Thanks to Luís for putting together this fine series of posts! I think the question he raises in this last post is an especially important one for the ASPO organizations.

Let me add another perspective. We now have a very strange situation--peak oil is almost certainly here (although some will debate this), but the naming rights for the crisis go to the financial collapse, even though I would argue that ultimately, peak oil is the cause of the underlying problem.

Furthermore, the price of oil is lower, rather than higher, and demand seems to be less than supply. With all of these considerations, many people see no particular reason to conserve, except for climate change, and because of lack of money to pay for fossil fuels.

It seems to me that trying to talk to political organizations now will be harder than it has been in the past. Every spare dollar is being used to (try to) solve the financial crisis. Without a price crisis, no one thinks oil is a problem. I don't know that we can give up on political organizations, but our message has to be more than peak oil.

It seems to me that we need to be looking more broadly at fuels, and understanding where the problems are, and what the long term solutions are. Natural gas looks like it will be a problem in the near future in Europe. We, or ASPO organizations, need to be looking at this closely, and pointing out the problem to elected officials, as well as whatever solutions we can find.

We, or ASPO organizations, need to be looking at electricity also. We can't take the narrow view that electricity will take care of itself, because there is wind and solar. Electricity, at least the way it is done now, requires a lot of oil-based infrastructure that needs to be built and maintained. Our solutions must consider real-world electrical constraints.

We cannot ignore financial interrelationships either. (It seems to me that ASPO organizations have tended to downplay financial relationships.) While it may seem strange, a reduction in debt can be expected to lead to a reduction in oil demand, because whatever would normally be done with the cash advanced by the debt (building cars, paying salaries to workers who buy cars, building roads, etc.), will be eliminated without the debt. Because of this, we get a feedback loop (high oil prices -> debt defaults -> credit restrictions -> reduced oil demand). This feedback loop is part of what made the drop in oil prices so large, since it tends to reinforce the more direct relationship of high prices -> lower demand. We need to understand these relationships ourselves, even if they don't directly affect what we say to elected officials.

There is now also a real need for the common people to figure how to adapt, because it doesn't look like we have very long for elected officials to do much, and for this to filter back to the people. Even people who are in ASPO organizations are starting to think more seriously about what they should do to personally prepare. Maybe it is time to start talking more about solutions at the individual level, and how to bring these solutions to the common people.