<DrumBeat: May 18, 2006 The Oil Drum We breathe it out, so it must be OK>

101 comments on Energizing America V [UPDATED: Full draft now available]

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Berkeley on May 17, 2006 - 8:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Now, all we need is another Depression or Space Race to supply the unanimous twenty-year political will to do it.
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Seadragon on May 17, 2006 - 9:10pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Could not agree more.  Good ideas that will most probably work abound, here and on other sites.  What's missing is the will to at least begin.  In absence of such, I must reluctantly conclude that change will not occur until we drive ourselves merrily off the cliff, and not one minute before. Don't get me wrong--I admire those who tilt at windmills. But all evidence points to Kunstler being exactly correct about Americans: we are a wicked people who deserve to be punished.
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Jack on May 18, 2006 - 5:11am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"Americans... ...are a wicked people who deserve to be punished."

I would guess that 75% of peak oilers believe this and close to 100% of the peak oil doom mongers do. My impression is that a large portion of the posters here are just rebranded anti-Americans, anti-capitalists or end-of-the-worlders.

There is nothing wrong with believing whatever you want, but don't act so surprised when the people you try to pursuade don't buy into your "doom is coming and you deserve it" fantasies.

I accept the general peak oil theory, but have to laugh when so many posters ask "Why does nobody listen when I talk about peak oil?"

The answer many times is that it is because you are not talking about peak oil, you are trying to get people to believe in your own doom obsession, and have just stolen the peak oil concept as a way to "prove it".

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Oilrig medic on May 18, 2006 - 5:42am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Jack,
  You hit the nail on the head.
matt
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Jack on May 18, 2006 - 6:58am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thanks. I stopped commenting here about two months ago because I became demoralized by the doom porn obsession that seems to have taken over. I'm glad I'm not alone.
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Oil CEO on May 18, 2006 - 7:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
You are definitely not alone. It is good to see you back. Many of us have missed your sane commentary.
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Bigelow on May 18, 2006 - 7:53am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It's Yin/Yang Jack. A "doom porn obsession" is the perfect reaction to the reality of happy-talk-news main stream media.

There is no one magic quick fix solution.  Energize America's twenty point approach is excellent. All our activity may or may not be enough to avoid catastrophe. If people want to know about energy, they can find out and maybe make their own estimations (including doom).

I would be perfectly happy if we manage to muddle our way through this challenge. I keep investing.

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Jack on May 18, 2006 - 7:58am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yes, I agree. Although I would have used the word "counterpart" rather than reaction. I don't know which came first, only that they are symetric extremes, neither one better or worse than the other. Yin/Yang is the right analogy.
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Essex Land Rover Man on May 18, 2006 - 8:19am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
One of my problems with having a positive outlook is reading the local and national papers to get a feel on how society is behaving. If everyone were like you and the majority of TODers i.e. fairly well educated, willing to make a small or large sacrifice for the common good, conserve energy etc then I would be far more positive about the overall outcome. Unfortunately, you only have to read the local papers about how many hooligans and street thugs there are around.

Americans might not realise this, but this is World Cup year and unfortunately for the Germans, England is in it. England has a bad reputation when it comes to fan violence and drunkenness. About one mile to the north of my local town, is an area of pubs where football "fans" drink and watch England play in international competitions in the pubs. Afterwards, whomever wins, the fans fight amongst themselves and anybody else in the area and smash up property either to celebrate England winning or England losing - it doesn't seem to make a difference. This is very common all over England. Scotland and Wales's fans are very much better behaved than the English savages sorry "fans"- I can't think of a better description at the moment. It is this type of person (unfortunately very common in England) that makes me feel that things will be worse than they really need to. If they can't cope with dealing with a football match, how the hell will they cope with someone telling them to cut back a little on driving or not driving at all?

England is becoming quite a savage society nowadays and this is when England is fairly rich and well off compared to most countries. When TSHTF, how bad will things then get? These savages/people are far more likely to respond violently to any polite request to conserve or cut down on usage.

Schools are now just beginning to install metal detectors for knives etc. It is only one or two schools on a temporary basis for a day at the moment, but in a few years time, my guess is more and more schools will have them and for longer temporary periods. I guess Americans used to New York schools would say it has been standard policy over in the US for a decade or two now, but as America leads, so Britain follows.

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Mike Hearn on May 18, 2006 - 5:24pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Psychologists have shown that people invariably overestimate how dangerous the world outside is, often by a factor of 10 or more - this is almost entirely due to the bias towards bad news in the mainstream media.

I'm with Jack on this one - optimisim is the only rational way forward, anything else is just wasted mental energy.

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Essex Land Rover Man on May 19, 2006 - 5:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
As I have driven through "fans" celebrating England winning as they swarmed all over the streets and seen the results to the shops the morning afterwards in my home town, I am afraid I don't believe you. To say all English fans behave like this is not true, but for a significant minority it is. England has a short history of drinking to excess and violent behaviour. You only have to read reports from the 17th century onwards and see Hoggarth's Gin Lane to realise the English are only carrying on its traditions. Drunk for 1d and dead drunk for 2d used to be the on signs outside grog shops as whole families marched into them to get their money's worth.

What has not been reported in the local press is behaviour near the main post office. Old age pensioners draw their money out; someone watches them leave the Post Office and then mugs the old lady in an underpass or down a side street where nobody is around. This is only very local knowledge to the police and surrounding shops and shop workers. Not many people know about this. Also there is the amount of thievery going on in stealing purses and wallets. The thief then goes into one of several clothes shops and puts the emptied purse/wallet into a coat for sale. Shop assistants find about 5 purses/wallets per week per shop as people buy the coat and discover the purse/wallet at the payout counter. This is only known to shop workers, the general public knows very little about it. I only know because I talk a lot to a couple of shop assistants about our football teams. So I would say media reporting of crime is greatly under reported. Murders obviously make big news and are fairly rare, but general crime is extremely common in England.

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Seadragon on May 18, 2006 - 8:42am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well, it's hard enough to get people to accept the concept of peak oil in the first place; I'm sure that adding in Kunstler without his admittedly extensive context in which he postulates this would just turn people off faster.  But you are correct, I suppose, that that particular quote is more cultural criticism (Americans have squandered our cheap energy, expect something for nothing, refuse to give up our precious right to drive, etc.) than it pertains to peak oil, although it is our absolute refusal to even consider this idea that makes Kunstler right on target, IMO. The fact that our so-called government has refused to even discuss workable solutions with the citizenry, engaged in debilitating resource wars, and enables our behavior just makes it all the worse. The fact is, we aren't going to prepare for this until its too late, many people are suffering now because of our profligate behavior, and many more will suffer in the future because we could bear to consider that the way we live is unsustainable.  If that's "doomer porn" so be it.
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eric blair on May 18, 2006 - 9:46am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"Americans... ...are a wicked people who deserve to be punished."

I would guess that 75% of peak oilers believe this and close to 100% of the peak oil doom mongers do

So are you claiming that 75% of the peak oilers are Calvanists?

I didn't miss your 'visions of doom and gloom are wrong' posts.   Because you never stepped up and explained HOW the nasty brutish parts of human nature were going to be avoided by providing a conicopia of plenty to make sure the bread, cirrcuses and soma keep comming to the citizens of the world.  And you've never bothered to explain WHY the option of powerdown won't work either.

But feel free to show how to sell more expensive energy in such a way that avoids nasty brutishness.  

Consider it an OPEN challenge the rest of you.

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Jack on May 18, 2006 - 10:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
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Jack on May 18, 2006 - 10:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
None of us knows the future and no one can say what will happen for certain. I have never said that everything will work out fine. Just that it is one of the options on the table and to pretend that you have a 100% assurance of the future is wrong.

My point is that the repetition of "doom is here and we deserve it" is not part of an analytical discussion, but instead a semi-religious obsessive masturbation. I see the doom fundamentalists as being the same as other fundamentalists. I can't prove that God won't call us all back or that Mother Nature won't destroy us all in a righteous fit of passion. Religious fundamentalists would bring their preconceptions to this site and rant on regardless of facts. The same is true of doom fundamentalists.

Stuart Staniford, Lou Grinzo, Halfin and others have lifted their voices above the din of doom on many occasions to say that there are a wide number of paths forward and that we can't know what the future holds. The framework that I see most likely is an extended peak that causes price increases resulting in the development of a lifestyle that accommodates the new reality - this would most likely be a combination of new energy sources, changed use of the ones we have and a more efficient use of energy inputs. I might be wrong - in fact I probably am. The future won't be tied down.

I believe that the doom mongers are doom mongers first and peak oilers second. In my view, they have reverse engineered the end of capitalism, which is their ultimate goal, and are today calling it peak oil. Tomorrow they will doom monger elsewhere under another name.  

For the record, I have never claimed that doom is off the table. Just that we don't know. I do find it entertaining to every once in a while say "Everything may just work out", because it is heresy to the doom obsessive faction.

Powerdown, to my mind is rebranded popular Marxism. We can argue forever about the merits of collectivism of various sorts. I don't see any clear pathway to powerdown aside from one forced on an unwilling public by forces of nature or an authoritarian government. I hope and believe man will successfully resist either.

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AlanfromBigEasy on May 18, 2006 - 11:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I have a somewhat related POV.  The future is just too complex to properly forecast.  A wide variety of scenarios could happen.

But what good does it do have guessed right ?  To have been Cassandra.

Rather I have focused on some overlooked steps that will help with Peak Oil AND Global Warming under almost every scenario.

These steps are not enough, I admit.  But they are something solid and positive (-10% US oil use in 10 to 12 years) and do not preclude other options.

My energies are better spent working on a solution to a problem of unknown dimensions, rather than trying to precisely define a problem that cannot be properly defined.

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Oil CEO on May 19, 2006 - 2:56am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well said. Your best piece.
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odograph on May 18, 2006 - 11:23am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"Americans... ...are a wicked people who deserve to be punished."

I would guess that 75% of peak oilers believe this and close to 100% of the peak oil doom mongers do. My impression is that a large portion of the posters here are just rebranded anti-Americans, anti-capitalists or end-of-the-worlders.

This is a good sub-thread!

I guess I lean a little bit toward "wicked" but not seriously.  I think people could be as happy, or happier, with a little more thoughtful use of available (and future) resources.

I am happily an American, capitalist (or post-capitalist), non-end-of-the-worlder.  It's just unfortunate that market players are making under-informed (and in some cases, just plain bad) economic decisions.

Get a happly little car, drive to the ocean/lake/river, and have some fun.  If you live close enough to the ocean/lake/river to ride a bike, so much the better.

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karma432 on May 19, 2006 - 8:35am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
In my opinion, "doom porn" about energy is probably overstated.

It's water and food shortages that are going to kill us.

Tim

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haggisbasher on May 18, 2006 - 3:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Wicked - certainly not, at least not to a greater extent that any other society in the world.  It is simply that the wickedness which does exist is made more significant by the economic and military power which the US possesses.

When I first became Peak aware, I read as widely as I could, and I found that I was picking up on every article that reinforced the idea that we were rushing headlong over the cliff.  I had to consciously force myself to take a pause from focusing on all the bads news (God knows, there's enough of that), and for a week or so I read as widely as possible, focusing on all the positive trends.  I recommend this, I think you may be suprised.  The really big question is not if change is happening, but will it happen widely enough and fast enough.

I prefer the positive (if slightly rose tinted) view over wallowing in pessimism.  

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Seadragon on May 18, 2006 - 6:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I certainly didn't put that quote from Kunstler up just to start an argument (oh, wait, that's what we're here for) but I do think Kunstler has some good points to make about the American "character," if there is such a thing, in that we do seem to be primarily interested in big suvs, big sprawling suburbia,fast food shacks, mindless consumerism, the "something for nothing" epitomized by Las Vegas. To the extent that character matters in dealing with the coming crises (plural intentional), we are sorely lacking.  It isn't the geology we can't deal with, it's the psychology.
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101 comments on Energizing America V [UPDATED: Full draft now available]

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