By Roger Diamond
If I tell you there is a storm predicted for tomorrow night that is going to blow your roof off, you’ll listen. If I pass on a rumour your boss will fire you next month, you’ll also listen. But if I tell you your pension fund will collapse in twenty years time and you’ll be left penniless, will you listen? Or if I say that the earth’s remaining oil supplies are getting harder and more expensive to extract and that your lifestyle will change over the next decade or two, will you listen?
Environmental scientists and environmentalists struggle to communicate their cause and it’s not for lack of trying, nor for lack of knowledge or a clear message. It just seems to be that changes that may take place in many years time simply do not spur people into action. The issue has to be real serious and real NOW before most people will take notice.
If you give a person the choice of no electricity in thirty years time or a wind turbine NOW, they’ll take the “no-electricity-at-some-point-in-the-future” option. However, if you give the same person the choice of no electricity NOW or a wind turbine in their living room NOW, they’ll take the turbine and wear it on their heads! Why the difference? If they don’t don the tower of power they’ll be in the dark NOW! It hurts and it’s immediate.
This is the problem with the peak oil message. It’s very indirect and most importantly, it’s NOT NOW! The 2008 oil price spike brought peak oil out of the closet, but not for long enough for it to transform our lives and affect us badly. The economic collapse that closely followed the oil price spike immediately diverted attention away from basic resources and to fiddly financial matters which, most importantly, affected people badly and immediately. And so the brief showing of oil issues has been overshadowed by superficial paper games played by bankers and (something that rhymes).
So this brings me to the point of this article — why am I bothering to even write this if I know that nobody will listen? Well, not nobody. Some people will take notice and hopefully dig a bit deeper or at least keep their ears to the ground for the next piece of news that could confirm this picture. So, I must be in this game with the knowledge that most people will not be interested. Unless.
Unless there is a way to connect the dots and show people how peak oil will affect their lives very soon, if not already, then we will have to accept that the message will be lost to the average person. So I come to the realisation that knowledge is only one half of the equation — communication is the other. In fact, both knowledge and communication are themselves only half of the total picture, for these both lie on the side of the communicator, whilst on the side of the recipient is understanding and action.
Let me then hope that my knowledge is correct and that I can communicate it, not only clearly, but in a way that reveals the relevance of the information. After that I’m afraid, it’s up to you to understand and to take action. Ready, steady, go!
Peak Oil Perspectives and Roger Diamond, what a lot of waffle.
Andre Angelantoni asks people the following questions to get them thinking about peak oil:
Could you get by without your car, food from outside your community, your job? Do you know how to make shoes? Can you build a house? How about grow food? Do you have a doctor and a dentist in your circle of friends?
If you cannot answer those questions you are not going to get by in possibly the next 10-15 years.
Find out how to survive peak oil and where they are doing it:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/142575/would_you_know_how_to_survive_after_the_oil_crash/?page=entire
Hear, hear… I have, personally, been struggling, with limited success, to hammer the same message into people’s minds since I first happened on the situation, about 18 months ago. Sadly, I’m at the point where my attitude towards people has gone from “change your mind, change the world” to “as jy dom is, moet jy kak”. So I concentrate on my own increased awareness first, and the elevation of others’ later.
It not just oil we are running out of, but also water. Gauteng will run out of water in 2013 according to predictions as our popultation grows from influxes from other countries and the rural areas. The densification and concretisation of the major metropoles is also increasing the fast run off of water – lost forever instead of sinking into the ground and reaching the aquifers for future use. Industrial pollution is further compromising this precious resource. Failure of the water and sanitation infrastructure in the Province means that we will be looking at this as our first crisis of note.
If the oil industry were really interested in getting an accurate message about peak oil out they would put the same resources into it as they put into denying the link between CO2 and climate change – millions of dollars and a network of skeptical scientists, right wing think tanks, and socalled ‘grassroots’ organisations.
However, this article may be the way the oil industry cope with peak oil themselves, they PROJECT the blame onto us? (I told you so but you won’t listen!!)
Psychological Projection is the unconscious act of denial of a person’s [industries] own fears, attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, like the weather, the government, a tool or another person or people.
In this case the public are the object of projection in Diamond’s article. Psychological Projection is a fundamental mechanism by which people keep themselves uninformed about the real circumstances they find themselves in.
Alternatively the aim of Diamond’s Peak Oil Perspective article could be to make mushrooms out of us (Mushrooms are kept in the dark and fed manure), as Diamond does not say very much other than wag his finger at us like an ageing school teacher.
Diamond raises a good point about people not listening to long term warnings, however, putting our heads in the sand like ostriches does not solve the problem.
Richard Heinberg’s book “The Party’s Over: Oil War and the Fate of Industrial Societies” deals head on with this imminent decline of cheap oil, which is excellent news from the perspective of climate change.
Heinberg’s book is a worthwhile read, our society will change dramatically forever with peak oil and its no good throwing up our hands in despair.
@Judith
Water and sanitation failure are important and must be addressed, but it should not overshadow peak oil.
The oil industry would love to make other crises more important in our minds over and above both climate change and peak oil, we must not swallow that line.