I think blogs may be a safety valve against groupthink, bias and political conformism. You can make strong claims on blogs and you'll either be howled down or help change the consensus view. For example I think it was TOD that effectively blew the whistle on corn ethanol as a silver bullet.

I was astounded how quickly lobbyists were able to water down Australia's cap-and-trade scheme due to start next year. Despite a lengthy enquiry and hundreds of submissions that all counted for little when the suits hit town. Thanks to blogs there is now a back swing against this interference. Blogs help sharpen the arguments so politicians and the wider public can understand the issues. Clearly blogs have an essential role to play.

Wow -- what an interesting question!

If I knew where we were headed -- absolutely deep in my heart knew -- things would be a lot easier. Instead I spend my day thinking about the worst, preparing for what I consider likely, and hoping for the best. But even that preparation for the likely case is difficult with the uncertainty surrounding global climate change and the error bars I place on my personal view of the energy decline curve.

If I knew I only had 5 years before I was plunged into the World Made By Hand scenario, my first reaction would be to cash out my savings immediately and head out in search of a sustainable looking place to hunker down and do my best to survive.

If I knew that business as usual was going to win out, I'd likely go all-in in the stock market and take a vacation.

For better or worse, peak oil is not on the radar screens of most of the people I interact with on a regular basis, but with the ongoing US debate (I'm in the US) over climate change, I can only imagine the multitude of directions people would tend toward if PO emerged as a focus point to even half the degree climate change has.

Great post Nate. The oil drum has excellent analysis. Now its the time for some action. Our government is not a distant entity. We are the government. Is there any activist movement related to the oil drum? If not, then lets form one.

We can write some bills and try to get them passed into law. A question is, what (if any) are the pragmatic and realistically achievable actions oil drum readers feel should be in those laws (other than growing/buying food locally, cycling/walking everywhere or heading for the hills with a gun)?

My first thought on reading this is: the sharing of information is Necessary, but not Sufficient. That is, without the sharing of information, it becomes impossible for action to be taken, but the information will not change reality by itself.

As far as your SHTF in five years thought experiment, I would probably spend time and money both prepping and partying. Ultimately, I think it comes down to Gandhi's "Live as if you were going to die tomorrow, learn as if you were going to live forever".

Interesting question, Nate. Planned on watching the Basketball game and sipping a little elixir.

However you have set off a pack of hounds in my head. Since spending some time with H. T. Odum in the early 70's I have known the time would come probably in my lifetime when TSWHTF. therefore, i have a hard time now believing it's not gonna happen.

While i still look at the data occasionally I've seen enough to convince me. I denied, got angry, bargained, and all that stuff but eventually learned to live with it. Can't say I would live my life much differently if I knew it wouldn't happen. You see, borne in the latter days of the great depression I was taught to be thankful for what I had and get all the goodie out of everything.

I have carefully introduced the subject to a few friends and several seem to get it. Others, especially my own wife and children tell me to just not bring up the subject. I'm riding with them so I guess I will just go over the cliff in a Thelma and Louise moment.

I have made some minor preparations. Retired at 53, got a little farm, grow almost all my food, make my own wine, skilled in a number of critical areas, etc. But I, like our dear friend Airdale, am getting old.

The life before us is going to be tough and the time to make the transition is getting shorter. I agree the change is going to have to begin at the bottom. Got lots of young formally uneducated friends who don't know the details, but they damn sure got some skills that are going to be valuable. They might not be able to make a speech, but they can make all the basic stuff and have the tenacity to make a difference.

Obama has cast our lot with avarice and lots of valuable resources are going to be wasted. Hope we got until 2012, but i'm beginning to agree with Kuntchler (sp) we may not have but 4 months.

By the way. When making wine you start with growing the grapes. Next use Campden tablets liberally and keep everything clear. The yeast will make the wine for you.

Best case scenario and worst case scenario are polar opposites. For the majority of us, the difference between what we can legally do and what we are probably already doing is not so great. There are already enormous constraints on personal action - even if some of those constraints take the form of apathy, procrastination, pessimism, cynicism etc.

Imagine you are told there will be a magnitude 9.0 earthquake in 1 hour centered at your home, but you are currently 10 miles away and with no possible way to make the journey in time to make any meaningful preparations. This is the situation we are in.

At best, even the most informed amongst us, will be reduced to observers of the train wreck - perhaps with a view from the roof of the last carriage, in the hope that we might be thrown clear or only suffer injuries that are survivable.

Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" is likely to become one of the most significant publications of the modern era, even if it is by title alone.

There can be no doubt that more than 90% of the population relies on main-stream-media spoon feeding them a palatable reality. Since they lack either the education, motivation, curiosity or means to inform themselves. Consequently they will be denied the truth until it becomes too shocking to actually believe or comprehend.

There are probably too many blogs and too much noise on the internet - over time natural selection would probably result in the more valuable blogs rising to prominent roles. News papers are already being replaced. The chief problem as always is the insufficient time available.

Today, Karl Denninger's Market Ticker blog has a link to an amazing youTube video - We The People Stimulus Package : it would seem that if people did rise up, or do nothing at all, the outcome will likely be the same.

Perhaps the greatest preparation any of us can accomplish is to adjust our minds to accept that in order to survive we may soon have to do things that previously were abhorrent. We will actually have to get our own hands dirty in every possible sense.

Nate,

I like your distribution idea about possible paths in the future.

With the number of variables(6.5 billion is just one dimension), No one can model or predict exact pathways and progressions.

The mental image I get is a Ball Bearing factory, Throw a ball bearing into the machines. (there was even a tv commercial using that video in the US) Or that scene in the Movie Men In Black where that little ball was wizzing around smashing stuff.

Now, I cannot predict the exact sequence of events or which machine parts will fail first, second etc, BUT we are pretty sure that all heck is about to break lose.

Get your preps done.

Nate,
I am intrigued by your suggestion that you "view the future as a dynamic probability distribution, meaning there are some trajectories more likely than others, but nothing is set in stone"

A few of us here want to approach the subject of oil depletion analytically and try to use a more formal approach. I have contended that our continued use of cheap heuristics works against us because we can never explain anything except by hand-waving.

So as I try to deconstruct your suggestion, I will put it into the context of the use of the Logistic curve to explain peak oil.
1. Trajectories
2. A dynamic probability distribution
3. Some trajectories more likely than others.

The classical Logistic derivation is based on solving the Verhulst equation which involves setting up a deterministic birth/death model and then working out a deterministic solution. The way this problem is framed has absolutely nothing to do with probability distributions, as it is set in stone from the start. There are no Black Swans, and in my opinion it completely misappropriates an equation used to solve a completely different problem. Somebody (Hubert, Deffeyes, etc) obviously reverse engineered the Logistic curve to come up with a model that describes the wrong thing. I have long belly-ached about this by blogging about it (I plead guilty, according to your theme), yet I think I can do some good by increasing our understanding by offering up an alternative way of thinking about it.

And, yes, the solution does include the 3 elements that you suggest, in what I call using dispersion arguments. That is essentially enough to generate the Logistic curve. That is the wondrous and strange thing about math, and the way that it handles such cases of degeneracy.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4171 (The Derivation of "Logistic-shaped" Discovery)

Now, one can always dispute the relevance of the dispersion arguments to explain the Logistic Curve. One would then have to argue that foxes eating rabbits works better than invoking dispersion of thousands of oil prospectors working at different rates on accessing differing accessibility pockets of oil. Occam would choose the simpler explanation.
And, for the important part, I would now have Nate Hagens on my side. Because he has the same intuition that I have on these matters. :)

And that's why we blog about this stuff, it is human nature to keep pondering.

Is it 'all talk'? No Nate, it translates to the real world. I first became aware of our 'energy descent situation' a couple of years ago and have followed The Oil Drum most days since. Without a grander political framework there is very little I can do, but some of what I can do I have done. I got rid of my car and bought a bicycle, I discovered that my great grandfather had acquired half an acre of land in 1930, I moved there and I'm busy transforming it from a bramble and hawthorn patch into an edible garden. I have become interested in permaculture, composting, potable water, keeping warm. As somebody who has spent a couple of decades working in a hermetically sealed cubicle it has been something of a liberation. Now what "if you knew with certainty the worst cases would NOT arrive?". I like my bicycle, I like my garden, I feel liberated from my cubicle, I would not change a thing ...

BUT ...

The most important thing I have learned during my little forage into 'minimal self sufficiency' is that it doesn't exist, it can't exist. I'm acutely aware of every external input into my little project and I keep asking myself "how is that done for that price?", "how could I do that myself?" and the answers are depressing. I'm also lucky in that I have half an acre of land in a crowded part of the world (something you in the US may not appreciate) and a partner firmly plugged into the 'real world'. It's a fake preparation, really, for the possible times ahead. I loved Professor Richard Wolff - we need a political revolution, we need land reform, we need to worry about our Gini index, we need to worry about our education system. It seems our "future as dynamic probability distribution" gives us plenty to worry about.

In the mean time, Nate, don't imagine The Oil Drum is just 'all talk'. Keep on banging away. And thanks for it.

Nate, it's a very timely question.

Someone I believe 100% actually did tell me that the worst was going to happen, about 4 years ago. It took me a very long time to come to terms with it, mostly because I insisted on trying to solve what I saw as a "problem" in the terms in which it was being presented to me. Alternative energy, political action, spreading the news etc. Essentially I spent three years trying to save the world by researching and lecturing to it. That didn't work out so well. I even posted couple of big articles on dieoff here, to an, um, "mixed reception". I did the whole Kubler-Ross thing, and came close to checking out near the end.

What changed me about a year ago was realizing that just because we can't fix the predicament doesn't mean we won't succeed. The answer lies in understanding the true root of the problem, and letting that understanding inform our definition of success. So far, the best statement of the root cause I've found is in Dr. Charles Eisenstein's remarkable book The Ascent of Humanity. In a nutshell, the problem is separation. It's the Faustian price we paid for the self-awareness granted by our neocortex. Self/other, mind/body, matter/spirit, humans/resources... Dualism has been the seed of our undoing. With that Achilles heel, it simply didn't matter how clever we were. In fact our cleverness made things worse. Sooner or later the wave function was going to collapse, and we'd discover ourselves ... right here.

I did discover a way out, but it's orthogonal to the problem. The only useful response to this problem, given the nature of its roots, is personal spiritual transformation. But not spiritual in any conventional religious sense. I mean spiritual is the sense of recognizing the unity of all things, and through that becoming aware of my own duality. I find that awareness allows me to heal the sense of separation, and that healing in turn allows me to make decisions in a broader, even universal, context. Such decisions are always more inclusive, more respectful, more whole. They may still have downsides, but every decision or action does (just ask the rabbit in the jaws of the fox). The difference is that the dark side is brought fully into my awareness and accepted.

For me, the healing philosophy is an amalgam of Taoism, Buddhism, pantheism and Deep Ecology. For others it may be different, but these are the streams I've found that have the healing of separation and duality at their core.

Carolyn Baker has just published a remarkable book called Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse. It fleshes our these issues with great lucidity and compassion. It's the perfect companion to Eisenstein's book I mentioned above.

Think of Peak Oil and Climate change as post-modern Zen koans. Structurally they are very similar to classical Zen koans: conundrums with no solution in the rational mind. Every twist and turn the intellect takes in trying to resolve them runs into yet another dead end. Eventually the effort to find a solution exhausts the reason, and in the instant of surrender the problem dissolves. When viewed in this light, it's not surprising that the onset of these insoluble problems has led to a surge in sudden spiritual awakenings.

What am I doing as a result? What I can, which is not much compared to some, but more than many. Most importantly I'm trying to do it mindfully, with loving kindness and as much compassion as I can muster.

The web is all talk, no action - but so is everything else in modern life.

To make a long story short, I cared very much about a big event at the dawn of this decade. I knew quite a lot about this event. I contributed to the making of some videos to inform people about this event. Some of these videos were viewed over 50 million times.

The public did absolutely nothing with this information.

On the other hand, my life became increasingly ... inconvenient, and I chose to leave my homeland as a result.

quit your job, cash out what's left of your 401k at a penalty, and go hedonistic

Good advice! I'm just looking for a few good parties, then some pills for when life isn't fun anymore.

No one is going to do anything effective about anything.

Three choices as to what you would do if you were certain of TSHTF(for want of a better acronym)...asks Nate.

Well I would do neither of those three choices.

Before I put down what I would do or am right now doing I will elucidate a bit.

Most here know I am a conservative. A conservative of the 'old school' and that means 'class of 57' as I am wont to post, but it means I grew up in an era of self sufficiency, if that's the correct term.

By that I mean my grandparents raised me , and some various aunts and uncles for periods of time, during the end of the depression and the war years and even beyond that.Up until about 1950..12 years more or less.

And I inherited there belief systems though they didn't call them that. They just worked and lived and there was no 'bailouts'. No welfare that they knew of or used. The lived by the sweat of their brows and asked for nothing. My grandfather was a master at breaking mules. He was always swapping. He was also of European stock and a half-breed Cherokee. Thru his father and thru his mother. Each were half.

I then grew up expecting nothing and relying on my own self. I went to work eventually and retired from a company(corp) that was very very conserative as I thought most businesses were back then. They treated there employees extremely well but expected lots of loyalty and hard work in return. I retired there after 30 years and came back to where I was raised and a farm I had bid on at a auction years before.

So my answer is number 1, but I would not go to meetings,engage others,or do all the other outward activities. Everything I did would be for mostly my own survival or very close kin but mostly for myself.

My children are grown and don't like where I live. My wife the same. They refuse a farm life or the rural areas. I have a lot of kinfolk here though and know a heck of a lot of folks hereabouts. Most don't care about this upcoming scenario and don't listen to me so I quit talking about it.

The church is the worse. They are rather stupid in that regard. I pretty much quit going but I have as a result turned more and more inward in my daily life.MOre and more to the spiritual side. Some here(in my area) respect me and my past since I fix a lot of their computers and such. Yet they sorta tune out when I might mention something about what is happening.Most do not use the internet to do ought than email and trivia. Maybe a bit of news. Never seriously.

My choice then is do all I can for my own survival. I learned that the hard way growing up on the farm and being pretty much without my real parents in my childhood. I used to be quite different and rarely spoke to anyone. I had a set of armor plating mounted on my body and soul that NO ONE could pierce. I let NO ONE get close to me for many many years. Whether I picked that up from my grandfather and other old timers I do not know but back then life was very very different from now. Very different.

I think we are going back to that sort of life whether we want to or not and many will never be able to go there. To that manner. They are not adaptable to it. They have no feeling inside for what it is like.

Now one last note. Around here I know most everyone and can sit and bullshit for hours and kid around. Today me and a horse breaker spent hours playing with horses and yakking about horses and IH tractors and other things. Yet he goes his way and I go mine in our lifestlyle.

Its called independence. Self sufficient. Conserative. Most here have changed more towards the city folks ideas of living. They are the newer generation. They do not touch the earth or soil/dirt. They have no kinship with nature. They don't feel it move them. They kill wildlife indiscriminately. They are full of themselves. They will not make it either IMO. The hate work to be honest about it. They do a lot of drugs. They fall easily into crime and theft. Why I don't know but many are very unreliable. They mostly live in trailers. Lots of trash around their place. They are what others call rednecks. They are your basic trash. No zoning laws out here in the outback you see.
Every one knows who they are, who is worthless and who you can sometimes trust. But most are not men of their word. Some will gut you out after you do something for them.

They couldn't raise a garden no way,no how.They couldn't farm and don't really care to except to take a summer job to get a few bucks in their jeans. They have forgotten the faces of their fathers...to use a Stephen King idiom.

But if someone came to my place and were someone I could find to trust? I would help them if I could. If I could trust them and thats something I can't figure out how to determine based on how people are these days. They are simply not easy to trust. And I might add not able to turn to and work hard. At my age I can still outwork most of them. But if they were proven? Then I would do what I could.

Problem with this world today is that most everyone has changed so much that honor or trust is not very prevalent anymore. Its just like the bankster/gangsters ....good ole boys upfront and then they screw you over. Can't trust anybody much anymore.

The world has 'moved' on. Going to be very hard to go back. No skills. No abilities. Not in touch with nature. Will run you over out on the highways if you get in their way. Flip you the bird as they go by and you notice the 'sign of the fish' on their back bumper. The little stupid yellow ribbons. The flags of 9/11 have fallen off into the dirt. Unforgotten. Just trash and thats just how much they cared.

Airdale-I sometimes feel an outcast in my own country, but I can usually get a hug from a girl cousin however most of them are now gone

Nate you said:

Our diets (many are serotonin deficient) and behaviours (various addictions) heighten our aggregate level of short-term thinking.

Which seems to suggest that you think one can obtain the effects of serotonin by eating it.

This is not the case as Serotonin does not cross the blood-brain barrier, it is synthesized within the brain. You do need the amino acid Tryptophan as a starting point but that's found in most high protein foods (meat, milk, eggs, soybeans)

Great questions, Nate.
On the dichotomy between communicating and doing - 1) the intarweb is a good place for people without genuine community to touch minds with other people out there who feel the same things they do, and value the same things they value; this is therapeutic, stabilizing, encouraging, emboldening, etc -- all emotional prerequisites to constructive action, probably. 2) one's knowledge, in many cases, helps shape one's range of possible actions. the exchange of viewpoints on the intarweb facilitates a broadening of one's existential flexibility (range of possible actions). for example, i would literally have no idea of the existence of permaculture design philosophy, if it weren't for saints out there blogging (that's how disconnected from reality i am - no one in my immediate circle is aware of even the need for responsible earth-shaping by humans, much less the actual possibility of it). now that i know about permaculture, i gear my activities toward achieving the ability to grow things. permaculture has entered my horizon of possible future activities.
Regarding the respective orientation(s) of my life given either a guaranteed worst-case scenario or a guaranteed business-as-usual scenario -- I wouldn't change a thing either way. My vision for how I want my life to run (and my life won't work out how I envision it, but one needs orientation) lives in a world that is independent of the variability of future scenarios. Irrespective of the shape of the world in five years, I think gardening and writing novels is paradise, so that's what I'm striving for. What do y'all think ... is it possible to have life-visions that don't need to take into account one's "external" context? i.e. is it necessary that we always react to what the world gives us - or can we simply shape the world we want to be in?
love,
-Symbiont

Yes, it's a dynamic probability distribution, nothing set in stone. We may be certain, convinced, have faith in a prophecy, whatever, but we can never know the future. Perhaps the thought experiment is irrelevant. It seems to me that the better informed we are the less sure we become about the outcome, the less sure about the best course of action, the more aware of the law of unintended consequences. We suffer a great deal from what I call 'The menu not the meal' - it's relatively easy to draw up elegantly/intelligently presented lists of what we have to do, much harder to actually deliver. I, like you Nate, don't know. Some talk, some make films, and when I'm not gardening for rich people for my living, write songs about it. (Nate I will email you and ask if you'd like to listen to myspace!)

Nate, I like the thought experiment.

There must be countless cases in history where this has come up. Consider what some people must have thought in the 1930s as we got closer and closer to war. For a long time Churchill considered that early action could have stopped Germany but eventually it became obvious to many that the only outcome was another war. Many people must have known it was coming and some probably took action.

And the problem space is spacial not just in time -PO will not affect all places equally. IMO there will be places that prosper even as the aggregate descends.

Personally the closer we get to 2012 the more I am going to ramp up 'mitigation activities'.

Nick.

Thought-provoking question, Nate.

I would say that blogging on the Web can be:
1) Mental masturbation
2) An extraordinarily effective way to promote revolutionary cultural change.

Masturbation: going over the same ground again and again. A high tech way to sit around the cracker barrel and bitch.

Culture change: networking, learning, making things clear, listening to other people.

Right now TOD and related sites are valuable because the subject matter had not been covered by the mainstream media. It's been important to provide a forum for people to develop ideas and realize they aren't alone.

I don't think most TODers realize how great the success of the peak oil movement has been. These are ideas that question the prevailing wisdom of the last 200 years. From a small nucleus a few years ago, the memes have spread to millions of people.

On the minus side ... because it's difficult to go out in the cold, cruel mainstream world, there's an understandable tendency to stay in the peak oil ghetto. I find that there's a self-perpetuating cynicism and fatalism that comes from breathing the same air all the time.

I'd like to see more interaction with people outside the world of middle-aged white technical professionals. I'd like to see more historical awareness. I'd like to see a more sophisticated approach to politics - moving beyond "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." - or "They're all corrupt."

Oh yeah, I'd like to see a place where women feel comfortable contributing and commenting.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

I would not make a lot of changes either way - World as we know it ends in 60 months, or there is a solution for all of the ills we have discovered (so far). I have prepared for a lot of problems, and hope to help others, family first, overcome the difficulties.

I like the other alternative question up thread. If I knew that an earthquake was going to hit my home, and presumably family, in a few minutes with insufficient time to do anything even if I could get there, I would be quite distraught. But, since I have tried to live my life to deal with the misery I know will come (even if you cannot tell me when), I will hope that I can survive long enough to pass on what I know to those dear to me and those who might become so.

I am currently engrossed in a book by William Greider which deals with many of these topics - taking back America, making our will known, etc (the title is Come Home America). He is a very good communicator, and has a lot of good ideas. Will any of this make any difference? Probably not. It feels good to have reinforcement of my own ideas, however.

None of us are in this alone, and while I may communicate here more than with my cherished friends, they will be the ones I try to ride this out with, wishing I was thirty years younger for now, but not sure that wish will hold for very long.

"This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away. To the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing." -- some Muppet

I think there is no gap between where we are and where we need to be. We are exactly where we need to be. The gap is between where we are, and where we want to be, and in this case, the wanting is detrimental. It's like hoping. The hoping will usually involve the visualization of some better future. And to our brains, that visualization is almost real in and of itself, and acts as a kind of self-medicating or self-pacifying response to the ideas of doom and havoc.

If we want a little more motivation and action, we can on our own terms employ some fear. Examine the gap between where we are, and where we do not want to go. Especially examine where you do not want to go. What are you willing to do to avoid an internment camp, a bread line, or a damp, cold future of disease for your family?

What's that saying, hope for the best, plan for the worst. I think that's backwards. If we want an actual better future, maybe we should hope for the worst and plan for the best.

Or, more accurately, dreading the worst to motivate planning for the best.

Let's take the case of drinking and hangovers. Suppose you're heading out to a party where you expect to drink like a fish. If you are hoping you don't get a hangover, you may be visualizing waking up tomorrow morning, being coherent and pain-free, having a nice shower and going for a run with the dog before brunch, and then doing some work in the garden. That seems pretty nice, pour another few shots, I'm gonna get good and tight. You are likely to wake up feeling like Death warmed over.

Now, suppose instead of hoping for no hangover, you instead dread the hangover you are likely to get. You remember the last time, throwing up, head pounding, you could barely get out of bed before 4 pm. You didn't shower, you couldn't eat, and your dog bit you for acting like an a-hole. This visualization can prompt you to do any number of things that will actually improve your situation tomorrow. You may drink less, have pain-killers and plenty of water ready for before you pass out, or have multivitamins and a healthy meal planned out the night before for the morning after.

Only some things about the future are unpredictable. Other things are predictable with certainty. When I die, unpredictable. That I die, certain. Until I die, that I will experience nutrient depletion, certainty. When I will next feel hungry, unpredictable. That the oil infrastructure deteriorates, certain. When it breaks down and needs replacing, unpredictable. That it will eventually need replacing, certain. That's how it works. So the hands-in-the-air claim of "no-one knows what the future will bring", it's dubious at best.

Blogs are good, as opposed to not having them, which we may not at some point. Australia, China and other places censor. Here it is done at work, and in other ways. So it's a good thing but it may not last. That they are good thing is why the TPTB hate them.

BUT blogs are not enough. I don't completely agree with bottom up, or at least bottom up only. There also need to be political movmements to get anything done, otherwise the TPTB will roll over local grass roots movement that are attempting to accomplish something. You become another Hezbollah. We'll need a political movement even to defend the right to continue blogging, or at least uncensored blogging.

Blogging and global interchage and communication are extremely important -- we share one planet. Many of the problems we face are global and require global communication.

Free interchange between citizens of various nations is also a force for peace. It is more difficult for TPTB to incite enmity beteen peoples when they are in contact and sharing experiences and ideas. It's much more pleasant to bomb strangers. Yet another reason why blogs will come under increasing attack.

For better or worse, the internet bloggers helped me to see life as it really is, not as the MSM would have me see it.
Somehow, ALL my precious pre-conceptions have been killed in the process.
Thanks to information on the internet I now understand why; and I can accept it better.

1. "WE" ARE NOT THE GOVERNMENT! THE US IS A PLUTOCRACY-KLEPTOCRACY.
Sadly, it was the truth when Bush said the US Constitution is just a piece of paper; and when adolescent Republicans keep saying we are not a [D]emocracy. Resistance is futile.
2. THERE IS NO GOD AND MOST RELIGIOUS "LEADERS" KNOW THIS. That is how they can behave like such hypocrites. It is also how I can walk away from religion without damnation.
3. MY PARENTS ARE COMPLETELY NARCISSISTIC. That's how they so easily dismissed/betrayed my trust.
4. I AM GOING TO DIE ANYWAY. So will everyone I know. No-one gets out of this world alive.
5. OUR CIVILIZATION WILL END. They all do. Given how much damage our civilization has caused, it's actually not a bad thing.
6. I AM JUST GRATEFUL. That I had a brain, an education, an appreciation for little things, and some good life experiences. Compared to most humans, really I have been very fortunate.

Re Action: Any positive change will occur locally. Forget the federal or state level, you do not have that much power, and your efforts will be betrayed by criminals in authority.
Work to help others on the extreme local level, among your peers. That's what I do.

Thank you to TOD, LATOC, and TAE for the inspiration to make small meaningful changes.
In the end, though, we cannot alter what is coming down the pike. So choose your battles wisely.

Hmmm...Cassandra, Mad Max, Grizzly Adams, or Party like its 1999?

thanks nate

this post has a heartfelt quality about it.

the first part of your post is definitely where i am.

if it turns out timing wise that the timescale for no. 1 is a decade or 2 per my wife i have to go back to work as i am emptying all our coffers.

unfortunately i can't see no. 2.

like upstanding says above[nice comment btw] this blogging u -nate & TOD provides does matter as i have on many occasions had to come here to get the courage [reinforced by info] to take numerous first/big steps for me, & my family. i was often alone re PO; over & over. now thank god i have a small but tight 'real' circle forming that provides tremendous support & yet also perspective.

lately i have come to believe that being highly adaptive/flexible is the most important prep.

this is mental first & foremost; some physical preps too. i am very very blessed to have a supportive wife, though this is not active support as she gets very depressed focusing on PO; & we own our small place & may be able w/ others to own/have available an alternative place.

but as GG & others say above with the kinds of disorder we will have nothing is assured & massive suffering- eventually is ;so most important is mental/spiritual prep.

this will assuredly be a very disorderly process.

i haven't given up completely on all processes outside our small circle- almost though.

actually- i'll probably get some heat for this- i have some hope for President Obama, eventually that is.

i'll give this reasoning ;a few decades ago i had a boss/boss, 2 levels above me who for the first year sat back & left decisions to us w/o giving much input, or just making the decisions. when i asked him about this he said he believed he needed to do 'dog' leadership for a while. the dog he said leads until a fork comes then the dog hangs back til the wagon heads down one fork or the other.

one day i came in & he had fired my supervisor- a wonderful man- 1 1/2 yrs. from full retirement. i got the hell outta there asap.

so i will still hope for a type of crisis where president obama takes a fork most wouldn't anticipate - for the good.i think he is deluded though about our energy situation; but perhaps not so much re the economy. he is shrewd i believe; we'll see about his courage- or maybe his wife will be a positive factor for him.

so much for one of my longer comments; hell i couldn't type or use a computer much til i found a reason to with PO, & TOD!

airdale i have enjoyed u'r comments a lot lately- u seem more at peace or something.

Very interesting questions and observations here.

Your thought experiment is a difficult one, primarily on epistemological grounds, for I base my life on the axiom as well as the observed fact that there is no certainty--ever, and certainly no certainty derived from some authority or third-party. Even what I "see" is subject to uncertainty, though I will believe something I have experienced more readily that something I hear about. All knowledge other than experienced is based on inferences from experienced reality together with a sense of coherence of these beliefs with each other. (A belief, by the way, is not a certainty, but just a conjecture with many confirming instances and maybe also a few disconfirming instances.)

So, basically, if someone, anyone, assured me that the end was nigh, that would do nothing but make me roll my eyes. If I arrived at the same conclusion, I would still maintain a doubt or two.

So, if I believed the end was nigh, what would I do? Well, it depends on what I expected to happen. I have enough life experience to be able to respond to events and adapt as best I can. But oftentimes that is not enough. I would have various plans (a,b,c...) that could be adopted on a contingency basis, none of which are guaranteed to work, but might.

As for blogging, well, two observations. One is that writing things down is a great way to clarify one's own thoughts. Writing a book (or a blog or an article or even just a letter) is an adventure because one never knows what one will say or how one will say it. That it is possible, even if unlikely, that another person will read what one writes is just an added benefit--but not the primary one.

The other comment about blogging is that I have an affinity for Plato's Parable of the Cave: if you know or think something that might benefit another, you have a responsibility to communicate it, even if only to one other person. Blogging is a form of conversation, a sort of town hall meeting in cyberspace, or even just a meeting of friends or like-minded people.

Certainly, there's a lot of talk. . .but not all of us are only talking.

Here in Hawaii we have a very progressive and proactive community moving robustly towards a peak oil future. Over the last year I've personally achieved food self sufficiency, the capacity to produce all fuels on a limited but workable basis on site, have built 3 producer gas set-ups, a 5, a 7, and a 50 kw unit. We have formed a cooperative based on the 'ohana system that greatly improves our own sustainability and security. Anyone can, it simply takes a good deal of effort. It's time to get started. Really, we all know it is.

Part of the reason I think people get hung up and don't get much done is they spend too much time on websites, such as this one, rehashing and rehashing and rehashing the details. I certainly applaud the education and the quality insight sites like this provide. At some point, however, you must become convinced as the evidence stands for itself. This is how I feel about Peak Oil, and as far as I'm concerned there's hardly another article worth writing about it. As the topic suggests, certainly demonstrating real progress made towards viable post peak lifestyles is what we really need, and very rarely see. Especially without gimmicks.

I'd love to see more of that around here.

Anyway. Thanks.

http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/forum/

Nate, I think this is a very interesting question.

I'm actually not at all sure I would change anything -- I love what I'm doing, and trust in what I suppose most people would call God (and which I would call Tao) that whether I live or die, I will find the grace to be grateful and satisfied with whatever life I have. There simply isn't enough space on the planet for all of us humans if we don't have civilization to support us. Why would I deserve to live any more than anyone else? At what cost do I struggle to survive? It's not like my homo self is having kids any time soon to worry about.

Death happens to us all, even more surely than taxes. And in the end, it is the fear of death that drives humans to all the horrible things we do. I might enjoy living out my days with my close friends, supporting them with what labor and skill I have, and living in harmony with my environment, whether that means dying, killing, or just working hard every day until I die.

I suppose that in the end, I care more about my friends than I care about myself -- if I were alone on this planet, I doubt I would bother to live for long. Every day is a gift, to be cherished.

Reading through all this again.

It is time for some god-damned heroism, people. . .

Really.

http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/forum/

Well, I don't believe in some absolute or supreme being so that makes it rather difficult for me to be convinced with 100% certainty of anything, so no matter how much I internalized the worst case scenario idea, there would always be a certain amount of doubt that would make it hard for me to convince others, particularly since the majority would not want to believe it as a matter of course and my self-doubt would creep in.

Anyway, I'm already doing much of this to some extent: encouraging people to change their habits (via the challenges on my blog), educating people on the issues, and making changes in my personal life. If I knew with more certainty what is to come, I would certainly ramp up my efforts enormously both in educating people who read my blog and working locally to build up resilience programs. But, people need to be pushed gently along or they either refuse to believe it outright and write you off, or totally freak out and become incapable of making any sensible decisions before getting sucked back into more comfy thoughts. Like who is going to win Dancing with the Stars.

At this point, I feel that what I can do is on such a small scale and even those who are receptive to my "odd" powering down/simple living ideas are still resistant to doing them for a variety of different reasons. Without a general consensus or, at least, the belief that we are heading down the worst case scenario path, people will still continue doing what they do best - consuming. Unfortunately, the core problem is that most people are still highly uneducated about peak oil issues.

I look forward to the day when it becomes more apparent to everyone that we are moving towards a low energy future, so that we can actually make some progress. And stop making just a lot of empty, feel-good gestures coupled with buying green, but equally energy-intensive, goods.

The first thing to say is talk or action is a false split. We can do both. Only talking is just slacktivism. Only acting is useful, but won't create widespread changing. But talking and acting, together they add up to much more than they are separately.

The reason speech must be free is to make sure decent ideas get out, and crappy ideas are cast aside. Blogs are nothing special in this regard. In terms of public affairs, they act like something between a letter to the newspaper, and an opinion column in it.

Blogs are just another form of speech. As to how many there are, first we have to remember that like dating and facebook profiles, most are inactive - someone made one and then lost interest, forgot about it. Many are duplicates. That takes out the majority of blogs.

Of the active blogs, most are not concerned with public affairs except in a day-to-day conversation way. People talk about their hobbies, their day-to-day lives.

Most people aren't political. That doesn't mean they're stupid or have no opinions, it just means that public affairs are not a major concern of theirs. Their opinions are nonetheless influenced by things they read and hear and see.

Because my own blog talks a bit about reducing your personal or household impact on the environment, people sometimes ask, "what's the point if no-one else does it?" I answer that in the first place, the right thing to do is the right thing to do, whatever the effect on the world as whole; but the second and main thing is that it's the power of example to make the radical seem ordinary. Because the more someone not obviously insane talks about their lifestyle, the more you see them live it, the more ordinary it seems.

And when things seem ordinary, people just accept them and themselves change. It's a slow but at the same time sudden process, as Rebecca Solnit writes.

Sex before marriage. Bob and his boyfriend. Madame Speaker. Do those words make your hair stand on end or your eyes widen? Their flatness is the register of successful revolution. Many of the changes are so incremental that you adjust without realizing something has changed until suddenly one day you realize everything is different.

We can see this with the peak oil question. Twenty years ago the issue was simply unknown. Ten years ago it popped up from time to time, but the peak oilers were dismissed as crazy or stupid. Around five years ago this started to change. Nowadays it gets mentioned in the newspapers in passing as something given, something obvious to everyone.

That's how ideas spread. There's no proud moment when someone turns to you and says, "you know, you were right! I'm sorry I doubted you." You spend years being mocked or ignored, then suddenly one day everyone knows what you know, and claims they always knew it. Just look at all the drongos popping up now on telly to say they knew the economic crash was coming - searches of their past writings and speeches often turn up no trace.

Or consider how hard it is to find anyone who'll claim membership of the KKK in the 1960s, and how easy it is to find someone who claims to have been at Woodstock. The Red Army noted that when they went into Germany, about two-thirds the population claimed to have been members of the Socialist party. After the revolution, everyone's a revolutionary.

As to your thought experiment, obviously if I knew an exact Doomsday then I'd be more active. But there's no indication that there'll be some sudden moment when everything turns to shit. Much more likely - if things go bad - is the slow crash, the long emergency. Things slowly become harder, blackouts go from being just on hot days a few times a year to being one or two days a month, then a week, then finally we find that electricity's only on for a few hours a day, but usually 9am-1pm. And people adjust.

That was the experience in the former Communist bloc. Nothing happened overnight, things just kind of sputtered along for a bit gradually becoming worse. Of course a Transition (as they called it) will be harder for us than it was for them. They were able to draw on the resources, money and people of the West to help them; but in a global crisis we have to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, or continue sinking.

Or if you want to think of the Ecotechnic world coming to be, consider the Industrial Revolution: it didn't happen in a matter of a decade worldwide. It took generations, and still hasn't reached most of the world's population. It's not like one day everyone was out hoeing the fields, then the next day a factory popped up and everyone had a telephone. Genuine change is gradual, and only looks revolutionary in retrospect.

So for my activism, I don't really expect my own words to create some kind of instant revolution. Our words, ideas and actions are drops of water falling into a glass in the dark. At some point the glass will overflow - but we can't know when.

Some people have already chosen to act (and react).

Thanks for this post Nate. It's a question I've contemplated a great deal over this past year. It's a reformulation of the old "fight vs flight" question that's as ancient as Lao Tzu, but with added urgency as we pass peak and enter the era of The Great Collapse.

Sadly, so much of what you said remains true for me, even though I've not been completely idle.

Here's what I have done:
1. moved closer to the CBD and started to ride my bike to work (1 out of 2 days at this stage)
2. got involved with the Australian Greens party and even stood for in the state elections - we got a record vote and we're just a whisker away from winning our first lower house seats! BTW, the Greens are the ONLY political party that deals with peak oil and its consequences in policy.
3. joined a local sustainable transport lobby group to pressure public decision makers on transport related issues.

I feel all this is helpful and leads to a meaningful change - though nothing drastic at this stage. But as the situation progresses I'm hopeful that more people will heed the messages I put out through my blogs, my classroom (I'm a teacher) and via the political groups I support, and get involved. Will this change be too little, too late? Time will tell. But if we're going down, I'm going to go fighting.

Here's what I haven't done (yet):
1. started growing my own food or storing food
2. wired myself up to renewable energy sources
3. stopped driving my (petrol miser) car
4. stopped flying passenger airlines
5. built myself a bunker with plenty of dried food and ammo, along with a tin-foil hat to stop "them" from reading my thoughts. :D

But who knows, it might come to that! Take care peoples!

By and large I think even most Peak Oil bloggers are in denial about how bad it could get. When I first learned that Peak Oil was Now, I started to do some preparations, but 1. my family was decidedly not interested in having me prepare for them. 2. I am old enough that extending my own life is not such a huge priority 3. I realized that almost anything can be taken away if law and order break down (or before law and order break down the government can take away your land or freedom). 4. Climate change will probably be exacerbated as people desperately burn anything any way they can and it least in my neck of the woods that might make any attempts to be self sufficient impossible. So I have rested where I am - small garden, hand pump well.

I blog Peak Oil less than I used to. Why do I bother - basically it is hard to be alone with the knowledge of Peak Oil and the internet is the best place to read and chat with somewhat like minded folks. We humans are programmed to talk with each other, yet we often have no real bond of understanding with those closest to us. All the more so if we see the future more clearly than our neighbors.

I strongly suggest "Reinventing Collapse" by Orlov as the best way to prepare. As he suggests, mental readjustment may be the first necessary preparation. Besides being cynically entertaining, he has concrete suggestions based on actual experience in a collapsing society. IMO he his the most clear eyed writer about the future.

[simplified exaggeration] it's preaching to the converted. It does help the stupid guys like me seem smarter in casual conversation around the dinner table.

It is also elitist and has created a self serving environment for some intellectual pissing contest where being right has the ultimate goal of leadership of this tiny hill. Is that sound?

power....

I often get derided and ignored for my bad prose and general dumbdowness.. I find that kinda strange given that "the message" needs to permeate strata of society way more ignorant than myself.

I keep suggesting that the brainy boys and girls here raise their game SIGNIFICANTLY outside the blogosphere. but i guess I'm just too stupid to make my point.[/simplified exaggeration]

on a positive note there is some trickle-down effect... PO is a known position across the political blogosphere

Nate,

If you knew for sure that this worst case scenario was going to play out, then the simplest thing to do would be to buy some oil call-options and finance them with Toyota put-options.

Next thing would be to go to university or somewhere likewise where you can pick up knowledge and study permaculture.

In a few years, you would cash in and move to Argentina.

No worries, I would say. Maybe pick up some Spanish somewhere.

Nate, you write: "we disproportionately value the present over the future."

Neuroscientist Gary Small, co-author with Gigi Vorga of iBrain: Surviving the technological alteration of the modern mind writes:

"Teenagers desire instant gratification – they want to satisfy their needs and do it now, not later. Their underdeveloped frontal lobes often impair their everyday judgment. Many teens feel they are invincible – danger will bounce off them. Today’s obsession with computer technology and video gaming appears to be stunting frontal lobe development in many teenagers, impairing their social and reasoning abilities. If young people continue to mature in this fashion, their brains’ neural pathways may never catch up. It is possible that they could remain locked into a neural circuitry that stays at an immature and self-absorbed emotional level, right through adulthood."

I feel the conflict between short- and long-term goals will be at the center stage in the next few years, as well as the one between the mind frames for specialization versus seeing the whole picture. System theory and the science of complexity are important developments toward a vision of reality which takes complex interactions into consideration, but basically they are founded on the same thought modalities of specialization and reductionism.

For instance, now we have much more knowledge of the complex environmental interactions but we are still far from seeing the whole picture. Like the search for the elementary particles, there will probably be no end in that knowledge. Though the more we progress in environmental knowledge, if we just rely on information, the more we risk making bigger disasters looking for “solutions,” as in the geo-engineering proposals to “hack and fix the planet” in order to reverse global warming.

We can probably find good advice in ancient Taoist, American Indian, or just philosophies of organic farmers on how to interact as human beings with nature and, it would be much better if we join those philosophies with scientific data.

This is a particular form of despair. Experienced in most professions, but most typically in Art. There are no sustainably satisfying solutions. There are only working solutions that dampen the acute discomfort, and make for something that can be endured. I'm glad you asked the question. Your question hits the bulls-eye. The good news is that the gap between what the PO community has to offer, and, the still largely immovable public remains large. So, there's a ton of work to be done. We are probably at the tipping point, though, where the built-up dialogue among the PO community is ready for wider release. I encourage you to read Lawrence Weschler's profile of the Light and Space artist Robert Irwin and here is why: after working exclusively for the sake of his own, artistic development for decades, he turned his attention to the public. This type of story is no doubt repeated through history. It's perennially a challenge for the person who has developed specialized knowledge to then turn towards the whole area of public consumption. My hunch is that's what comes next.

G

PS: With regard to the fleeing from the country theme, on this thread, I already bypassed that off-ramp. My spouse is a New Zealander. We could/can exit anytime. We knew hard times were coming to the US, but I would prefer to stay and see what happens. Besides, there is no "escape." Every country will have all sorts of problems. Utopia no more exists in hard times than good times.

I have been absent from TOD for quite a while. Looking over the names, I only recognize a few (WHT, GG, for example). Interesting to see relatively few old-timers.

Nate's question is a difficult one. I have been applying Pascal's Wager, in practice. Either we have a considerable amount of time, or we don't. Either I prepare, or I don't. If I understand Pascal correctly, he might recommend in this case that I prepare.

A complicating factor has been the credit bubble. Here in Lithuania, real estate prices are finally coming down. And yet residential housing and the farmland surrounding my town of 33,000 remain surprisingly expensive, at least by my standards. This is a problem. Living in a block of flats practically means that modifying the structure (e.g., insulation, solar water heating, solar panels, etc.) requires common agreement and effort. Try getting a group of 25 households to reach agreement on fairly basic matters. Difficult. There are 243 blocks of flats in my town. Of these, 32 have organized groups of homeowners. With neighbors, we tried to organize such a group, the first step in the process of renovation. No go.

Okay, so a single-family house, or a plot of land on which to build such, becomes an issue. Prices remain exorbitant. I watch the market closely. We own our flat free and clear because we paid cash prior to when the credit bubble began to inflate locally. Sure, we could sell the over-priced flat, and pick up an over-priced firetrap on a plot of land not far from town. I could rebuild the firetrap, turn it into a post-peak ark, so to speak. Still, a difficult proposition, so long as the aftermath of the credit bubble remains.

At work (a small-business development center), we have actively organized seminars about building methods and alternative energy, and in January sent a group to a fair in Germany, to see the state of the art. The pace is slow, though. The construction industry here is just so far behind. We're talking Brezhnev-era. Architects, designers, builders here are just clueless. Sure, there are a few enlightened, educated ones, but the overwhelming majority have the attitude, "well, this is the way we've always done it..." (Yeah, and look at the result, pal...) Dumb as rocks. Not their fault, I hasten to add. The customers are just as clueless. As of January 1, any buyer of a flat can demand an energy audit of the flat from the would-be seller. Three months later, and NOT ONE BUYER has expressed such a demand. Dumb as rocks...

Riding my bicycle or walking to work is not enough. It makes me feel good, but I am only one of 33,000. A few years ago, I consciously chose to spend less time reading TOD and more time trying to organize action. So far I cannot point to any great results, unfortunately. But blogging would definitely not have been as useful as my attempts at moving people locally toward renovating our houses, or making bicycling more possible, or the other things I have tried to do. Many thanks to those who provide so much excellent information, but I have chosen to be a user, not a dealer, so to speak. :)

*takes a step back to get a good look*

I think i will go out on a limb here and call everything, everything that has been mentioned on this thread and in previous ones about preparation, getting the word out, changing the system by example, etc, is opiate. Why? Simple scale of the problem.

Nearly 7 billion humans on this planet veraciously consuming everything they can, though some more then others while completely ignoring the finite nature of the one substance that allows that many to live in the first place. A climate on the edge of tipping points where the inertia in the system makes it impossible to do anything but hold on for the ride. Many governments in the system we call civilization heck bent on maintaining B.A.U. by any means they can.

Want to get the message out about the problem? Fine by me since it makes you feel better but i think you should realize that in the long run it will just make the problem worse. Not everyone has the same mental or physical capability's. They all won't act like you do, or your little group does. Some will spit in your face. Others will ignore it even to the point that it kills them. Some might join you. Yet still others will do what ever they can to keep what they view as their's and their right to have it, which might include going after you and your group. Still others will just try to profit from it thinking the consequences won't effect them.

Want to make your neighbor's into a tight little community to weather out the effects or form a new one somewhere else? Many will laugh at you when you ask them after showing them the problem. Some will say "Oh thats nice." and inwardly wonder what medication you forgot to take today. Some will join you in your efforts but can you really trust them? Within your community, even with family members, you will have to fight off political power grabs from those who think they can do a better job then you are doing. Not to mention making sure everyone in your group contributes in a fare but not necessarily equal way to the group. You also have to realize that despite all the effort you put into it, that it all can collapse like a house of cards just as easily as the system your trying to run away from. Some of your neighbor's might form a splinter group over a trivial issue. The City/County/State/Federal government might come in and seize your and all your neighbor's property for the good of the the rest of the City/County/State/Country since your doing so well. A neighboring group of people with a similar mindset might take what you have. Even the climate might start to make your investment years down the line un-usable since a 2+c rise in temp will make agriculture very difficult to nearly impossible in many area's.

Teach and cause change by example? Before you even start you will be drowned out by every modern media outlet unless either your neighbor's are like minded people but more timid or they are forced into the lifestyle you preemptively adopted by external forces. Either way the change you force, other then the one you yourself undertake is reactionary. Such change could also bring it's own Chaos rather then peaceful order as those around who would otherwise have no idea what to do, or care to do, as times get bad see you as a example of what to do and try to acquire what you have by hook or by crook so they can keep as good of a lifestyle as you do. Not caring if it's from you or elsewhere.

The crisis we are sleep driving into is unprecedented in scope and scale, it won't leave a single area of this planet untouched yet at the same time it won't effect everyone equally. Everything I have read on this site pertaining to preparation for themselves & their family or trying to get social change to work on the problem is based on past methods which won't work as well now if at all compared to when they worked in the past because circumstances have changed. Along with those who are behind forces that do not want these things to work have developed effective countermeasures.
Simply put everything you do to prepare is opiate because you have absolutely NO way of knowing if you will be that lucky(or unlucky depending on how you look at it) 1 out of 6 that is optimistically estimated to come out of this crisis alive.

*please note this is one of the longest posts i have made so excuse any grammatical error's. I tried to proof read it as best as i could, I was never really good at writing but I am a very good reader.

I have voted for blogging as a catalyst for change. I did so by starting the Peak Oil Awareness Blog (http://www.PeakOilAwareness.info). Before my awareness blog, I hadn't found any subject worthy of my efforts. Since Peak Oil is the biggest issue ever in history I've found it acceptable to blow a few hours wrestling with the intricacies of Blogger to have the chance to make a meaningful contribution.

But, I understand that writing the blog is mostly about catalyzing the change in ME. I think I need to change in order to create a channel to pass on my understanding of the myriad of nuances about Peak Oil that are obvious to someone with my extremely unusual collection of life experiences.

The last thing the world needs is another blind blog, especially just a copycat and rehash or reposting machine. There is more than enough noise already and I have a philosophical objection to spending time blogging enthusiastically about Cabbage Patch Doll collecting or Scrapbooking just as a manifestation of some psychologist's conception of the therapeutic value of the process of writing a diary.

As a surfer it's been hard in this life to understand the noise and apparent vacuity of other people's value systems. Surfing is an ineffable form of consciousness that the creative force hardwired into Planet Ocean. So, it's strange and difficult to try to communicate or connect with people who consciously live unconscious of the miracle of tuberiding and the obvious perfection of the ocean realm.

My hope is for my blogging experience to change me enough where I can become more effective at engaging people in expanding their awareness of the threat of Peak Oil, which may also lead to them understanding the connection between an unsustainable civilization illogically overdeveloped on the back of essentially free energy from oil and the consequences of the out-of-sight-is-out-of-mind idiocy of the disposable society that has created a monument to stupidity in the form of the "garbage patch" area of the Pacific Ocean filled with zillions of disposable lighters and plastic bottle caps.

Writing and acting to me, are inextricably linked - that is, besides reducing my own impact, or preparing for a particular future, there's the power to actually influence other people.

I also think that some of the talk-talk information stuff (as opposed to the practical) has the power to bring in readership who can then do things. For example, I get all intellectual when I write pieces for TOD, because I know that the readership of TOD really likes lots of data and links. I do posts that are designed to move people emotionally, because sometimes people need that - I can feel the tone of despair rise, and I want people not to go crawl back into bed, so I respond to my audience by reminding them of what they can do. I post informational material because it isn't interesting, and ideas have value in and of themselves - the exchange of ideas is never completely pointless. And I post a lot of practical material, and suggestions for other people. I want them to get their hands dirty.

I think one of the things that sometimes limits blogs is that we get good at doing one kind of post, and only one - either the political commentary, or the technical analysis, but not the "how to actually go ahead and do this." I find myself trying really hard to present all kinds of information, in all kinds of ways - to tell stories, write humor pieces, do long analyses of interesting issues, write how to pieces, inspire, depress, anger, analyze - because all the pieces matter, and different people take in knowledge in different ways.

I think it is important to distinguish then, between the doomer porn - that is the material that only just describes our situation, which also has great value - but and places like TOD which also try and cover issues in a range of different ways.

Sharon

I tend to think that blogging is both. On one hand, people can simply be venting, perhaps stunned into inaction by what they've realised. On the other hand, even if they themselves are stunned, those who read the blog might be startled into desicivness. Without the information proporating to wider and wider audiences, few people would have any inkling about the subject at all. So it goes both ways.

My immediate family doesn't believe anything is going to happen. I've (mostly) patiently suggested selling up all (or at least the majority) of the family business to eliminate debt and to reduce dependence on consumer culture. I wasn't taken seriously, and, well, we see what's happened to the economy in just six months. The only jobs going are Government ones. We could have gotten out before everything hit the wall, but we're pretty much stuck now. In addition, no one here pays any attention to me about efficiency. Lights, for example, are left on despite no one being in the room for an hour at a stretch, even during the day. I'm forever walking past and turning them off.
My other halfs family is sort of split. Her mother is Evangelical, and believes that if she prays just right, their 'bounty' will be provided. Her father, herself, and her brother are in the Peak Oil camp, but aren't taking any active measures (this is not helped by the fact her father is a courier). On the other hand, her and her brother have recently bought property out in the hills, where, with some effort, farming is a possability.

Myself, I worry.

If I knew Kunstlers' WMBH was coming in 60 months, I probably wouldn't do a whole lot differently. I've already got a bicycle, live relativly close to shops. I own my land outright. The house I'm having drawn up will be efficient and 'sustainable' (I'm aiming for something above the QLD 5-star rating), with SHW, SPV, Grey Water, rainwater tanks. Insulation isn't a huge concern here in SEQ, but between the wide verendahs (keep sun off the house) and GSHP, I'm sure I'll be a lot more comfortable then most. I'd probably extend myself a bit, financially, and get a basement built below the backyard shed, and connect it to the house with a 'doom tunnel', just in case. :D The property is located near a creek, so water for the plants is more or less secure, if drinking water might be limited (or require solar distilling). I'd certainly take some limited self-defence lessons (and I'd insist on TOH taking them as well). I'd probably join a gun club and practice, just in case I ever need the skills.
Up at the other halfs' property, we're already in the early stages of planning for self-sufficiency. Plenty of space for raised gardens, there's already one big dam (although the drains need work and it needs some excavation work if it's going to be used to its' full potential), and the house and sheds all have rainwater tanks connected. There's space for a netted 'paddock' of fruit trees (local birdlife and Flying Foxes precludes leaving them unprotected), and more than enough space for nut trees and the like on the back side of the dam.

Between the two properties, given five years, we've got two bases we can relocate to with only a few hours notice (we could, concievably, just up and leave at a moments notice, but, as with almost everyone else, we'd want as much time as possible to prepare to 'bug out'. A week would be good).

Now, it's all very well to be self-sufficient in food, but a Mans gotta have something to occupy his downtime. I expect TV and the Internet will still be available, even if perhaps the internet is not so affordable/speedy, but there's almost nothing I watch on TV as it stands anyway. So it's DVD's, books, and models for me (and probably TOHs father), music for TOH and her brother. I don't know what TOHs mother will be doing, but (and this may be uncharitable, because she's got a heart of gold) I think it'll be either in the corner in a foetal position wondering why her god hath forsaken her, or down at one of the local churches, trying to 'modernise' (read: Evangelise) it. I'll also have to stock up on computery things like low-power PCs, in case they become unaffordably expensive.

So, accomplished so far:

• Avoided car useage
• Bought a bicycle
• Started walking
• sold Shares
• own land outright
• started researching Aquaculture and organic no-till gardening
• focused on hobbies with long-term 'replay' value
• attempted to run for Federal House of Reps.

Haven't accomplished:

• built house
• constructed garden beds
• purchased PV system
• constructed and tested Ammonia-ice absorbtion fridge/freezer
• bought food in bulk to dry-store

Opiate of the masses or catalyst for change?

Neither, in my opinion. I frequent the Oil Drum and a few other sites for the sense of community they provide. Like many of you, I have not had a lot of success in 'passing the word' about peak anything. I haven't given up - I continue to speak with those who will listen, and I continue with my own preparations. It can be lonely - unlike Noah my family doesn't believe - lol.

What TOD provides for me is a place where what I believe is accepted - and discussion flows from there. This is why I stay, and this is the value I see in this blog.

Al

Putting some numbers behind possible resource issues is useful. Exploring issues such as export land model is useful. the wiki oil projects is useful.

The gardening, try to achieve subsistence level independence is not useful.
Those plans are pathetic and weak. It is like seeing that the National Socialist German Workers' Party is being elected in 1930 and moving out of Warsaw into a cave in the woods.

The reason those plans are no good is that even if they are successful they do not address the real problems and the ultimate impact on any end result would be meaningless.

What kind of action is useful as a model. The March of Dimes funding of the Polio Vaccine. twenty years of the march of dimes to achieve large success against Polio.

Fund a technology or technologies that can affordably be funded and can make a big difference.

Look for useful technology and patents which are under-utilized which could be used to increase efficiency or to enable a faster transition to other energy sources.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/12/aero-modding-car-customization-for-high...

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/03/reducing-drag-on-cars-and-trucks-by-15....

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/02/walmart-will-double-efficiency-of-their...

Algae cost and production breakthroughs
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/03/algae-fuel-cost-and-production.html

What is adaptive? Seems obvious: Make more money now. Money still buys land, insulation, tractors, medicine, solar panels, water filtration systems, and tons of other very useful stuff.

If TSWHTF in 2014 and you are 100% certain of that then you've got 5 years to make more money and spend it in ways that improve your prospects for survival.

Aside from making money what is worth doing? Convince friends to do the same. Make money, prepare for huge disruptions and discontinuities. Small groups can accomplish far more than individuals.

Organized small groups can protect each other and achieve economies of scale in equipment and skills.

As for talking to larger audiences on the web or in person: You aren't going to convince most people that huge changes are needed in time enough to prevent big disruptions. Go ahead. Make the argument. But make peace with your limited success.ve

I hardly post any comments on TOD but I follow TOD without fail every day. Have been an unregistered member of TOD since end of 2006 and have been a registered member for slightly above a year now.

I'm 29 - live in India where our oil dependence as a nation that primarily depends on food, farm-produced goods (cotton / cotton derivatives, tobacco, etc., as examples) is equally bad given the high population density that feeds off the high amounts of food produced and an economy that needs consuming nations like the US to keep consuming at ever exorbitant rates.

Most folks around me don't see peak oil coming any day soon and even the "well read" few believe Technology can solve the problems. Yeah, sure. "I can help you" doesn't necessarily mean "I will".

I used to "believe" in Technology solving "Global Warming" and "Peak Oil" up until early 2008 after which time I learnt more on the subject through TOD and a couple of books ("Hubbert's Peak" by Kenneth Deffeyes, "The Long Emergency", etc.,). The TOD community has significantly changed my world-view and allowed me to learn as much as possible - not only about peak oil, but also pointed out the shortcomings of what-I-perceived-to-be 'solutions' as I understood key concepts more deeply.

But one key difference I noticed between myself and those who don't give a damn about Peak Oil is how they perceived their place in the grand scheme of things. I for one look at the world we live in wide-eyed wonder. Inanimate, simple chemicals _from earth_ made self-replicating chemicals that resulted in a conscious and 'intelligent' Homo sapiens. We could wield the forces of nature using an abundant energy source. We will continue to do so except at a smaller scale, if life continues on this planet at a level needed for Homo sapiens to continue surviving.

Since mid last year, I've taken some steps in my own life to prepare for the descent. Of everything I did, the only thing I'm proud of having done is that I have convinced my family that it won't be business as-usual in the very near-term. All this, simply talking about these issues, playing related documentary movies and sometimes even reading out some interesting things from the books I've read. The rest will fall into place once everybody is in agreement. We're amazing at how we can delegate work :) Now its all about mobilizing and liquidating existing assets and buying other stuff that would help us. I've bought a tiny 2 acre farmland and 'enriching' the soil right now; Quit my mutual-fund-linked Insurance policy - liquidated it (albeit with some loss due to the current market scenario); Doing every bit I can to sell off my existing mortgaged house in Bangalore and hopefully either construct or buy a house near my farmland.

In terms of creating awareness, I've given up talking to friends at work. However, I do talk to children because they're willing to listen, sometimes so curious to the point of being a pain :).

Right now, looking for a career in the short-term where I can do something to create awareness locally. I have always loved teaching and I'm wondering if I can create a job in some school - you know, like a "Ecological Sciences teacher" or somesuch?

I am having the exact problem voiced in these words... "What would be the inflection point? Events themselves, or waiting for others to act and joining in?"

In my case am ready to go ahead and do the needful but am restricted by the lack of support primarily.

Secondary problem being that if i had a little more monies to my disposal it would have helped greatly. But i think that is secondary because one can never have enough monies to jump into a life changing situation.

In the mean time i garden on my roof and try to talk to as many people as possible...