I came across this news article today, in FastCompany of all places, and I'm thinking to myself, what will it really look like when peak oil the term is mainstream? How will we know when it's mainstream?
I've been seeing peak oil editorials in business-related rags for some time. It seems that the investment sector has bought onto it, although it seems oftentimes that the only reason they've bought onto it is the idea they can make a killing somewhere along the lines. So that whole conflict of interest issue has prevented me from seeing this development as being that significant.
But there is also the issue of tone. Despite a strong strain of industry pushback in the editoral pages of major business-related rags, global warming, by and large, is treated as a closed issue by the press.
The debate then shifts to what to do about it.
Articles like this one seem to be moving in a similar direction, that peak oil may be moving beyond the starting gates of if it's real, to reporting on "the scramble" that various parties are already engaged in to cope with it.
The Honda thing where they linked to doomers would be similar, as would the Exxon story on the front page of the WSJ, etc...
What's blowing my mind about all this is how blase' this mainstreaming process is.
There isn't a lot of linkage between an admission of peak oil, and, let's say, the end of globalization, mega-capitalism, or malthusian die-offs. It's almost like people are engaging in that Shortonsense fantasy that even though we're facing what the doomers said was gonna happen, what we swore up and down wasn't gonna happen, that since we haven't hit bottom yet, it won't really be that bad, and so we're deluding ourselves with the idea that "the market" can respond in sync with geology and this will go by with more of a whimper than a bang.
What do you think?
PeakOil is You
What does peak oil becoming mainstream LOOK like?
Re: What does peak oil becoming mainstream LOOK like?
by Sixstrings » Thu 17 Feb 2011, 12:31:35
For me, the "peak oil has gone mainstream" moment was that Doom Prophets show on History channel. That was first time I've heard peak oil mentioned on the teevee, and discussed at length.
That Fast Company article.. just the headline sounds like doomer news, not mainstream:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')olar Power Comes to Saudi Arabia in a Big Way as Peak Oil Looms
That Fast Company article.. just the headline sounds like doomer news, not mainstream:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')olar Power Comes to Saudi Arabia in a Big Way as Peak Oil Looms
Interesting how fast that can happen.. to go from not talking about it all to peak oil being assumed like everybody knew it. Maybe it was the wikileaks that turned the tide.
Content of your article is interesting.. basically the oil's runnin out so Saudi Arabia switching over to solar panel power, wants to be an exporter.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')audi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi has already made it clear that he wants his country's level of solar output to match oil exports, though in terms of action the world is still left waiting. The country has more sun than oil, which means the desert nation could become the world's top exporter of power, just as it is the leader in oil.
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Re: What does peak oil becoming mainstream LOOK like?
by mos6507 » Thu 17 Feb 2011, 12:42:30
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Interesting how fast that can happen.. to go from not talking about it all to peak oil being assumed like everybody knew it. Maybe it was the wikileaks that turned the tide.
')Interesting how fast that can happen.. to go from not talking about it all to peak oil being assumed like everybody knew it. Maybe it was the wikileaks that turned the tide.
I really thought Earth2100 would be that moment, but it aired right around the time oil prices tanked and people just hit the snooze bar for 2 years.
It totally is like those scenes in comedies where the peon feeds an idea to the executive over and over again and finally the executive repeats the idea and says "Glad I thought of it!"
There is going to be a lot of collective amnesia about all of the denials leading up to this.
I swear the only reason people are warming up to the idea is the mental buffering they are doing about consequences.
If they can decouple an admission of peak oil with an admission of the consequences of peak oil that doom prophets like Ruppert so often talk about, then it's easier for them to concede it.
Similarly, AGW denialists saying "yeah, the climate is changing, but we can adapt. Just put houses on stilts."
It's that clinging to the notion that BAU will persist, that as long as we don't have this overnight fast-crash, the center will hold. The stone age didn't end for a lack of stones.
So the debate shifts from whether or not peak oil is real to what we here argue about, which is what we can and/or should do about it, in which most denialists fall into the drill baby drill and technofix camp and the powerdowners and malthusians are marginalized still.
It's kind of like embrace and extend. BAU can learn to embrace peak oil if it can sell the concept as merely a speedbump on the road to progress, even though all the experts worth listening to agree that BAU is hosed.
- mos6507
Re: What does peak oil becoming mainstream LOOK like?
by gollum » Thu 17 Feb 2011, 12:50:50
I was listening to an interview with Robert Hirsch on Financial Sense News Hour yesterday, he seemed to think it may take sever "oil shocks" before people see reality. He tried to very hard to not sound alarmist, which scares the hell out of me. His opinion is that when the authorities do fess up all hell is going to break loose.
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Re: What does peak oil becoming mainstream LOOK like?
by cualcrees » Thu 17 Feb 2011, 13:04:29
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gollum', 'I') was listening to an interview with Robert Hirsch on Financial Sense News Hour yesterday, he seemed to think it may take sever "oil shocks" before people see reality. He tried to very hard to not sound alarmist, which scares the hell out of me. His opinion is that when the authorities do fess up all hell is going to break loose.
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"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
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