So when your Republican co-worker makes an innuendo about how horrible abortion is, and how abortionists need to be at least stopped, if not punished, you could take that opportunity to help him or her realize how peak oil and the subsequent die-off will just about guarantee that those vile abortionists will be stopped. Explain to your curmudgenly co-worker why he or she should welcome the end of the oil age. After all, people aren't going to be wasting the precious time of medical care personnel on abortions. They are going to be too busy treating the many casualties due to various flus, malnutrition-related diseases, and the huge increase in stress-related problems, including drug overdoses, alchoholism, problems exacerbated by lack of preventive medical care, injuries due to crime and family violence, and so on.

Yes, people are also afraid of change, even if it's not necessarily that they are "comfortable with the world the way it is/was", they just don't want something, which is outside of their control, coming along and changing it. People generally like to choose major life decisions by themselves, at least after their parents are through making them for them. By this I mean the things which affect the quality of their lives for years to come - their education, their marraige partner, number of  children, career.

But if you ask almost anybody, there's at least one thing which they would like to change about the world, as long as the results are what they would like them to be. In one way or another, there has to be a way in which peak oil can bring about some of these changes.

Like your anarchist friends. Sure, after the fall of the police car, there's going to be the rise of the horse cop. Sure militaries will probably grab whatever fuel is left remaining and hold on to it for as long as it remains. But eventually, there's going to be more anarchy, somewhere. There's likely to still be hierarchy somewhere, too. For a long time. And of course, a hierarchy anywhere is likely to become a hierarchy everywhere, so we're back to where we are now. Still - the possibilities sure increase with the end of oil.

See, we should concentrate on the positive aspects of peak oil, in order to lead with a carrot, so to speak. (There's plenty of stick!) We should figure out more ways (than just the elimination of the abortion issue, and the fall of the state), in which the end of the oil age will solve many of their current problems. (Although, of course, bringing in a raft of new ones! :)

Help them feel more in control by helping them identify with the immense forces which are about to wrack our world with change like a real person; a strong, demanding, parent. A little brutal, but one who at least treats all his children equally.

By cheering up a co-worker, you're actually encouraging a fellow citizen in this time of war. And when you help others, you're actually helping yourself. For when we do our part and chip in, we get the satisfaction of knowing that we're at least making a contribution, no matter how small. After all, so many of our own are making the ultimate sacrifice over there in Iraq. Tens of thousands more have been injured. We can do our part.

It makes no sense to be thinking about our own little problems all the time. We should look for the silver linings in life, and encourage others to do the same. One silver lining in the crash of industrial civilization is that abortion and gay rights are not going to be such big issues any more, and finally the human family can move on to worrying about more important things, like food, shelter, and heat.

-FPRP

And Jevons had it right: increasing energy efficiency does not spell conservation. And rising energy costs don't spell increasing efficiency. Increasing efficiency spells investments - or scrapping capacity. In an energy crunch (and in an economic depression) all production capacity can no more be used and then the most energy consuming will be closed first. This will increase the average efficiency.

If the crisis is sudden a lot of energy will lost in started but abandoned investment and construction projects. Former Soviet Union is full of abandoned building sites. A lot of energy was used to produce those now crumbling concrete blocks. That's how it happens.

In the long run the efficiency starts decreasing because the existing capacity will be run longer, maintenance is neglected etc. This applies also to cars. People will not change to newer cars with more mpg. They just drive longer with the old ones with less maintenance. Look at Cuba. All this has happened in countries where there has been an energy crisis.

I understand that most people in the US has never seen or experienced a real energy crisis. The Europeans experienced it during the WWII. In Eastern Europe they experienced it some years ago (and in many countries it is not over). You have never seen people sitting on roadside with a small bottle and a sign: "Want to buy gas for motorcycle" or a tanker selling black market diesel on a parking lot. There are first hand empirical data on the effects of an oil crisis. We do know something about what will happen. The bad news is that it is not nice. The good news is that you adapt and survive.
   

Less attention to the PO issue is bad, but there's a bigger danger: when prices fall back, the warnings will look false to many--even some in the PO community. That will breed more complacency and inaction until the real crisis hits.  

What's the heads up time for new technology? It depends. The DC-1 that revolutionized aircraft design and manufacture went from an unproven idea to a flying plane in 11 months during WWII. On the other hand, the British Navy knew that limes prevented scurvy (from memory) about 160 years before they actually gave sailors limes. Depends on your sense of urgency.

For conservation issues, expect lots of years. The US auto fleet is about 9 years old on average, and it takes a long time to replace those inefficient vehicles. Hirsch is probably right when he says 20 years lead time is needed--if we push.

As for salvation: if there's a feasible solution to the PO problem that we can adopt in the next 10 years, it's a pretty well kept secret. I think mitigation of the damage is necessary and doable (to an unknown extent). We'll need to work to keep societies and economies functioning, and to minimize inequities. One key task, that takes very little oil, is to work on strategies that will offer people a vision of hope, and some sense of control. That's where we in the PO community can come in.

where's the heads up lead time on conservation and new energy resources that gives us the time to adjust and prepare for an era of scarce oil?

A real energy bill would have re-instated the PNGV.  We didn't even get that.

See, the oil statistics count now "all liquids". All of the growth now is really something else than what was "oil" in Hubberts time. Some of these "liquids" are not independent components: NGLs are completely dependent on natural gas production and will deplete with it. Refinery gains will decline with oil production. Offshore oil has different, far steeper depletion curve.

The markets really provided some "fixes" after the oil crisis of '70s and '80s: these new "liquids". Not bad but not enough. It is important to see that the crisis in the beginning of '70s was a real supply crisis. You can see it as you look at the world oil production curve. There was a great and permanent shift: the rapid growth slowed down and the curve got flatter. Most of the growth was this "new oil" that took longer and demanded bigger investments to come online. OPEC was destructively overproducing in the end of '60s. Low prices discouraged non-conventional oil development. The situation was clearly critical. If this was to go on the supply would have hit the ceiling, soon and hard. Extrapolating the trend 1960 - 1971 we see that the production would have been in 3 - 4 years time (about 1975) more than now! This was impossible, so something was done. So there was really a physical problem. OPEC did the only right thing.

The rest of the world did not. It managed to kept the economy growing by adding nuclear energy and natural gas. But growing economy needs more oil. Oil in the energy mix is now more difficult to replace than before. The diminished share of oil of the bigger energy consumption makes us more vulnerable, not less. If most people didn't get in thirty years what happened during the first oil crisis it is easy to understand that they have difficult to understand the peak oil now.