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Just want to clarify the point I made about the HB energy bill. Electricity is approximately $4 million per year, natural gas $1 million, and vehicle fuel $1.5 million (excluding waste management).
It was great meeting so many of The Oil Drum contributors including Professor Goose himself. I look forward to helping organize next year's conference in California.
Debbie Cook
Thanks Debbie:
Sometimes it is hard to work out what my scribbled notes really mean. I much appreciate having met you, both in Cork and Houston, and as I (gulp) get ready to go and talk to the local political folks here, your advice has already caused me to change the way I will go about doing it. (You also explained why I failed when I talked to our local Congressman's staff).
I second that. A big thanks to Debbie for all your advice about reaching elected officials.
I wanted to list what I considered to be the most valuable advice I received about presenting peak oil to elected officials.
From Senator Mary Whipple:
Ask for a personal meeting. She recommended 30 minutes as a good length of time. Be willing to talk to their assistants, the information will be relayed. Bring a one page hand out with summary and any links you feel are important. She recommended the summary from the Hirsch report as it is readable and authoritative.
From Alan Drake:
Sell the upside. Job creation, economic development, efficiency, consumer and voter preferences, etc. If you manage to sell it to your target then they have to sell it to their committee or constituents. Bad news doesn't sell.
From Debbie Cook:
Build relationships! This is politics we are dealing with. It's about knowing people, knowing who they know, knowing who has pull with the person you want to influence. Let me say that again, Build relationships! That is the single most important piece of advice that I got from the conference.
Send the right people. If I want to educate my city councilor about peak oil then I should bring a geologist. Preferably a geologist with tenure at the state university or better yet a government geologist. I work at an organic foods cooperative and that carries no weight in this arena. Also, bringing the chairman of the neighborhood association and someone from the small business council increases my clout.
Being deauthorized. These are elected officials, if they do something radical and impalpable then the voters will withdraw consent. If a politician increases the gasoline tax by $5 a gallon then the person who will replace them will repeal the tax.
From Gail Tverberg:
Use the right terminology. Gail said that she often doesn't use the phrase "peak oil" when talking to people. Sustainability, energy security, price increases are often more useful. Let's face it, peak oil is scary, politicians are scared of getting involved with scary topics. You have to present them with a message that they are capable of hearing.
Other suggestions and observations:
Peak Oil has a negative connotation. Googling "peak oil" brings up wikipedia as #1 and www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net as #2 Which opens "Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon." A politician is incapable of hearing this, it won't register. It might be worthwhile to coin a new phrase. I'll leave this to the PR gurus in the audience.
Keeping perspective. We have a minority view. I was at a Microsoft conference for the Vista Release for the city of Albuquerque and there were 10 times as many people present, just for the Albuquerque stop on the tour. ASPO Houston was The conference for peak oil this year and we had a fraction the turnout. When Elizabeth Jones of The Texas Railroad Commission or Richard Nehring presented I remember thinking: "what are these people doing here, they clearly don't get it." But upon further reflection I realized that as far as the rest of the world is concerned they did get it. They were the business as usual model. The model everyone but us is looking at. Keep this in mind when talking to new people. We are a fringe movement, a marginal voice in world affairs.
I'd like to illustrate this point. Kunstler registered this protest with Justin Ward from Toyota during the question and answer session:
I don't have the exact quote so forgive the paraphrase: When are you going to realize that cars aren't the answer?!? We are going into a world without cars and you don't get it!?!
How Toyota translates this: Hello Toyota, I would like to suggest that you change your business model from making and selling a product to not making and not selling a product.
Toyota is not capable of hearing this message. It's a square peg and a round hole, it won't go in. Kunstler got zero traction with Toyota. The end result was that he burned a bridge. This is the opposite of building relationships.
Toyota was the only car company at the conference. He made it more difficult for them to come back.
During the break I tracked Justin down and thanked him for coming. I said that I really appreciated his presence on the panel. Again, building relationships.
Tim
PS It was nice to finally meet all of you.
Thanks for the writeup, both of you (Heading Out, Tim).
I'm afraid both are needed.
Pestering annoyances, like Kunstler's approach and the one you took.
Just being nice doesn't drive the point home very well. Not to everyone anyway.
You know, I have tried to tell you folks that Kunstler is going to make an azz of you everytime he get's out in public, but you folks don't seem to get it...
You guys like to make little wagers around here, right? (the $1000 bet etc.)
I will bet here and now that we will still be driving cars for a good while after Kustler has given up this mortal coil....any takers? :-)
RC
If by "cars" you mean tiny little NEVs then you are very likely right.
Of course then there were all those predictions that Jim made to the effect that the American suburban model is utterly unsustainable in a finite energy world and that suburban housing values would crash, and look how wrong he has been about that. . . oh wait. . .
Hey hey WestTexas,
First, my point wasn't about cars and their future likely hood. My point was that Jim's comments were not helpful to ASPO's relationship with Toyota. Toyota sent a representative to a peak oil conference, that takes guts. Our feedback to them should be useful to them. We should have talked to Justin about plugins and neighborhood cars. We should have told them about the cars we were thinking about buying and why. Some of the people at the conference do have cars and will be buying a new car in the future. How long they will be doing so is an open question, but their future and our ability to influence their decisions is going to be largely determined by our relationship with them.
For the record I think Kunstler is right, we are headed for a collapse, possibly a die off of 2-4 billion in the next 30 years. I'm planning to relocate in the next year or two to a different country to build a life boat. But until the four horse men show up I am going to do everything in my power to turn this boat around. That means hundreds of silver BBs from plugin hybrids to victory gardens. Since I'm not in charge of allocating resources I need to influence those who are.
Tim Morrison
PS Westexas, I had a question about your presentation. You said that in the middle case the US would be consuming all of the exports from the top 5 exporters 10 years from now. What percent of total exports is this? And how long until the US consumes all exports? Also, it was nice to finally meet you. I was the one who said your presentation was terrifying. hope that narrows it down :)
And actually, Jim got a resounding round of applause for being a "pestering annoyance." (His "annoyances" have brought untold numbers to peak oil awareness.)
I for one found the toyota blather pure crap and was disappointed more attention wasn't given to the marvelous Alan Drake who was on the stage and has a REAL plan.
Hey hey Confederate,
Things get tricky here. Knustler is right. Alan Drake is right. But Toyota is going to sell more cars and America is not going to jump on the TOD bandwagon this year, next year or the year after.
Here is why it gets tricky, there are two different discussions going on here. Or more accurately there are two distinct discussions that should be separate.
1) What we should be doing. This discussion is about whether or not solar and sodium sulfur batteries is better than wind and pumped storage. Whether or not we should include nuclear. How we should structure trade and banking and the economy in general.
2) What we are actually going to do. This discussion is about how to reach local government, the media, business and society. What pain levels are going to be necessary to reach the average consumer. What is going to happen to the economy, banks and trade we actually have.
Both discussions are important and it is important not to confuse the two. Kunstler is important in waking people up; he smacks people upside the head with a 2X4 and that is needed. Alan Drake is important; he does have a REAL plan. Reaching Toyota is important; Toyota is going to sell millions of cars in the next few years and like it or not that will have an effect on how this all plays out.
My comment that Kunstler was counterproductive is part of the latter discussion. The people in the audience who applauded already agree with Kunstler. To that extent he was preaching to the choir, and in doing so he gave the cold shoulder to the only representative from the auto manufacturing sector.
For the record; my internal thoughts and motivation for thanking Justin for being there: Justin's presentation struck me as a sales pitch, much like Elizabeth Jones from the railroad commission. And to a lessor extent Richard Nehring and his 7 trillion barrels. Then I thought for a minute... This is how everyone else is thinking. This is how the world sees things. As far as the world is concerned these people are right and I am delusional... It's important that these three people are here because it gives me perspective. While Westexas's ELM is real and important to me, no one outside of this room has a clue about all of this... We need Justin's help with all the clueless people outside this room.
It would have been better for everyone if after Jim registered his protest Justin said something to the effect of
I went to thank Justin because we need him. We need a broad discussion about peak oil in all sectors and if we turn people away we are not going to get it. We have a minority view at present, a view the business community is not interested in hearing. If we go about reaching media, business and the political community with a message of abandoning the suburbs then little tinfoil hats appear above or heads and they continue on exactly as before.
Tim
ThatsItImout,
From the perspective of history (as in a 100 years from now), what makes the difference if Kunstler is 5, 10, or even 20 years off - it will happen. Debating the exact time is pointless and non productive, waisting valuable time in developing mitigation measures.
I have a favorite saying to sum up my point - "My crystal ball is cloudy, but the trend is obvious!"
Jeff
Hi Tim,
I really appreciate your post here and below, along with the responses.
All of the comments – Jeffrey’s, Roger's and others - also interest me from the point of view of a book I’m reading right now. It’s one I’d recommended to Robert R, before I'd read it myself - (my suggestion, which I explained at the time, was based on a single interview with a mediator who’d undertaken “Transformative Mediation” training):
http://www.amazon.com/Promise-Mediation-Transformative-Approach-Conflict...
Also, I recently read this book (below), which covers some of the same themes:
http://www.amazon.com/Facing-Shame-Fossum/dp/0393305813/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/...
The authors talk about conflict itself – quite apart from the particular situation or the particular actors - as generating some fairly predictable reactions in people. Namely, a kind of closing in and closing down, or “self-absorption” - and other common responses, which are discussed in these books.
It’s interesting to me to notice Roger’s language (which in some ways echoes Jim, with his use of one of the same words Jim had used in his write-up on the conference, i.e., - RC modifies as “azz”) (see http://www.energybulletin.net/36065.html), and also Roger’s use of wager. Jeffrey’s focus on the accuracy of Jim’s predictions, and so forth.
Anyway, though it may seem counter-intuitive, the authors, Robert A. Baruch Bush and Joseph P. Folger, talk about “empowerment” and “recognition”, which I could try to summarize as “regaining a sense of clarity in oneself" and “feeling empathy towards another”, or, to pick a random quote from the book to share: “…interactional change begins with a party calming down, getting clear and thus regaining strength; with this renewed strength, the party then begins to open up to a different view of the other.” (p. 67).
*Not* that the authors see the role of mediation as having the *goal* of “calming people down” – quite the opposite, in fact, by supporting people’s full expression. And doing so in a way that mirrors the expression, acknowledges and helps gain clarity.
I wanted to share this, because to me, (IMVHO as they say), some of these efforts to address patterns of conflict are illustrative of a kind of a contribution to our understanding that is as remarkable as any technological or scientific advancement. (I’ve sometimes also referred to www.cnvc.org, www.gordontraining.com, and www.newconversations.net.)
And may help us.
Thanks Aniya,
This is the discussion I was trying to generate. When I was writing the original post I thought about adding a link to How to Win Friends and Influence People, but I decided against it and only listed the things I learned from the conference. My original post was intended to help people reach important decision makers in their community and I used the Kunstler example to illustrate a mistake that some of us are prone to making when talking to people in our community.
If you are reading this post on this site then you already know what the problems are and what the solutions are. The next step is doing something about it. If you are reading this post on this site you may not know how to reach your community and that is what I was trying to address.
Tim
Hi Tim,
And I appreciate your acknowledgment - thanks.
There's something so fundamental here - it's about how people feel (emotions) and see each other. That's one of the essential discussions in books and other references (eg., organizations whose founders have also written some "classics" - Thomas Gordon and Marshall Rosenberg.)
It's along the lines of: how do we see each other? Is another human being only a means to an end (of my own choosing)? A "human being" or a "need object"?