The Oil Drum

40 comments on Peak Oil and Community Solutions Conference (Saturday)

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Joseph Somsel on September 28, 2005 - 11:51am

Sam and Stuart,

I am handicapped by not being in attendence but I didn't mean to imply that some presenter is ADVOCATING the immediate death of billions. I'm also sympathetic to a vision of our planet with only 1 billion rather than 8 or 10 billion - but only as a fantasy. To present and advocate policies that condone and facilitate such a policy of involuntary population reduction is morally analogous to building the mythical Doomsday Machine back in the Cold War days and just as repugnant. Both are bad ideas and pointless.

The only morally worthy activity is to engage in physical and mental work to keep the current world population fed, healthy, educated, and prosperous. Zero population growth is an excellent, useful position but willful, involuntary NEGATIVE population change is unethical.

As to Cuba, how an imploding, isolated, comand and control economy can offer meaningful "lessons" to a giant, global, vibrant free market is difficult for me to envision. Also, I don't think that anyone has proposed an overnight 50% reduction in oil supply as a plausible scenario for the US economy.

Remember that Beatles lyric:

"You go talking about Chairman Mao, ain't nobody gonna listen anyhow..."

To reiterate my political point - the Peak Oil community needs to understand the moral and ethical implications of their advocacy. Your efforts will be endorsed by the wider community only as to how it is judged to support the welfare of people. Holding up an enslaved society like Cuba as an exemplar or prescribing the death of 80% of the world's population will get you turned off and ignored.

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Yosemite Sam on September 29, 2005 - 5:46pm

JS: I agree that you are handicapped by not being in attendance. Go next year! I would suggest purchasing the DVD when it comes out. You might be surprised. I was.

Secondly, no, we are not going to lose 50% of our oil in one year. But "a giant, global, vibrant free market" is in a way far more sensitive to smaller declines in oil supplies than was Cuba. Once we are on the backside of the oil curve, we could see declines over 5% or more a year. If this were the case, without adequate preparation, the results could be very serious.

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Valuethinker on September 18, 2006 - 1:37pm

"As to Cuba, how an imploding, isolated, comand and control economy can offer meaningful "lessons" to a giant, global, vibrant free market is difficult for me to envision. Also, I don't think that anyone has proposed an overnight 50% reduction in oil supply as a plausible scenario for the US economy."

two points:

- the point about Cuba is that a command economy might be more capable of making a rapid adjustment to a change in its circumstances, than a more free market economy.

There is precedent. By any measure, the most successful economies in WWII at mobilising resources for war were the British and the Russian. The latter was already a completely socialist state, and the former adopted total market socialism (rationing, the works) for the period of WWII-- so successful was Britain, that despite having a pre war economy only half the size of the Nazi one, and despite the brutal disruptions of the submarine war, in 1941 they managed to outproduce the Nazi economy in terms of total war production. It was a stupendous feat, and, indeed, another part of Britain's 'finest hour'. (see Alan Milward, The World Economies 1939-45. Penguin Books).

- 50% drop in oil supplies is dramatic. But it's not impossible. It would take a serious blowup in the Middle East, but the world is on a very fragile supply line from Middle Eastern oil. If someone found a way to close the mouth of the Gulf, and/or there was a revolution in Saudi Arabia, we would be well on the way to a 50% cut in supply.

Cuba made a dramatic shift. If one believes the Peak Oil thesis, the whole western world will have to make that shift, albeit over a longer time period.

Such a time period may give time for the marketplace to work its magic, create new technologies and new sources of energy. But we can't double the fuel efficiency of the US car fleet overnight for example.