That's a great tactic in a conversation. A presentation, on the other hand...

Now, I read the presentation - and saw the usual problem that I have when I try writing about PO myself:

WHAT'S YOUR (for me relavant) MESSAGE?

"The problem of Peak oil is real"...
just doesn't cut it. 'cause the answer to "it's going to be a problem", whether PO or GW is, "well, we'll somehow get by."

Which is, of course, why Ralph had the list of "objections", that we will indeed NOT just get by somehow.

Bob Shaw's two-by-four approach is great because he's presenting die-off with the answer "head for the hills". And then more immediate solutions can be evaluated.

What do you tell a Rotary Club in Adelaide?? Hell, I don't know. What interests a Rotarian there? Start with the Saudi quote "my son flies a jet plane and his son will ride a camel" -- The Saudis know what's coming - does Australia(Adelaide)?? Well, Australia is even going to profit immensly from PO - by selling billions of tons of coal!! Who cares if we ruin the planet while we're doing it?? We (the rotary) are the moneyed people, we'll do great, won't we? Our sons will be sitting on top of it all just like the Saudi sons..

Now, (once you have the audience on your side..) give your real message: GW, Widespread poverty, Fear of the yello man, better asset allocation - what do you really want to say??

I've also had hundreds of conversations on oil, etc.. and think that almost everybody understands oil depletion in some way or another. Most of us know that the problem "is real" someday, while the discussion "well, we'll get by somehow" is the real Gordian Knot. For: we might get by, we might not get by.

So what's you REAL message?? To stop building roads? (i.e. better resource allocation..)

Just remember, there are thousands of people on this site alone trying to figure out what the real message (for ourselves, for local politics, for humanity) actually is...

Cheers and best of luck!
Dom

In June 2000, I was asked to speak about the "high" price of gasoline and the relatively quick run-up in prices from 1998 and 1999. Nationally, the average price per gallon (all grade weighted average was $1.69/gallon (locally about $1.58/gallon). Since this group of people knew what I did and had known me for quite some time, it seemed natural to them to ask me to give a short presentation. The dot-com bubble was in it's intial deflation.

I spoke of the typical cycles we saw in gasoline production (at the refineries) and the seasonal changes in price with summer driving demand and global demand for oil. But there wasn't a single person in that room that had any idea of how much oil/liquids we used in the US (19.6 MMBPD) or how much was imported (~57%). We were in the middle of an election cycle and candidate Bush was talking about "jawboning" the Saudis (later we were to find out he really liked holding hands with them).

I was asked a question immediately about whether gasoline prices would ever go back down (below $1.50/gallon). I told the room "no" or at least not for any sustained period of time. There would be brief periods of time when it fell back but if the room was looking for the days of $1.00/gallon gasoline to return, something very different from what we had been doing.

And that's hwo I introduced peak oil to this group. None had ever heard about it. I showed the US production right up to 1970 and everyone "saw" the production ever increasing (until the next slide showed 1971 through 1999. I showed a couple of versions of graphics with various production areas (Alaska and the GOM, in particular) and then a graphic that showed US production and the amount made up by imports.

And then, since this was a drinking crowd, I pointed out that peak oil is about rates. If you are rate limited (for any number of reasons) then it was like trying to drink through the swizzle sticks in everyone's drinks, rather than a soda straw, or a firehose. And that one day in the not too distant future (say 2011) what the US had seen in it's production was likely to be seen globally. And in the bidding war over resources, gasoline and oil would likely go much higher possibly driving economic collapses in various parts of the world (the Asian financial crisis was still fresh in people's minds and the flood of liquidity that characterizes a bubble burst had not reached the consciousness of most people around the dot-coms. I had been completely out of stocks for over a year at this point).

So, price changes and the challenges they present are a good entry point. To the people whom I see on a regular basis since that presentation, I seemed remarkably prescient. I have spoken formally on this topic off and on since then.

But I left them with the following thought: we can be "victims" of poor planning and inaction and to stand against continual,unending growth can be very challenging. There will be a time when the numbers simply do not add up. Our choices can be to take matters into our own hands, become informed, and make an informed transition to some other economic and personal model for the living.

And one question that one can ask and should answer if they are going to take this challenge seriously is this: "How much is 'enough?'"