Alice Friedemann
Jordan Brown speaks with Alice Friedemann in an attempt to introduce her two books When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation from 2016, and Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy from 2021—both very important works about peak oil, climate change, and energy.
Alice Friedemann is a systems analyst, writer, and researcher on peak energy, resources, climate change, and the preservation of knowledge. She’s the creator of energyskeptic.com where she regularly writes.
Sections
Click on the time-codes below to seek to that section of the interview.
00:00 Introduction and Background
03:01 Grandfather and M. King Hubbert, 1950s, Hubbert’s Peak
04:29 Background as Systems Analyst, Globalisation
06:14 Trucks Are The Basis of Civilisation
08:23 What Happens When Trucks Stop Running
10:40 Battery Powered Tractors
11:35 Diesel, One Barrel of Oil = 4 Years of Human Muscle Work
13:17 Fossil Fuels Are Keeping ~6 Billion People Alive
17:48 Oil Makes So Much Stuff, Microchips
20:10 So Much of Our Knowledge is Stored on Computers
21:49 Peak Oil and Climate Change
24:57 Exponential Growth
29:45 IPCC and Exponential Growth
32:10 Conventional Oil, Fracking and Tar Sands
36:38 Some Problems with ‘Renewables’
40:39 Avoiding Facing Energy Decline, But Don’t Want Panic Either
47:40 Facing Reality
50:00 Cleaning Up The Mess
