garyp wrote:Much capital is made here of the inability/unwillingness of politicians to accept and prepare for peak oil. Some even go so far as to say that they are intentionally lying about it whilst preparing to save their own skins. However stepping back and looking at things dispassionately, the oil doomers, die-off fans and greenies have to take a share of the blame for the situation we face.
If you look at the range of global threats we face today with a significant probability of occurrence:
- Climate change
- Peak oil
- Bird Flu + Other pandemics
- Demographic Timebomb
- Water depletion
- West > East superpower transition
- Global Recession
- CFC/Ozone Hole
- Nuclear/biological war
- MegaTsunami
you can see that many are not addressed seriously by the political establishment. Of those that have been, three common factors can be seen:
1) the threat is accepted by experts as very certain
2) achievable solutions routes have been outlined
3) those routes are acceptable to the general population
Taking CFCs as an example, the threat was understood, the phasing out of CFCs for replacements was painful, but achievable, and since there was no significant impact on the stand of living of the population, it was acceptable to them. Contrast that with climate change - the experts agree, but 'solutions' proposed either fail to be significant enough to have much effect (Kyoto), or are impossible to implement in today's society. Needless to say, significant change is also unacceptable to the broad swathe of the general public, particularly in car dependent cultures.
To the politician viewing such a list of 'disasters', each threat needs to get in line behind the many smaller threats that cause concern every day. In general a terrorist bomb has a greater mindshare in the general publics' views than climate change. Someone who comes up to the politician saying that this is a significant threat will get heard; but when they start to state that massive change of society is required all they are in fact saying to the politician is that the threat exists, and they don't know how to deal with it. Threats stated without credible routes to solution actually
decrease the notice and action that will be taken. Why worry about something you can do nothing about?
Peak oil is falling into the same trap.
Many quite rightly say that the threat is real, and that given human nature (eg lying) it's probably much closer than thought. However by not presenting it in a way that has a credible solution that fulfils all of the above three points, those same people make it
less likely that action can and will be taken.
To remove doubt:
- die off
- artificial population reduction
- sustainable living = arable existance
- contraction & convergence
- significant carbon taxing of individuals (probably)
are all non solutions that basically just state 'we don't have a clue' - certainly to a politician's ears.
The question I pose to people here is: how can you present both the problem, and a solution that meets the three points - even if it's not a total solution? What is needed is an encapsulated combination that makes a viable whole and that then can be taken up and implemented by the politicians.
- Alternative fuels get a bad press here, but they do meet the above requirements.
- "Reducing our dependency on those nasty arabs" may not be a pretty message, but it is acceptable and allows movement in the right direction.
- More nuclear power to produce a better environment is similarly acceptable, if after a moment of confusing paradox.
Can anyone come up here with similar problem<>solution sets in peak oil that could create positive movement?