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116 comments on Putting Peak Oil In Perspective

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Leanan on November 1, 2005 - 1:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
I guess I'm a real pessimist.  I don't know for sure what's going to happen, but if I had to bet, I'd say a slow collapse is more likely than a sudden one.  Historically speaking, societies collapse over centuries, not in months or years or even decades.

Which in the long run, is probably worse.  It will give us a lot more time to burn ever dirtier coal, cut down every tree in sight, drill the entire planet in search of hydrocarbons, pollute the oceans and rivers, build nuclear power plants and solar panel factories with ever decreasing safety standards, etc.

We may not even notice the actual peak when it comes.  Just ever rising prices, more and more people falling out of the middle class every year, an ever shrinking economy.  Until we're just another Third World country.

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Glenn on November 1, 2005 - 2:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That's what I call the Argentina syndrome...In the first half of the 20th Century Argentina's standard of living was in the tops of the world, but then a series of military coups and other problems caused major disruptions and they never really recovered.
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jkissing on November 1, 2005 - 5:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yes, when Peron took power, Argentina's per capita income was sixth in the world. WHile he was a military man, the country's economic crash was more on account of his lunge for socialism, almost to the level of Russia's "Great Experiment". It can take generations to recover from the disease. Compare what is now happening to Venezuela. Any improvement to the peasants will be temporary as production from all sectors, certainly including agriculture, continue their sharp decline.
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Beto on November 2, 2005 - 2:58pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Didn't Juan Peron die in 1974?  The Argentine collapse wasn't until the late 90s with a lot of poor leadership in between.

I'm quite optimistic about Venezuela's chances.  They might very end up in better shape than the US - at least those who don't spend their money on second homes in Florida.

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wkwillis on November 3, 2005 - 12:58pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Peron was in power from 1946 to 1955, nine years, and it was wholly after the collapse of wheat prices caused by artificial fertilisers and crop mechanisation had destroyed Argentina's market position.
But he was the only populist they could blame things on, so he got the blame.
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Don in Colorado on November 1, 2005 - 3:07pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I think there is also the question of the "debt bomb," in the U.S. that no one really wants to talk about. The debt bomb seemed uncomfortably close to detonating a month ago when gasoline went over $3.

We aren't a country similar to the 1930s, when a lot of people lived on farms or small towns where they were fairly self-sustaining. People in those days tended to save for rainy days. Right now the U.S. savings rate is zero, and the government is into deep deficit spending to try to keep the economy going.

That's why I can never discount the "cliff" theory. We don't have a parachute if the debt bomb goes off.

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Leanan on November 1, 2005 - 3:26pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It's certainly a concern.  But other countries have had economic crises.  Such as Argentina.  It was unpleasant, but it wasn't the sudden collapse of civilization as they knew it.
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Glenn on November 1, 2005 - 3:46pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Exactly, Argentina and many other declining states find that from one generation to another the changes are persistently negative, but it becomes harder and harder to realize what has been lost unless you have a reference point - for instance, would East Germany have looked that if it were not sitting right next to the prosperous West Germany?

What we might find (one possibility) is that we slowly slip into a decline that we can only diagnose long after the fact when it might not be fixable.

If you haven't read Jared Diamond's "Collapse", I highly recommend it. Not all Collapses are the same. Some take weeks, some take years, some take many generations.

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Leanan on November 1, 2005 - 4:18pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I love Jared Diamond.  I've been reading him since he began writing columns for Discover magazine, twenty years ago.  (One of his early articles was "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" - which he argues was inventing agriculture.)

Collapse is great.  I also recommend Guns, Germs, and Steel, his previous book (which won him a Pulitzer).  It's sort of the complement of Collapse: it explains how Western civilization came to dominate the world.  

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