[aldente]

I am picking up on a script from Dale Allen Pfeiffers blog Collapse of Complex Systems where he states, quote:

When we talk about peak oil, then we must either hope for a technofix or head for the hills armed for survival. But when we realize that peak oil is only a symptom of the true problem, then we also realize that neither technofixes nor personal escape will really solve our problems. So let us state once and for all: the problem is not peak oil or energy depletion, nor global climate change, nor overpopulation. The problem is the collapse of a complex system due to fundamental conceptual flaws. End quote.

Are we merely obsessed with a symptom on this forum, not seing the forest for the trees?

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('albente', 'I') am picking up on a script from Dale Allen Pfeiffers blog Collapse of Complex Societies where he states, quote:

When we talk about peak oil, then we must either hope for a technofix or head for the hills armed for survival. But when we realize that peak oil is only a symptom of the true problem, then we also realize that neither technofixes nor personal escape will really solve our problems. So let us state once and for all: the problem is not peak oil or energy depletion, nor global climate change, nor overpopulation. The problem is the collapse of a complex system due to fundamental conceptual flaws. End quote.

Are we merely obsessed with a symptom on this forum, not seing the forest for the trees?

[Jake_old]

Not fair, i'm sure it was tongue in cheek Energyspin

I wish I'd done something in the geology / ecology line, I didn't. Does that make my opinion any less valid? When I talk about peak oil, am I just band waggoning, or am I trying to persuade people of something which is for the greater good?

I think peak oil and especially Peakoil.com provide an outlet for people who are aware of a problem and in the face of ridicule are trying to help others in the real day to day world.

I do however think dale is wrong on this. The problem IS peak oil. All the other problems would be ignored until they became tangible to the majority. The immediate problem of an energy crisis will be the thing that causes unpredictable events socially, individually and globally.

[backstop]

Albente -

For me Peak Oil is one long-awaited major symptom of an heretical ideology, namely the Isolationist belief in Anthro-Supremacy.
It is heretical in that it cannot be integrated within the capacities of the planet, but has instead powered delusions of eternal material growth, which are now coming to their fall.

For the record, I'd describe the main symptoms as being the Four Horsemen, and a Chicken.

Or more precisely, Earth, Air, Fire & Water, and a sick battery hen.

As to whether "we're obsessed with a symptom" I guess that few could browse the site for long before picking up on some of the other major symptoms.
Personally I think that those of water insecurity and soil depletion are less widely discussed than they warrant, as is, most particularly, the calamitous interaction between symptoms.

For example, right now, in the Indian sub-continent, the Oil-powered "Green Revolution" has got hundreds of thousands of farmers trapped in a cycle of buying ever-larger deisel pumps to raise cash-crop irrigation water from depleting aquifers to pay the interest on their debts.
To this end they also need increasing volumes of chemical fertilizer and biocides to counter the outcomes of monoculture cropping.

In some areas the deisel has recently become unaffordable, and the farmers are blockading roads in protest, because they cannot plant this year's crops.

Those that are not now forced off their land by debt, and try to get by without pumps and chemical inputs, may well find that their soil has been significantly depleted, and, with rainfall also becoming increasingly unreliable, that its yields are well down on what they achieved traditionally.
__________________

Yet for all America has lost one city to unprecedented weather and stands to lose more, I think that for the politics of wealthy nations,
out of all the symptoms, it is likely that Peak Oil will appear to be the unparalleled driver of imposed change.

regards,

Backstop

[aldente]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RedJake', 'T')he problem IS peak oil. All the other problems would be ignored until they became tangible to the majority. The immediate problem of an energy crisis will be the thing that causes unpredictable events socially, individually and globally.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('albente', 'T')he problem is the collapse of a complex system due to fundamental conceptual flaws. End quote.

Are we merely obsessed with a symptom on this forum, not seing the forest for the trees?

[JustinFrankl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('albente', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RedJake', 'T')he problem IS peak oil. All the other problems would be ignored until they became tangible to the majority. The immediate problem of an energy crisis will be the thing that causes unpredictable events socially, individually and globally.

[FairMaiden]

I think peakoil is just the limiting factor. You look at any animal population and it will thrive to the point that there is not enough food to sustain it anymore. There is die-off and the cycle starts again. For us, the limiting factor is energy - not food - or one could say the energy needed to create & ship food to us...thats all debateable...but the bottom line is that our way of life is dependant on high levels of cheap energy. When that energy isn't there - we will have to pull back in some way. Whether its die-off, conservation, etc I think remains to be seen.

[crow]

Peak Oil is a simple symptom of something much larger.

It is the sum of human ignorance, arrogance, greed and several other flaws compounded upon each other.

Had we, as a whole, had the foresight to know what peakoil would cause the world back in the year 1850, and with the inclination to care what would be happening to humanity 150 years down the line, the whole disaster could have been avoided.

Fact is, how long have people known oil would eventually run out, but persist in keeping their heads down and going on with their daily lives, content with their current riches?

Greed, ignorance, arrogance are the three big causes of peak oil in my opinion, and thus peak oil is the simple symptom of those three diseases(maybe arguably others can be added, or differnet terms could be used).

[TheTurtle]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('crow', '
')Had we, as a whole, had the foresight to know what peakoil would cause the world back in the year 1850, and with the inclination to care what would be happening to humanity 150 years down the line, the whole disaster could have been avoided.

[crow]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheTurtle', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('crow', '
')Had we, as a whole, had the foresight to know what peakoil would cause the world back in the year 1850, and with the inclination to care what would be happening to humanity 150 years down the line, the whole disaster could have been avoided.

[galacticsurfer]

Our western system is linear and based on something called progress and logic. We rule in the bible over creation. "I think therefore I am". Eastern systems are based on cycles and spiritual connection to the whole(not master/servant relation to nature). Now maybe our culture is just too damn young and naive to have seen and understood a complete cycle of rise and fall of a civilization or they did not think as deeply as gurus in India or the buddhists. PO is of course just part of a problem we made for ourselves which includes the destruction of the whole damn planet. Now we have even converted sensible living asians to our capitalist destructive ways and adopted their religion(meditation, yoga) to become a more hard powered salesman of automobiles,etc. How much worse can things get than that? Nobody sees the big picture anymore but just uses bits and pieces that suit them. All of us should go take some philosophy and religion courses to get a feel for some deeper sense of life and get away from our fear of loss of immediate material gratification which is the basis of our coming to peak oil web sites anyway.

[Hermes]

For more thought on this subject I recommend reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.