[ubercynicmeister]

NO MATTER HOW OFTEN I CHECK THIS THING FER SPELLING, TYPOES ALWAYS GET PAST....

I note a disturbing trend appearing amongst the boards here: the desire to give the Baby Boomers a thorough kicking, deserved or undeserved about such things as Peak Oil. I must reply - if you place the blame for things like Peak Oil at the feet of the Baby Boomers, you place the blame too late.

The Baby Boomers were not responsible for things like Peak Oil. The decisions to replace steam with diesel for (say) rail travel was made in the 1930's. The huge replacement trend was delayed because of the Great Depression and the Second World War, and so started in earnest in 1945. Perfectly good steam locomotives, modern, efficient and easy to maintain were scrapped in favour of then-unreliable diesels, simply because diesel fuel cost a whole lot less than coal: US$0.08 per US gallon for diesel fuel in the 1940's as versus US$4.75 per tonne for coal. That's about a 3-to-1 advantage.

The middle of the 1950's marks the last time steam was as numerous as diesel on US rail travel and by the end of the 1950's / beginning of the 1960's steam was almost entirely gone in the US. Indeed, one of the things that marked the steam-to-diesel / rail-to-road transition is how obscenely hastily it was done. The process was repeated, with the same obscene haste, in the Britain, Europe, Australia, and all countries a little later on. But those decision-makers who decided against steam and rail, in favour of diesels and roads, would have been born around the turn of the Century (1900's) and educated in the New Ways in the 1920's and 1930's, when tradition was being slowly strangled. The Second World War marks the real end of Traditional Times, when Tradition, especially Traditional Ethics, was finally murdered. This is the point that C.S. Lewis was trying to make in his book "The Abolition Of Man" (something that all Peak Oilers should read if they want to understand the real spirit behind what's driving us inexorably past the Peak). No, the decisions to use Oil and only Oil were made when The Baby Boomers were still infants or even unborn. Another example if this is Winston Churchill, then First Lord Of The British Admiralty, who made the decision to switch the British Navy entirely to Oil in 1913, long before the Baby Boomers' parents had even married. Peak Oil can be directly traced back to Winston Churchill's decision in 1913. As a historical side-note, the British Admiralty was persuaded to adopt Oil simply because Oil from Iran (!!!) was then cheaper than anything else they could buy.

The Baby Boomers were offered a massive energy subsidy that appeared to have a mid-point further off than most people can think about - if Peak Oil happened in 2005, then in 1955, that event was still 50 years away. And if it took 50 years to get half-way...heck....the run-out point must be even FURTHER off, right?

Think about it: if you are born into a world where everyone still has memories fresh from the Great Depression and the most destructive conflict the world has ever seen, the Second World War, and you are suddenly offered a massive economic boost in terms of what seems to be almost free energy. This energy source will give you every form of "push button" convenience and new modes of fast transport which are personalised to the point of being offered in the colour you want, and the supply of the stuff keeping all this New Ideal going (ie: Oil) was predicted to run out long after you are dead (by which time obviously someone would have developed an alternative)...could anyone refuse to use it? And how the heck would the average Politician - assuming they did not wish to go down that road (pun intended) - how could they explain such a difficult-to-understand decision to their entire electorate? Would not such a decision have been labelled "obscurantist"? "Luddite"? To put such a decision into modern context: imagine some political leader someplace deciding to opt out of the Internet. Everyone would automatically issue howls of derision about such, but Peak Oil could be delayed a little if we all did not have this desire (I include myself) for computers & internetting.

I know *I* would have a difficult time saying "no" to such an offering as Cheap Oil. I know I would have an almost impossible time trying to justify not having (say) the Internet access, in spite of the fact that it consumes irreplaceable resources. This is the very situation the Baby Boomers had in the 1950's. The then-unquestionable "Progress is automatic and always good" mantra , and it's converse "Old Is Bad", was in unquestioned operation at the time. The Traditional conservative (in the sense that Conservationists use it) lifestyle was "Old", all right. It was millenia old. Hence it must be "bad", right? In any case, of COURSE someone would have gotten around to discovering a Non Oil Energy Source 50 years after the 1950's...absurd not to think otherwise.

So spend, spend spend the Oil, and now (2006)...we discover that progress is not always good, and not always automatic. As someone said in the late 1960's :

"Progress??? We have made so much 'progress' we can no longer speak with confidence of human survival..."
The first, cold hint of the later Peak Oil ice-storm had already chilled humanity, but lightly. The first Shadow of the later Oil Crisis had appeared, but on the edges of vision. However, the Oil-Based Economic Sun of the 1950's, 60's, and 70's still shone, and other breezes were warmer. Why think of the cold, when you can have Oil-fuelled Fun in the Sun?

So let's not be harsh towards the Baby Boomers. I am not one - I was born in 1969, but I can say this: given the same set of circumstances and the same blandishments of modernity offered, my generation, indeed, ALL generations would have given in to the deadly embrace accompanying the siren call of the Oil Well.

To repeat: The Baby Boomers were not responsible for things like Peak Oil. To place the blame there is to place the blame too late, time-wise. Peak Oil was made inevitable in 1913 by Winston Chiurchill's decision to convert the British Navy to Oil, a decision at the time that had massive unintended consequences. Winston Churchill was not a Baby Boomer.

[thuja]

Pinning blame is a pointless game...however...Boomers and their parents became well aware that we had serious problems with excessive resouce consumption in terms of demand for petroleum, arable land, potable water, etc...since at least the 60's. Many people finally woke up in the 70's and tried to find solutions to these problems. A few delineated the problems (Limits to Growth, The Population Explosion) and offered Powerdown options, such as getting "small" (schumacher), shifting towards energy alternatives and decreasing consumption patterns.

At the apex of this movement, president Carter laid out strategies for dealing with these excessive demands on resources based on conservation and efficiency.

What happened? The vast majority of Boomers thought about it for a second...and then soundly booted Jimmy out of office and voted for "Sunrise in America", pulling the solar panels off the White House and buying oversized gas guzzlers.

The boomers (and their parents) mostly knew the dangers of continuing on this course, but like smokers and junkies, decided to opt for the quick fix instead of the long rehab.

Do I blame them? The ones who ignored the warnings- yes...but I also understand human nature and the difficulty of altering course when the one in front looks so easy and carefree...even if there is a Mack truck barelling towards you just around the next corner.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Good points, uber, but is one man really to blame? The real question is what that guy at theoildrum poses, "are humans smarter than yeast?"

[Colorado-Valley]

"Are humans smarter than yeast?" is, in my opinion, the most important question ever asked about our particular race.

I was a boomer, but I got the message early on about mindless industrialism and have tried for many years to convince people through my journalism that fossil fuels and unbridled population growth would lead to disaster.

I used to hate the WWII generation for getting my generation trapped in a disastrous war in Vietnam. It was only later that I found out that many of the WWII generation hated the war as much as we did.

When Reagan was elected, I remember great sadness in most of the baby-boom generation. It was the Cheneys and Bushes and wealth class that celebrated.

[PenultimateManStanding]

How can we look at this objectively? The war in Viet Nam was to resist Stalin and Pol Pot, in the final analysis. That was the paradigm of the last century. Pol Pot got to do his thing because of American lack of resolve. If we had stood firm that never would have happened. But Americans are decadent and fun loving, as Hitler and Stalin and Bin Laden have noted.

[rwwff]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Colorado-Valley', '"')Are humans smarter than yeast?" is, in my opinion, the most important question ever asked about our particular race.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rwwff', ' ')we are, for just this tiniest fraction of history, the Apex organism.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('thuja', '.')..What happened? The vast majority of Boomers thought about it for a second...and then soundly booted Jimmy out of office and voted for "Sunrise in America", pulling the solar panels off the White House and buying oversized gas guzzlers...

[RacerJace]

My personal obsevation/opinion is that the Baby Boomers are the most hedonistic and materialistic generation known to man. I myself am in the Generation X (children of the Boomers) timeframe. And I identify with the angst of being part of a futile paradigm of 'go to university, get married, start a career as DINKs, get a morgage, have two kids, realise that your levels of debt are getting more and more out of control, struggle for career progression in a meaningless job supporting the boomers sitting in the top jobs doing stuff all and having an unhealthy dependancy on the disgruntled GenXers that are getting the real work done.

But what is even worse is that the GenXers are taking the evils of consumerism to the next level and totally corrupting the Generation Ys (their children). The GenY's are now growing up with the expectations of "I can have anything I want now and someone else will pay for it later' mentality. They have the potential to overtake the Boomers in their materialistic self serving ways. WRONG... The GenYs and their children will bear the brunt of former genrations of shortsightedness and self interrest. They will grow to hate all the generations before them.

What I find ammusing is that there is a growing trend of Boomers that are now reaching retirement and are cashing in their lifes earnings on a final full blown hedonistic splurge. They're saying f**k the kids we're going on a world tour holiday and spending all the inherritance.

.

[vision-master]

Man, you live in paradise already. Come on over to the states to say, L.A.

[Heineken]

I blame the Boomers for selling out to the corporations. The Boomers had the right ideas in the 60s and 70s, they were starting to take this country in the right direction, but then most of them ultimately turned their backs on their own beliefs. The corporations creamed them, just like they've creamed every generation since.

Disclosure: I was born in 1955.

[TheTurtle]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'T')he Boomers had the right ideas in the 60s and 70s, they were starting to take this country in the right direction, but then most of them ultimately turned their backs on their own beliefs.

[Heineken]

Good for you, Turtle. I'll see you down at th' commune!

I, like you, am a holdout.

The reality is, though, that the corporations and their politicos won the battle; the world is wrecked and futureless.

[TheTurtle]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', '
')The reality is, though, that the corporations and their politicos won the battle; the world is wrecked and futureless.

[Heineken]

Well, Turtle, I do blame the Boomers . . . the ones who sold out, that is. Let's be honest: The corporations are now run mostly by Boomers and former Flower Children.

[TheTurtle]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'W')ell, Turtle, I do blame the Boomers . . . the ones who sold out, that is.

[vision-master]

Corporations are run by the "Flower Children"? I know more than one Conservative, Crew cut, Pro-military, Redneck, Country boy, Bible thumping Boomer from "my generation". There was a movement in the 60's, but most folk just followed the same-old thinking from the 50's. 2006 and still in the 50's. BORING!

[Heineken]

You need to clarify what point you are making, vision-master.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'I') blame the Boomers for selling out to the corporations. The Boomers had the right ideas in the 60s and 70s, they were starting to take this country in the right direction, but then most of them ultimately turned their backs on their own beliefs. The corporations creamed them, just like they've creamed every generation since.

Disclosure: I was born in 1955.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou need to clarify what point you are making, vision-master.