The Skill of Ecological Perception and Peak Oil Survival

While the topic of global warming is a very important one, an even more important one is now coming into the light. We know that we are destroying the Earth with our carbon emissions and know that in just a few years time, most of us will be dead because of global warming. The topic I am talking about is what happens after global warming has taken into effect. What happens to those who survive the extreme heat and droughts and make it through to live on past the destruction? Both “Peak Oil Survival” and “The skill of Ecological Perception” talk about the aftermath rather than the before.

“Peak Oil Survival” is about the many solutions people have come up with to slow down global warming. It is also about how no matter the amount of ideas that are made; there is always a reason for them to not work. Some solutions can be changed to work while some, like hybrid cars, according to Aric McBay, “because hybrid or battery-powered cars are more complex to build, use energy-intensive high-tech and lightweight materials, and require more maintenance, they require more energy to build than gas-powered vehicles” (McBay, xii). “The Skill of Ecological Perception” is about how the only solution to stop global warming is to stop using everything we would normally use and start acting like we did before we grew technologically advanced. According to Laura Sewall, author of “The Skill of Ecological Perception”, “my hope for a sophisticated response to contemporary ecological and psychological conditions calls for a return to our essential, animal selves,”(Sewall,203).

So while “Peak Oil Survival” talks about the problems with the solutions, “The Skill of Ecological Perception” is just about one solution and the methods to its continuation. “The Skill” offers the one idea that “Peak Oil” doesn’t contemplate and doesn’t talk about. While it is never mentioned, the idea in “The Skill” is never talked abut because it’s too radical of an idea for society to use. The ideas used in “Peak Oil” are at least reasonable and solutions can always be made for the problems that arise from the solutions. They both want to help stop global warming but each lack the idea that things can sometimes go right and not everything has to be so radical or have problems to it.

McBay, Aric. Peak Oil Survival Preparation for Life After Gridcrash. New York: The Lyons, 2006. Print.

Sewall, Laura. The Skill of Ecological Perception. 201-15. Print.