The Peak Oil Feeling Cycle—Denial, Anger, Fear, Depression, AcceptanceBy Shepherd Bliss,
sb3@pon.netA Peak Oil Feeling Cycle seems to occur as one learns about the globe’s dwindling supply of petroleum. It can go something like the following: denial, anger, fear, depression, and acceptance. One’s feelings as they learn about the Black Gold’s ongoing descent do not necessarily occur in this order, nor does everyone go through all these stages. Upon first hearing the scientific evidence that we are in the twilight of the Oil Age, some people accept it immediately. But most people seem to go through a process that can take months, including going back and forth between various feelings, even on the same day.
When I talk about Peak Oil with my college students in Hawai’i and friends I get different responses. Some still have not heard that we are at or nearing the half-way point of our Earth’s limited petroleum supply, after which their will be a gradual decline. So they reply with a range of responses from curiosity to blank stares. Some change the subject to something more pleasant or exciting. Others argue back. After listening intently, some seem to understand.
By reflecting on my own Peak Oil awareness process and that of my students, friends, and readers as they engage information about oil depletion, I want to describe what I call the Peak Oil Feeling Cycle. My attempt here is to go beneath the important scientific, political, economic, and social aspects of Peak Oil to consider some of its human dimensions.
Rather than use the word “feeling,” I thought about “awareness,” but I think “feeling” is more accurate. Rather than “cycle” I originally used “curve,” connecting the term to the bell-shaped curve that came to be called Hubbert’s Peak and to the more familiar term learning curve. I decided upon cycle because it implies something ongoing and because it can include occurring and recurring. It suggests that feelings are circular, like a wheel, rather than linear. Feelings can get stuck and stop a flow, or they can evolve, especially when expressed. Cycle is also a biological and electrical term and can evoke bicycles, which are part of the solution, once one gets to acceptance.
“There is a Peak Oil learning curve,” author Richard Heinberg observed. He was speaking to over 200 people this summer near his home in Sonoma County, Northern California, at a talk organized by Solar Sebastopol. His comment stimulated me to realize that there is also a Peak Oil Feeling Cycle.
Then I recalled the work of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D., in her classic 1969 book “On Death and Dying.” From her clinical work she was able to describe the usual stages of dealing with death—denial, anger, bargaining, fear, depression, acceptance. Peak Oil is a process, rather than an event. It is a kind of dying—of the Oil Age, after which we will have another age. Energy has evolved from wood, to coal, and now to oil. It is still unclear what blend will provide energy for the future, though it is clear that it will not be cheap oil nor as abundant or effective.
I seek ways to describe the natural process of oil depletion to a growing number of people in words that are understandable. The early responders— like canaries in a coal mine—already sense what is happening. They give voice to the crises that will soon happen as industrial society runs out of its main energizing, non-renewable fossil fuel. For those who try to talk to friends and family about what they’ve learned about oil’s twilight, it is tempting to present scientific facts and offer analyses of its potential consequences. This doesn’t always work to communicate information in a way that people can integrate.
When I first heard about Peak Oil, I thought it was just another Y2K false threat. So I was doubtful and skeptical. I was in the first stage of denial. This is the stage at which some people laugh at others and even try to belittle and ridicule them. Others report that they are “bored.” True, the Peak Oil news is initially not very exciting or distracting, which is most of what the current media presents, rather than inform us. People in deep denial just want you to shut up, so that Peak Oil will go away.
I first read Heinberg’s book “The Party’s Over” in early 2004. Then I watched the documentary “The End of Suburbia” that summer at New College of California, where Heinberg teaches. He appears in the film, along with Kunstler, Simmons, and other Peak Oil theorists. The book and the film together finally stimulated Peak Oil to appear on my radar screen.
But I still didn’t give Peak Oil much attention. Then some government officials began advocating the building of a new highway through the forest where I live in Hawai’i. Peak Oil suddenly became a relevant reality to me. Why build such a highway with all its environmental degradation if our amount of gasoline and use of cars will decline?
A member of our road opposition neighborhood group sent me an excerpt from James Howard Kunstler’s book “The Long Emergency” that appeared in the magazine “Rolling Stone.” Peak Oil finally made sense to me, because I could relate it to my own situation of fighting a road through the forest. I began to feel some anger, especially at greedy Big Oil, whose profits continue to soar to record heights. I also resented Americans for our over-consumption of a limited, non-renewable resource. I expressed my anger at public meetings to discuss the road building and in articles in the Hawai’i Island Journal. Others have described their anger as growing into rage and even wrath. Anger has merit and is certainly appropriate in the face of Peak Oil. Anger’s fire can activate, but it is not sufficient for the long-term.
As I studied Peak Oil more, I got frightened and felt a growing fear. After all, I had made some careful five and ten year plans, which did not take oil depletion into account. “Peak Oil scares me and I feel vulnerable,” a Big Island resident confided to me. I had been planning to stay in Hawai’i, but the islands import most of our food and goods and our economy is dependent upon tourism. Fear can create a sense of helplessness. Transportation breakdowns in Hawai’I lead quickly to shortages in stores. So how would my friends and I get enough food in these remote islands, I worried. If a crisis were to hit Hawai’ as devastating as Katrina, would we react like New Orleans? I dwelt in Peak Oil fear for a few months—not an enjoyable feeling, nor an activating one. In fact, it was rather painful and demobilizing.
Fear can grow into hysteria and panic. I’ve noticed this happening since Hurricane Katrina hit. Katrina has awakened an increasing number of people to Peak Oil issues; it frightens many that what we see happening in New Orleans may happen in other urban areas. Indeed, it may. But when fear escalates into panic or hysteria, rather than evolving into right action, one’s thinking and doing can be clouded. The feeling of desperation is more likely to de-mobilize or lead to ineffective action than it is to produce
effective activity. Some have the urge to get a gun to defend themselves, rather than plant a garden to provide for themselves and others. Crises can bring out the worst in people, as we see in New Orleans, but they can also bring out the best, as we saw in New York City after Sept. 11, 2001.
Depression followed fear for me, especially as I thought about what my friends, others, and I would lose. At times this depression has been accompanied by confusion regarding what to do. I enjoy traveling, which I will not be able to do as much of as oil peaks. More serious consequences include the reduction of the amount of and options for food. As one reads more about Peak Oil, it is easy to get sad and do what is called “anticipatory grief.” I must admit to sometimes slipping back in my cycle into feeling despair.
The main visible place that we currently feel Peak Oil unfolding publicly is when we fill our cars with gasoline at rising prices, which angers many people. Such symptoms of the underlying problem will increase, bring more discomfort, and with it the mourning for the life of relative abundance that once existed. It is easy to get despondent over the emerging oil shortage.
I finally began to talk more about Peak Oil with friends and others. This broke my isolation. I moved into an acceptance of the inevitability of the twilight of the Oil Age. I began to feel better. Things would surely change without petroleum to fuel industrial society, but they might even eventually get better. In fact, I have come to see Peak Oil as not only a threat but as potentially an opportunity. It could help wake us up to the damage that oil-based industrialism does to the Earth.
As one talks to individuals or groups about oil descent and its economic, political, and social consequences, it is helpful to understand where one’s listeners are coming from: How much do they already know? Where does their information come from? Have they merely been reading the mainstream media with its focus on rising gasoline prices as the problem, or have they ventured into the authors mentioned above and others trying to connect the energy dots and provide analysis and context, including various Peak Oil websites? How do they feel about what they are learning?
The importance of getting to the acceptance of Peak Oil as a reality is that it can lead to a deeper study of the subject and being better informed. This can help guide connecting to others and taking direct action. Getting to this stage sooner will enable us to plan better for our personal futures and those of our families and friends.
Wherever you might be in your own personal cycle, I appreciate the drive you’ve taken with me by reading this article. I’m using my two-wheeler more these days than I used to, like when I was a boy. I don’t get as far as I did on my four-wheeler, but it gives me a better opportunity to see the flowers and other things along the way and do less damage to them and myself.
by LeonDion » Mon 08 Aug 2005, 14:50:26 
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