Should I show my nice parents End of Suburbia over Xmas?

crapattack

My really great parents are coming for Xmas. I really want to tell them about Peak Oil so we can all start making our plans. Should I tell them or wait until the holidays are over?
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Guest

Why would you want to upset your parents?
Christmas is supposed to be a time of getting together with friends and family and having a good time
It is not about springing some end of the world bollocks on them.

Guest

crapattack

See, guest, that was my thought too. I mean who needs all this 'end of life as we know it' stuff over the holidays? It should be a warm fuzzy time, I don't get to see them very often. They are getting older and I don't really know how they'll deal with this, it's so far out of their experience. Probably disbelief, but someone said not to be surprised if they take it ok since they grew up during the Great Depression. My PO plan involves having them live with us and as they are selling the house soon they should know what we are thinking. Also, I want Dad to start stocking up on things as they live on an island and if there is a sudden crash soon we might not be able to get to them. Perhaps I should just take the opportunity while they are here, but it is a very tricky thing. We really don't know what would be best.
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Ayoob · Expert Joined: Jul 15, 2004 Posts: 1038

How about Three Days of the Condor? It's a much better movie, and then they won't have to look at Kunstler's fat ass.

Micki

Better check the pulse carefully before jamming the whole PO doom scenario down their gobs.

I have over several months tried 'conditioning' my wife and still she comes up with ideas like 'lets spend your christmas bonus on a new car' type ideas. When I remind her of what our PM said on TV about end of chep oil, Goldman Sachs $105/bbl predictions etc she looks at me like I wa one of those "the end is near" type dudes or gives me the 'now now, it'll be alright. That is years away..." things. I don't even dare to bring up a lot of the interesting or scary PO stuff that I find.

Lucklily my wife lets me handle our investments, so I've been carefully stocking up on gold withotut really explaining why.

May I suggest that if/when you bring it up with your parents you make references to the 70's oil crisis and ask them how they would handle/cope something similar but worse. i.e. you can always mix in some terrorism, chinese demand etc in the talk to see how receptive they are before introducing the concept of PO.

When it comes to stocking up things, I don't think that is going to be an overnight problem. Better prepare the bigger things like preparing your home, learning more about farming etc.

Good luck and let us know how they took it once you told'em.

AmericanEmpire · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 14, 2005 Posts: 497

Yes, make sure to explain to them that there is no hope of solving this crisis on a global scale and that 5 billion people are going to have to die off from disease, famine, and war starting in a couple of years.

That will make for a wonderful Christmas. Laughing

crapattack

AmericanEmpire, exactly - when I tell people about this stuff I feel like I just took their birthday cake and sat on it, than ran over to granma and crapped in her shoe, then ate her hat. No wonder I've gotten those 'did you take your lithium' type looks. How can I ruin their nice little retirement where everything was going so swimmingly with this this cat barf!. I'm a bad bad child. I shouldn't tell them. I wish I was a cornocopian then it would be no problem at all.
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Doly · Expert Joined: Dec 03, 2004 Posts: 4031

Is Christmas the only chance you have of communicating with them? Generally, I wouldn't say that Christmas is the moment to introduce peak oil to anybody, unless they belong to the "I hate Christmas" category. It's the moment when they're more likely to reject it straight away, if you ask me.

If you have a good chance to talk with them, even by phone, after Christmas, I think it would be a lot better. Actually, my method, which is not giving people a lecture and expecting them to "see the light" immediately afterwards, but giving them tidbits until it sinks in, requires a bit of time to work. Christmas holidays is too short a time.

Barbara

This is what I got when I tried to introduce my parents to peakoil.

They stopped me after the first two or three sentences, and said: "Wait! We are old, we are sick, we don't want to hear anything. We want to enjoy our last years without any worries. This is your business, you're young, take care of your family and leave us alone."

I couldn't blame them for this. Chances are, if they're over 70 like my parents, you'll get the same answer.

Good luck, anyway!
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dhfenton

Maybe your parents are debating whether to tell junior about peak oil over Christmas. "He's so high strung you know"
lol

They're not stupid, send them the video after Christmas and let them make up their own minds.

Jake

Yep, wait till after the holiday. What if they've just spent a fortune on a load of (with the greatest respect) tacky crap.

My folks didn't accept it at all, but my dad obviously took it on board and seems fully aware and interested now, from his own knowledge and research I presume.

He knows a lot about Nuclear so actually managed to make me feel less doomy (for the short term at least).

Laughs_Last · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jul 26, 2005 Posts: 851

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Wrencher

Hi CA,
I think Miki's suggestion is a good one. You can sort of nibble around the edges of this and see how they take it. They went through the earlier oils shocks, so they know what that part of it is like, and what can happen to the economy. I gradually enlarged on these shared memories. We all agreed that these were just artifical shocks, and that in the end a lot of exploration and and drilling created a buyers market for quite a while. I then did a little bashing about the believability of corporate statistics, or those of any OPEC country since both have every incentive to report the greatest possible amount of reserves. I talked to them about how hard it really is to determine how much oil is recoverable in any formation, and then went back to the point that a company or country will probably both report the greatest reserves possible in order to make the most money. It is not a big step from this point to telling them about how production peaks on a bell shaped curve, and show them where on the curve discoverys peaked, where North America peaked, and where non-OPEC oil peaked. And tell them that these are the reasons that you are very concerned about what effects having the OPEC peak will have on the world, and your personal worlds esspecially. If they are half as smart as you are they will be picking up on the rest pretty quick. Also once people understand that you don't have to pump the last gallon out of the last formation to have the market change from a buyers market to a sellers market, the usually see the implcations. At least the start of them.

I haven't seen 'The End of Suburbia' so I can't really advise on that. I am guessing that it is pretty hard hitting, and if so you might want to wait until they have digested this. Speaking of digesting, it might not hurt to talk a little about NG, and how much fertilizer affects the availablity of our food.

I wish you the best of luck. I think my parents are a lot more ready to believe these hard truths than are my kids. Come to think about it, I can't remember the last time one of them offered 'A penny for your thougths' . Smile

Probably a lot more than they really want to hear.

Again, best of luck. I am sure that there will come a time when they want to know what is going on in your head and in your life and will be ready to listen.

If they live on an island they will already understand transportation issues and possibly the wisdom of having some food storage and general self sufficiency. Assuming this isn't Long Island. Smile

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crapattack

Thanks for all your feedback, the votes are still suggesting I show it to them, but going by the posts you've been leaving maybe I shouldn't.

To answer Doly, Christmas isn't the only time but it will be a while until I see them again and they are making plans meanwhile to sell the house. I have to tell them our solution soon and that would mean an trip to them just for that, and in telling them I would have to give them my reasons (PO).

I like Miki's suggestion too, I wish I had a bit more time, and of course Laughs_Last, suitably hilarious, but...no. I hate that movie and while it would be a fun sketch for some hypothetical parents you despise - get them so depressed on It's a Wonderful Life that telling them the End of the World is nigh doesn't seem so bad! I love my folks too much to double stomach punch them on Christmas - maybe just one stomach punch Wink

They'll think some techno-fix will save them I'm sure. Nuclear or the 'experts will think of something'. This makes me feel even more depressed as I don't believe it myself even though I'd love it to be true. As long as it doesn't prevent them from doing something to cushion the fall, that'll be ok though. Then if the fall doesn't come, hey, all the more pickles for me!
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"Ninety percent of everything is crap."
-Theodore Sturgeon

Stay low and run in a random pattern.

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