Basically, airlines are consolidating (e.g. NorthWest and Delta) and cutting back on flights to smaller markets. The age of permagrowth is over; we'll see a lot of things now going in reverse. Airports in smaller cities may eventually close down. I read somewhere that there was a cutback of 11% to 12% in flights since last year; perhaps the remaining reduction in fuel comes from more efficient ways of flying the aircraft (less idling on the ground, longer glides in to landing).

Lag time can be a nasty creature—it beats you when you have dropped your guard...

Gas only became "too expensive" toward the end of the run up though.

Many were very cavalier about 4 buck gas for a while acting as if it was no big deal as we are all just pre-rich anyway.

Many are still in denial or just have a $hit load of dough.

Now at 1.85 gal a lot of people just don't have the money (layed off) or are playing it close to the vest.

Don't get me wrong I am all in with your big picture Analysis I just think that the "real" economic pressures are greater than most acknowlege.

Don't even look at oil the price of rice got hammered and last I checked people don't cut back substantially on rice consumption because some American banks are having problems.

The volatility in price must be unprecedented. The wackiness of the "bailout sequel #34" coming at us it seems like daily. I do not remember a time like this ever. Stability is not happening. I think we are headed for a "wheel coming off" situation, be it oil, finance, political unrest. The world leaders are in "reactionary mode", miscalculations are a given. The time for planning was before TSHTF.

In some ways I recoil at the fatalism in your post.

Yet in some ways I agree. There are Transition Initiatives (I like that effort very much), there is Plan C from the Community Solution, there is the Plan B 3.0 that you mention, and more. The point that I agree with you on is that no single plan is likely to gain enough mindshare to become dominant.

No one will ever agree 100% on anything.

But history shows great trends and movements do arise, usually almost spontaneously or in response to the times in which they occur. Perhaps at the right time, all of these "plans" and gathering awareness will make a collective difference even though no single one dominates. The times are changing, and like you say, in some sense (the macro sense) we can only observe. Yet we are part of the times. We may be swimming against the tide right now, but it may be that the tide will eventually come "our way". Soon, we may be swimming with the current instead of against it.

Will that "save" us in the way that most currently want? No but it may provide a way to a softer descent than many here foresee.

We are but observers Nate. Of course there is something you can do, you can make plans to improve your own individual chances of survival, and that of your family. But you are not going to make the future better for the world. The world just is not listening, and never will listen.

Exactly! The problem with over-shoot is that there is no acceptable solution anyway (or else it wouldn't be over-shoot). Not everyone is going to get through the ensuing bottleneck. Those that do, will do so because they were lucky enough to be in a niche that was marginally more sustainable than the others.

Given the way the World is handling the global financial crisis, which is arguably within our power to solve, then there is little hope when it comes to the less solvable problems of Energy and Climate Change.

As individuals we can improve our chances, but as a whole we probably cannot.

Sorry, can someone tell me again why planning and improvising are mutually exclusive?

There are many win-win actions we can take, and most of them require some mid-range to long-range planning.

For example, California tightened building energy codes starting 20 years ago and continuing today. As a consequence, California buildings use 30-50% less energy than buildings in comparable climate zones in other states. Since they did not "forget planning", California has reaped and will reap significant economic and environmental advantages which would never have occurred via the "free-market" without planning.

Boulder, where I live, started a Transportation Master Plan about 20 years ago (I helped). As a result of that plan, Boulder has well-designed and nearly complete bicycle system. About 12% of Boulder residents travel by bike everyday. Absent planning, with only the typical car-clogged boulevards of unplanned sprawl, the percentage of residents enjoying healthful and economical bike travel would be much lower.

Similarly, Boulder's Community Transit system, carefully planned and designed, carries around 5X as many passengers as the previous ad-hoc system. Over 60% of employees in downtown Boulder do not arrive by single-occupant vehicle, as compared to 5-10% non SOV mode share in unplanned or poorly planned communities.

The list of successful planning is way to long too list. In times of uncertainty, failure to plan is basically panic. The real issue is the appropriate time scale for plans and I agree that trying to predict the distant future and plan for it is impossible. But there are so many short and medium term plans that can help individuals and communities plan for the future.

Even in Mumbai, those people who planned when and where to run, were much more likely to survive (and even be interviewed as the Brit who slipped away at the base of the stairs was). Those who panicked and failed to plan, even for the short-term, were much more likely to be victims.

Similary, individuals and communities that fail to plan for energy and climate transitions are much more likely to be victims.

Hi Leanan,

1) Planning can save lives. Rehearsing something physically, for example. Some interesting ideas in Amanda Ripley's book.

http://www.amandaripley.com/

http://www.ashland.or.us/Page.asp?NavID=541

Also, I wonder:

2) If the US developed an energy policy that incorporated "peak oil", what would it look like in your view?

An example of planning: ag policy - more money into transition to organic (less FF input on the fertilizer side of it), education for ag careers, supporting organic and sustainable ag on a world basis. As opposed to current policies. Just as an example. Would this not count as something of a "plan"?

Look - I don't mean to be combative, but we are speaking past eachother. I was one of the 'peak oilers' who said oil was likely to plummet in price, and that we would likely never see more than $200 a barrel due to demand issues. I even called the exact date of peak in price on FT Alphaville...:-)

The bigger points are twofold

1)Futures markets (and therefore prices), due to being small in comparison to fiat currency and credit (leverage) will continue to give oscillating signals necessary for proper long term investment in conventional public markets.

2)Demand is every bit as important as supply with respect to valuing the marginal short term barrel. The difference being that eventually, when demand has sufficiently returned, supply is going to be even more constrained than would have been the case had we not had the financial meltdown (btw your comment about removing financials from the mix is incorrect - the correlations would still be over 90%). The other salient difference being that humans reproduce on human time scales and oil does not.

Peak oil has always been about oil supply not being able to keep up with oil demand. Just like everything else though, we will 'borrow' from future to make today 'seem' better. Demand has dropped far more than supply for now, which means one day supply will fall much further than demand. If you are suggesting that the Peak Oil community, (broadly defined, including Simmons and Pickens on CNBC), contributed to prices going higher than they otherwise might have gone, I don't disagree. But the seeds for the financial crisis causing the selloff were laid before there was much of a peak oil community at all outside of Colin Campbell, Jay Hanson, Richard Duncan, etc. The seeds were laid when Glass-Steagal was repealed, investment banks were allowed to lever up 30x, no-doc loans were approved, FNM, FHLMC eased lending standards, record fed easing from 2000-2002 flushed system with tens of trillions of credit, etc.

Bottom line - Peak Oil is real but was trumped by the credit crisis, which has now made it 'realer'. It just doesn't seem that way right now.

*And decisions made under the assumption it wasn't a bubble, by and large would have been good decisions (other than low energy gain, high externality energy investments like corn ethanol)

**There is a CHANCE that the way it has unfolded may be the best of both worlds. Slowing consumption gives leadership more time to choose better social ends than conspicuous consumption and turning resources into dopamine and garbage (on average that is - there are quite a few products that produce longer term happiness with low externalities). We conceivably could now allocate resources towards renewable infrastructure and have less of a public outcry than we would have withouth the financial crisis - more jobs, secure energy future, etc.

Obama is a good politician. He's got a real shot at pulling off something pretty intelligent.

I disagree.

The election of Obama demonstrates politics in America are just as bankrupt as business in America.

Hi Priority

How do you get it that Obama really understand "peak oil"? I mean, what are the indications? Or, do you know this directly?

Do you have "insider information"?

Last I heard, his higher level staff didn't get it at all.