RebelFarmer
The self-fulfilling prophecy of peakoil 09/23/2009
"Crude oil futures for delivery in 2015 are currently trading near $85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange" Any thoughts about this: normally people that warn against peakoil complain that they are not heard in the media. What about if they UNDER-estimated their influence, and traders and investors become afraid from all the predictions that have been made in the media and start buying up more future stocks of oil, and driving up current prices with it. Peakoilers would see in the rising prices a scarcity that they have predicted. But in fact, what they see is the result of what they partly have been causing themselves. I say this because it reminds me on what happened with the "multiculturalism debate" in the Netherlands. You know this debate went totally wrong, resulting in a transformation of a tolerant country to one of the most hostile ones in Europe towards immigrants. What went wrong here is that the proponents of multiculturalism have too long profiled themselves as underdogs, because they felt that they were not heard, while in fact a lot of policy attention was paid towards it. The problems of "integration" (in the beginning still a very not-political correct term in the NL) were in fact so huge, that it seemed like that the government did nothing to help to close the gap between newly immigrated people and the established Dutch. This was utterly condemned by the "new right", who believed that all the governmental support just aggravated the problem: it prevented that immigrants were confronted with "necessity" that they should "integrate". Like I said: this was in the beginning language only expressed by extreme right in the NL, now it is common sense (and I emigrated to France...) Anyway, back to oil: the biggest hatred and accusation from "oilpeak-deniers" or "climate change deniers" come from the fact that "money-squandering schemes" or "taxpayer money" are spilled to create a "no-growth" scenario, while in fact according to them this money should be spent on stimulating growth, because only growth can compensate for pollution. Now, I don't predict that the whole climate debate will finally come back this ideology, but maybe if peakoilers would reflect more about their own position in the debate, there would be less an ideological war as I can see right now between them and its "debunkers". I think the two best known websites on both side of the peak oil front, The Oil Drum and Peak Oil Debunked, are already doing a relatively good job in trying to stay "objective". And although I agree it is like fighting a war, which necessitates scientific theory to back up eachothers' ideological and moral standpoints, both parties need people who are above the party lines. Personally I am in favor for searching for no-growth scenarios (and for a world without borders ;-) but I did some economics on my university and with this background I can't see yet a serious theory that can guide a transformation. The Stiglitz commission might be a beginning. But massively claiming no-growth already as an ideology, because we feel have not enough (media/governmental) support might make its own fear come true: indeed no-growth but one without solidarity. Some of the more "objective information"that I know off: The Hirsch report Commentsonno Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:40:17 Hi Rebelfarmer, Leave a Reply |
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