At the 2005 ASPO-Denver conference I met John Theobald who uses the peak oil theme in teaching his communications courses at UC Davis. At one of his Oil Forum events in 2007 I was introduced to his novel way of measuring media coverage in a given market—by using the search term “peak oil” in a paper’s search engine. It was certainly an attention grabber.

This may not be a very scientific way of measuring media coverage, but it can be instructive. I sat down yesterday and spent a few hours perusing various papers around the world. The results, while not surprising to TOD readers, are disappointing:

On the international scene there seems to be more mention of peak oil on television, as well. As an example, here is a seven minute panel discussion on peak oil, that we are not likely to see in America.

I won’t try to read too much into this little exercise, but with few exceptions, US papers have clearly turned a deaf ear to this issue. The Cleveland Plain Dealer is a bit surprising given that Pat Murphy’s Community Solutions is a 3-4 hour drive from the Cleveland area. My personal disappointment is in my newspaper, the Los Angeles Times. Frankly, all of the Tribune papers turned up goose eggs; it can’t just be a coincidence. Just as with the climate debate, the international media is light years ahead of the U.S. It’s as if we aren’t grown up enough to read adult issues.

Cynicism does creep in. I can’t help but wonder whether the current mindset can be dislodged by another meme or if our peak oil reality will just live as small mammals alongside dinosaurs as postulated by Greenish back in May:

Windows was a terrible OS, but Mac didn't dislodge it. Likewise VHS and Betamax machines. Likewise, mammals existed alongside dinosaurs, stably, and the dinosaurs were in no danger of being displaced without some huge perturbation. There we have examples of virtual, mechanical, and biological cases; the rules are the rules and are remarkably similar across seemingly conceptually disparate kinds of systems.

I’ll check back…after the perturbation.