by Roger Diamond.
“The world is coming to a catastrophic end!”
How does that statement make you feel?!
Let’s try “Certain elements of our society are likely to be placed under major stress and perhaps stop functioning optimally.” Feel different about that prediction? Two totally different sentences that could have the same meaning, but certainly do not produce the same emotional response within one. Language is our primary communication method and how we use it determines how well our message gets across.
There are many messages out there and the bulk of them are total nonsense, such as the message displayed on most billboards, that by buying product “x” you will transmute into the person in the poster and obtain their dreamy and carefree or passionate and fun-filled lifestyle, whatever the exact product and version of marketing is being used. Other messages are political, economic, sporting or related to any other of the myriad sectors or sub-cults of our society. We are literally bombarded by information, of which this little page of words is yet another contribution.
The interesting thing is that there is no perfect way of getting your message across, because the variables that control the effectiveness of your message are many, but include the content of your message, the medium you use and of course the recipient. You can be certain that for one single message, there is no way of practically nor intellectually reaching every person out there. The converse is that even the most pathetic attempt at hurling a molecule of information into the wide open world will reach at least some people. As they say, some people will believe anything you tell them.
How does this all relate to peak oil? Well, the peak oil message is not terribly complex, yet neither is it overly simple. It is however, not the most palatable message, yet does seem to be rather urgent. As a result of the urgency, some people lay on the heavy doom and gloom in an attempt to induce some mitigatory actions into the reader, yet due to the general recalcitrance of people to change, this does not really work. Also, a highly unpalatable message is often just spat out and the last tastes washed down with something distracting.
On the other hand, a formal tone can lose many people in the niceties of language and the urgency does get lost. As stated before, there is no perfect way of communicating. Environmental groups, and I count peak oil largely in that stable, need to learn the simple way of targeting the means of communications (content and medium) to the target audience. The message has to be packaged in a 100 different ways if you’re speaking to a hundred different groups. Know your audience and speak to their values.
Peak oil is probably affecting you now, but being a Thought Leader reader you are probably able to weather the early part of this storm. When the winds really start blowing, even the wealthy and smart will find their comfort zones under just a little bit of pressure.
If you look around its not all doom and gloom. This has been posted elsewhere on Thought Leader but you must have missed it.
1) New study on renewable energy challenges conventional wisdom (guess what, who needs oil?)
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/08-3
2) And even more exciting from China, last year, 10,129 sets of wind turbines were installed, totaling 13,803MW, up 124 percent over the previous year. By the end of 2009, China’s total installed wind turbines reached 21,544, amounting to 25,805MW, up 114 percent over the end of 2008.
So China now has more than half of South Africa’s total power generation capacity from wind turbines alone.
Alex Scarrow wrote a fantastic novel about the Peak Oil scenario: “Last Light”. I wish more people were aware of this terrifying possibility!
I think peak oil is not doom and gloom. Would it not be nice to use trains (electriucity is not dependent on oil) and manufacture stuff locally giving local people jobs and not have all this stuff transported from all over the world. The global village is so overdone. Just think of less hot tarmaced roads and more green open spaces. Less plastic, less automation. Yea I could live with less oil. Just wish that we would stop producing soooo many people.
The world is ending in 2012, so you should not worry about oil. Of course, this is a theory.
We need to adapt. Take a look at this article The Great Transition: http://www.scribd.com/doc/21656220/The-Great-Transition-Navigating-Social-Economic-Ecological-Change-in-Turbulent-Times
My pen can $hak-esp-ear… and Old Coyote Knose that time runs short for ewe folks. So let me give it to you straight.
The DOCTRINE OF PERPETUAL GROWTH of the human population and the global consumer economy on Planet Over-Birth Earth, a fragile host organism of FINITE space and FINITE resources, cannot be sustained much longer. Perpetual growth in a closed looped system (Earth) is not progress! It is cancer! Full blown cancer… compliments of corp-rat culture.
Yesss… we are clever baboonies, very clever and inventive, but we lack wisdom, prescience and common sense. We indluge in denial, dogmas and censorship for the $ake of profits in lieu of prophets. And this is why we ignore the elephant in the livingroom, the core problem causing all the other problem: overpopulation fueled by the DOCTRINE OF PERPETUAL GROWTH.
Give it some thought!
Those who advocate the DOCTRINE OF PERPETUAL GROWTH are insane and $ociopathic misanthropes.
Oh! I get it.
By broaching the AIDS issue with the ‘a,b,c’ message, we’re not getting through, because in an a-literate world, the alphabet hardly counts?
A ’1,2,3′ message would probably resonate more, because counting their ill-gotten gains means more to some.
The world of Big Oil is comeing to an end, they rest of us are fine thanks.
As long as we run baby factories, no amount of energy will ever be sufficient. Yes, it is overpopulatiion that has given rise to the theory of constant economic expansion, yet talking about it is a taboo subject.