Peleg wrote:Well, can we at least admit that they are walking the fine line of not causing an immediate panic and also telling everyone that the future of oil is limited?
Alarm is necessary to spur action. Adaptation requires some form of stress as an instigator, in the human world and the animal kingdom alike. Hubbert relied on reason alone in 1956 to advocate change and never stood a chance. We do not respond well to reason unless accompanied by stress. The oil shocks of the 70s were our best shot, unpleasant though they were. They introduced insecurity and that got results. The only tragedy was the stress did not remain in place long enough for effective follow-through.
Our present predicament is a legacy of those wasted years. Avoding panic amounts to avoiding giving people a reason to change their ways. Stress is a powerful motivator. Its most common guise is the plethora of economic incentives that underpin a market, though they are rarely recognised as such. In the interests of saving people from fear, the entire problem is being obscured. In the interests of saving people from fear, they continue to be told that energy prices are a speculative bubble and the result of uncompetitive practices, with eventual resolution by third party naturally being implied. The effect of this is a substantial countering of the economic incentive to switch to a higher-efficiency vehicle. A helpful stress response is postponed.
The instinct on the part of technocrats to minimise untidiness is something I can understand, but this has even been nullifying
price signals up to this point! They cannot see the damage they are doing. Some surely do, but are bound by organisational cultural intertia. This policy is dysfunctional.
This is an unpopular stance, but fear is healthy. Rational fear helps you avoid harm. Individuals, societies, they need it. Instead we do not allow people real fears and replace them with irrational ones that are more easily controlled and disposed of. In my opinion this represents a strategic failure of influence. Where is the expectation management? Above all that is what we need, and we need it yesterday.