Last night I gave a Peak Oil talk to a bicycling group—Wheeled Migration—that is en route from Chico California to San Luis Obispo. These young folks didn’t need any convincing. They’re worried—as anyone with two or more functioning brain cells must be—by the obvious signs of a rapidly rupturing US economy and a political system too mired in partisan infighting and corruption to do anything but make matters worse.

But these cyclists are a sign of hope: many of them are already gardening and lowering their energy consumption. They’re on their way to a sustainability conference at Cal Poly, after which they’ll cycle back home.

Lily Tomlin once famously said, "No matter how cynical you get, it’s hard to keep up." I confess that on some days that pretty much sums up my response to the news. It’s good to know that there is more going on than meets the newswire. As I told the audience last night—which was clearly exhausted from a day of pedaling and swerving to avoid cars—we are in for some hard times.

But if we approach them with a spirit of cooperation and shared adventure, we will have the opportunity to redesign human society to a degree that no previous generation has ever experienced. We must do so, in fact, because our present fossil-fueled way of life is failing fast.