[Cynus]

I was thinking about how, with high oil prices, many of the old and poor will not be able to afford to heat their homes in this and coming winters. I thought that perhaps this would force conservation measures to be enacted in order to bring down the price of oil, but then I woke up and realized this would not happen (yet anyway). There was a heat wave in Chicago a few years ago where something like 900 people died, but since they were mostly poor and old it did not get very much attention. Even if people start screaming for assistance with heating their houses, it will not take the form of curbing oil use in other areas, such as transportation, it will probably be in the form of ever increasing tax breaks for purchasing heating oil. What will it take for Jimmy Carter style conservation measures (limiting days when you can buy gas, for example) to be enacted?

[deconstructionist]

i think the death toll would have to reach 5 figures in one isolated incident before we get serious enough to make the types of changes that are required to combat the effects of peak oil for real...

[Mower]

I dont think there will be time for these measures, or any conservation measures really. Once it dawns on a majority of people what is actually happening, there will be panic and a sudden inplosion and upheavel the likes of which will challenge our very sanity and existence. And I think it's coming soon...

[aahala]

High oil prices will not affect heating costs much in the US, except for the
Northeast. About 85% use NG or electricity to heat. Using fuel oil to heat
is uncommon in most sections of the country.

[Rickenbacker]

Not so sure aahala, NG depletion will be even swifter following an oil crisis. No new NG power stations are being constructed in the US because there isnt the extra gas there to supply them, price will fly up when patrol generators and oil stationsgo under. The US is already using many of its reserve power stations, normally used in peak season only, as full time generators. Without major investment they wont take the heat. They weren't designed to.

Do we really think the big oil companies and government, with full knowledge of the peak oil situation, still bleating constantly about ways to improve growth, actually care about number of lives lost etc?

As soon as their companies become illegitemate they will liquidize and run off with the profits, leaving the rest of us to starve/die of heat exhaustion/fight to death. etc.

We'll no doubt elect twats who promise to fight for our way of life etc. (if theyre not in office already) and instead of dying at home, youll get the promise of rations for your family and being looked after by being drafted. Theyre probably hoping the barrage of stuff that will be invented in WWIII (first battle of which was the first gulf war) will put us in good stead afterwards, as long as we haven't been nuked...

[emersonbiggins]

It will take either of the following in order to cause widespread panic:

100,000 transients and/or invalids die in a given time period

-OR-

1 rich, suburban white girl goes missing on an island somewhere...

[Jack]

Cynus....nobody cares about the old and the poor. They may say they do, but in actuality - they do not.

So arbitrarily large numbers can and will die. The media will show pictures from Thanksgiving to Christmas - after which, they, too, will revert to not caring.

[bruin]

By the time 1000's are dying due to PO, no one is going to have the money to help out the next 1000's.

[fossil_fuel]

"nobody cares about the old and poor" WTF? you may be right about the poor, but the old have the highest voting rates in the country, and politicians pander to them like crazy. it's the 18-24 bracket that no one cares about because they don't vote at high rates.

[dukey]

i think there will be reagonal doom
basically towns/cities are mostly reliant on food being shipped into them

if peak oil kicks in transportation of this food will become more difficult
but also the amount of food farmers produce will most likely drop massively without fertilisers heavy machinery etc .. In lots of cities especially, there isn't even enough space to grow food even if you wanted to.

theres basically nothing like the number of people in the country farming. all these farm hands have been replaced by machines. What teams of men and horses used to do, in weeks 1 guy does in a few hours with a huge combine etc .. Farms years ago were nothing like as productive as they are now. Also a lot of countries even now don't even produce enough food to feed themselves.. like the UK.

i moved back to the country where food is grown with this thought in mind. If i told people this they would most likely think im nuts but i swear theres meaning behind my madness

[Jack]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('fossil_fuel', '"')nobody cares about the old and poor" WTF? you may be right about the poor, but the old have the highest voting rates in the country, and politicians pander to them like crazy. it's the 18-24 bracket that no one cares about because they don't vote at high rates.

[backstop]

There's an air of Yankocentricity to this thread so far, so I hope its alright if an alien joins in for a few points.

In Europe two years ago we had the hottest summer known which, meteorologically, was a 500-yr event. In France alone over 30,000 "excess deaths" were recorded (i.e. over and above the norm for the period) with the huge majority being elderly.

I guess most of you probably didn't get to hear of it, as your media seems if anything more parochial than ours.

The European media covered it in dilatory fashion for about three days (a week in France) and then dropped it. Old people dying just isn't news. . . .

Now just 50 poor innocent sweet decent hardworking honest suit-wearing fare-paying mobile-phone-carrying commuters blown up in the rush hour ?
That's news for a month and counting. Every bloody day.

The blackest part of this sick joke we call a free press, is that the real threats- those of peak oil destroying the economy and global warming decimating the land's food-production potential - are blithely ignored.

No, the media doesn't give a damn for human life - its role is to profit from selling advertizing. And if the media doesn't care, then why should the politicians ?

Just think about it - > 30,000 dead in Europe by the extreme weather that's long been predicted of Global Warming - >10 x the 9/11 toll - and you never even heard of it ?

All the best,

Backstop

[MonteQuest]

Well, I guess you mean in the 1st world as millions are dying all over the third world. Look at Niger.

10 million children starved to death last year.

Nobody noticed or cared, really.

It's the loss of money that will make people sit up, not bodies.

[emersonbiggins]

For the record, I heard about the 30,000 deaths in France from the heat.
It was just about the time all the France-bashing started to occur and I heard snide comments talking about those 'stupid French' that didn't have 'air conditioners', yada yada... It's a shame what blind patriotism will do to a nation.

We'll see who has the last laugh.

[mommy22]

My family and I were living in Paris during this heatwave of 2003. In a wonderful apt, but not air-conditioned. My husband and I were very scared, and kept wet washcloths on our children and ourselves throughout the nights, and tried to hang out in stores and movie theatres during the days (most of these are air-conditioned). I couldn't beleive the lack of news coverage even there in Paris, where 15,000 died. The French were saying after the heatwave, that the elderly finally got some air-conditoning...in the morgue after their deaths. I mentioned the lack of media coverage, and my French teacher just shrugged it off. Citing high enrgy costs, etc... But, historically, France never got too hot, even in the summer, so AC was never a high priority. I just hope they've gotten around to cooling the hospitals over there, if these heatwaves continue. I had a child in Belgium, and that floor (delivery and nursery) had no air...women were instructed to bring their own fans! This was 1998.

[gg3]

Deaths tend not to make news unless they're visible and dramatic. In a heat wave, people die quietly indoors. In a terrorist attack they die in a most visible and dramatic manner, and plagues are good for this also.

What gets more attention is when the living are suffering in such a manner that they can still muster up the capability to make a big stink in public, for example by rioting.

Re. "death by temperature (too cold/ too hot)": Almost all of the buildings in use today were built during times of relatively cheap energy. This is a problem that will have to be addressed, in many cases by demolishing the worst of the worst and starting from scratch.

[max_power29]

People should keep this kind of thing in mind, especially if they believe there will be no such thing as a great die-off. This is nothing compared to what we will be dealing with in the future. If nobody cares about people quitely dying in their homes now, I expect that nobody will in a much lower energy world either. Once your body runs out of stored energy and you start digesting yourself you die quietly also.

[max_power29]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('fossil_fuel', '"')nobody cares about the old and poor" WTF? you may be right about the poor, but the old have the highest voting rates in the country, and politicians pander to them like crazy. it's the 18-24 bracket that no one cares about because they don't vote at high rates.

[max_power29]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'W')ell, I guess you mean in the 1st world as millions are dying all over the third world. Look at Niger.

10 million children starved to death last year.

Nobody noticed or cared, really.

It's the loss of money that will make people sit up, not bodies.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('max_power29', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'W')ell, I guess you mean in the 1st world as millions are dying all over the third world. Look at Niger.

10 million children starved to death last year.

Nobody noticed or cared, really.

It's the loss of money that will make people sit up, not bodies.