Wars against Peak Oil and Climate Change?

[GliderGuider]

Something I've always wondered was how we could ever get people to respond to long slow squeezes like Peak Oil and Global Warming as the true crises they are. Our old friend the hyperbolic discount function rears its ugly head, and people yawn, roll over and go back to sleep assuming the faceless "They" will figure it all out.

The bubbling crisis with Iran and the threat to oil shipping through the Straits of Hormuz points to a probable mechanism by which "we" will address this conundrum. Regional wars brought on by PO have the potential to convert the abstract, unfamiliar squeeze into a clear and present danger that people can respond to collectively in familiar ways. If the problem is not seen as Peak Oil or climate-driven water shortages, but rather a shootin' war of good guys v. bad guys, people will end up (among all the inevitable wrong-headed responses) embracing conservation and lifestyle modifications that they wouldn't otherwise support. We saw exactly this mechanism at work in the USA in 1973-74, just after American oil production peaked in 1970.

This situation has the added advantage of fooling people into believing that they are coping with a short-term crisis. That (mis)perception makes drastic changes much more palatable. It gets people "over the hump" so that when the crisis doesn't abate once the war is won or lost, their behaviour is more in line with the realities of the biophysical situation.

Basically, long-term crises will present as short-term ones, and that will allow people to cope with them psychologically and respond with action instead of apathy and denial. The realpolitik benefit is that it makes the realignment of population, consumption and resources more dynamic, and may facilitate better regional outcomes in some places while pushing the losers offstage a little prematurely.

Of course I'd prefer to see us take considered, rational, voluntary action to address these (and other) long-term sustainability issues, but it seems people only move when they feel pushed. Wars will definitely provide a push.

[kristopher]

1. Another way of saying that...

We face a variety of challenges in our civilization and some of them have common solutions. When a problem is present some will believe we are required to take action while we will also have forces that would lose if remedial actions are taken.

This means change, especially major changes require a preponderance of winners in order to be implemented. Escalating oil prices due to rising global demand, energy/economic security, and the need to address climate change present three separate windows of opportunity to rally support for action.

[GliderGuider]

3. Consumerist advertising trains everyone to feel like losers if they cut their consumption.

Precious few will see themselves as winners if the required action is to reduce consumption rather than to simply consume different things.

That's where a lot of the public resistance comes from, and why the public is so easy for the Inhofes and Watts of the world to hoodwink into acting against their own best long-term interest.

If the problem is how to get people to urgently reduce their consumption and travel, I still see the underlying problem as psychological - especially when the public psychology is in thrall to those who sell us our consumables.

[KansDem]

2. Peak oil and climate change theories go back (at least) to the 1950s

1958 - Global Warming - It's NOT newly known

Peak Oil--
M. King Hubbert created and first used the models behind peak oil in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970.[3] His logistic model, now called Hubbert peak theory, and its variants have described with reasonable accuracy the peak and decline of production from oil wells, fields, regions, and countries,[4] and has also proved useful in other limited-resource production-domains. According to the Hubbert model, the production rate of a limited resource will follow a roughly symmetrical logistic distribution curve (sometimes incorrectly compared to a bell-shaped curve) based on the limits of exploitability and market pressures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

Yet, I don't recall ever discussing these subjects when I took science classes in school (1960s) or college (early 1970s). Why?

[bananas]

4. It was widely discussed in the 70s and Carter talked about it on tv

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=263587&mesg_id=263722

[Javaman]

5. Maybe it was the school you went to...

by science and social studies teachers in both elementry and junior high clued me into oil being a finite resource and how much the earth could change with even a single degree rise in temp.