The Oil Drum

I was involved in one of those periodic discussions that spring up about "The Limits To Growth" recently (one of my eternal bugbears) and found myself wondering, not for the first time, if other people have read a completely different version of the book to the one I possess.

In this case, the remark that prompted this was an assertion that the book only mentions energy once - when it actually mentions energy at least 40 times. However, most misconceptions about "Limits" fall into one of 2 categories:

1. Doomers and cornucopians alike claim the book makes a prediction that industrial civilisation will collapse, as we overwhelm our resource base and the environment (the doomers view this as a correct prediction, the cornucopians as a prediction that has been proved wrong - see this article at The Economist for a classic example).
2. Conspiracy theorists claim the book advocates world government and forced population reduction in order to avoid the collapse that it predicts.

Both of these views are completely false, yet I have never come across a rational discussion of what the book actually describes - which is a number of scenarios involving population, economic growth and resource consumption that have been generated using a computer model (known as World3) operating under various sets of assumptions and looking at a timeframe spanning the next 100 years.

The book doesn't actually "predict" anything. The authors explicitly note that it is not a forecast, and that they do not believe the available data and theories would enable an accurate prediction of what will happen to the world over the next century. The scenarios are simply a range of different examples of how the world might evolve.

Given this, I wondered why so many people have misunderstood what the book actually says...

[The graphs below display part of the output for scenario 9 in "Limits" - the forgotten scenario that I am complaining about.]

Peak Oil is a large and scary concept to get one's mind around. If there are arguments around the water cooler about finite resources, large depletion rates, Peak everything, etc., there are probably cognitive biases underlying these polarized opinions. In the first two parts of this series, we looked at some of the factual reasons why people disagree on the timing and importance of Peak Oil: gross versus net oil production, better technology vs depletion, productive capacity vs flow rates, differing definitions of "Peak", etc. This post will address some social and psychological reasons why the urgency of our energy situation may not be being addressed on an individual level and only at a snails pace on the governmental level. Among the phenomena we will explore are a) why we have beliefs and how they are changed, b) our propensity to believe in authority figures, c) our penchant for optimism, d) cognitive load theory, e) relative fitness, f) the recency effect, and several others. The fact is, even if the world's energy data was transparent and freely available to everyone, it would be an open question whether people would agree on any near term action to mitigate future oil scarcity. This post is a first stab at examining our cognitive belief biases. It's long, but I believe it will be well worth your time to read. (Note - This is an updated version of a post that first ran in May.)

"Lovvy, there's plenty of oil, and if there's not we can just buy some more!"

Via Detroit Free Press: Fuel prices won't drive US to conserve

I'd take this article with a grain of salt, coming out of the Motor City, but it did have some interesting analyses.

Many factors play into America's reluctance to conserve, but psychologists say two facts of human behavior dominate: We get used to high prices that are reached incrementally. And we're more afraid of losing something than we are motivated by the advantages of giving it up.

Combined with surveys showing that our interest in fuel efficiency rises and falls with gasoline prices instead of being an ever-increasing concern, it's reasonable to say that the United States won't slow its fuel use, at least not for a long time.

There is a tremendous headwind to Americans adjusting their driving habits, much of it built up over the past few decades of suburban to exurban transformation. I do agree with this article that, more importantly, people are just afraid of a lifestyle not built around the automobile. They are afraid of a loss of "freedom" to be a destination in a moments notice, afraid of "losing time" to a bus commute that may take an extra 30 min a day. They are afraid of not being to keep up with the Joneses if Charlie can't go to soccer practice anymore, or if G-d forbid, they have to be seen standing on the corner waiting for the bus.

More insight: