Here's your gold star.

Your correct--I cannot encourage newbies enough to study, study, study Dieoff.com, and anything else written by Jay Hanson--He is all over the WWWeb.  I am terribly sorry he has withdrawn from the public, but I understand his reasons why, yet his legacy of thought remains for all to read.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Or about people who live in other places, where the planning for dealing with that ongoing energy crisis has been part of the social/political matrix for a generation. Whether that planning is realistic, adequate, whistling in the dark, or simply going through the motions is another debate, but it is truly a fact based one - and yes, I have tried to be as restrained as possible concerning war, because war would certainly cause all of the problems you feel inevitable. But again, that same sort of war was equally likely in the late 1970s - and equally due to Soviet and America oil production peaking, leading to a war in the Gulf (Iraq I was Carter's war, by the way, using Carter era strategies to retain control of the oil, with stealth technology, prepositioned equipment, and cruise missiles.)

Or people who looked around America between 1976 and 1986, and could see the writing on the old historical blackboard? (There is some Bismarck quote about God protecting drunks, fools, and America, but likely even Bismarck couldn't imagine the drunken fools running America in the name of God these days.)

This is one of the reasons I find so much of this debate a problem - what happens when you have considered this issue part of your entire adult life, change where you live to reflect that fact, and try, as much as possible (and very imperfectly), to live morally? (Yes, I find the profit impulse so more often on display here human - earning large amounts of money for listening to Simmons about American NG around 2000-1 seems to be much more part the problem of an attitude about getting something for nothing, but now, we are in Kunstler territory.)

I will admit, one reason to read all of these comments is to get some sort of feel for what will happen to America.

Before peak oil awareness - drive car, flip switches. After peak oil awareness - chop wood, carry water. I don't know whether that will catch on - but it is already a false statement. Most people living in the world today do not drive a car, and I would bet the majority have no switches to flip. And from your persepective, the chop wood part will be false for most people too.

A large number of people (most non-Americans) think climate change much bigger than peak oil - not that the issues aren't connected, but truly, Cat 5 hurricanes hitting the Eastern Seaboard every summer as a regular occurence is much more likely to make an impact on people than oil production at 'only' 40 mbd.

In a way, that peak oil is so important in America, while the rest of the world seems much more concerned about the weather is just another sign of how uniquely Americans live. Most of humanity actually experiences the weather around them, unlike Americans living in their seemingly perfected cocoons. (All of the public schools I attended lacked air conditioning - these days, I would assume that would be worth an instant lawsuit, to keep the students from dying like flies in the unbearable heat.)

I was not naive, but I had been distracted for some years in starting a family and having children, especially during the 1990's - which may end up being the peak of US luxury, wealth, and power.  Damn - I turn my back for a couple of years and everything goes to hell!

The combination of these 4 issues causes stress when I try to decide how to respond, amplified by my responsibilities to my family.  It's all in trying to guess the rate at which change will occur, because meaningful actions will require significant changes in lifestyle.  Making such moves at the wrong time could be a real problem, which in turn can lead to paralysis.  

I'm presently fascinated by the speed in which cultural institutions that seem so unassailable can disappear.  The Roman period in Britain (and the centuries afterward) is a good example.  Partly it is because what we recognize as the symbols of those institutions are just the external veneer - we don't see the foundation crumbling underneath.  And we don't like change.  Also, we tend to think of times in the past as periods when things were constant, but this was rarely true.  So we fool ourselves into thinking that change is unusual, when in fact it is the norm, and we cannot imagine the things we've grown used to being swept away.

I believe that if one were to live for a few more decades; in looking back one will see massive changes in the world, beginning about now.  We cannot know how it will play out, but I believe that most important thing to "do" is to keep an open mind, be alert, and be ready to embrace change.

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I would agree in terms of the overall quality, but would have to disagree in terms of overall impact. In the context of a society where http://www.wwe.com (professional choreographed bitchslapping, formerly the World Wrestling Federation) gets up to 50 times the traffic of the top peak oil sites, we have to be realistic about the degree of impact even the most heroic of our efforts are likely to have.

How many of the world's 6.5 billion people can even access this type of info?

Best,

Matt

People respond to price. They might bitch about the reason for the prices (peak oil vs. "corporate greed"), but once they realize the prices are going to continue climbing, they will wring the waste out of their own personal budgets.

Much depends on how quickly the transformations take place, and what people perceive their options to be. But when the price of energy starts to skyrocket, I guarantee that people will begin making major changes.

I go back and forth between being slightly optimistic, and quite pessistic about the larger scheme of things (I'm presently studying Joseph Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies.")  But even if our most optimistic projections come true, I fear we'll spend the rest of our lives hearing people bitch and moan constantly about how they miss "the good old days"

"Working the land" gives an academic like me some new perspectives. You start to see how much easier it is to move a big rock when you are many. Just as an experiment, we wondered if we should switch off the power for a week or so, just to see how we managed.

Although we have also come to appreciate just how important specialisation and comparative advantage is, aiming for some degree of self-sufficiency is great fun, great excercise, and profoundly meaningful in itself. It's a cure for depression if there ever was one.

But then again, we live in the country, own plenty of land, have a very nice neighbour of 80+ who grew up in a traditional farm, and who is a skilled gardener. Our other neighbour is a fisherman... If I lived in a big city, I might be more worried.

As I recall, there was also a pre-internet troll who provoked people by claiming he should have the right to pull into the left lane whenever he wanted no matter who was overtaking him. It was amazing how many angry letters they got.

While cycling home Tuesday, I got the "clown who honks just as they're going by" routine.  This is vastly preferable to the "clown who throws a bottle just as they're going by" which I used to get on rural roads in the 1970s.

american militarism might have really died in that moment.  he said no draft, and that guaranteed the manpower shortage that in turn guaranteed iraqi disintegration.

now, maybe you have a different meaning, but when people worry about resource wars of the future, i really doubt that americans would be so enamored of war that they would draft their children for global conquest.

if you are going to secure oil infrastructure (which insurgents have found to be unsurprisingly flammable), you will need a lot of boots on the ground.

you say you haven't seen a change ... in a different way, i'm making the same observation.  as much as the necons (are they still there?) wanted to run a cheap war ... i haven't seen a change that would give us wars that work (immoral as they might be).