by Pops » Sat 29 Jun 2013, 17:00:02
ROCK, I'm giving you a ration, buddy. There was a time I took this site pretty seriously, I thought there was a message to be shouted from the rooftops. I'm more sanguine now because I've realized that folks will do what they want as long as they can get away with it, then they'll do something different. I did and I'm pretty sure that others will.
Having said that, my complaint about POD is exactly it's non-specificity, the fact you can point to whatever ink blot and attribute it to POD, after a while the entire concept becomes meaningless. To me that's like Preston pointing out Nazis around every corner, all it does is make "Nazis" less scary. IMO, PO and long term decline should remain scary for the folks that might want to do something in preparation for actual decline, which I'm pretty sure you'll agree won't look anything like this.
Sure, the '70s US peak is part of the POD. OK. A few years in the West in the 70's may be like global peak - but global peak will not be like the '70's. The '70's ended. The US peak wasn't global peak, there as lots of easy oil left and OPEC's embargoes were entirely political - nothing to do with physical peak. By 1980 OPEC got carried away and caused a 20 year buyers market. That by definition isn't going to happen after global peak. Mashing the two together reduces the implied impact of global peak, at least to me it does.
See what I'm saying? Everything in the pre-peak world can somehow be related to the POD but after the decline sets in, nothing in the past will compare, IMO anyway. ELM & GNE and the current flatline are but a taste,
the plateau is the peak, but it's merely prelude, the story begins with decline
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The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)