I'm somewhere between a 4 or 5, but there is a potential to bring the scenario to a 2 or 3. The problem is that we're out of time to begin the change to alternatives. America will probably be a 4, as will most of the 1st world(Western Europe, Australia, Japan), everyone else a 5 or 6...

Looked back at this to count the number of 'optimists' voting - I count 12 I guess, with a doomerosity of 2 or less.

I'm intrigued by the few posters who think the US will be better off than the rest of the world - surely, those most dependant on fossil energy will suffer the most. I believe Peak Oil will be a great leveller, and that Africa will cope much better than the US (of course, Africa has it's own HIV dieoff to worry about, even without thinking about energy issues)

Also, perhaps some of those who said they were between 4 & 5 (or between other numbers) could offer a short description of what they perceive - similar to the poll answers - and I'll try broadening the scale a bit...

--J

The US has tons of arable land, lots of water, transportation to get it anywhere, and our own petroleum. Yes we are hopelessly disconnected from the land, but it is there to feed us with little effort. It is doomer romanticism to believe that Americans will be hungry. They will not let that happen.

3rd world land is depleted and eroded from overpopulation and hundreds of years of colonial abuse, regardless of the proximitry of population to that land. These people have suffered and will continue to.

Between 2 and 3, depends on the day. I used to be around 5 but I think fossil fuel depletion will be slow enough to be manageable.

I wonder if there is a correlation with the age of the posters (see Your Age).

I'm between 2 and 3 too, with the caveat that . . . well, who the hell knows? Anything could happen. That's the fun of trying to figure out what's going to happen in the future. But over a year on this forum has convinced me that PO is just a small piece of the sustainability puzzle. We tend to perceive the problem of the moment as larger than it actually is. And we perceive the problem of the century as smaller than it actually is.

Here's a good slogan I just thought of: everyone's talking about peak oil when really they should be worrying about peak soil.

Soil conservation is an overlooked but necessary condition for sustainability. We forget about it because it's not glamorous or capital-intensive like energy.

I have been a solid 5 for a very long time now. Even if peak oil itself only pulls us into a 4 then human nature being what it is will add to the problem and make it a 5 along the lines of how the difficulties of the depression paved the way for the even greater horors of WWII.

5) ... the cause of massive human dieoff, society as we know it will not exist within decades
34% [ 47 ]
6) ... the end of everything, welcome to the stone age
3% [ 5 ]

Lots of votes for 5, but very few for 6. This is interesting, I think. What substantial dirfference is there between these two options? About the only thing I can see to distinguish these are the words "as we know it". That allows for the existence of some new kind of society presumably. But is it realistic to think that billions of people will die and this global society collapses and then we just pick up the pieces and build a whole new society in ths ashes of the old one? I could see us going to something like a 3 or 4 and making it through the tough times, but if it slips down to 5, then I think its likely, as I said earlier, that its kaput. Survivors will be living in very primitive conditions, i.e. 'Stone Age'.

The intent with 6 was to go 'off the scale' - think more stone age rather than iron age - more small clusters of surviving groups than a reversion to primitive society.

oil price spike causes recession, recovery leeds to new spike, rince, repeat, eventually leading to depression, slow descent over decades to 4, unless future arab israeli war goes nuclear then quickly to 5

I voted 4.

It's interesting that there basically seems to be a 50/50 split between 4 and 5. So obviously most people here think PO will have serious consequences. But from 4 to 5 it is not a gradual difference, but a huge gap, between doomers and optimists, basically...

Doomerosity Level 3 ...
But who the hell voted for
There seems to be 1 vote ..... WHO IS IT?

Spike aka Michael Lynch

I thought it was BiGG.
Do you think Lynch was scared away of this forum?
In the last week ... it has been getting spookier and spookier.
And there seem to be many of short fuses around here

BiGG was a 1



Interesting - as a 3, I regard 2 as definitly optimistic, and 4 as pesimistic.

The scale is supposed to be logarithmic, so the gap between 3-4 is bigger than the gap between 2-3, etc.

The biggest gap is 5-6 - but some seem to view them as similar.

The difference between a 4 and a 5 is that a 4 is really a cornicopian who thinks we can go though a generation of adjustments and still get to keep our industrial economy. A 5 five on the other hand beleives the industrial age is only as finate as the oil in the ground.

Now the difference between a 5 and a 6 is that a 5 beleives humanity will be given a second chance to create a Camelot, Atlantis, or Shang Ra-la because the human spirt will not die with the industrial dream. A 6 on the other hand is really a disbelief in the resiliance of the human spirit. It is the difference between going back to the farm or going back to the trees.