The Oil Drum

The Energy and Environment Round-Up: October 14th 2007

The Oil Drum: Canada

Canadian Gas - Decline Sets in.

434 comments on World Energy and Population: Trends to 2100

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Manager-BW on October 17, 2007 - 1:53pm

Superb article. Thank you. With the press release from Accenture about their study around the world interviewing people's perceptions: http://newsroom.accenture.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=4601 perhaps getting this work passed around will encourage the average Joes to wake up to what's coming. It will be on the Weekend Link List Friday at http://newenergyandfuel.com/ with a very strong recommendation. I doubt that we're too late though. Rather we could be looking for policy leadership to mitigate the harm to those who most likely will be harmed. No where near enough attention and investment is being leveled at getting all the alternatives into working productive shape. But until 10s of millions of Joes catch on, well . . .

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ilargi on October 17, 2007 - 2:11pm

... policy leadership to mitigate the harm to those who most likely will be harmed

It's the leadership that inflicts the harm. To get out of that spiral, you need a completely new system of politics. The problem with that is that the current leaders have their fingers on all the important triggers and buttons and printing presses, and they're not planning on giving that up easily.

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Manager-BW on October 17, 2007 - 3:04pm

I agree - But what to use in place of it? A communist party as in China, soft dictatorship/democracy as in Russia or a hard dictatorship? The corporate business model doesn't have the cahones to put the money up nor should it put the investment, management, and labor at such risk. A government is a poor choice, too, as you note. Can a public corporate model be made to work or will it quickly be a bureaucratic sinkhole? Other than that Joe and Jane public has to become aware, educated, motivated and complaining about it. That means these articles are important. So . . . Pass it Around!

Like this: http://newenergyandfuel.com/

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Samsara on October 17, 2007 - 9:00pm

Maybe take a look at Jay Hanson's conclusions about Humans and Politics.

Description

America was specifically designed by special interests (e.g., General Motors, Firestone and Standard Oil) to require fossil fuel and automobiles to survive. Peak oil will leave many millions of Americans with no access to food or water and facing certain death.

This group mainly discusses what the evolved human brain "does". Besides "what the brain does", we can also discuss (to a limited extent) "how the brain works". Of most interest will be fitness strategies which evolved to address the type of absolute resource conditions imposed by population "overshoot", "peak oil", and at least a hundred years of falling "net energy". Also of interest, are critiques of current political arrangements, "realpolitik" (practical politics), and neoclassical economic theory.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/killer_ape-peak_oil/messages/1?l=1

http://www.thesocialcontract.com/pdf/sixteen-two/xvi-2-93.pdf

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GreyZone on October 17, 2007 - 10:26pm

Mr. Hanson's "killer_ape-peak_oil" group is private to members and apparently closed to anyone wishing to join at this time, as I cannot get Yahoo to give me any options about joining the group.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone