The End of The End: How the Peak Oil Movement Failed

[IsThisRealLife]

When faced with the choice of giving up the SUV or giving up food Americans will give up the SUV and will even move back in with their mother-in-law to be able to walk to work.

What you're saying is that faced with critical situations, Americans will be rational. Mr Cynicism himself here, I have a hard time believing in that.

There are already a dozen critical situations in everybody's everyday lives, yet we see dumb actions after dumb actions.

[IsThisRealLife]

How many electric cars will be on the road in 5 years? In 10 years? (out of 250 million personal vehicles in the US?)

I understand there were 11.5M new cars and light trucks sold in the US in 2010. If all these were EVs, it's an easy math. I doubt the penetration will be more than 5% in 10 years.

Peak Oil movement failed for the same reason that electing Obama has not resulted in real change. The system is rigged to maintain the status quo until it collapses.

PO is not a movement, but a geological fact. As for things not changing in DC, we can thank the Party of No for that, can't we?

[mos6507]

PO is not a movement, but a geological fact.

ASPO might disagree. Not that ASPO has accomplished much beyond making money holding conventions, but still...

[Ludi]

Farming on the other hand will continue as long as there are people to eat the food produced.

Paid for by whom? I would agree with you if you had said "farming will continue as long as there are people to BUY the food produced."

With so little oil there are no longer suburbs, what "work" will the people be walking to?

I just can not be so complaisant about people moving in with Mom to walk to their jobs in the city. What jobs?

I guess that's why I'm a doomer. I'm not seeing what jobs there will be when there is so little oil there are no longer suburbs and everyone has moved to the city.

I guess this is something I'm just never going to figure out, how our economy is supposed to continue when it is dependent on cheap and plentiful oil.

[Hawkcreek]

Farming on the other hand will continue as long as there are people to eat the food produced.

I just can not be so complaisant about people moving in with Mom to walk to their jobs in the city. What jobs?
I guess that's why I'm a doomer. I'm not seeing what jobs there will be when there is so little oil there are no longer suburbs and everyone has moved to the city.
I guess this is something I'm just never going to figure out, how our economy is supposed to continue when it is dependent on cheap and plentiful oil.

Part of it depends on how long people have to prepare before things really fall apart. If someone has an SUV getting 12 mpg and is paying $3 per gallon, that is the same as having an efficient car (48-50 mpg - like my VW Jetta) at $12 per gallon. Anyone who can afford a $30 K SUV can probably afford a $26K efficient car.
I remember in the early days of PO when the uber-doomers were claiming that we could not possible change most of our transporation fleet in less than 15 years. That may be true, but more highly motivated people (those who commute further to work) seem to be leaning in that direction.
Don't misunderstand me - I am still leaning in the doomer direction - I just think that it may take a lot longer than we first thought.

[ian807]

Heck, I didn't know there was a peak oil "movement." I thought it was just a bunch of folks who figured out at age 5 that you couldn't drain a bathtub forever and still have water in it.

Seriously, math is math. We (i.e. "the world") use 30 billion barrels of oil a year. That gives us 30-some years tops of "conventional" (i.e. affordable) oil if we keep pumping it out at that rate. Finding an extra 100 billion here or there will make the tub drain a little slower, but it's still draining faster than we can fill it.

[LateGreatPlanetEarth]

we still know that discovery has been less than consumption for the last 40 years (which has been the traditional marker used). That means the peak is out there, or recently passed. remember, the plateau could be about 4 years.

[Revi]

The plateau is going to last a few more years, but the price of energy will go up. The price of a barrel of oil in 2010 was almost $80 a barrel on average. That was the second highest price after 2008. Check out what Gregor.us has to say about it:

http://gregor.us/

We are entering the end of the oil age now. I just saw a piece on Frontline about the maintenance of commercial aircraft. It made me think that we are not going to be able to keep these things in the air much longer. They are too complicated, and in an era of expensive oil and aging aircraft there are going to be problems.

Welcome to the second half of the oil age.

[AirlinePilot]

30 years ago things were very much different. Our ability to discover and exploit oil resources is vastly better now. We all know about reserve growth and all that but doesn't it sometimes strike you that we may have actually gotten better at modeling discovery, exploration, and also estimating resource base? My thoughts are that we have a FAR better picture now as we begin to realize the possibilities of what might remain with regard to oil resources. I admit that its still a large unknown, but you have to acknowledge we may actually have begun to reach the end of the rope when it comes to discovery of large reservoirs of easy oil. At the least we are a lot better at looking for and finding oil, if we are not finding the big giant resources we need I doubt it is for lack of ability or desire. At these prices we should be finding new SA's a few times a year according to global economists!

[vtsnowedin]

Farming on the other hand will continue as long as there are people to eat the food produced.

Paid for by whom? I would agree with you if you had said "farming will continue as long as there are people to BUY the food produced."

With so little oil there are no longer suburbs, what "work" will the people be walking to?

I just can not be so complaisant about people moving in with Mom to walk to their jobs in the city. What jobs?

I guess that's why I'm a doomer. I'm not seeing what jobs there will be when there is so little oil there are no longer suburbs and everyone has moved to the city.

I guess this is something I'm just never going to figure out, how our economy is supposed to continue when it is dependent on cheap and plentiful oil.

Compared to you Ludie I am a slow crasher. I don't think we will all lose our jobs and the ability to pay for food overnight. I do expect quite a bit of disruption and the rate of that upheaval to accelerate over time. I think that a lot of jobs will be created in the new industry of "Dealing with peak oil". If we can't afford oil at its current price we will expend time and labor doing whatever it is that needs to be done by other means. Not all the Mother-in-laws live in the city. Some are still living on the family farm and in small towns where work and homes are within walking distance of each other as well as the corner store,the church, and the school.
And again the expected shortfall of oil post peak is on the order of five percent per year and we are currently wasting some forty percent of the oil we consume in America driving each and every one of us twenty five miles each day and getting nowhere. That gives us some eight years to ratchet down SUV single person commutes and needless trips to strip malls before we need to shut down any farmers tractor or turn the lights off in any factory.
If we have leadership with an accurate view of what is going on we can start expending resources on making the transition from sprawl and commutes to walkable and livable communities that are profitable. The question is can we educate the leaders we have or do we need to vote in a new set. When will a presidential candidate be asked to explain his policy on dealing with peak oil?

[Ludi]

Compared to you Ludie I am a slow crasher. I don't think we will all lose our jobs and the ability to pay for food overnight. I do expect quite a bit of disruption and the rate of that upheaval to accelerate over time. I think that a lot of jobs will be created in the new industry of "Dealing with peak oil". If we can't afford oil at its current price we will expend time and labor doing whatever it is that needs to be done by other means. Not all the Mother-in-laws live in the city. Some are still living on the family farm

Yes, you are certainly an optimist compared to me.

I don't expect this to happen "overnight."

I'm not optimistic about new jobs - what jobs? paid for by whom?

Almost no mothers-in-law live on the "family farm."

[mos6507]

Heck, I didn't know there was a peak oil "movement." I thought it was just a bunch of folks who figured out at age 5 that you couldn't drain a bathtub forever and still have water in it.

The difference is that in a bathtub you can always see how much water is left. Oil being underground = hope springs eternal.