[quote=maxwellbach]I enjoy coming back to this site now & again to monitor some of the many intelligent conversations taking place here but I don’t value them as much as I once did. This commentary is technically excellent but I feel it’s just one side of a diversionary debate, the Citigroup/WSJ mendacity being the other. To persist with this debate is to fall into the trap which has been set by the corporatized oligarchy.
Peak Oil is not the issue. When, by government decree, ordinary citizens are prohibited from consuming oil of any quantity, there will be plenty of oil available for those authorised to access it; including our armed services and their owners. The resource base, flow rates and productivity will all be more than adequate for their needs - Peak Oil notwithstanding. If you think there will be a fair market for oil in the future, you’re dreaming. There will be a two-stream market and almost everyone reading this column will be in the smaller of those two streams. This split will happen on a trans-national and intra-national basis.
I once heard the head of OPEC being interviewed on ABC radio in Australia. He made a comment (which I’ve subsequently read elsewhere) that "the Stone Age ended, not for a want of stones; that the Iron Age ended, not for want of iron; and that the Oil Age too will end - and not for want of oil." We should pay heed to this warning.
I’m concerned that the conversation about Peak Oil, both here & elsewhere, is focused too much on the geological and economic dimensions of the matter with scant consideration of the political dimension. I worry that our brightest minds and most intelligent conversations are directed at the wrong aspects of the problem. In true systems dynamic style we’re pursuing “fixes that fail” because we seem unable or unwilling to tackle the systemic causes. I worry that we are indulging in highly technical debates as an end in themselves rather than confronting the moral and political catastrophe that is our modern warfare economy. When dealing with most problems in life, there is no substitute for intelligence, but in the search for truth and deep understanding, intelligence or cleverness for its own sake becomes an indulgence; an inwardly focused indulgence and in the case of Peak Oil, a dangerous distraction.
Look at the legislation passing thru governments around the world right now. The legal basis and operational machinery for corporatized tyranny are being uploaded as I write. The pace of legislative over-reach and cyber/social control is increasing exponentially. Once this is fully functional, Peak Oil will cease to be an issue. While we sit and analyse the actions of the corporatized oligarchy, they create new realities for us to get our heads around. And while we’re distracted with all of that they get on with their agenda.
I suggest it’s time we stopped thinking so much about the science of Peak Oil and started thinking more about how the threat of Peak Everything is negatively transforming our society and what we’re doing about it at a personal level. As a community we need to create for ourselves an entirely new epistemic framework and conceptual vocabulary which allows us to understand problems such as Peak Oil in terms not owned and controlled by a corporate elite. All transformational movements in history have managed to do this. For example; we need to stop thinking in concrete terms about the abstraction we call the “Market" - an abstraction which holds such a dominant place in out discourse and thinking that it’s become our God. We are in thrall of it in much the same way primitive peoples were in thrall of their stone idols. While we continue to worship the “Market" and other corporate memes the high priests of these memes - bureaucrats, financiers and industrialists - will continue to control us. We need to create a new consciousness about our ecological identity and revisit ideas such as natural law and moral teleology. We need to have new conversations about natural and human rights as well as physical, intellectual and spiritual abundance.
Intelligent conversations about the science of Peak Oil or about this or that scenario are essential and they don’t come much better than this article but when such conversations become an end in themselves, they risk lapsing into vanity and passivity. Let’s build on this work and expand our intellectual horizons beyond the material and ecomomic dimensions of this problem.
Maxwellbach
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Excellent comments!
One need only look at the end game and "reverse engineer" it to deduce the high probability events that will occur in the interim period. We already have a two tier legal system and two tier financial system. A two tier energy distribution system is a logical sequelae.
Plus the value of oil lies primarily in its ability to allow wealth extraction from each and every person on the planet. When it runs too low to allow that wealth extraction to occur in an efficient and fluid fashion, we will move on to the next energy source (capable of synthesizing anything we get from oil now), which by that time, will have its bureaucratic and corporate control structure in place such that TPTB wealth extraction process can continue with minimal interruption and disturbance.
Arthur Robey,
Great points as well. FWIW, there’s a very high probability that we already have the means to leave the planet … and the solar system … faster than most imagine. It’s just that you and I are not in a position to book passage.
robert essian,
What makes you think that TPTB want us all to be fed? The manifesting plan is that we NOT all be fed.