by theluckycountry » Thu 04 Sep 2025, 18:25:18
Time to touch base with PeakOil.
The Fall and Rise of Peak Oil
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t’s now been close to fifteen years since the Peak Oil movement collapsed and lost whatever temporary grip it had on public awareness. We could doubtless have an interesting conversation along the lines of “did it fall or was it pushed,” and there may be a point to that conversation a little further down the road. For now, though, I think something more basic is called for: an update on where we are just now on the long slow slope of Hubbert’s curve, and what we can expect in the years immediately ahead.
Now of course if you mention that possibility among most of those few people who still remember the phrase “peak oil” at all, you can count on a horse laugh. After all, they’d claim, the entire peak oil theory disproved itself in the wake of the 2008-2009 spike and crash of petroleum prices. Peak oil theorists supposedly insisted that sometime very soon, we’d all hear a horrible gurgling noise from deep within the earth as the last barrels of crude oil got sucked up the pipes, for all the world like that disappointing sound that comes at the end of every root beer float.
That, so the theory went, would be the end of petroleum once and for all. Thereafter, since there would be no more petroleum, and the single largest share of the world’s energy consumption (including nearly all its transportation) is still made up of crude oil and its derivatives, the whole world would go hurtling down into chaos and mass death.
That was what the Peak Oil movement predicted, so the claim goes, and it didn’t happen. Instead, the 2008 spike in world petroleum prices sparked a frantic quest for more sources of liquid fuel, and since big profits could be made by coming up with those sources, they were duly found. Thus the whole peak oil theory was based on an elementary misunderstanding of economics, and we can therefore safely ignore it as a guide to the future. Right?
That’s the claim, at any rate. It is certainly true that there were people—some of whom should have known better—who were associated with the peak oil movement, and who retailed some version of the claims just outlined in books, blogs, public events, and the like. Still, the peak oil movement didn’t speak with a single voice on this or any other subject. Notably, there were quite a few people deeply involved in the peak oil movement who pointed out that the believers in this version of overnight apocalypse were quite simply deluding themselves, rehashing Hollywood fantasies and warmed-over Christian apocalyptic tropes under the mistaken notion that they were talking about the real world.
This less gullible group of peak oil theorists pointed to many lines of evidence, from petroleum geology, history, economics, and ecology, that showed that there would be no sudden collapse. Instead, they argued, what the world was facing was a long, ragged descent from the peak of industrial society, taking many generations to play out completely. They predicted in so many words that each crisis brought about by petroleum depletion would be followed by massive and at least temporarily successful efforts to find new sources of liquid fuels, and to jerry-rig industrial society so that the effects of the crisis could be contained.
Furthermore, they argued, petroleum depletion could only be understood correctly in the light of a much broader perspective, in which the depletion of a very large number of nonrenewable resources and the disruption of a good many environmental cycles all played important parts. Our planetary predicament didn’t have a single cause, and therefore it couldn’t be fixed by a single solution—be that some new energy source (cough, cough, fusion power), restrictions on a single pollutant (cough, cough, carbon dioxide), attempts to rebuild community in social contexts that had discarded it (cough, cough, the Transition Town franchise), or any of the other loudly ballyhooed gimmicks that embraced peak oil back then as part of their marketing plans.
So what fix did the thinkers we’re discussing propose? They didn’t. That’s exactly the point. They proposed that industrial civilization was moving through the usual life cycle of complex human societies, at the usual pace, toward the usual destination, and that this movement would define the future in which we all would live...
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-fall-and- ... -peak-oil/And that as they say folks, is where we are today, in a world of slowly collapsing economies, and lifestyles. I was fooled by the early doomsayers, but only for a few years It turns out though that was positive, because without the impetus I doubt I would be living a comfortably resilient life out in a rural Australia town now. Solar, on and offgrid, water tanks, we all have those, good savings and investments in precious metals, all the stuff that was recommended to survive the apocalypse that never came but which, as it turns out, is exactly the sort of stuff you need to have for weathering the slow collapse we are experiencing.
While crime rises in the cities due to poverty, and food and electricity prices go up and up, many people are pulling their hair out, blaming the current political establishment, when in fact they are simply living through the downslope of the age of Oil. While hundreds of deluded amateurs sit in internet circles masturbating over the latest cheery IEA data on non-conventional oil, they themselves are struggling to pay their bills and keep the fridge full. We have more oil then ever they tout! Yet for some odd reason this hasn't flowed on into their personal lives. "It's the rich" they claim, they are stealing all the profits. Yet in the same breath they will praise the work of Elon and his cohort that are bringing A.I. to the world. The savior of mankind, even as it overloads electricity grids and drains water reservoirs. Very dysfunctional people...
@ $20 bbl and less it was no problem to build a new Dam or expand the electricity grid, you just did it, but not today. Today they struggle to get the funds to replace a single bridge in a major city. And it's all across the world, nations starved of oil revenues going tits up. Indonesia, a once oil rich nation and member of OPEC has long depleted it's reserves and now today the entire country of 283 million people are rioting in the streets. They are hungry, not yet starving, but they see the political class giving itself pay rises and are up in arms. Such peoples are no strangers to riots but it's on a whole other order of magnitude now. Like Haiti, the violence is off the charts, the same in many third world nations, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, even England and Ireland are on the verge and there it's over immigration. Foreigners coming in and competing violently for the crumbs of the oil age basically.
Unfortunately for most in the wealthier Western nations though the false narrative of PeakOil being a one off doomsday event that never came has locked them into the 20th century abundance mindset and now they can't understand why their cities are in general decline? They vote in a new party, but things get worse, they vote them out and the others back in, and things continue down. Worse still many can't even see this slow degradation? It's the frog in the pot problem, "sure things are worse now, but they have been bad before..." These are still above water, they aren't working 3 jobs or living in a homeless encampment yet, but they are heading in that direction. Retirement on a federal pension? What's that like now after the big rises in food and electricity, insurance and other general costs? The pensions don't have to collapse, they just have to not keep up and before long you eating stale bread in a dark house, saving your pennies for the property tax bill. "Yes but I have a private pension fund" Yes, and it's value is pegged to the US stock market, which is the most inflated and overpriced market on the planet. If that collapses...
Well the nations have been through these downturns before they say, but it's not PeakOil, that was fake, the apocalypse never came...
We're 17 years past the peak now and the 3rd World is going hungry and dark. We'll be next, we're well on the way in fact.