If, When and How.

Unfortunately, I have chosen to start this blogsite right in the middle of finals crunch. I have been pondering the repercussions of Peak Oil for I guess a month now and I have so many things I need to get out. I read that there are something like 8.5 million blogs like this out there. I wonder if the bulk of them have this 'I-gotta-get-it-out-there' energy curve where you see massive daily postings that gradually taper off to nothing. Maybe having to share finals with my need to elucidate will help flatten the curve.

The best bloggers I have seen take the time to quote others who have already written about the topic at hand. For now, when I talk about Peak Oil, I am going to assume that you have read some of the essays in the "Inevitable" column off to the right, or articles as you find them out in the main stream media. I just do not have the time right now to write but off the top of my head.

For me it is not a matter of 'if' this will happen. It seems that, even looked at simplistically, we are in a bind. The rate of new oil discoveries has been on decline since 1964. While they say there is still a lot of oil left, it is getting technologically harder to get out and economically less profitable - supply is on decline. On the demand side? Go out and look at traffic. Count the SUV's. I remember the day (you knew that was coming) when the car ads boasted the MPG's of the advertised vehicle at the bottom of the ad. Oh yes, China and India are joining the oil consuming world and they are both very thirsty. Oh, and p.s., we have done NOTHING as a nation to avert this disaster since Jimmy Carter first pointed that we need to look at it.

It is more a matter of when and how, specifically. After spending weeks in a 'the end is near' froth after reading essays like Kunstler's, or Bagaent's, or any of the numerable dismal websites devoted to this topic, I came across one written by Ran Prieur. It was like a glass of cool water on a hot day. The difference was in the timing of this event. On the one hand the potential immediacy and severity of the event, on the other, a more gradual sliding down. As Prieur puts it, “It won't be like falling off a cliff, more like rolling down a rocky hill." I'll let you read as I need to get going.

I e-mailed Prieur to thank him…

I just read your essay The Slow Crash and I think you
may have saved me. I have recently discovered the Peak Oil literature and had my paradigm shifted in a big way. Your essay is very well reasoned and the crash will probably be less dramatic than I had imagined.

I won’t be buying guns at any rate.

Thanks again,

Mike Plank

hi mike,

well, if i'm right i saved you, and if i'm wrong, and
it's a sudden hard crash, i may have killed you! :)
one thing i didn't mention, that makes me think it
will be slow, is that i think women have better
survival instincts than men, and none of the women i
know are worried, even if they've seen the peak oil
stuff. only very mechanical-thinking males are
worried.

Ran

I have noticed a similar phenomenon with some of the women with whom I have spoken.