so ago, and without many things made from plastic until about 50 years ago.

After about 3/4's of the world's population dies off, humans will once again learn to live without plastic.

Being optimistic, of course.

Almost everything we're currently making from oil can also be made from coal. Over the detour of calcium carbide, we get to acetylene, wich is a hydrocarbon.
On the basis of acetylene, most, if not all, products of modern petrochemistry can be created.
Granted, it does consume more energy, and thus is more expensive than using dirt-cheap oil as a precursor, but it is possible.
Recycling plastics will become a huge market in turn, and also durable goods will see a comeback.

http://rawstory.com/2010/03/ibm-invents-earthfriendly-plastics-plants/

In my opinion the problem is not availability of petroleum feed stock but the ability to maintain a production and distribution system.

Production and distribution of low value (JUNK) plastic will cease due to feed stock price escalation. This will significantly reduce feed stock requirements.

The world economy will continue to deteriorate due to debt at all levels from the individual house hold to the sovereign nation. Increasing cost of essential resources such as petroleum, copper, coal, steel, etc. will ensure the inevitable collapse of the economy.

At some point in this international economic decline, there may not be enough customers with money to purchase any thing but the most essential items. The result will be elimination of producers. As producers fail and consumers have ever decreasing income, and savings, the amount of feed stock required will not be a problem.

The solution is to learn to live as my family did in the 1930s. Both of my grandmothers died at 92 and my mother in law died at 101. My point is that you can live a long, productive, happy life in seemingly primitive conditions, if you face reality and make the right choices.

The sooner that we give up on business as usual and start preparing to live as people did prior to the petroleum age the better our chances of living joyful productive lives.

History guy here. All of us but the Japanese got off whales. We can get off oil. I know, I have to do it every time a hurricane hits here. When I grew up, I ate food that came from within walking distance with some of it grown in the yard. You sound like the Romans at the start of the Dark Ages. Do you think we will lose the formula for concrete for another 1800 years? This is a problem, but it is not THE problem. The problem is we are going to end up killing each other on purpose.

We need hydrocarbons, and will need them in any conceivable future. There are many avenues how to get them, without reliance on biomass or fossils. One way is plasma arc recycling of existing landfills and other waste heaps. The other is electricity + CO2 from air + water:
LA-UR-07-7897: Green Freedom: A Concept for Producing Carbon-Neutral Synthetic Fuels and Chemicals (PDF, 1.8MB)
LA-UR-08-1805: Green Freedom Synthetic Fuels and Chemicals Production (PDF, 1.2MB)

While many petrochemicals are used for making industrial and personal luxury goods, in a country like mine (India) the most critical product from petroleum is the chemical fertiliser mainly Urea which had enabled India to be self sufficient in food grain production. Though organic fertilisers are desirable their production is not adequate to meet the huge demand for grain production. I wonder what we aould do to meet the food grain needs if the petroleum feedstock is not available for fertilser production.

Gail,

Thanks for the funny video. But, most of the stuff our "hydrocarbon man" lost can be replaced by biopolymers produced from sugars that come from biomass. Here is one example of how this can be done.

Dow and Cargill formed a joint venture (Natureworks LLC) in the late 90's and built a plant in Blair, Nebraska that is producing Ingeo, a poly-lactic acid (PLA) biopolymer, since 2003. The original source of the sugars was corn, but the sugars can come from any cellulosic material really. Dow pulled out a few years later (oil still too cheap, I suppose) and NatureWorks LLC became a joint venture between Cargill and Teijin. A year ago, Cargill acquired full ownership of NatureWorks.

Ingeo can be made transparent or opaque, rigid or flexible and has been used to make everything from packaging and consumer goods to fibers for apparel. You can buy Ingeo products now (they cost a bit more, I found) and they have the added advantage of biodegradability so they will not stay "for ever" in the landfill.

Now if you couple this technology to (a) the fact that we use less than 10% of the oil for materials (see previous post by David.ChE), and (b) a strong push to reduce, reuse and recycle (prices will add an extra incentive), you can come up with a realistic scenario of replacing oil as the feedstock for the materials our "hydrocarbon man" needs. Sugars are, after all, hydrocarbons and we have some very smart "molecular engineers" who know how to transform molecules into other molecules. Ingeo is (or rather, should be) just the beginning.

Ingeo-like materials cannot replace the roof shingles from HM's home (at least, I do not think so). But, there are other alternatives for roof coverings.

I am not trying to say that it will be an easy transition. But, this looks much more feasible (from a mass and energy balance point of view) than replacing a substantial portion of transportation fuels with biofuels.

Home page for NatureWorks LLC

Polystyrene, aka Styrofoam when expanded, dissolves readily in acetone making a "lacquer" that I've experimented with for weatherproofing wood. It doesn't work very well (and it's dangerously flammable), but it illustrates the kind of things that could, possibly anyway, be done. And I'm not even a chemist - heh.

Hard plastics replaced bone and horn, for example, in knife handles. I dont see any reason why this situation cannot be reversed.

It seems that TOD is falling prey to the same misunderstanding of peak oil as the common ignorant response.

"Oil is going to run short some day," we say.
"Impossible! Oil will never run out!" cries the indignant middle-classed suburbanite in his 4WD at the burger drivethrough.
"Of course it's not going to run out, but it will run short."
"Nonsense! Oil will never run out."

This is not the first article where Gail wonders what will happen when the oil runs out. Surely TOD can do better than this, I was hoping that with the well capped we'd be spared from the endless run of articles about the Gulf of Mexico spill and could have more varied topics again. But if DOOOOOOOOOOOOM! is the only option, well give me more drill bits and concrete cubby houses.

If we were prepared to pay an infinite price, then an infinite amount of liquid hydrocarbons would be available for petrochemical feedstocks. We could produce them from coal, tarsands, oil shale, or a sabatier reactor reacting nuclear/renewable derived electrolytic hydrogen with carbon dioxide derived from limestone.

So a more appropriate question is: how much can we afford to pay for each oil application, what is the resource set available at different prices at each time and depletion level, and how is demand suppressed as price increases?

Basically, as the supply set becomes more expensive, the supply and demand curves for each application cross at different points. The more expensive, the lower demand, etc. But ultimately, as prices rise and disposible income diminishes, the entire economy will contract because of feedback effects. So the answer as to what we would do with less conventional oil available is:
consume less, partly through efficiency, partly through alternative energy sources and partly through becoming poorer. Difficult to be any more specific than that.

Isn't this question why we are all here?

Industry is trying to scale back on crude in the petrochem department, but it can only do so much in the crude based world we have created.

Take a DVD cases. It has a decorative holes cut in the case. Saves 20% of the plastic over the old cases. Water bottles? They also cut 20% of the plastic with thinner shaped bottles and smaller caps.

But even if we did find out how to burn water for energy, petrochemicals make up roughly 9% of every barrel of crude goes to petrochemical use.

If we stopped burning crude this instant, we would still suck the wells dry, albeit not as quickly, just from petrochemical use.

I have to laugh at the knuckleheads that say 'lets get off crude.' What do they think they will pave the roads with? And roof our houses and buildings? The tires on our electric cars...the Chinese clothes on our backs..the keyboards we are all typing on...all crude based.

Some work has been done with making plastics from corn, but it can't touch the variety of plastic and rubber products that crude produces.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/plastic.html

So even if we all stop driving we will just be postponing the inevitable .

From this list we can see that we are still massively depend on crude for our non sustainable lifestyle.

There is no replacement for crude...crude is in the details of our life.

Solvents Diesel Motor Oil Bearing Grease
Ink Floor Wax Ballpoint Pens Football Cleats
Upholstery Sweaters Boats Insecticides
Bicycle Tires Sports Car Bodies Nail Polish Fishing lures
Dresses Tires Golf Bags Perfumes
Cassettes Dishwasher Tool Boxes Shoe Polish
Motorcycle Helmet Caulking Petroleum Jelly Transparent Tape
CD Player Faucet Washers Antiseptics Clothesline
Curtains Food Preservatives Basketballs Soap
Vitamin Capsules Antihistamines Purses Shoes
Dashboards Cortisone Deodorant Footballs
Putty Dyes Panty Hose Refrigerant
Percolators Life Jackets Rubbing Alcohol Linings
Skis TV Cabinets Shag Rugs Electrician's Tape
Tool Racks Car Battery Cases Epoxy Paint
Mops Slacks Insect Repellent Oil Filters
Umbrellas Yarn Fertilizers Hair Coloring
Roofing Toilet Seats Fishing Rods Lipstick
Denture Adhesive Linoleum Ice Cube Trays Synthetic Rubber
Speakers Plastic Wood Electric Blankets Glycerin
Tennis Rackets Rubber Cement Fishing Boots Dice
Nylon Rope Candles Trash Bags House Paint
Water Pipes Hand Lotion Roller Skates Surf Boards
Shampoo Wheels Paint Rollers Shower Curtains
Guitar Strings Luggage Aspirin Safety Glasses
Antifreeze Football Helmets Awnings Eyeglasses
Clothes Toothbrushes Ice Chests Footballs
Combs CD's Paint Brushes Detergents
Vaporizers Balloons Sun Glasses Tents
Heart Valves Crayons Parachutes Telephones
Enamel Pillows Dishes Cameras
Anesthetics Artificial Turf Artificial limbs Bandages
Dentures Model Cars Folding Doors Hair Curlers
Cold cream Movie film Soft Contact lenses Drinking Cups
Fan Belts Car Enamel Shaving Cream Ammonia
Refrigerators Golf Balls Toothpaste Gasoline

Thoughts on dire predictions. It seems an extreme view to assume that petroleum feed stocks will completely disappear and that we will have no more plastics. They will most likely slowly dwindle and their prices should rise to appropriate market levels. Once made, thermoplastics such as polyethylene and polypropylene are very recyclable. Thermosets (such as epoxy and polyurethane) will be a little harder to recycle. Polyhydroxybutyrate can be made from bacterial sources, and cellulose grows well and converts to Rayon, so the ultra-tweed market should be safe as well. Nitrocellulose billiard balls also lent an air of excitement to games in the late 1800's. I'm not particularly esthetically taken by corn-based packing peanuts and cutlery, but I can live with them. I expect that tires can be recycled back into rubber and not just mulch. And I am very relieved that the "Petroleum" man was apparently wearing cotton briefs and not Lycra.

If we look at the chart which opened this thread, we see some 73% of petroleum being used by ground transportation, which should be the easiest component to replace by alternative energy sources. Depending on exactly where the ethylene, propylene, and petroleum feedstock fractions go, perhaps 12% of the petroleum lands up in plastics and industrial chemicals. If we simply eliminated the ground transportation consumption and did nothing else (no extra coal, gas, conservation, etc.), we should be able to extend the lifetime raw feed stocks for plastics (etc.) by a ratio of something like 73/12 or by a factor of 6. Finally, petroleum is still about the densest portable energy source and there is no reason why it cannot continue to be used for this purpose if it is used conservatively. For example, I'd rather run my camp stove off of petroleum ether or propane than batteries, although a sun oven is an interesting possibility, at least for breakfast. It won't keep the bears away at night, however. LED lighting should be a big improvement over the standard thorium mantle gas lamp, however. Sun and hiking (energy recovery) can both be exploited to recharge lighting, GPS, and radio batteries. A solar powered Kindle also seems like an attractive idea.

Finally, looking towards the next generation, we seem to be fixated on where our next gallon of petroleum will be coming from, rather than on setting aside some wells and reserves for our children (and beyond). This seems particularly thoughtless, considering how often various sorts of family values are trotted out as excuses for everything else. It is reminiscent of showing up as a guest, cleaning out the refrigerator and departing without so much as a thank you.

"Nonsense! Oil will never run out."...

Peak oil...it is just a theory. That is what my wife's lady stockbroker told her.

Dismissing peak oil as 'just a theory' is an easy and quick way to rebut PO.

If the question is when we will peak - yes we can only theorize.

If the question is if we will peak - then it is not a theory and only a question of time.

No one knows the exact peak date for world oil production, but we do know that time will come in the not so distant future. Finding the peak is not hard problem once we can look back on it by a few years...but we need some time to do it...again, only time will settle this debate.

And the possibility may be that we find another big discovery and the peak dates look more like a double top stock market chart than the drop over a cliff.

But all this does not really matter. The bottom line is we are running out of crude no matter how the hard the spin doctors try to masturbate the facts.

The fact that 'we have to estimate' reserves or useful life of anything says that the item in question does not have an infinite supply or life span.

I never argue with persons claiming that we have peaked already or others that claim the peak is 20 years away. To me they are both on the same page, just looking at different paragraphs.

"If the public does think briefly about future oil supplies, the question usually asked is, "How long will oil last?" This is the wrong question. Oil will be extracted in some insignificant quantity perhaps 200 years from now. The critical question is: When does the peak of world oil production occur?" ~ Richard C. Duncan

The US peaked in oil production in 1970 at 3,517,450,000 barrels Since that time we have never approached that figure again. In 2007 we were producing 1,848,450,000 barrels. That's a decrease in production of about 52%.

I always tell the proponents saying peak oil is a conspiracy and think that we have an unlimited amount of oil, natural gas, coal, uranium...actions speak louder than words.

We can look at global oil production and see what the general trend is.

We can look at the trend in drilling to see how deep we have to go to find oil. How many big finds are being made?

We can look at the quality of crude being produced.

Is it light sweet crude or high sulfur, heavy, hard to refine crude?

The light sweet is just that 'light' and is on the surface of the oil pool. Whereas the less desirable heavy sulfated crude is on the bottom of the pool. Does the phrase hitting the bottom the barrel mean anything to you?

Lately we have been putting much of our hope in the tar sands of Canada.

When we have to get the oil out of the sand and shale it sounds like we are hitting the bottom of the barrel again. Even talk about getting our gas from refining bitumen coal.

We're doing something near to impossible, which is to predict the future. Tons of IF's, AND's and BUT's that could happen. We just don't know.

As futurists we try to anticipate future events and the direction the world is headed in and as survivalists we try to prepare for those circumstances.

Whenever you are confused, always look at the trend.

Things can go in 3 directions...get better...get worse...stay frozen.

This helps remove some of that confused or wishful thinking and can help settle the war raging on in your head.

"It seems an extreme view to assume that petroleum feed stocks will completely disappear and that we will have no more plastics."

Yes, I agree. We will have plastics and the rest.

But at what cost?

As crude prices rise, so do all the other derivatives of crude...even food!

We got a taste of that in the last crude bubble.

Personally, I think it's a good time to be scouring antique stores and yard sales for things that were made 100 years ago and haven't ended up in the Pacific Vortex, and practise using them.

e.g. clocks or watches that you - (arghhh - indrawn breath) - *wind up*. Glass containers, metal containers, metal utensils such as steam irons, push mowers, the list goes on. Look for things that don't plug into a wall outlet.

Once one regains the familiarity with things not made from disposable plastic, or juiced up from the grid, one can then start to wrap one's mind around where to get them if they fall apart. Or have them repaired.

The problem we have is over-reliance on "the invisible hand of the free market". Try negotiating with it to get what you really need when you actually need it. Like trying to buy a space heater at the local big box retailer out of season....

Postscript : when you've paid a hefty price for a wonderful old clock, you have good incentive to repair rather than replace. Part of our problem is the disposable mentality of contemporary consumerism.

I think it's now been fairly well established by the info presented in some of the above comments that the production of petrochemicals and plastics consumes but a very small fraction of total petroleum consumption.

So, what can we conclude from that fact? Depends on how you look at it. Most of our petroleum consumption is transportation-related, and most of that transportation-related consumption is from the use of the personal automobile. Therefore, would it not stand to reason that if we made a concerted effort to simultaneously increase average fuel economy and decrease total vehicular miles traveled that we would then have 'produced' more than enough petroleum to easily keep us in petrochemical and plastic feedstock for a long, long time?

I don't think some people around here understand the concept of a hierarchy of uses very well. Burning oil in furnaces and cars is a far less valuable use of these precious resources than the manufacture of petrochemical and plastic, not to mention pharmaceuticals.

And whilst on the subject of plastics, so much of it is wasted on unnecessary packaging, that I suspect we could reduce the production of some of the commodity polymers such as polyethylene, and polypropylene by over 50% without suffering severe societal hardship.

Let us also remember that back in the Golden Age of plastics during the 1950s and 1960s, the petroleum industry aggressively strove to expand the use of plastics into every conceivable cranny of American life . ("Benjamin, I want you to remember just one word ..... Plastics!). So there is considerable fat in the system that could be cut out.

Being that the volume of petroleum feedstock for petrochemicals and plastics is so much smaller than that for auto fuel, that says to me that the production of bio-polymers is a far more sensible use of valuable agricultural land than growing marginally energy-positive ethanol to put in cars. First things first.

And as a somewhat more general comment: it is a mistake to assume that light to medium manufacturing (other than the obvious case of petrochemicals and plastics) is very heavily dependent upon petroleum for things other than transportation of raw material in and product out. The reason is that most small to medium-size manufacturing facilities use electricity in the actual manufacturing activities and little if any petroleum.

If a viable way is not found soon and immediately implemented to humanely accelerate the current decline in human fertility rates worldwide, the end of plastics and other 'essential' petro products will likely not take on the significance it does in our time?

As Fred Magyar has noted, the current huge scale and unbridled growth of absolute global human population numbers in our time is the global challenge that dwarfs all other human-driven threats to human wellbeing and environmental health.

There is an undeveloped deposit of tar sands in Canada that is rich in the aromatic hydrocarbons that some plastics like styrene are made from. It's likely there are other similar oil sands deposits, but as long as oil is cheap they are not economic.

As a chemical engineer I know it is possible to transform biomass, coal of tar sands into many different chemicals. Cost is the issue and the byproduct mix isn't always good. Biomass is a limited option because 50% is already being harvested. We have perhaps 100 years of lower grade fossil resources if we can maintain today's style economy. The higher costs mean it's most likely that we will decline economically.

Spring, you got to get with the program. (USA's program that is.)

Consumption and waste is good...recycling, reusing and doing without is bad...

Check out out world according to Victor Lebow

"Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption...We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption."

Victor Lebow was a 20th century economist and retail analyst, perhaps best known for his quotation regarding the formulation of American consumer capitalism found in his paper "Price Competition in 1955"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lebow

IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE TO DO A 180...Without compulsive spending and conspicuous consumption funded by unaffordable debt, we would fail as a country. Since our economy if fueled 70% by the consumer, we must stay in debt and consume by any means necessary to keep the Ponzi scheme from collapsing.

We must make shoddy products that self-destruct quickly - so new products are in constant demand to keep the workforce of drones working. All the while squandering natural resources. But on a positive note, we are increasing the business of the landfills.

We must not grow our own food. We must buy poisonous food from chemical laden farms. Our concrete jungles could never hope to allow anything else from their inhabitants.

http://i685.photobucket.com/albums/vv219/keepitlow456/DSC02545pot.jpg

Would you rather eat an embalmed potato or a live potato? The store bought 'Green Giant' red potato vs home grown live KB potato. Both stored for 7 months in my root cellar.

And we must squander fossil fuels as fast as possible to keep the economy booming. What would all the tourists traps from Las Vegas to Florida do without the travelers? And the multitude of business that depend on travel along the pilgrimage routes?

On an a more global level, lets say everyone becomes voluntary simplicity and frugal squirrel devotees. We recycle, reuse, repair and just say NO to buying more crap. If we stop buying all the stuff that America imports from China - who keeps the 1.3 billion plus people in China from starving, so they do not go back to old ways of trying to take over the world?

We can see we have created a time bomb. Even the highest level brainiac economists can't fix what ails us. Our whole system is based on an unsustainable model that will eventually collapse no matter how much money that is printed up by the Fed. (...they don't even need to print money nowadays, all that needs to be done to create billions is to magnetize a silicon chip!)

Tony Benn's take on things:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnserZOf1-4&feature=related

We can see in the pop chart above, the population was pretty steady over the centuries. People lived within natures boundaries. They grew their food, burned wood for fuel and ate the game and fish nature provided...until the age of fossil fuels.

Whale oil or wood was the prevalent fuel up to that time. As whale oil was running out, coal and liquid coal (crude oil) came on board. Then petroleum / natural gas based fertilizers made cheap food possible.

Fossil fuels allowed people to move from an agrarian from of life to an urbanized city lifestyle that removed all the hard and dirty work of growing and producing one's own food. Fossil fusels also made possible many areas of life extending improvements to humans. And people spread to all corners of the planet and flourished...but by an artificial and non sustainable means.

What happens when something is running at an unsustainable pace?

It must slow down to a sustainable pace - if it is to keep moving forward steadily and sustainably. Slow down = Dieoff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_malthus

It would be one thing if we all reverted back to rural living, burning trees for fuel and housing and living within our comfortable means allotted to us by nature, as our ancestors did back in the day. But seven billion people can't burn the trees!

When we live out of balance with natures intended means there is a price to pay to come back in balance with nature. And the price usually extracts pain from us in the adjustment process. Now renewable energy will replace some of fossil fuels benefit to mankind. But don't be under the delusion that they are a seamless and fungible replacement. There is NO replacement for crude, NG, coal and uranium...all fossil fuels.

It has been estimated that for the earth to sustainably support its population without fossil fuels a 90% dieoff must occur. I don't know if that is the right figure, but I do know humans could not live as they do unless it was funded by artificial means via fossil fuels.

So if this dieoff happens, of course there will be great amounts of pain in the world. But it is natures intended balancing act.

It also reminds us that nature does not bow to humans - it is humans that always bow to nature.

As my survival mentor says "to prepare for the unthinkable...one must first think the unthinkable." You have lost this key tool forethought preparedness by getting stuck in dream land. As such, you will fail to prepare for what awaits you by subscribing to wishful thinking. But the positive part of this is that you now have the information to possibly change your future.

But no matter how you slice it...

This...

http://i685.photobucket.com/albums/vv219/keepitlow456/popchart.gif

Is hard to fix without this:

http://dieoff.org/

You still have some valuable time left to prepare for what awaits you down the road.

We are in the 'Indian Summer' of a carbon based world. Don't wait until the winter sets in to start work on your preparedness efforts....Semper Paratus

oil is used in 500,000 products and nearly all essential objects are made WITH fossil fuel energy. Glancing at the list, I see pesticides are missing, I'm sure quite a few other important items are left out

http://www.anwr.org/features/oiluses.htm

Clothing Ink Heart Valves Crayons Parachutes Transparent tape
Enamel Telephones Antiseptics Vacuum bottles Motorcycle helmets
Pantyhose Rubbing Alcohol Carpets Epoxy paint Unbreakable dishes
Upholstery Hearing Aids Cassettes Pillows Car sound insulation
Deodorant Shower doors Shoes Awnings Refrigerator linings
Shampoo Safety glass Salad bowl Rubber cement Nylon rope
Ice buckets Fertilizers Hair coloring Toilet seats Denture adhesive
Loudspeakers Movie film Fishing boots Candles Water pipes
Car enamel Shower curtains Credit cards Aspirin Soft contact lenses
Detergents Sunglasses Glue Fishing rods Linoleum
Plastic wood Golf balls Trash bags Hand lotion Electrical tape
Shaving cream Footballs Paint brushes Balloons Fan belts
Umbrellas Paint Rollers Luggage Antifreeze
Model cars Floor wax Tires Bandages Sports car bodies
Toothbrushes Toothpaste Combs Tents Dishwashing liquids
Lipstick Oil filters Hair curlers Ice cube trays Electric blankets
Tennis rackets Drinking cups House paint Rollerskates Insect repellent
Guitar strings Ammonia Eyeglasses Ice chests Life jackets
TV cabinets Glycerin Nail polish Roofing Car battery cases
wheels Refrigerants Cold cream Camera Plywood adhesives
Anaesthetics Artificial turf Artif. Limbs Dentures Beach Umbrellas
Mops Ballpoint pens Boats Golf bags Caulking Tape
recorders Curtains Putty Percolators Vitamin capsules
Dashboards Skis Insecticides Fishing lures Perfumes
Shoe polish Petroleum jelly Faucet washers Cortisone Food preservatives Antihistamines Dyes LP records Solvents

Gail, the answer is quite obviously in the title of your post:

"What do we do without all of the things that are made from petroleum?"

"Do without", of course. Life will go on for some. Unfortunately I think many will perish.

A couple of comments:

First, as long as we can maintain a few people who are competent chemists, we need not live without ANY plastics whatsoever. There are some plastics that can be made without any petro feedstocks at all, if you know what you are doing. Bakelite and cellophane are two that come to mind, both were developed before the petrochemical business really got up and running. There are probably quite a few other examples that could be cited. As a general rule of thumb, I would expect to see us having to give up plastics in reverse order to their invention, with the most recent inventions being the first to go. The oldest - like bakelite and cellophane - would hang on the longest.

Second, just because plastics are used in so many things today does not mean that is a good thing. Plastic may last "forever" (not literally, but maybe at least as long as any human civilization has so far), but that doesn't mean that it retains its utility for that long. As most of us have certainly found out by personal experience over and over again, plastic things wear out and break very quickly. The words "cheap" and "plastic" just seem to go together. If we are ever to transition to a lower-energy, lower-material-throughput, sustainable economy, then making and using things that are really very durable would seem to me to be an essential aspect of it. The fact is that most of the stuff that we have now that is made out of plastic really doesn't fit that specification at all. Maybe our future is not having a lot of cheap plastic stuff, but rather having a few really well-made things that may be expensive but last more than a lifetime. Most of the few things I have now - all treasured possessions - that fit in that category are NOT made of plastic.

If only time was on our side.....

Sometimes I feel as if many too many are comforted by 'the courage' they display by seeing no truth, hearing no truth, speaking no truth and doing nothing to change anything while the clock runs out. We are facing a forbidding global predicament, but too few are willing to discuss what so many believe to be its root cause.

These circumstances are revolting.

Hi Folks,

Went to an interesting talk tonight by Satish Kumar of the UK Schumacher organisation, about his concept of Soil, Soul and Society. He talked about how we, especially in the 'West' are suffering from Nature Deficit Disorder ( as espoused by Richard Louv's "Last /Child in the Woods" ). He also pointed out our overbearing materialism - the fact that someone in Paris uses 50 times the resources of some one in Bangladesh for instance. While he was using an extreme case to make his point, his main thrust was towards the need for a simpler way of life. As he put it with regards to our possessions we should aspire to what his mother called the bud principle: to own things that were beautiful, usable and durable - wouldn't that alone reduce all that crap made from the black stuff?

L,
Sid.

Make substitutes from other feedstocks. The first "plastic", Bakelite,(as the result of a competition to find a substitute for ivory in billiard balls) was made I think from milk casein. Rayon was made from cellulose. Many many chemical concoctions can be made starting from alcohol - or ethanol as we like to name it now. Many more complex ones from coal and coal tars. That raw material will be around for a long time, especially if we get smart and leave a good bit of it in the ground.
Yes silly to leave a post now when everyone has moved on to the next topic.
I always meant to write a piece on how "Drugs and Alcohol can Save the World" You just read the gist of the alcohol part of it.