Fracking Very Short Term Fix

Fracking is a much touted technology for pushing off our need to wean ourselves from oil, environmental concerns aside, for another twenty years or so.  But recent indications in the depletion rates of Bakken field wells suggest otherwise.  They are showing very rapid depletion rates.  Maybe we’ll gain an additional five years of environmentally disastrous oil production, certainly not twenty.

I urge you all to take this short interval as an opportunity to prepare for days when oil is scarce to non-existent.  Instead of investing in the big SUV, consider a small hybrid or all-electric vehicle.  If you’ve got a good southern exposure to sunlight, consider installing solar on your roof.  If you’ve got room to grow some of your own food, do so, because not only is it the only way to get non-genetically engineered pesticide and herbicide free food, when the oil runs out, the farm machinery that these mega-corporate farms depend upon is going to sit and rust and so with it the food they produced.

If you have the money to become independent of fossil fuels, do so, you’ll allow others who don’t have that ability to survive a bit longer by reducing the demand and stretching the reserves that we have and you’ll provide for part of a functional economy that can help continue the conversion after the oil runs out.