by BigTex » Tue 20 Nov 2007, 13:42:52
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'T')he peak oil issue is starting to percolate up into the mainstream. Obviously the US press is going to be the last to take it seriously, but it seems to be exploding now in the UK. Because the UK being an english language country, americans are going to read a lot of it via Google News. It will eventually bleed into the US press.
I think next year is the year that everyone starts to talk about it around the water cooler. That's assuming oil passes $100/bl and gas prices spike even more. I just don't see how it can be swept under the rug much longer.
Why can't it be swept under the rug much longer? We've swept it under the rug as oil has gone from $15 a barrel to $95 and gas has gone from $1.25 a gallon to over $3.00. If this kind of price inflation doesn't get people's attention, I don't know what will.
When you have invested enough in a certain world view, sometimes there is NO SET OF FACTS which will pull you off of your chosen view of things. Not unlike Baghdad Bob, though perhaps more subtle.
I have learned there is little praise for being right early about something that portends doom for many. In fact, many who were right early wind up somehow being blamed for the eventual problems, as if seeing it early somehow caused it to occur.
If you want a somewhat analogous situation to the current mainstream PO resistance, think about Galileo (and others) fighting the church on scientific matters. EVENTUALLY, the scientific truths were accepted, but there were lots of pioneers who suffered greatly for seeing that church dogma did not begin to explain all there was to know about the universe.
Modern industrial capitalism is really a religion that worships cheap energy as its deity. The reason I say that cheap energy is treated as a deity is that industrial capitalism presupposes that cheap energy is infinite and an entitlement. How can unlimited cheap energy be possible in a world of finite resources, unless there is something supernatural about it? Sounds silly, but isn't this fantasy one of the core assumptions on which the modern world is based? Delivering the PO message to this mindset is like telling a child there is no Santa Claus--it is perceived as being mean spirited, even if it is true.
Note, too, that there are few who would benefit from the PO story going mainstream, thus there are fewer promoters motivated by greed to push it forward.
Modern industrial society is the frog in the pan of water, slowly heating up.