[aldente]

I get your point. At least your friend responded to your post. I myself, very fond of having discovered Google Video (thanks PMS) immediately sent the link of 'End of Suburbia' to three of my best friends. Result?
Dead silence!
I guarantee you that there is a psychological component built into dealing with being able to see the future as we guys here seemingly are able to compared to the rest of the bunch. Are we all psychics or what?
Well, not to preach to the choir - good post!

[Kod]

I can't find The End of Suburbia on Google video.

Can you link us?

[aldente]

It was fully available though this link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... ak+oil%252
Now they tell us that it this video 'may' not be available. (As pointed out before everything 'seemed' not available...')

Well, I guess you're out of luck and the whole thing was only a short window that opened up there. Keep diggin!

[LadyRuby]

I love your blog, Shannymara. You really put your heart into it.

How's the cabin going? Ready to move in by spring?

[Heineken]

I lost a friend because of my yammering about PO. We had been attracted to each other because of our maverick natures, but when push came to shove he couldn't handle what I told him, and drifted away. Guess I don't blame him---he has a young son and understandably cannot bear to think about what that child is going to confront.

[BO]

I had been engaged in a debate with a friend of mine who is a car enthusiast. He is a registered Democrat, and thinks that everything will be fine with a Democratic administration in 2008. He just flat out does not beleive in PO, or Resource Depletion! I mentioned to him the other night that under our current system, the world will not have enough resources to support the population we have now in just a few decades. His reply was to say it is not true, and provided no evidence. He won't talk at all about peak oil, and usually gets mad if I bring it up. But as I said, hasn't done any research as to why he thinks PO is a hoax, he just thinks the oil companies are manipulating the price of crude. After exhaustively explaining the facts, he still won't even consider it. The other night, when I tried to bring it up via resource depletion (we were at a hockey game), he got mad, and said, "We are not going to agree on this, I came here to have fun tonight, I don't want to talk about this." very angrily.

I think it comes down to the study showing 95% are imitators, and 5% are initiators. He loves cars, probably can't imagine a world without them, his job requires him to drive about 35,000 miles a year. The kicker is, after unloading all of my PO info on him, and explaining that oil prices will continue to rise, he went out and bought a Nissan Pathfinder, and proclaimed that oil prices will soon drop down to about $45 barrel.

Why is it that some, (like us here) find out about PO and change our lives, and others cover there ears and think happy thoughts, unable to divorce themselves from there unsustainable lifestyles, even though they must know the implications if they are wrong?

[LadyRuby]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shannymara', ' ')I put my heart into everything I do. I get hurt a lot but it's worth it. I've always been pretty intense.

[Ludi]

I don't really understand a life in which one can simply ignore unpleasant things.

It's never worked for me, the unpleasant things are still there.

[Ludi]

Regarding car enthusiasts and PO: My husband is a car enthusiast - love love loves cars. Has a 1970 Datsun roadster and is restoring a 1965 Datsun pickup truck. This hasn't had any sort of an effect on his ability to understand and work toward preparing for peak oil, he just uses a portion of his car brain to figure out alternative fuels he might use, or how to rebuild his cars as electric vehicles. Loving cars and being interested in PO aren't mutually incompatible.

[jdmartin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')oving cars and being interested in PO aren't mutually incompatible.

[Heineken]

Two movies encapsulate perfectly the full range of human responses to really bad news. The first and perhaps most obvious is "Titanic" (both the 1950s version and the more recent one). The other is "On the Beach," which portrays Australians' reactions to fallout from a massive nuclear war headed their way (fallout that has killed everyone else on Earth).

It's interesting and instructive to rewatch these films with PO in mind.

All the "characters" are there in these realistic movies---the cowards, the heroes, the deniers, the embracers of reality, the lost in space. They all reliably emerge when a population is confronted by something like PO, sinking at sea, or an inescapable toxic cloud.

[FairMaiden]

Because I am most unusually right about alot of stuff (I even surprise myself, its freaky)...EVERYONE loves to point out how terribly wrong I am with regards to PO. In my city, a famous professor just came out with a book on the future of energy that looks really rosy...so I must be wrong. Even tho, I have pointed out his whole book is based on the assumption that "the market" will find alternatives as the prices of current energy sources gets too high. He fails to recognize oil has NOT been a laissez-fair market. Apparently I'm just being a "doomsdayer" with all this hub bub. (If I am wrong, why does everyone feel the need to email or call me when they come across a story/article/etc that debunks PO? Worried maybe?)

I come on this site so I don't have to blabble about PO all the time - I can read and post here to get that need taken care of. My fiance is a believer now bc when I told his family they said, "oh sure - its a finite resource so that totally makes sense." They are engineers and apparently its pure logical sense to engineers...of course, they are the ones building alot of useless things just "because they can."

FM

[ubercynicmeister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FairMaiden', 'B')ecause I am most unusually right about alot of stuff (I even surprise myself, its freaky)

[Battle_Scarred_Galactico]

I wish everyone could be that honest. It's a wonderfull thing when someone is, it brings a great kind of closure to things.

[Hermes]

Hey Shanny!

I got an also somewhat refreshing response from my brother about PO last Spring. When I found out about PO , and I verified that it was for real, I went first to my family and close friends to try and let them know.

I cared especially a lot for my brother, and put special energy into trying to convince him of its reality. The whole family went back and forth, arguing about things, and accomplishing nothing.

I took him aside later and decided to take a different approach. I asked him if, setting aside all discussion of whether or not PO IS for real or not... would he actually do anything about it anyways if it IS for real.

He said no.

And that was both depressing and refreshing. No more agonizing over reports and numbers. No more warring over details, and whether or not we will all be saved by technology or politics... even if I finally DID convince him that PO is for real it would be discussion with a dead man.

I think the depressing part is pretty obvious.

The refreshing part of it though it is that finally there is a relationship I have with someone where I don't have to try and convince them! I can just let it go and enjoy the times we spend together instead of trying to save him.

I believe that a large portion of the populace is of the same opinion: that even if they do find out conclusively that PO is in fact happening, they will still do nothing about it. They will only respond to PO if it becomes the status quo to do so... but will certainly not do so because of PO, itself.

They will do so because their neighbors are doing it, and they heard they're supposed to do it on television.

[spudbuddy]

Hmmm. The psychology of this gets more interesting all the time.
Of course we discover how energy-dependent we really have become.
Then we discover how wasteful of that energy we actually are.
Then we dig into the actual reasons why.
I wonder how many people are overwhelmed by the thought of it - because it just seems like that one final weight that tips the whole thing over (or the big domino, the house of cards...)

I like the fact that more people are beginning to critically examine how we live, what we live in, how we get around, and the why of it.
I like the fact that more people are actually noticing that Main Street is gone, and actually miss it (along with train whistles at night) and reflect back on how different the world was when they were young (if the memories are old enough)
but most importantly - that realization that these so-called inexorable changes in our world...that must be right somehow, some kind of law of nature...are anything but.
They're not right. That's the point.
If Peak Oil is some kind of great leveler, then it intrigues me as much as scares me.
Of course I remind myself that gazzilions of people will all be in the same boat, and that it will all no doubt be a long slow bleed, as opposed to some catastrophic sudden smash (barring a nuclear holocaust.)

Perhaps that is the biggest concern right there - the geopolitical mess.
It's a huge thing to ponder, and still maintain some semblance of a "normal" life (which of course, most of us do.)

I guess I'm lucky. I have friends in the "real" world heavily involved in this issue. We yak a lot about it.
One positive thing I find...is all the energy put into solutions. Constantly thinking about positive changes (not running off to the wilderness, or extreme denial, or post-fossil Mad Max scenarios, etc.) but rather a problem-solving exercise, which is also a social thing, and shared, and designed to make one feel less alone in the face of it.

I find as things go along that this human resilience is important to me.
Without that - I imagine the world would look pretty bleak.

Still and all, I find this site has real value - I like the idea that a growing army of people all over the place, every race creed color and religion, every walk of life (except maybe for Oil Co. execs!) are sharing this concern.
Come to think of it - do you suppose those execs are monitoring all this activity? (suppose I'll know if I suddenly lose my internet connection) [wink]

[oowolf]

A local pastor (Community Congregational-whatever THAT means) who really helped me a lot while my mate was dying of ALS, gave me a ride the other day (as he often does). He usually listens patiently to my endless rants about corporate fascism, peak oil, global warming, post office nazis, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

After a few minutes he turned to me and said: "It's too late. It's too late to save the human race from itself."

For once I was speechless. There was nothing else I could think to say. The rest of the ride we just sat there, riding through the Montana twilight, along the Clark's Fork of the Columbia, into the night.

This guy once described my life as "a long dark night of the soul". I wonder what's going on in his soul nowadays.

[Heineken]

An interesting anecdote, oowolf. Perhaps, as the convergence of inescapable facts about PO, GW, etc., continues, a critical mass will be achieved that will swiftly shift millions of staid citizens from their comfortable, goofy optimism. And then maybe we'll get some action (although, alas, it will probably be too late).

[Mesuge]

Perhaps, the action will eventualy take form of collective suicide. Organized with the little help of mass media. That's the best option from enviro/energy stand point..

However, this might be only a tiny dent when we are bound to 8.5bln pop by 2030.

As mentioned in this forum many times and by different voices, the rule of thumb is that most likely the majority will just stand still perplexed and starve to death..