doomsaying peak oil
The sky is falling!
People are finally starting to wonder what's really causing high gas prices, but now it's too late.
Then again, we might have a little time--a couple of years, maybe?--before the real crash.
My husband (then fiance) starting researching the problem of oil supply over a year ago. It didn't take him much time of looking at the numbers before he bought into the theory of peak oil--bought into it big-time. When he first started talking about it, sometime last year, I felt like the family of Noah must have: everyone started to give us odd looks and avoid us at dinner parties. Whenever the subject came up, everyone--even me, sometimes--would roll their eyes: "Here he goes again...!" It's obvious enough to be a truism to say that oil--being, after all, a fossil fuel--is a finite resource that will eventually peak and then begin to decline. It's not far out of probability to say that the peak might be soon. But to say that everything in our economy, in our way of life, depends upon oil? That our civilization as we know it stands on a brink and will soon fall apart? No wonder people were rolling their eyes.
But now, people aren't just listening; they're calling him to ask him for answers. As we've been fed little tastes of what it really is like to run short on gas supplies, even temporarily, people are starting to worry. They're starting to be afraid. I've been watching with a surreal amazement as my husband's predictions have come true, one after another falling like dominoes into place. It's not pleasant to be a doomsayer, but I must admit: it is pleasant to be proven right, even when you'd really rather have been wrong.
Most of all, though, it's pleasant to have an answer. And while we still don't have that, at least we have thought about possible solutions. I don't want to be remembered, as we generally remember Noah, as having been part of the judgment (although I'm sure Noah didn't think of himself that way); I want to be part of the solution. And when the time comes that solutions are desperately wanting, perhaps our role as doomsaying prophets will pay off. If nothing else, there is one certain benefit of speaking up now: we'll have the satisfaction of knowing that we told you so.
People are finally starting to wonder what's really causing high gas prices, but now it's too late.
Then again, we might have a little time--a couple of years, maybe?--before the real crash.
My husband (then fiance) starting researching the problem of oil supply over a year ago. It didn't take him much time of looking at the numbers before he bought into the theory of peak oil--bought into it big-time. When he first started talking about it, sometime last year, I felt like the family of Noah must have: everyone started to give us odd looks and avoid us at dinner parties. Whenever the subject came up, everyone--even me, sometimes--would roll their eyes: "Here he goes again...!" It's obvious enough to be a truism to say that oil--being, after all, a fossil fuel--is a finite resource that will eventually peak and then begin to decline. It's not far out of probability to say that the peak might be soon. But to say that everything in our economy, in our way of life, depends upon oil? That our civilization as we know it stands on a brink and will soon fall apart? No wonder people were rolling their eyes.
But now, people aren't just listening; they're calling him to ask him for answers. As we've been fed little tastes of what it really is like to run short on gas supplies, even temporarily, people are starting to worry. They're starting to be afraid. I've been watching with a surreal amazement as my husband's predictions have come true, one after another falling like dominoes into place. It's not pleasant to be a doomsayer, but I must admit: it is pleasant to be proven right, even when you'd really rather have been wrong.
Most of all, though, it's pleasant to have an answer. And while we still don't have that, at least we have thought about possible solutions. I don't want to be remembered, as we generally remember Noah, as having been part of the judgment (although I'm sure Noah didn't think of himself that way); I want to be part of the solution. And when the time comes that solutions are desperately wanting, perhaps our role as doomsaying prophets will pay off. If nothing else, there is one certain benefit of speaking up now: we'll have the satisfaction of knowing that we told you so.
posted by lisa c. baker at 12:10 AM
1 comments
