This is your Vietnam War to oppose. YOU have to get involved with those that YOU know and make the positive choice to FIGHT for YOUR future.

YOUR future is in the trash can and soon that trash can will be on fire. YOUR children and your children's children will have NO FUTURE AT ALL and be living at the hands of blind fate and worse luck.

It takes YOU convincing ONE FRIEND and they ONE MORE and so on in a chain reaction. Only you can do this only the younger people. My Vietnam was ... Vietnam. The older generations can only understand the status quo, they have lost their idealism. It is young people like yourself who have the chance to remake the world into something that all life has a place in. You must fight or die ...

The establishment will be against you, you will be hated and attacked, you will be arrested and harassed, you will be assaulted and hurt. In the end, winning will not be what it has been. It will be less. This makes the task at hand that much harder.

Good luck to you. You have taken the first step. The second and third will reveal themselves. Be patient - but not too patient. Use the time to find that one friend.

ermyers,
The end of oil will probably spell the end of ICE vehicles, but I would be surprised if people don't continue to live in suburbs, using electric power from renewable energy, traveling in EV's. The movement from agriculture to urban and suburban living took 100 years these types of changes take generations. You only have to ask 18 year old women/men where they want to live if they decide to have a family. Not many are going to choose sustainable farming or urban high rises unless I am totally out of touch with the younger generation.

I am retired so I can live almost anywhere, I actually like the suburbs( without snow) and am waiting to be able to buy a PHEV, when the price drops below $50,000. I figure I will still be able to get small amounts of ethanol or gasoline for the next 30 years, but use electricity for most traveling.

It seems likely that this amendment of the IEA's position re: the timing of peak oil will set off alarm bells across the globe. They are acknowledging what most here have long expected, the Age of Oil is fast drawing to an end. Hopefully this will serve as a wake up call to governments and concentrate attention on how we can prepare for the inevitable. However, I fear that most governments, particularly members of the OECD, will waste time trying to downplay the possible ramifications of declining oil production and to assure the public that everything is under control. I also fear that we will waste precious time trying to figure out how to maintain economic growth. Growth is not the answer - it is the problem!

"This could very well be a breakthrough"
I very much doubt it. FB doesn't even set out the facts frankly. He suggests a peak 12 yrs ahead while just about everyone who's clued-up sees the end of the growth curve is already 4 years in the past.

And a key point to understand is that being informed of the facts is a long way short of having any understanding of what they mean. The doubters of Copernicus, of Wegener's continental drift theory, and so on, had exactly the same information at their disposal. The concept that economics and politics are the kings of subjects, commanding the obedience of lower-class subjects such as mere physics and chemistry, is hardwired into the brains of the "leaders". That's why none of them chose to be physicists! The idea that "growth is a good thing and it can always be restarted" can only be thrown out via a paradigm shift to a new perspective such as only happens "when its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it".

Within a few weeks most media voices will be back to the b.a.u. chants about when the recovery comes, after the recovery comes, when we successfully restore growth, blah. The peak oil ~theory~ will have been last month's story.

As for a grass-roots movement to join, I'm in the UK, but the situation is international and you are welcome to collaborate over there in my own beginning efforts at http://energyark.blogspot.com and www.energyark.net. I believe there's some "transition towns"-type thinking going on in Portland OR, but you'll see I am far from persuaded thereby.

Hey ER;
Guess I'll join the chorus of advisers here for my two bits..

As Robin says, it can be a tough message to sell.. and given Steve from Virginia's intense version of it, you surely know just how even a well-intended message can go offtrack and probably lose more ears than it gains..

My approach has been to be very visible in my various projects for solving my energy needs, and just to make people know that this is one of MY beliefs and interests. I have a fairly UGLY homebuilt box and tower on my roof in a small Maine City, and I've told many neighbors about the Solar Hot Air Box, Solar Panels, Lighting and other house retrofits that are whittling away at my 'Imported Energy Habit'

I have "PEAK OIL! - coming soon to a highway near you. Got Options?" bumper sticker on our car, FWIW, and I don't approach it like I'm resigned to have people despise and shun me over it. I'm making preps for my family, and people who ask me about it, I'll explain to them that 'We're extremely vulnerable in our energy dependencies, and I'm looking for alternatives and retrofits' Many agree that there's a problem, some think it's overblown, but after supporting my position a bit, I don't insist on 'winning the argument', I agree to disagree without backing down and I just keep visibly doing what I can to devise retrofits and toss them into conversation and onto the roof when possible. They know who in the neighborhood to come to if they want to do more about it.

I think the most radical stuff you can do is get off the juice itself, and be visible and audible with your successes. There are places for yelling, but there's so much fear and anger blasting around right now, I think those messages will largely be ignored and avoided.

There are people out there who DO want to change, even if they're stuck in the cart-tracks right now. Help figure out ways they can wedge their wheels away from the ride. It might be like the Martial Arts idea of using the power of the opponent against itself, instead of thinking you can just butt up against it and beat it with your own muscle.

Courage!
Bob

Both ordinary people and power elites will change their minds once an iron bar called "reality" hits them over the head, and not a minute before. You will just burn yourself out in a futile effort to speed that along any sooner, so don't even try.

The things that could make a real difference for your (and everyone's) future are mass transit, inter-city passenger rail, and renewable energy. The more of these that we can build out, and the more quickly it can be done, the better your future is likely to be. I suggest that you focus your efforts on these. It is not necessary to convince everyone that the worst is coming in order to get support for these things; you just need to be clever and skillful enough to convince enough people - the right people - that it is in their interest to move forward on these things. It doesn't have to be a massive national program, either. Every little movement forward on these things in every little place does make a difference. It is a lot more feasible for the little people like us to achieve little things than it is to accomplish big things.

""Is there anyway an 18 year old such as myself can get involved educating? Where's the grass roots movement at?""

The real answer to your question, and something not many here will say to your face, is.....

It's already too late.

Find a place to survive as best you can. Get away from the cities ASAP, find a small community that will keep you alive for as long as you can. Enjoy the ride to the bottom for all it's worth.

Is there anyway an 18 year old such as myself can get involved educating? Where's the grass roots movement at?

The location of the grass roots movement depends on your location. Are you in U. S. A. or U. K.? Transition Towns is growing fast in my area (Colorado). ASPO-USA is also strong in Colorado, so we are fortunate in that regard. Good luck wherever you are.

I think that everybody is still educating themselves; this is a complex issue. It is hard enough to see the problem. But what is really hard is to find viable approaches. Even among the educated, there's only the most general ideas about a general direction for appropriate responses. Look at TOD: we've seem some posts by Herman Daly and some others, but there is nothing even close to a consensus on which direction we should take. It's hard to build a movement when you can't answer the question, "well, what should we do?" with more than a vague response. It's the end of the growth economy, but what will replace it? And what policies will the movement advocate? And then when you have these policies, how do you popularize them?

I know, this isn't that helpful: more questions than answers. But the problem is that even among the well informed, there are real questions for which we don't have answers. I'm working on it!

Keith

ER -- You will get a lot of advice, including sensible advice that is completely contradictory. In the spirit of Yogi Berra I would say: heed all of it. I have some thoughts:

This could very well be a breakthrough, which could bring price raises in the coming weeks.

Be careful here. Daily price ticks have little to do with supply pronouncements from shops like IEA. Oil is up pretty big today, for instance, but it is driven by the weakening dollar and the domestic financials-buzzed DJIA. I would not get too hooked on what prices do in the near term -- you can find posts on this site literally calling for $20/bbl and $200/bbl by the end of the year. Both are possible and neither is welcome.

Is there anyway an 18 year old such as myself can get involved educating?

Absolutely, take a position on oil supplies that you are comfortable defending based on strong evidence and let people know your beliefs. They will be impressed by your knowledge but expect a lot of pushback, including an insistence that 'drill baby drill' is indeed the answer. Make your case firmly and calmly. You may not convince your particular antagonist, but others around you will start to think....

At 18, your prime learning years are very much ahead of you. In addition to research, set aside a good chunk of time doing practical work. There are a great many skills that will be needed in the future, more than you can be expected to master, so pick what seems most at hand and attack it. These skills mostly relate to determining the best ways to manage food, water, and energy closer to the source.

Where's the grass roots movement at?

This is an interesting question. Awareness of the troubling signs ahead is broad but not at all deep. I'll bet you can find a committed group of activists nearby. But the emphasis these days on taking local action works a bit against national scale organization. I also happen to believe people, young people especially, are more alienated from national politics than in past times, as they sense, correctly, very little difference in the governing parties. The time is right to get involved locally, but I wouldn't expect a mass movement a la the Vietnam era in the near future.

Ermyers, I am a part of the grassroots movement of sustainable farming. I am saddened to see all of these disheartened people who dwell in the downtrodden mind, and now thrive on negativity. Statements like "your life is f*cked, it's all over, there's no hope" are unlikely to help anyone.

The sustainable farming movement is called Permaculture, which is a term I'm sure is familiar to many readers on this forum, and is important because it has the potential to feed people without farm machinery. Permaculture practices can be completely independent of the fossil fuel/economic system, and there are many examples of this all over the world. In fact it's so successful that many permaculture farms are overwhelmed with abundance. It yields such results in the best of conditions, but it also has proven to yield impressive crops in an area of Jordan that was previously considered a blasted unfarmable wasteland.

I see that you live in Portland; I myself live in Eugene, and have started a permaculture farm here on my 20 acres, with the intention of enlivening the community here. You see, Permaculture is more than just a system of farming, it is about generating your OWN economy, so you don't need the doomed national one. Portland is fortunate to have a very large permaculture following. You can take intensive permaculture training courses which will arm you with the core principles and a diversity of practical and design skills. What's more, you do not need a 20 acre farm to practice it on. Even a suburban yard can be made useful with conversion to an Edible Forest Garden.

If you have not already done so, I recommend that you partake of some of the Permaculture instruction available here in Oregon. You will meet people who I believe are the kind of activists for which you seek, because they are willing to face the paradigm shift with positive personal action, and not just lament the loss of their flying car that folds into a briefcase. Putting your foot forward as an example to others in your community as one who practices a new cultural form that is materially frugal yet totally rewarding socially, will do more good than any amount of howling at a moribund bureaucracy or delusional captains of industry.

If you have any questions, I will do my best to answer them to the best of my knowledge.

Before educating others, start educating yourself.

Here's a start:
- the global spare capacity for oil production is currently about 8mbd
- OPEC is running at about 70% of capacity
- the OIl storage (SPR, Cushing, Rotterdam, China's SPR) is full to the brim
- additional oil and oil product had to be stored on ships, about 100mb in total
- IEA has no clue what's the real global depletion rate...they admit they were off by more then 80% on their previous estimate only 2 years ago...the truth is, they have no clue...the concept of "depletion" is a complicated one...OPEC's data is a heavily guarded secret.
- despite IEA's "depletion"- whatever the number might be- world production capacity actually INCREASED since 2007!
- the world has huge and cheap reserves of Natural Gas. We just scratched the surface here in North America and we already have so much nat gas now, soon OIL WELLS will have to be shut down, as we'll soon have no place left to store the gas and flaring associated gas will not be allowed. Gas will soon replace oil in many of its applications.
- in the last few years the production of NGL (Natural Gas Liquids) increased considerably (OPEC alone 3mbd increase). NGL replaces oil in many applications, gasoline production included.