Poll: Where are you in the peak oil taxonomy?
Posted by Super G on May 22, 2006 - 11:54pm
Topic: Sociology/Psychology
Tags: cornucopians, doomers, peak oil, taxonomy, technopeakers, traditionalists, wingpawns [list all tags]
Last week there was a hilarious post that proposed a taxonomy of the camps in the peak oil debate. (Hat tip to several commenters who pointed it out over the past week.) While I don't agree with everything that was said, it's definitely an interesting exercise. Four main species are proposed: Cornucopians, Traditionalists, Technopeakers, and Doomers. WHT joins the fun with a fifth species, Wingpawns.
I was going to paste in descriptions of each species, but I found that quotes were too lengthy and I didn't want to cut out anything. So I encourage you to read the two posts linked above and then take the poll below the fold.
The choices below are from WHT's interpretation of the original article. You may find that multiple choices describe you. Please pick the single choice that describes you best. Remember, poll answers are anonymous, so feel free to answer honestly.
deviding people up into camps like this and labeling them with mostly ill fitting definitions.
Anyhow, we're only slapping silly labels on our own foreheads -- or at least, that's what one hopes. Or are you just a one-shot Johnny? (-:
Actually, that was fun! :-)
I of course consider myself to be closest to the techno-peaker/techno optimist, but of course, I think that has always showed in my posts...
My background is mostly responsible for this: I was a true techno/doomer in the 1970's, and was certain that the U.S. and the world economy was DOOMED in those days....I was going to drafting school at the time, with an eye to engineering as a career, and dropped out, because, well, who would be hiring engineers in a rapidly collapsing economy? A friend of mine was studying because he said he wanted to work for General Motors...I laughed..."General Motors isn't even going to survive the coming decade!"
Needless to say, he has had a long career with them, and even if they collapse tomorrow, he has had 25 years of high income, and assets paid for...now, we say, "General Motors won't survive the next decade!" But....and I know this thought is horrific to many here, what if it does?
In 1978, someone was talking about investing in the stock market...ohhh, how we laughed!! What kind of idiot would invest in a market that had been collapsing for almost the whole decade when you could get double digit interest on a CD with no risk? It would have been INSANE! In 1982, the market took off....people leaped in front of us "doomers" because as always, the really big money came right after the turn to bull market....being a doomer has already cost me a fortune....
But, this does not mean that I can make the leap to "cornucopian". The technology being touted to "save us" is still so much in it's infancy, and the investments needed will be huge....unlike the 1970's, we now do not have a HUGE generation of young technicians, scientists, managers, bankers and socially aware young minds coming out of the universities. It is a smaller, more conservative, and more obedient generation now...
Someone asked in another post, why do we come back, why do we keep the debate and the exploration going....why don't we DO SOMETHING.
First, that assumes that because we are here, we are not DOING SOMETHING.
I differ strongly with that. I think many of us are engaged in work related to energy alternatives, energy conservation and forms of networking that will help lay the groundwork for the transition. But, we need to communicate with and know there are people out there who feel there is a need for a transition! Great revolutions begin at the emotional/intellectual level. People who intend to affect/assist the change must first come to grips with themselves. "Know Thyself" said Socrates. What is it you want, what is you think you can do, what is it your willing to do?
Then the revolution moves to the social level. It is well known that one of the first steps to achieving any goal is to "externalize it". It is important to find out that you are not completely alone in your goals, views, desires, and efforts. This is the difference between let us say starting a business firm, or a hobby like building a boat out of popsicle sticks! The latter can be a personal flight of idiocy, since almost NO ONE is going to share this goal. It may be fun, it may consume days, years, it may require skill, but it is not a "revolution" or even a social goal in the normal sense. You may attract some similar eccentric who wants to build a popsicle stick boat, but it is a project not likely to attract mass interest, investors, or change culture in any way.
A business firm, or a social movement, or a political party, is different. But how do you tell the difference? The "Peak Oil" aware and interested can only find out that their efforts are much more meaningful and important than a popsicle stick boat if we COMMUNICATE, DEBATE, AND MEASURE OUR IDEAS AMONG LIKE MINDED PEOPLE. If there are few of us, this does not matter, just so there are some, and the number increases. In the early days of aviation, people communicating about "heavier than air flight" were in the extreme minority. At the birth of the auto age, the number of people who were even aware of the effort probably numbered less than the current number of posters on TOD. But, they communicated, argued, debated, improved their goals and their message....such is the way change is born.
Emotion+Thought=Words
Words+Ideas+Action=Change
Change+Communication=Culture
TOD is just one of many (and despite my occasional outburst of annoyance...I CAN'T STAND negative thinking, it has already hurt me enough in my life!), I think TOD is one of the BEST places for where we are in the "Ideas/Action" spectrum (because setting up TOD was AN ACTION, and posting here is AN ACTION) ...we are now moving to the Change/Communication part of the spectrum....and of course, we know how important this is.
This is why "miscommunication" is taken so seriously, (re: Ken Deffeyes recent "stone age by 2025" remark, which to his credit, he has since retracted...it was the "Peak Aware" community, or at least parts of it, that were most upset...not by whether the remark was factually correct (because it was obviously hyperbole) but by the MESSAGE, the communication, the IMPRESSION it gave the world of the Peak Aware community.
We are moving from Communication to Culture...and more than just an online culture now, the culture exists out in the real world, at places like The Community Solution in Yellow Springs Ohio, or Stelle Community in Illinois
http://www.stellecommunity.com/
http://www.centerforsustainablecommunity.org/
to name just a couple. We also have "fellow travelers" in the culture, the technicians working on Distributed Generation, the pioneers at Calcars working for free on the Plug Hybrid, the windmill operators and designers of the world. We may not all agree that these technologies will work, but we are in agreement on the need to diversify away from a fossil fuel only world.
One last caveat: As we move to the realm of "Communication", and even further into the realm of "Culture", we face more and more the need for a key ingredient: RESPONSIBILITY. As we have an effect, an impact on the world, we have to be willing to be more and more and more responsible for what we say and how we say it. We must accept the possibility that people will accept "our" ideas, "our" statistics, "our" view. For example, if we come out against an option, (take ethanol) we must know that we are factually correct. If not, and we influence policy away from a possibly workable alternative, we will be at least partially responsible for the missed opportunity. I think we (meaning the Peak Aware who seriously doubt the viability of ethanol) are correct. But part of the reason for debate, for argument, for exchange of data is that we MUST BE SURE.
There are many other controversial ideas on which "we" (meaning the self proclaimed "Peak Aware" of whatever faction) will begin to have a more noticeable voice in affairs, and have the ability to sway opinion, first in small ways, but then in larger ways. "Peak Aware" politicians such as Senator Roscoe Bartlett, DOE contractors/advisors such as Robert Hirsch are beginning to have an impact on CULTURE. "We" (the Peak Aware) have already moved from communication to culture. In effect, the "Peak Aware" are already inside the gates of the proverbial castle. This is extremely important: With that move, begins REAL RESPONSIBILITY for what "we" say, and the sides we take (and in the end, it will be about taking sides)
This is what differs a movement or a revolution (whether technical or cultural) from a hobby. This is why the discussion, the clarification of what we believe, and what we believe in is so important. It's fun!, yes, but it's more. This is why what we do and say matter more than some eccentric hobby like building a popsicle stick boat.
This is why, for instance, I sign my posts and writings on this issue. It is a small way to take responsibility for what I say.
It is also why we must keep the HUMANE aspect of the issue and possible alternatives firmly in front of us. As a movement moves to the CULTURAL LEVEL, it begins to have effects on other peoples lives.
TOD is at a fascinating and crucial place. We are all at an exciting crossroads. Even the older among us have a role to play. Due to the dearth of a young educated crowd familiar with these issues, our role may even be magnified. "We", the "Peak Aware", and even the more senior among us, can be relevant to a great cause. But, if we undertake the venture, "we" will have to be willing to be at least partially responsible for the outcome. Thank you for you patience and attention.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
My apology on the error, I would not want to irritate Thales by failure to give him due credit! :-)
Boy, I still regret actually believing in all that stuff, since it has made my life so miserable compared to so many other people who I went to school with, who have houses/mortgages, cars/payments, and so much nice shiny new stuff/nice credit card balances.
The only problem, it wasn't belief, it was the truth.
I will agree on one thing - the late 70s was not a very hopeful time. Luckily, the Alaskan oil pipeline kicked in, Reagan got elected, and since then, everything is just peachy. More people own more stuff with more debt than ever before in American history, and I still can't see how anyone can find fault with that proof that the American Dream didn't become turn into the American Nightmare that people in the late 70s foresaw - you know, a future where corporations would plunder everything they could unless stopped by the will of the people, a future where environmental degradation becomes so commonplace that no one even cares, a world where a government for the people, by the people is one with no respect for any law which would restrain those with power from simply engaging in whatever military or punitive action they see fit, from invading a country to torturing prisoners.
Sometimes, I think not joining the Young Republicans was my biggest career mistake, ca. 1980.
And think about this - instead of living in the country which is the envy of the entire world in its own eyes, I live in Germany, with its dreadful old tired European disadvantages, like free health care for my children, 6 weeks vacation, and a functioning public transportation system. Hell, Germany still hasn't even become post-industrial, to show how far it lags behind America.
All jesting (not really jesting, but not mockery either) aside, we all make choices, and the future is unknown. If you had gone into the oil industry, you would have done great for a while, and then it would have collapsed, and then today, you would be looking at a great future again.
I think the one thing that is true about much of this debate is that human beings still really have a very short term scale when looking at time or complex systems. I make no predictions about the next 10 or 20 years, in the sense of saying what life will be like for my children (colder or warmer? wetter or drier? plant in April, plant in June?). On the other hand, America does seem to look a lot like the society which some people in the late 1970s tried to oppose - filled with crassly selfish materialistic consumers, with no concern about future consequences of their current actions, a place riven by huge disparities in wealth/power, and one seemingly incapable (note the 'seemingly') of actually changing itself. For the more paranoid vision, a society now more capable of making sure it will not be changed by those outside of the current power structure, since it seems as if effectively all that late 70s legislation intended to stop the government from misusing its vast power is either swept away in various PATRIOT measures or ignored with impunity.
Oh, and since so many seem to feel that a classification is necessary - I am just a believer that oil/coal/natural gas are finite resources, and that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. From there, the science and engineering is very hard, but as we are all participating in this first truly global scale real time experiment in climate alteration, the results should be clear enough in the next few centuries - and we won't be the ones paying any bills which come due anyways. Well, that is the consensus from ca. 2000, right? Strange how some of the trends don't seem to be following that comforting majority belief - maybe the idea that that awful future will happen after we are all dead will seem as delusional as the late 70s belief that America was heading for a vast fall if it didn't learn how to live within its means?
Might be a fun exercise in taxonomy, but tends to obscure the need for serious study of issues in such a way that, even if a hard-core minority cling to a point of view (e.g. global-warming isn't happening or has nothing to do with humans) the scientific data and consensus becomes overwhelming in forming a more 'realistic' point of view.
expat,
The opening of the post was to do no more than give a little background of how I came to where I am today...it was the rest of the post that I was most interested in developing my thinking on, to help me explain to myself why discussion and communication on the energy depletion issue is more than just an "eccentric hobby".
The 1970's, and my own complete misread of what would follow in the 1980's and 1990's taught me a few major lessons though...
(a) timing matters-if you are right too early or too late, it is equal to bing wrong. Even a stopped watch is right twice a day, and if you predict either good news or bad, sooner or later, you'll bump into both.
(b) It is good to be prepared for bad times should they occur.
It is also good to be prepared for good times should they occur.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
I suspect in a few years there will be many people who come to see the world as you did in the seventies, and for the same reason.
Stoneleigh
You say....
"Perhaps now you risk the converse - holding on to bull market psychology at another time of impending reversal."
When you say "you risk" I assume your talking in the generic sense...I own no shares, and have little faith in the current bear market, which is what it is, by the way, we have been in a full secular bear market since 9-11-01, with stocks now getting out to a half decade with no real gain, if you count for inflation, plus the lost time, and the lost interest money that could have been earned at no risk, stocks have been a massive loss. What you call the reversal is now a half decade old, despite attempts to recover since that time.
You say....
"Roger, in the seventies you were sucked into the psychology of a bear market as were many, if not most, others."
True, but to limit the scope of the mood, the culture, the sheer shock of defeat and decline of the 1970's to just "a bear market" does not do the period the justice such a defining, declining deserves...
You see, We have seen post peak. Do you want to know what it looks like?
Go to the poor rural states in the South, and take a look at the scattered "basement homes", with nothing but a roof above ground, heated with nothing but a woodstove. The "zero energy home" is not a high tech idea.
Look behind them or up in the shed, up on the blocks sit a Diesel Volkswagen Pickup truck, long ago broke down, now brown on the creases with rust as the paint disappears....these were capable of hauling firewood, commuting to work, and getting the kids to school. With a stick shift, 50 plus miles per gallon (Coca Cola Corp. used them as route trucks for their order takers and vending machine service....one Coca Cola route salesman told me how they knew when to take it to the shops and change the filters and check the timing of the injection pump...."we keep a log, and when it drops to 48 miles per gallon it goes to the shop." This was in 1978.
Allow me to quote a bit of poetic nostalgia for the days that would never come again. There is something haunting about people writing the chronicle of a dead or dying age. Think of the Biblical passages of the Jews in exile..."we sat by the waters of the river and we wept for old Israel", or W.H. Auden as he sat in the dives, feeling the pain of a destroyed London in World War II....sad, but haunting and beautiful.
Now, for the 1970's version, I hold in my hands a treasured issue of "Automobile Quarterly" Third Quarter, 1978. The issue opens with an essay by a Stan Grayson, called "Garages". It celebrates cars, but not cars out on the road. Instead it celebrates cars as they consume no fuel, stored, treasured as art pieces in the garages of the nation, the world. It is a haunting beautiful ode to the end of the auto age by a magazine and a writer who deeply love the auto age. Allow me to give you a sample of the last two pagagraphs, describing the last garage examined in the essay.
After describing the collection of a wealthy Wall Street broker, complete with V-12 Ferrari built into his home as a centerpiece beside which the owner can sit and eat dinner, we move to...
"...the opposite extreme is a young Firebird owner who lives in a small northeastern Pennsylvania city. His little apartment is lined with hot rod magazines and Pontiac brochures among which are filed a few treasured letters from Pontiac executives responding to some of his more esoteric mechanical queries. The object of all his affections sits out in a detached and dingy alley way garage. The building is red brick and there's a window at one end so grainy you can't see inside.
Open the door and you'll find an utterly immaculate red Firebird Trans Am crouching in the gloom. It's got a Super Duty 455 in it, maybe the last really high performance V-8 Detroit will ever build. In front of the car on a workbench is a set of pistons, on the floor, a set of specially prepared, flowed and polished cylinger heads. There, hidden away with less than three-thousand miles on the odometer is just the sort of exciting, brutally fast car that the government and a changing world is going to eradicate. Now, it goes out for an occasional midnight ride. Think what it will be like to see the car still alive in that garage ten years from now-forty years from now. It will be enough to make you very sad indeed."
Notice, please, there is no mention of seeing it on the road 10 years, 40 years from now...
Think about the time frames mentioned, 10 years from 1978, as the first of the V-10 Dodge Vipers came on the market, or now, with twin supercharged Porsches and Mustangs on the market, and 500 horsepower Corvettes taht also get over 20 miles per gallon....how could they have imagined in 1978, at that darkest hour for the automobile, for those who loved the powerful and fast auto, or the giant luxury trucks, (one writer called them "road locomotives") that the "last giant V-8" would soon be rendered puny by a new muscle age and astounding advances in automotive technology?
But, reread the piece above, WITHOUT knowing what was to follow, as I did for the first time at 19 years old....
No, the 1970's were not a "bear market". For most people who read, studied and learned and payed attention, it was what the current peak folks call TEOTWAWNI.....the end as we knew it. There was no doubt then....the fossil fuel era was over, the good times had ended, America, disgraced by Watergate and Vietnam was powerless, social, racial and sexual unrest was dismantling the nation as interest rates soured into the teens, unemployment soured past double digits, and the stock market spent a full decade running downward and sideways. American airliners were hijacked almost weekly and blown up in the Arab desert, Iran held our hostages, and we were powerless to change a thing. THIS we knew was the result of American wealth and power being drained away by oil, as Sheik Yamani of Saudi Arabia stood higher in respect and was more feared than our own American President Carter.
We have already felt the sadness for a dying age. And we knew, WITH CERTAINTY in 1978 that the markets would only go lower and lower, fuel shortages would only increase, prices of gas and oil would skyrocket past all ability to bear the cost. Rodale Press published The Cornucopia Project, with long essays proving that food prices and transportatin combined with water crisis and soil erosion would soon result in massive price increases in food prices. The price of Diesel and fertilizer would destroy the national food production system. We knew that if all of this did not happen by the 1980's, it would surely happen by 1990.
For those of us old enough, and who paid attention, we have seen post peak. We have seen "The End As We Knew It."
It was 28 years ago.
No one could imagine then that we were preparing to enter what even the greatest cynics would come to call "for most people, these really are the best years of their lives." (Pat Buchanan, in reference to why it was almost impossible to stage an upset of his arch nemesis, Bill Clinton...in a shocking moment of candor by Mr. Buchanan).
But this time, it really could be different. Like the economists who proudly proclaim that they have predicted 6 of the 4 recessions, sooner or later, we will run into hard times. Sooner....or later....
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Correction: I mispelled "TEOTWAWKI" !
I used the phonics method of spelling, and spelled "know" with an "n"
(TEOTWAWNI....The End Of The World As We No It?......sorry, it's late....
Roger Conner Nown to you as ThatsItImout (hee, hee) :-)
What?
ThatsItImOut states that he is a optimist because previous pessimism has been proved wrong before. But statistics learns that previous results do not say anything about the chances of anything happening in the future.
Let me give you an example: Whenever you roll dice the chance to hit a "6" are 1 in 6. If you have rolled the dice hunderds of times before without hitting one single "6" you are inclined to believe that that has some influence on this time you will roll (Perhaps thinking that it has to finally be time for a "6"), but statistics learns it hasn't. The chance to hit a "6" still is 1 in 6.
This, to me, debunks stories that "we have seen pessimism not work before, therefore now I quit being a pessimist."
I said what because I read your post about the bomb on the airplane and could not get your message.
Statistically you are right odds are odds and they are not changed by history.
If you look in various fields there have been many "doom lies ahead" arguments. I recall reading a book predicting a financial meltdown around the year 1990. EDN magazine in the early 1980s predicted a crisis in engineering as there would not be sufficient engineers to design electronic products. This was largely solved by the vast scale of chip integration which made it easier to build products with fewer engineers. A book about future problems I picked up written in the fifties predicted a shortage of chemical engineers (but totally neglected future problems with pollution). Currently some economists are predicting an economic meltdown due to the extraordinarily high debts we have run up.
It is not that any of these arguments were deeply flawed. It is just very difficult to predict the future. Also, things generally happen to mitigate the imagined problem. Personally, I don't agree with the doomers. Technically, it does seem clear that we are at or near peak oil production. It is the result that is in question. I think we will muddle through though there may be some hard times ahead.
The bear market actually began in 2000 when the NASDAQ peaked in March. The downward spike after 9/11 was the culmination of a larger downward move that had begun earlier. I agree with you that stocks have been a losing proposition since then. When I point to a reversal, I mean the end of the dead cat bounce that has been in effect since October 2002 - bounce that has had investors clinging (with a considerable degree of thinly disguised desperation IMO) to the old bull market optimism and assuming the old 'rules of the game' are still in force.
Not that I'm recommending that you, or anyone else, become pessimistic - far from it. What I am suggesting is that pessimism is about to become resurgent exactly as it was in the seventies because the psychology of a bear market is 'catching'. If you recognize it for what it is, then you can be forwarned as to the prevailing attitudes of the majority, and the consequences that will flow from those attitudes, while avoiding being sucked into it yourself. That route means losing hope, as happened to so many three decades ago, and is couterproductive.
Prevailing attitudes are inherently temporary, although they may persist for relatively long periods of time - long enough for economic, social, and political consequences to result (see my comment further down this thread). I expect this bear market to be considerably more severe than the seventies and to last for longer, but I do not expect a final and permanent decline as in Olduvai theory. In that sense I am optimistic - I am expecting future upbeat and expansionist phases, but perhaps not for a long time.
That is exactly the prevailing psychology of a major bear market bottom, but it is an emotional certainty. Successful investors look for that kind of wholesale capitulation to a trend as a signal to begin investing again. Similarly, successful investors regarded the ubiquitous optimism of the dot com boom as a warning that a trend reversal was coming and pulled money out of the market (selling stocks to the unsuspecting public just in time to leave them holding the empty bag).
Excellent point at the close of your post Stoneleigh', "Wholesale capitulation" is the key....
I don't think we have seen anything like the "wholesale capitulation" of the 1970's yet...
Most folks are still in the "it's just a scam" phase, but "it always goes back up..."
When everyone, not just the peak oil aware become convinced as they did in the 1970's that "the market economy is finished", "this time it is different, it won't rebound from this", and "buy a shack out in the country, it's time to run...", that is when the turn comes....we have only seen that sort of thinking....well, here.
But, your right...look for the capitulation in the mainstream....that is no where in sight....yet.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
I suspect the point of recognition will be seen this year, but that will still be relatively early in a trend with a lot further to go to the downside. I would be inclined to look for a market bottom in the first half of the next decade, with an economic depression (a lagging indicator)continuing for at least several years after that as happened in the thirties. Various investments may begin to make sense again by the second half of the next decade, but by then it should feel like the seventies only much worse and everyone is likely to be telling you that you'd have to be crazy to invest. In that pessimistic abyss, opportunities should begin to present themselves. The difficulty will be resisting the impulse to give in to the prevailing negative mood despite relentlessly negative news and social pressure to conform. You need nerves of steel to buy low (when everyone is telling you things can only go downhill from here) and sell high (when everyone is piling in to the market and telling you how foolish you are to sell).
- The Jay Hanson Realist
- The Bambi School of Sociology Advocate
- The Wanna Be Policy Analyst
- The Wanna Be Cult Leader
- The "Profit" of Doom
- The Mini-Dictator
I'm a combination of numbers 1, 4, and 5 as I subscribe to Jay's theories best described by the term "thermo-gene collission", am woking on starting a cult, and am earning $$$ from these issues both through product sales and investments. (Although not recently since pms are getting hammered.)Best,
Matt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English
Wow, I'm the first "techno-curmudgeon".
Now all youse kids stay off my lawn.
Well, it always works like that in the movies. Sigh.
This is my first post at The Oil Drum. I have been lurking here for about six or seven months, but have been unable to post on the site due to my utter lack of any kind of technical computer ability. Many thanks to Super G for helping me get around the barriers that had kept me off the site.
As for my own take on this, while I don't think that we are going to revert to the stone age or the Olduvai Gorge, I think it inevitable that massive economic and social dislocations will be coming along in one form or another. I am pessimistic about a slow and orderly decline as I feel that as soon as Peak Oil reaches a certain critical mass, or tipping point in the consciousness of what we could term the "investor community", that the latter will panic, and the markets will implode, crashing with an earthshaking roar that will usher in a Great Depression, Act II.
I think that some of the renewables have a degree of potential, like wind and solar, even though I don't foresee their coming anywhere near replacing our current use of electricity. Others, such as fusion, have been worked on for 40-50 years and still haven't been successful on any scale larger than in the lab vessels in which the experiments have been done. Ethanol, in my opinion, is a waste, another example of government handing out subsidies to its corporate pals and lobbyists; biodiesel, on the other hand has potential as a "niche" fuel, but any ideas of its coming anywhere close to replacing our current oil usage is a fantasy.
The brightest future I can predict for the private auto in 50+ years is a relatively few glorified electric golf-carts available for relatively well-to-do seniors for in-town or short-haul trips, and that attempting to maintain the auto beyond this level will ultimately be unsustainable, and merely waste resources that could be better spent rebuilding the railroads, for example. And as far as railroads are concerned, I agree with Alan from Big Easy that municipal transit networks should all be electrified, and, even more importantly, changed from rubber-tyres to steel wheels on rails. But I do not think long haul railroads, such as Amtrak or the freights should be electrified. Electrical rail requires that the train get its power from an external source, either a third rail or overhead wires. I ride Amtrak a lot, and it goes through vast stretches of remote and isolated areas. A third rail would be a bad idea because of the electrocutions of people or animals trying to cross the tracks, and overhead wires would be vulnerable to storms, etc. I think long-distance rail needs to have its own independent, self-contained energy source, and it seems that this would be a good "niche" for biodiesel. The most important thing that needs to be done for passenger rail is to lay a set of dedicated tracks which are for Amtrak only, the freighters are so heavy that they eventually deform the rails to the point that the passenger trains frequently cannot safely attain even the 79 MPH speed limit imposed on Amtrak.
And I do NOT think that our electoral, representative "dumbocracy" will be able to address any of this in any meaningful way. Cuba is frequently mentioned as an example of a country dealing with a post-peak situation, but Cuba has two enormous advantages over the US in dealing with this stuff. First of all, Cuba is a relatively small country and has a population of only 10-12 million people. They, therefore do not have the immense problems of scale that we will, and scalability seems to be the major problem with those alternative energies/technologies that actually do have some potential. Second, Cuba has a government where Castro can sit down with his inner circle and hammer out a coherent response to the crisis, without the conversation constantly being skewed by legions of parasites, the hucksters and lobbyists for every imaginable alternative, whether real or imaginary. In addition, Castro could then implement this response without having to worry about the "politics" of the matter, without having to pay some price at the polls for doing the sometimes unpleasant but vita