More On The (Peak Oil) Message, Part II

Continuing with the theme of messaging, I think it’s important to add some considerations to the mix. This is both for those of us who have chosen to do what we can to share what we know about the challenge of Peak Oil, and those trying to understand the complex issues that arise from declining worldwide oil production.

“Unfortunately, politicians don’t seem willing to face a more difficult reality: There is no solution, if by ‘solution’ we mean producing enough energy to maintain our current levels of consumption indefinitely.
“To deal with the energy crisis we must deal with a consumption crisis, but politicians are reluctant to run a campaign based on a call for ‘less’ — the American Dream, after all, is always ‘more.’ But, whether the public and politicians like it or not, our future is about learning to live with less, starting with a lot less energy….
“The most important step in dealing with our energy crisis is to realize just how much isn’t there. Either approach — believing that we can drill our way or invent our way out of the predicament — is magical thinking. Instead of fantasies of endless abundance, we have to recognize that a radical shift in the way our lives are arranged is necessary for survival. [1]

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, this is not the nicest or most pleasant message to share with others, especially at this time when the fears and worries about our future economic prospects are so pronounced. More bad news is not anyone’s first choice as a topic of conversation.

“But the passion of opposition [to President Obama] stems, I think, in part from a sense that the way the world once was is disappearing, that this is inevitable, and a repressed acknowledgment of the inevitability actually intensifies a resistance to it.
“The America of the future will not be the America of the 1950s, the teenage years of many of those in the Tea Party movement.” [2]

And therein rests a fundamental problem to be not just acknowledged—that’s the easier part. We Americans want things to go back to the way they used to be, whatever the hell that means, and the bigger problem is that Peak Oil is going to change everything. We are a nation whose prosperity has been created, sustained, and enlarged on the back of the fossil fuel resources whose efficiency and low costs over time have been blessings almost beyond rational thought. And we are not ready by a long shot to embrace the realization that life as we know it is going to now take on different shadings than the ones we have been expecting or hoping for.

Those fossil fuel resources are no longer what they once were, and soon enough they will not be accessible to us with the ease, low cost, and ready availability we’ve come to expect. Business as usual, and/or a return to the way things used to be, are soon enough options that will no longer be ones we can count on. It doesn’t matter that this may not likely be truly noticeable for several—or even “many”—more years. We need even more time than that to prepare, and we’re not doing anything yet! Expanding demand for fossil fuels (specifically oil) is going to clash head-on with a decline in availability, and the math won’t add up. We’re simply not going to have all that we need, and that’s not going to change. Certainly it won’t get better.

Lifestyle choices, industry, transportation, food production, entertainment … you name the topic and “easy and cheap” oil has been a vital reason for its existence, growth, and success. Without the same supplies of easy and cheap oil, something is going to have to give. For most of us, that means adaptations we’re largely unaware of, given how much oil is a part of our everyday personal and economic lives. Worse still, we’re all woefully unprepared to deal with those adaptations.

Ignoring, pretending, hoping … those are all strategies we’d prefer relying on. I’m no different in that regard. The only problem with employing any one or combination of those and similar strategies is that they are useless. Other than that, we should have no problem!

The truth is that many of us are genuinely frightened. Accustomed as we have been for the last dozen or so years at what seemed like limitless prospects for growth and everyone’s own version of the American Dream, what’s happened in the last 3 – 4 years has left us all more than a bit stunned. The government we presumably count on for support and leadership becomes more dysfunctional by the day.

“Democratic Pollster Stan Greenberg told me that when he does focus groups today this is what he hears: ‘People think the country is in trouble and that countries like China have a strategy for success and we don’t. They will follow someone who convinces them that they have a plan to make America great again. That is what they want to hear. It cuts across Republicans and Democrats.’” [3]

Of course we all want to expand prosperity and return to a state where we feel as though we are part of something/a nation that is truly great by any reasonable definition. Of course we all want to continue on the paths of growth and unlimited opportunity that seemed ours for the taking just a few short years ago. Why wouldn’t we? That’s been the hallmark of this wonderful nation for decades.

No one is prepared to accept that continuing growth and even greater opportunities aren’t just around the corner. They aren’t anywhere to be found; at least not if we expect/hope/insist/desire/plead for more of the “same.”

I’ve been consistent throughout in asserting a belief that the challenges this energy problem is going to impose upon all of us much sooner than we think are also opportunities for us to re-think, revise, and devise entirely new ways of living and producing. Daunting to be sure, and as idealistically wonderful as that may be, that’s an awful lot of work to undertake when it would be so much easier to just shore up our economy a bit, get people back to work, and then prosper along just like we did in the recent good old days.

“Today’s American voter clearly is demanding instant results from whomever it puts into office….Election campaigns are now based on challengers not being the incumbents – and little else of substance….
“We currently seem about to embark on another round of throwing the rascals out. If as seems likely the economy continues to slide, we could be seeing a pattern developing in which the voters throw out one party and then the other in a vain search for somebody who can return the American dream of ever expanding prosperity.” [4]

This is an imminent strategy destined to fail—a message I nonetheless fear is going to fall on a lot of deaf ears. Sad to say, we may all have to get beaten down some more before we realize the problem-solving approaches that once may have worked are going to be just as ineffectual as the whole ignoring, pretending, etc. etc. line of thought. Until we come to terms with the fact that the economic and employment challenges and obstacles are not going to be solved with a tweak here or a tax cut there, and that we need to start preparing for a very different future on an almost unimaginably grand scale, we’re going to keep repeating these cycles of behavior that serve little long-term purpose other than to eventually frustrate and discourage.

It’s a choice. Not an immediately appealing one, perhaps. But the choice to assume responsibility for undertaking the changes we need to make—politically, personally, economically, industrially, financially—is ours. We’re going to be confronted by a future largely foreign to us, and one we’ll be even less prepared for (or able to rectify) than we might be now if we choose instead to just kick this particular can a bit farther down the road. Do we want to have a meaningful say in how a different future unfolds?

How do we come to terms with the fact that this Great Recession does not lend itself to the same solutions that worked in the past, and that the divisive, ineffective, and wildly dysfunctional and confrontational partisan bickering is only going to make things worse?

What is and will be our vision for the future? How can we find a way to appreciate the need to articulate a consistent and long term vision and then accept the challenges, limitations, and opportunities that await us? How can we do so in a truly bipartisan manner? This is most definitely not a Left or Right issue. But there are some fundamentally egregious approaches to governing and leading and truth-telling that need to be changed. When one party has seemingly decided to collectively create its own alternative and fact-free reality about climate and energy, that strategy is not exactly helpful to the masses. In truth, the cowardice from elements of the Left and the hypocrisy and obstructionism from elements of the Right are each and all appalling—and that’s the nicest thing I can say.

To what possible end is any of this justified? Why do we keep sending people to Washington who cannot seem to think beyond next week, if they think at all?

We need to accept one truth, perhaps a truth more important than all the others: There are no easy, quick, and inexpensive solutions. Period.

There are no liberal or conservative facts about global warming or peak oil. There are just a substantial preponderance of solid, well-reasoned facts, and they are going to intrude into our rosy hopes for the future regardless of our political leanings or assessments and preferences about Big Government, Smaller Government, or Almost No Government. There is no ready solution on the horizon to accommodate (or overcome) the mind-numbingly stupid and extreme partisanship we’ve all allowed to serve as the new norm in Washington.

As significant, burdensome, and frightful as our current economic challenges may be, the ones we’re going to have no choice but to adapt to in the years to come are on an order of magnitude much, much larger and broader than most can imagine. To think that the complexities and widespread impacts of declining fossil fuel availability will lend themselves to Republican or Democratic solutions is beyond ignorant.

We need to change how we work with (or against) “others.” Declining oil production and the ongoing lack of a ready, inexpensive supply of oil to “get us back on track” and then just continue on to ever-expanding horizons of growth and prosperity are going to curtail those expectations dramatically. The challenges we’ll face are not going to be shoehorned into liberal, conservative, libertarian, socialist, or “other” political theories or solutions. They are well beyond such simplistic approaches.

What we really need are courageous leaders who understand this, can and will speak the truth to all of us regardless of political affiliation, and work with all of us to create the strategies and then devise the means by which we find our better selves and better prospects for a future vastly different future than what we’ve let ourselves expect by default. So too do we need to come to terms with what we face and what is at stake. Those are decisions open to each and all of us.

“Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights — or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things … that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability.” [5]

Let’s not let that bleak vision be the one we fulfill. The choice is ours.

Peak Oil Matters