by waegari » Sun 19 Feb 2006, 19:10:58
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Magus', ' ') I no longer even see myself as an American, as I now despise pretty much everything this country now stands for.
First off, welcome to the site, welcome to the land of truth, and secondly, as a citizen from the rest of the world I would really like to reassure you as an American: we as humans brought this about together, and we're all in this together, wherever we are in the world. And I would suppose, most of us, would much love anyone anywhere in the world get hold of one of those handy machines we call computers, if only to get informed and be warned about the peak oil phenomenon. But, a US computer as much as any Japanese or Korean manufactured computer needs about 10 times its own weight in oil to get produced.
So whatever any US administration may have done wrong, peak oil goes beyond such responsibility. Or, if anywhere, it lies with all those in politics worldwide who dismissed Limits to Growth in the early 1970's, at least.
And on another note, being a news editor here, I even envy you, Americans, for the much greater amount of peak oil awareness I encounter in media reports than I would in, at least, the Netherlands and Germany. So, in that sense, you're even lucky.
Still, yes, peak oil awareness isn't easy, but it does give a sense of direction, a standard for separating chaff from wheat in one's life, and one even doesn't get upset too much about things that would normally be absolutely annoying, delayed trains for instance.
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.
Al Bartlett