[Rickenbacker]

I'm a new user who's read around this topic a little. I thought I would present a scenario which seems possible to me, in the hope that those of you more experienced on this topic can point out the logical holes. I imagine a lot of this has been suggested before, please forgive me for not having read the entire forum history!

G8: Lets hope that our world leaders aren't apocalypse nuts. If the projected scenarios of peak oil become enough of a current reality to prompt political action, the slippery slope to a nuclear war over oil is an obvious risk. I would hope that the power heads of the G8 would try to avoid this at all costs, and declare a collective 'War on Waste' or something similar, taking aggressive state driven action to avoid the risk of disastrous consequences of energy shortage, in the same way that governments globally have jumped onto the 'war on terror' bandwagon. I'm not an economist, but economy is a human invention, it is supposed to be a tool of humanity so perhaps it would have to be reshaped to encourage survival rather than consumption, cohesion rather than competition. I reckon the G8/UN/IMF/World bank etc. collective could change the rules of the 'free' market considerably if it was in their interests.

Possible avenues for action:

'War on Waste': It's always a bone of contention how wasteful our society is, there are huge amounts of ways we could save on energy. Rising prices of petroleum would discourage such frivolous use of personal transport, rising electricity prices would encourage people to turn lights of etc etc etc. Hopefully the cost increases would be enough to encourage sufficient conservation to prevent an energy freefall, if not, state action to ensure conservation may be necessary.

Power: As much as we rely on oil, surely an excessive price per barrel would cause an explosion of activity in renewable energy development. I'm not saying we're going to 'invent our way out', simply that we could work our way out of it by building loads of renewable energy power stations. Nuclear could provide for the electricity, and we could isolate an area of the planet for radioactive waste so we only ruin a little bit of it. Wind farms, biofuel, wave farms, etc. The argument that 'oil is needed for all of these' evades me a little, surely it's just manpower and the relevant materials that are needed, the manpower coming from:

Employment: If our very survival became an issue, luxury would be put on the back burner. People currently employed in tourism, fashion, cosmetics, luxury vehicles and other industires non-essential for survival could be retrained and given a role within the new infrastructure of a survival-based rather than consumer-based society.

Food: Luxury food items would become irrelevant if food becomes harder to obtain. Due to the increased price of food we wouldnt be able to eat so extravagantly. The scale of this could vary greatly, from the abolition of ready meals to the economically forced adoption of vegetarianism, using the fertile land to grow plants and obtain the maximum food energy available from the land. In an even more extreme case food could be distributed centrally in a WWII style 'rationing'. More fertile land would then be available for efficient food production and also biofuel production.

For me, too many of the counter arguments I read involve the assumptions that our way of life will, somhow, continue unabated. Perhaps its my 'critical flaw axion' but I've always assumed its a given that the human population explosion combined with the sort of consumerism we've had since thatcher and reagan is totally unsustainable in the long term. Perhaps the end of the oil era will be a naturally forced transition to a more sustainable way of life. I do not doubt that it will cause major difficulties and probably a great deal of suffering, especially in countries without the infrastructure to enact changes like those suggested, but at no point in human history has there ever been a time without mass suffering. Peak oil may be just another phase of this epic struggle, and the environmentally forced end to the consumerist way of life.

A realistic theory or not? Don't pull any punches now, I can take it!

[marek]

This is, in a sense, the point that Richard Heinberg is making in "Powerdown." Although he is against World Government, he understands that things have gone so far that a coordinated global effort is required to reduce our profligate consumption. Of course, luxuries would be hit most, and absolute necessities would be provided to the extent possible. On the other hand, looking at what is happening in the U.S., the Apocalypse people have gained much ground recently.

Bill Moyers' Harvard Medical School Speech
Theocracy Watch

[No-Oil]

Well personally I think you are way off the mark. It will be an enforced return to a more sustainable way of life if we don't destroy ourselves & the planet fighting over what's left of the oil.

I don't know where you are from in the world, but the institutions you have mentioned that might do something about the problem are incapable of doing so for the following reasons;-

1. The USA controls all of them.
2. The leaders of the USA deny there is a problem, of any kind.
3. The USA is the most powerful military nation in the world.
4. The USA uses that might more & more to shore up its corrupt system.
5. The rest of the world leaders are kept at each others throats by the USA, thus they will never act cohesively to defeat the USA economically.

The rest of the world could sink the US Dream overnight if they so choose, but they never will. The US economy is the most corrupt in history & teaters on the edge of collapse. This will be the stick that broke the camels back when the USA losses control of the world oil price & the sellers start trading in Euro's or whatever.

The alternative energy sources are continually quoted as being to costly, this is based on the current price of energy to build them & the price of sale for energy they produce. But as the cost of oil increases, then the cost of alternatives will also increase, so at the moment they are as cheap as they are ever likely to be to install. It's a self defeating system if you rely on conventional economics. By the way economy was not a human invention, it was a consumerist invention.

With regard to luxuries, they will always exist. Rich people have not got richer over history, what has happened, is that more & more poor people in the western econonic regions have got not so poor. This is why our jobs are now being farmed out to second/third world countries that have benefitted from our education & health inventions & can now do the job much cheaper than we can in the 1st world countries. The rich will always exist & thus luxuries will be an economic niche for those suppliers that can manage it. The world revolves around rich peoples needs & the democratic system disguises this quite well, whilst at the same time failing to address any of the real issues, like over population etc.

With regard to employment of ex luxury staff, there will be no requirement for the people, never mind retraining. The only way society can deal with the population issue realistically is to remove the waste of society, i.e those that either won't or can't contribute need to be removed & used in bio mass fuel provision or fertilizer.

My prediction is for a catastrophic collapse of western societies that have not prepared (USA, UK & many Euro nations), the leaders will use all means at their disposal (read military) to take control of the last of the oil reserves. This will plunge many more nations into their own collapse when they had planned for a transition phase from oil with reducing supply, being instantly dropped to zero supply will destroy their plans.

Why catastrophic ? Well the economies rely on repayment of debt to drive it & if the oil price spirals upwards, then whole corporations & thousands of companies & thus millions of individuals will default on their loans. This will thorw the banking system into a nightmare where banks can't liquidate assets (many of which are purely virtual) fast enough to cover their own debts & bang the western economic system will effectively cease to exist.

Some people knock this theory, but when the EIA & IEA are feeding idiots useless figures for energy availability for the next 25years & companies are signing longer & longer term deals based on that garbage info, then they will be contractually forced to supply whatever it is they do at less than the cost to them & will go bust. This puts many people out of work & they too go bust individually & that leads to the collapse of ever more companies that rely on their customers trade. Ultimately these losses all feed back to the banking system, who were the creators of this debt lead system & they will never be able to absorb all the defaulted loans & will go bust as well. Now the banks are underpinned by the national treasuries & those treasuries will be emptied by the banks whilst trying to save their own asses & after that its all over.

The USA has the largest debt in the world & will never reduce it to very low levels under the current economic system, so it is a given that the US economy must collapse to purge itself of the debt. Unfortunately most of the other economies that rely on that debt payment will also fold when the US does.

A starting point for reform would be a tax based on everyones consumer habits, thus the poor (low consumers) would be better off & the more affluent would have to pay crippling taxes. In Germany for intance they have a law that forces up the price of fossil fuel regardless of the oil price, this is to reduce use & dependancy & to promote development of renewables.

The rest of the world follows the western nations, what we do today, they literally do tomorrow & they have the benefit of zero development costs. Telecoms is a prime example. In the less developed nations, phones were few & far between, because copper wire is expensive. The cell phone let them jump a whole century in communications terms.
If we deploy renewables & recycle our old plant equipment (as metal, not sold to third world contries) then they will follow suit, if we give them good incentives to do so, either economically or militarily.

But for any change to happen, the US has to lead it. They did in the 70's they can do it again ! But I won't hold my breath waiting for it to happen, because the average US citizen believes in the baseball WORLD series, because the USA is the world to most of them. The US politicians believe their own retoric about being the most powerful nation in the world & that there carrier groups will allow them to steal the last of the worlds oil. I wouldn't like to see how their carrier groups fair against any of the European nations ! And the way they are going, the Europeans & the Arab nations will set aside there differences if the US tries to take control of the rest of the Arab oil fields, which leads us back to the first line of this post !

Take care

[chris-h]

No-Oil that was a nice post.
I agree with what you say .But i do not believe that USA is the evil nation here.
The one responsible for this mess is human nature not just a single country.
"I WANT MORE AND MORE"
Humans just do not know where to stop.

[Rickenbacker]

By the way economy was not a human invention, it was a consumerist invention.

Haha as much as I'm against consumerism, I'm pretty sure even it's most avid supporter is still human! (Whatever David Icke Says!)

Thanks for the in depth reply. As I've mentioned previously I'm not familiar with economics, so I'm never quite sure how bank collapses and stock markets relate to people being able to eat drink and breathe etc. So the economics side of your argument I'll leave alone.

However what I will say (and I apologise if Ive completely missed your point!) is that your post seemed to indicate we're in for a US led future either way, whether its constructive or destructive. I'm well aware of the US' position as the globes hyperpower, but we're still talking about a militarily strong, economically weak country. The countries that share the euro are in a much more financially stable position, as are the chinese (In terms of debt anyway). So the US' power for me lies in its imposing use of force to 'confer stability' i.e. keep their way of life going at any cost.

I think extrapolating this into a global conflict is a bit of an illogical leap. If we're talking global we're talking nuclear, and who's going to give support to the government to start a nuclear war. Surely US nationalism isnt that extreme, and the idea that bush is sat with an itchy finger over the red button is, I'm sure, a complete fallacy. I would imagine there are enough intelligent people with some sort of conscience involved at the higher levels of govt and military to want to find any alternative to risking the entire destruction of the globe above ground. The american peoples reaction to ground zero was one of absolute horror. If theres one good aspect to american nationalism, its that the people are unlikely to take a course of action thats going to result in massive-scale destruction of the land they love.

As a humorous example of what I mean by american nationalism, Tyler JC writes (On the results page of the latest poll on this site):

For better or worse, I love my country. I may fear its government. I may hate its ignorant masses, but you can't call America the Great Satan. We have done more good in the world than any nation, ever. We keep tyranny from taking over. We are the engine of a large chunk of the research and developement in the world. We keep the world order in check.
Ask yourself this question, if not for the USA, who would have stopped Hitler and the USSR? Who would have maintained free elections and democracy in the face of communism and facism?

I think we're at risk here of falling into the trap of american exceptionalism which, for me, dons the black shirt of fascism. Here, this explains it better (well, a little more objectively )than I can

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

The US might have a tough army, but they breathe the same air and live on the same bit of rock as the rest of us. Its hard enough to get the troops motivated for the Iraq misadventure, imagine trying to get them to fight Japan, China, Russia, UK, Canada?!?!?!?! The nations people to accept the draft? Just for easy access to stuff rather than putting up with half a generations worth of hard work? We'll have to be in a pretty desperate situation for a civilised nation to act in such a way, which is why I hope we have enough time to act constructively from the point in time where we start to feel the pinch.

The pessimistic view would be that it takes everyone working hard as one species to constructively change the way we live for the better. It only takes one country or one wayward government to start the war ball rolling.

[nero]

RickenBacker,

You've described the optimistic peak oiler's hopeful scenario. I agree that we in the west have alot of unnecessary luxuries. We could reduce them, and probably would in response to high energy prices. But let's recognize that that means everyone is going to feel a lot poorer, and that will be no picnic for the economy.

The pessimistic people often say that the status-quo economy will implode under the stress. It might, I don't think that we should discount it. You are also right that governments do have alot of power to take corrective action. That however assumes that governments are good at long term planning, collective action, and are interested in what is best for everybody and not just interested in what is best for the "powers that be". I don't have a lot of confidence that they are. Mostly I think they just react to whatever the latest crisis that has or is going to happen in the next 0-4 years.

[Rickenbacker]

I wish I could edit my own posts!

1) Where it says ground zero I meant 9/11. Makes little difference, its a pile of dead bodies and rubble, giving it a name just gives it academic validity as an isolated incident. I'm not trying to be anti-US, just anti-brave new world style conditioning. Thousands are dying a week in Sudan, but we dont give each massacre a specific name, we call the whole situation a 'humanitarian' crisis, as if to suggest it's the red cross' problem. Events like these are all HUMAN crises. But thats pretty tangential, this isnt a social philosophy forum after all!

2) I forgot to add a point to the above reply. If the US economic stability is comprehensive tied to oil, surely an oil crisis will equate to a US financial crisis. Will the oil they have left really be better spent fueling planes, tanks, ships and missiles rather than distribution vehicles, generators etc?

[Tyler_JC]

In defense of my post, I think most historians would agree that the US was responsible for winning WWII and probably WWI. Was that not a good thing? Was that not a major accomplishment?

Another point, the average American has more personal and economic freedom than 99% of all people in history. We have no nobles in this country. The elite are made up of people with exceptional talents that the masses find useful. Bill Gates is rich because he worked for a living and got lucky with a popular idea, the home PC. Only 18% of millionaires inherited their wealth. I'm sick of hearing from you people about how "all rich people stole their wealth from some poor guy" and "wealth is evil and destroying the world". Wealth is what is allowing you to be able to use a computer. Without free market capitalism, we never would have created the home PC.

Now cheap energy had a BIG impact on this, but without the foundation of Capitalism, oil never would have been discovered. Even Marx agrees that Capitalism is what allows Communism. The Proletariat would use the factories of the Bourgeois to do whatever it is they do.

So before you attack American Exceptionalism as evil, remember that we have done many exceptional things. The telephone, telegraph, internet, car (well, that's not a great example with PO and all), electricity, solar panels, and other great things that we use now and will need to survive the coming energy crunch.

[Tyler_JC]

I did not mean to go over the top with my "Any nation, ever!" quote. I was just angry to hear so much negativity surrounding the USA.

[Rickenbacker]

Nero: Agree with you on the whole 4 year politicians thing. Hopes for votes. I would simply hope that occasionaly they would use the power at their disposal for real, lasting positive changes. I admit that a hope is all it is!

Tyler: Let's not let this escalate into another anrgument about the US or capitalism, theres a billion other sites for that. However I can't just take a back seat and let you make things up! -

So before you attack American Exceptionalism as evil, remember that we have done many exceptional things. The telephone, telegraph, internet, car (well, that's not a great example with PO and all), electricity, solar panels, and other great things that we use now and will need to survive the coming energy crunch.

Telephone? Alexander Graham Bell (Scottish)
Telegraphy? A French invention (the optical telegraph) unless you mean the electrical telegraph, which was invented by Wheatstone and Cooke (English)
The internet?, arguably US military, but the world wide web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee (English)
The Car? Henry Ford was the first to mass produce them, but the inventors of the self combustion engine were German! (Bena, Daimler and Maybach)
Electricity? I think you'll find thats Michael Faraday (English)

But Americans did invent solar panels, I think that was a NASA job. 1 out of 6 aint bad. And then you wonder why I have a go at American exceptionalism!!!!

[Tyler_JC]

They used America as the catalyst for their inventions or the US was the physical location for their discovery.

But whatever, let's drop it. I'll be rational enough to know when to stop.

[No-Oil]

To all & especially Tyler_JC. I did not intend in any way to imply that the USA was evil, or the harbinger of doom.

I was just stating the fact that the USA is generally the leader in all things at a global level & if they are not the leader, they have enough influence to mold almost all other global situations to their advantage or way of thinking.

So if the American people were to get off their arses & put some effort into making THEIR government do something about the coming problem, like they did in the 70's after the problem arrived, then the rest of the world will follow. Unfortunately we won't have the luxury of of a post problem responce like we did in the 70's.

I liken it to people going for a ride on a rollercoaster, its coming to the top of the climb & soon will be hurtling down the big drop on the other side. Unfortunately a couple of the people have just started to pay attention & noticed that the coaster appears to not be finished & the there is a big gap at the bottom of the drop where they will be going the fastest. Now someone has pointed out that as the coaster is automated & there is no brake on the car, someone will have to jump off & check if the track is broken & then hit the stop button before the car gets to the top & goes into free fall.

Unfortunately no-one wants to be the first person off on this first great ride, so an argument ensues. Most of the people don't care, they are having a great time & the guys that noticed the potential problem are just trouble makers trying to scare them & besides they would never have let us on if it wasn't safe right ! So the car edges closer to the peak & still no-one is going to get off, then suddenly someone gets off & the rest call him a sissy, so without checking or hitting the brake he gets back on. And the car gets closer to the peak & in the end no-one gets off to check or hit the brake & the car coasts over the top & then suddenly EVERYONE can see clearly that the track is indeed broken & the guys weren't taking the piss.

But alas the car is gathering speed & hurtling out of control towards the void in the track below. People start crying & pointing fingers & then they attack each other & clamber to get to the back, or as high back up the drop as they can, but its no use. The car is going too fast & no-one can get off, then someone has an idea, its based on weight & gravity, if the car was lighter, then it would go slower & thus crash more slowly & hopefully some people will survive. So the big guys start throwing a few of the smaller guys off & the rest don't object, because the theory seems to be working & the car appears to have slowed down a bit. Mean while the majority are trying to grab the track furniture to slow the descent, they are grabbing everything at the same time, but there is just nothing big enough to stop them, some things slow them a bit, but not enough. They are all grabbing wildly & losing most of the effort, by all pulling seperately.

So the big guys throw a few of the less liked & less friendly medium sized people off & yes it appears that the car has slowed some more. This goes on for a bit, but in the end the gap is ever closer & only the two biggest guys are left on the car. A desperate struggle ensues as the two try to throw each other off. Unfortunately they are nearly evenly matched in the end & at the last moment one gets the upper hand and is just about to eject the loser, when the loser looks down & realises its all over anyway, so takes a death grip on the last guy & they & the car hurtle off the end to their death.

Now the moral of this story is this. If we could just convince enough of the "could not care less" people to pay attention, then someone will get off & hit the brake. Most of those "could not care less" people reside in the USA, you try convincing the greatest believers of all time that their time is about to come to an end & all you will here is "not so, tell him its not so" Mr Bush says its not so, so he gets elected & the car continues upward ! But remember its economic suicide to get off too soon !

Now for anyone in doubt about whether the ASPO guys are correct, why is GWB allowing the oil/gas explorers to dessicrate the last bastions of the USA's wilderness & wild areas in the search for oil & gas, assuming the world has so much of it ????? Did he mention that the USA only has approx 3years of gas reserves available ? Then many in the uSA will freeze & suffer electrical blackouts ! No I don't think he mentioned that in his election manifesto !!!!!

[Tyler_JC]

Great analogy. That's one of the best ones I've heard in a while.

[Rickenbacker]

Agreed, damn good analogy.

I'd add that people like those you read on this board (i.e. who care) would be perfectly prepared to get off (i.e. lose our luxurious ride) and hit the stop switch, but unfortunately it's locked by twenty different keys (obstacles to changing the status quo), and the people who hold those keys are on the damn coaster, probably in the best seats too, the ones with exra padding and head protection.

For the people who care, its about trying to find a catalyst that will cause those people to feel the need to brake early.

[nero]

The only problem I have with the rollercoaster analogy is the idea that once they see the problem they are going to actually try to do something about it.

How about if instead of a rollercoaster they were all in a canoe going down a river at the end of which was a waterfalls. In the canoe there were 4 people but only two paddles and two life preservers. When they go around the last bend and finally clearly see the rapids and waterfalls everyone panics and struggle for the life preservers instead of working together to paddle the canoe to shore.

(Couldn't think of anything similar to a life preserver on a rollercoaster)