Heinberg – Beyond hope and doom: Time for a peak oil pep talk

Awareness of Peak Oil, Climate Change, impending global economic implosion, topsoil depletion, biodiversity collapse, and the thousand other dire threats crashing down upon us at the dawn of the new millennium constitutes an enormous psychological burden, one so onerous that most people (and institutions) respond with a battery of psychological defenses-mostly versions of denial and distraction-in an effort to keep conscious awareness comfortably distanced from stark reality.

I discuss this in “the Psychology of Peak Oil and Climate Change,” chapter 7 of Peak Everything, where I conclude that the healthiest response to dire knowledge is to do something practical and constructive in response, preferably in collaboration with others, both because the worst can probably still be avoided and because engaged action makes us feel better.


Some people who are aware of global threats respond psychologically with a relentless insistence on maintaining mental focus on possible positive futures, however faint their likelihood of realization. Other knowledgeable people are irritated by this behavior and prefer to plunge themselves into prolonged contemplation of the worst possible outcomes. On various Internet discussion sites this split plays out in endless flame-wars between “doomers” and “anti-doomers” (the latter differ from cornucopians, who deny that there is a problem in the first place).

I generally try to avoid both extreme viewpoints. To me, all that matters in the final analysis is whether awareness leads to effective action that actually reduces the risk of worst-case scenarios materializing.

But the fact is, even those who do engage in practical action get bogged down from time to time in fear, grief, and a sense of helplessness, or they suffer burnout from working too long and hard for too little reward. I’ve seen enough of this lately to conclude that some sort of informed pep talk may be helpful. (By the way: I experience the same symptoms occasionally; this pep talk is aimed as much at myself as anyone else.)

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