Re: SC82

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/12/people-get-ready/comments/page/2/#comments

Yes, many things will change very rapidly, and the shift will be all the more wrenching and play out more catastrophically because our policy makers have unilaterally decided to follow a Dont Ask Dont Tell policy regarding Peak Oil and its implications.

Don't scare the sheople, who are already panicked enough over our current financial situation as jobs and businesses are lost and more people fall into default on their debts.

Robert Hirsch, author of the Peak Oil Report: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management, was quoted in The Wall Street Journal and by Kenneth Deffeyes at his site "Beyond Oil:The View From Hubbert's Peak", as counseling political leaders to avoid hammering the public on the matter of Peak Oil just now, because the public is already so traumatized by the financial meltdown and its effect on their lives, that confronting peak oil at just this time would lead to more panic and disruption.

I'll quote him verbatim:

"To The Peak Oil Community:

The world is in the midst of the most severe financial crisis in most of our lifetimes. The economic damage that has already been wrought is considerable, and we have yet to see the bottom or the turnaround. Against this background, I suggest that the peak oil community minimize its efforts to awaken the world to the near-term dangers of world oil supply. The motivation is simple: By minimizing our efforts in the near term, we may not add fuel to the economic fires that are already burning so fiercely.

We are all aware of how disoriented governments and business are right now. Our leaders, leaders-to-be, and best minds are disoriented and seeking pathways out of the current morass. The public is in a quiet panic mode – those who were reasonably well off are less well of, and their options for action are limited. Those that have lost their jobs and/or homes are desperate. Businesses and the markets are in what might be called a free fall. If the realization of peak oil along with its disastrous financial implications was added to the existing mix of troubles, the added trauma could be unthinkable.

Like many of you, I've devoted my recent efforts to trying to wake the public and governments to the impending horrors of peak oil. As much as that awaking is urgently needed, continuing to press forward now is almost certainly not in the broader interest.

Many may be tempted to directly challenge the recent IEA World Energy Outlook. I am among those who were very disappointed. Pressing those concerns at this time might further the peak oil "cause," but it could well do much more damage than any of us really intend.

Please keep up your studies and thinking, because helping the world realize the dangers of peak oil is an absolute must. In the near term, keeping relatively quiet is likely the better part of valor."

Yes, folks, he really said all of the above.

So now we have an official policy of Willful Blindness operating now. The citizens at large are to be permitted to delude themselves, which means that they will continue to overwhelmingly oppose and militate against the policy changes, including those regarding infrastructure spending, that we need badly to make to have half a chance of negotiating the transition to a lower-imput economy with any degree of grace- that is, without the kind of social unrest, and political and economic upheavals that leave a country in complete ruins, with a body count in the millions.

Willful blindness never was the way to negotiate the difficult decisions in an individual human life, or in a nation, but that's the path our leaders have chosen.

May the Gods help us.

Posted by: Laura Louzader | December 08, 2008 at 01:26 PM