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230 comments on A Thought for Today: "Losing Faith in Peak Oil's Transformative Power"

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totoneila on September 17, 2006 - 5:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hello Nick,

I hope you have been reading my Zimbabwe posts.  I believe this can be illustrative of the likely path ahead.  Mugabe's people are starving, but he has now purchased $240 million worth of Chinese fighters to further consolidate his power, and Chinese military advisors are training the Zim military how to supress popular revolt.  Recall that Mao Zedong was very ruthless and successful with this strategy.

Most of the riots we see around the globe are by Peakoil ignorant masses-- they pillage when fuel prices or electricity prices are raised-- they riot for MPP.  Americans will do they same when blackouts occur, or no fuel is available for their SUVs.  People WILL NOT riot or protest for early paradigm shift whereby 60-75% of us and our children will abandon their vehicles, then spend their days in manual permaculture--But They Should Riot for this shift in lifestyle direction if everyone would accept detritus entropy.  We are headed for the full Thermo-Gene Collision, IMO.

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

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Nick on September 17, 2006 - 7:05pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Zimbabwe was on this path long before peak oil, and it's situation has very little to do with PO, though clearly PO has made it worse.

I agree that PO won't make people riot for a new paradigm of agricultural poverty.

I disagree that such a riot would be a good idea, or that agricultural poverty is dictated by PO: agriculture can run just fine with electric tractors (or possibly on E3 ethanol), and non-oil fertilizer combined with crops like soy that have low fertilizer needs.  

Right now agriculture is dependent on oil-based transportation and ferilizer, and sudden depletion would be a big problem, but that could be fixed in a 10-15 year transition.

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p on September 18, 2006 - 5:22am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Zimbabwe was on this path long before peak oil, and it's situation has very little to do with PO, though clearly PO has made it worse.

Totoneila's point is *not* that Zimbabwe's collaps is caused by peakoil. The way I see it Totoneila just points to Zimbabwe as an example of a collapsing society.

Some "peakoilers" (Whatever that may mean: It is not an ideology, nor a movement) point to Cuba as well, also not because Cuba's predicaments are caused by peakoil, but because it shows that a collapsing society can stop the collaps at certain level. And that does not mean those people advocate communist dictatorship.

As Matthew Simmons said: we are heading for unchartered territory. Therefore we have no ready examples in history. We have to do with these to give a tad of an idea what might happen.

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Agric on September 20, 2006 - 10:37pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yes, I have and many thanks, though they sadden.

Just as sadly China is only doing what the USA has done, and UK before, with other countries' regimes as dire or worse than Mugabe's.

Somehow we have to get the awareness of peak oil, energy and resource depletion into the consciousness of enough people for rebellion to happen - the current model is broken, the current powers that be won't change enough or fast enough.

Perhaps the tactic of brief takeover of broadcast media is worth considering?

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230 comments on A Thought for Today: "Losing Faith in Peak Oil's Transformative Power"

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