Peak Oil - Apocalypse Delayed
I’m of the school that global oil production has peaked, or will peak within a few years. But I’m a peaknik, not a doomer. I foresee hardship in the transition, but I doubt society will collapse as energy gets scarcer. Communities are as likely to dissolve into lone-wolf survivalism, as whales are likely to revert to single-cell organisms. Indeed, there are so many advantages to community that if all social bonds were to suddenly break, people would immediately start self-organizing into new groups and tribes.
This HuffPo article points out that some peak oil evangelists deliver their predictions of coming chaos with a zealous schadenfreude – the secular analogue to the gleeful imaginings of fanatical religious end-timers, I suppose. Perhaps both types are expressing a latent hostility towards the Other; that huge majority of non-like-minded people who disagreed with, or ignored them. They’re Cassandras with a temper.
While I disagreed with the Peak Oil doomers’ vision for the future, I only had a gut feel that societies could undergo hardship and transition without succumbing to violence. So I was delighted to read this article on The Oil Drum, which argues the case persuasively.
The four conclusions of Coming Chaos? Maybe Not are:
- absent political motivation, large-scale violence is unlikely
- the police can be of help in avoiding violence
- leadership (not necessarily from political figures) can prevent violence
- community is important
Most of these revolve around community. Providing there’s no scapegoating, and ties between tribes (whether ethnic, political, or economic) are firm, I’m convinced communities and by extension countries, will be able to muddle through.
The situation might be different in callously libertarian areas where the population of privilege feels no compunction to help out those suffering in their midst. (I’m probably maligning libertarianism — which seems as philosophically diverse as, say, the many strands of Hinduism — so I’ll just say that some of the libertarian financial commentators I’ve read, would certainly fit into this unsavoury category.)