We are constantly being assailed to get into debt, spend like theres no tomorrow, keep up with the Joneses, be the most civilised (which invariably means, devote our societies to wasteful consumption and competition).
Then occasionally, theres the odd divergence to maintain the pretense of democracy.
The overwhelming message however is one of the triumph of capitalism which in turn tends to preference us towards its overwhelming power to overcome anything, unsurprisingly.
This can be seen in China, that epitome of the bizarre confluence of the irreconciliable, where the triumphalism of capitalism now finds them playing god with the weather.
I would watch these very same blinkered individuals undergo a Damascene conversion when resource depletion becomes unavoidably obvious.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('WildRose', 'I') think lots of people have heard about the concept or read about it. Over the last few years, I've noticed quite a number of
articles in mainstream magazines, and watched news stories and documentaries on TV. I figure the readership of those magazines
probably read the articles and the documentaries must have been watched by some. Oil depletion is discussed in schools, even
at the grade five or six level. University students seem to be fairly knowledgeable.
But a lot of people don't approach the problem mathematically - percentages of decline in the major oil fields; increase in oil demand as we build
bigger homes, drive larger vehicles, use more technology, increase population; decline in new oil finds and what that means to the overall outlook.
What I hear often are statements like, "Well, did you hear they're drilling a lot deeper in the ocean now?" or "They'll find more; they always do."
So, while information
is getting out there, my feeling is that one has to investigate the topic a little more to understand ramifications and so on.