by Pops » Wed 18 Sep 2013, 17:51:16
This is really one of the long standing questions around here, how to "educate" the public and in what way should they be educated.
There is no doubt that oil production will eventually reach a maximum and decline, oil is finite after all. But it isn't like the Y2k problem where there was a date to shout. We know oil production will peak, just not when or what the peak will look like: pointy, flat, smooth, bumpy or even if we are there until we're well past - look at the smaller peaks on the way down the back of the US peak. AAK, GOM, now shale, none reversed the overall trend for long but no one forecast them beforehand.
And of course neither do we know what the reaction will be, or what mitigation might take place before or during the initial phases of decline, yadda, yadda, etcetera and so forth. In other words it's foolish to put too much stock into predicting the future and if you can't predict the future how do you educate folks about it?
In fact as I think about it, the current mood seems to be kind of Y2k-ish - - - actually, kind of Y2k+1 - ish.
The most dramatic peak prognosticators all said oil would have peaked and be in decline by now, but since it hasn't, the deniers say it's just like Y2k, it never will! We're saved! You can hear this argument made all the time in the form of "they've been saying the same thing forever." Of course the optimistic prophets were not much better, they said we'd be over 100MMb/d by now and oil would be in the $30 range.
But for some reason, folks have bought the OilCo PR line that there is no problem, that horizontal drilling and fracking is the Plumb from the Energy Fairy's bum that makes everything peachy. They even say that it is demand that's peaked and folks no longer even want to drive! LOL If demand had peaked, prices would be in the toilet instead of the highest yearly average ever for the longest period ever.
The PR spin for them is obvious, we're destined to be Saudi America, so why not export it?
I think it's pretty obvious Saudi America ain't gonna be our new name, even in the most optimistic scenario there might be 5MMb/d of tight oil produced in the US over the next few years before decline so we'll not even cover our own consumption. So far there is no fracking of commercial amounts of tight oil anywhere else in the world that I know of. They are trying but I haven't heard of great gobs hitting the market.
Anyway, back to educating. The saying is "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." The bible says: how can an Ethiopian change his skin any more than a leopard his spots? ---- Point is, people in general are very hard to deflect from established habit. They prefer the easy route, acquiring stuff, comfort, pleasure, etc. Telling them they need to cut back, get more resilient, build up some slack in their personal economic system is akin to telling the tiger to change his stripes. (ah, got my metaphorical quota in one paragraph - or quota of metaphor if you will)
Folks aren't going to change because of some revelation found online or browbeating from their cousin. They may change a little if they think it's cool, like Crunchy-Local-Free-Range-Antibiotic-Free-Grass-Fed-Beef. But folks who buy that from me are paying more and proud of it! They do it to talk about it and are the same folks who are driving Teslas. They aren't doing it because they think the end of BAU is upon us, if they thought that they'd be doing something entirely different.
So I guess that's all a long way of saying; lead by example. "Get Small" is the main goal, get resilient, get in a place where if you become redundant you won't care. Making money now is cool but use it to not need money "then". Brag about the fact that you ride a bike or take the bus or live so close to everything you can walk or live so far from everything you don't need to
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The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
) like PO is the most known, unknown issue. Mountains of research and statistical data to support the claim that PO is upon us and we are beginning to feels it's effects. Not very much coverage or debate from within the MSM. Why is that? Global Warming/Climate Change/Environmental Awareness is pretty mainstream now - plenty of celebrities and pop culture figures are campaigning for people to go green. Where's PO's 'celebs'?
