[Jack]

The problem here is that we have one, singular event that must prevent peak oil. To accomplish that, one must either:

1) Permanently limit human population to a small number

2) Change human attitudes such that they no longer pursue exponential growth.

Either one is tough to do. For my "one act" I suppose I would try to change the attitudes.

It might be possible to go back to Egypt and Amenhotep IV, and do various "magic" - say, a 10 megaton thermonuclear device on some other country's city - to persuade him that one was the emissary of Ra. Then introduce a set of beliefs. All would subscribe to those beliefs or they would be terminated.

Then innoculate the population. Call it receiving Ra's blessing.

Then release a bioengineered virus to eliminate the rest of the human race.

It could work. But I suspect the believers would stray from the fold.

[NEOPO]

I would go back many generations to my great x70 grandfather Atilla and convince him to raze Constantinople and Rome to the ground!

[Tyler_JC]

Wouldn't it be easier to tell Congress in 1912 to mandate 100 MPG cars?

[kochevnik]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Baldwin', ' ')Then England came and came within a hairs' breadth of destroying Irish culture.

[Ebyss]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Madpaddy', 'I')'ld go back to East Coast United States in about 1680 and give the Indians a few history books about their fate and then I'd give them machine guns and rpgs.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', '1')789 put it in the constitution that it is a federal offense to export raw materials.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shannymara', 'S')uck most of the fossil fuels out of the ground and shoot them into the sun before we started using them much.

[ucosty]

I'm picturing it now. Fewer cars and more pollution and the same people sitting around this website (instead called peak coal or peak firewood or something) talking about production curves of forests or strip mines

[Madpaddy]

I'ld go back, pretend I was a deity and tell Adam that Eve really likes in in the botty.

[Madpaddy]

I'ld have prevented Noah boarding the Ark.

[basil_hayden]

Go back to the monkey that mutated into a human and inject some genes that would allow for the understanding of the exponential function right off the bat, then party with him until dawn.

Guess I have to go forward and invent that gene first.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'W')ouldn't it be easier to tell Congress in 1912 to mandate 100 MPG cars?

[Tikib]

Old thread I know but:
Create a nuclear war over the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The few survivors would have a cooler climate and not enough oil reserves to rebuild. To anywhere near current population levels.

[joyfulbozo]

SIMPLY I WOULD HAVE INVESTED IN OIL.... LOL

[KaiserJeep]

Instructive to note that even back in 2007, years before I joined, members named "milt", "Jack", "Tikib", "kochevnik", and "basil_hayden" recognized that peak oil and AGW and <insert favorite resource peak here> were only symptoms of overpopulation, and that it does not matter in the least whether you treat the symptoms, if you don't solve the underlying issue.

[evilgenius]

I would convince the CIA, or whomever, that it was not against the US national interest for oil producing countries to use their own oil in order to develop industrialized rather than export based economies. Yeah, sure, we'd have had worse economic shocks here and there, and earlier, but overall not any worse than what the sum total will be the way it was done. The proper reaction to those shocks, and a lack of fear over them, should have won the cold war just as handily, and seen the US in the same top spot it enjoys today. The absence of the rising third world problems due to the collision of such vast differences could have been avoided, though.

But that would be a tall order for just one person going back in time. You'd either have to take others, in sufficient numbers to provide a convincing level of agreement, or perform miracles for them. There's a reason why Jesus performed miracles when what He really wanted to do was change people's hearts. Not even his own disciples listened to Him, even when a voice came out of a cloud and told them to. So to think that one person going back in time could achieve real change is probably absurd.

[dinopello]

I'd go back to 2004 and join up on PO.com and lay out exactly what was going to happen and have real fun fending off the other less informed prognosticators for a decade or so, all the while linking back to my original post saying "see I was right again". Eventually, you all would think I'm some kind of genius and worship the ground I type on.

Oh, and I'd buy a lot of the right stock and be richer than the Kochs.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ucosty', 'H')i ppl (Bear with me, this premise is far fetched at best)

If you could go back to some arbitrary time in the past, and somehow get a lot of influence or control, what would you change so that we could avoid the heavy handed outcome of peak oil.

I just have one request: don't talk about what shouldn't have been done. Just talk about what you would have done. That way the conversation is more on topic and positive.