Every person who thinks we’re just going to “imaginate” our way out of significant societal disruption is the same person who thinks peak oil isn’t going to affect their daily life materially.

One day they’ll just go to the gas station and Voila! the pumps everywhere will all dispense biodiesel or ethanol, and cars will magically and in a cost-free manner ALREADY have been converted to run on any old fuel there is.

Because those kinds of cars are EVERYWHERE, aren’t they? And being manufactured EVERYWHERE for a reasonable price, aren’t they? Replace every oil-burning engine with an ethanol-burning engine! Easy! No time at all! Faster than it takes to watch an informercial!

Before taking off on this statement, I urge you to poll you friends and see how very, very many of them subscribe to this pie-in-the-sky, everything’s-gonna-be-fine, technology-will-step-up-to-the-plate canard. Watch for the waving hand and the professions of faith in Yankee ingenuity.

And then watch them change the subject when challenged.

He was right to emphasize coal as the killer. The U.S., China and others are going full steam ahead.

While I’d well agree that the “dislocation” is no longer avoidable, I’d observe that the choices (investments of goodwill, time, money) that we make now while society is fairly coherent will govern the degree of dislocation we face, as well as setting parameters for peoples’ choices thereafter.

For instance, the adoption of the policy framework of “Contraction & Convergence” as the basis of a Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons, (see http://www.gci.org.uk ) is one such supremely urgent action, in that the greater the dislocation, the less the chance of success.

Another such urgent action is, IMHO, the development of small-scale wood-alchohol stills, to process feedstock from sustainable forestry into this traditional fuel that can serve in ICE engines, CCG-Turbines and Direct Methanol Fuel Cells.

As such, it offers an easily-stored liquid transport fuel, whose feedstock can utilize non-arable land, and can be produced worldwide wherever forest will grow.

And suprise suprise this option has hardly had chickenfeed research funding since the oil-barons gained power, for all wood alcohol was first commercially traded in 1684.

The need for these and other such actions seems so clear that I wish Jeremy would explain what he meant on this issue – as I’m certain he didn’t wish merely to promote fatalism or apathy.

Could he be asked for a clarification ?

Regards,

Lewis

“1956. Hubbert predicts that world oil production will peak in 1971.”

just about to walk out to catch train down to sydney for the H2 gig!

Did he say what those choices might be?

Trend: Global warming and burning fossil fuels are highly correlated. The cause-and-effect may be the most important question of this century. Here’s a timeline from a presentation at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) by Jeremy Leggett,…

Here’s an excerpt from a presentation at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) by Jeremy Leggett, who worked in the oil industry until 1996. Link: Transition Culture » ASPO 5. Jeremy Leggett Intertwines Peak Oil and Climate