“Peak Oil”: Framing problem?

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freelansing

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August 17, 2010

Someone forwarded a link to this movie tonight: “A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash.”

Looks interesting, & I’ll check it out, but I’ve gotta say that the trailer contains some questionable assumptions. Seems to follow typical “peak oil” framing: Oil is running out & that nothing can quite replace what oil does, so that’s a big problem for civilization. (Hopefully there’s more to the message of the actual movie…)

I’d frame it differently: Abundant & cheap oil has enabled us to create excessively wasteful lifestyles, which are now overheating the planet & threatening life on earth with a climate crisis. Instead of worrying about how we’re going to replace oil, we oughta be thinking about how to design our society so it’s much less wasteful, which is really not that hard to do, even with what we already know right now. If our way of life were more sensible & efficient, it’s not hard to imagine comfortable lives using a tiny fraction of the energy we use now.

At that level of energy use, there are many clean, renewable energy sources that can meet our needs. And avoid cooking the planet to death. For the win!

I hope the movie gets into that.

I think that the real problem with “peak oil” is not that we’re running out of oil, but that we’re not running out soon enough. What do you think?

5 responses to ““Peak Oil”: Framing problem?”

freelansing

August 17, 2010

Didn’t realize when I posted this that the movie is 4 yrs old. Guess I missed it, or forgot about it. But my question still stands: Does focus on “peak oil” ask the right questions? Have we learned anything & has the framing changed in the 4 yrs since this movie was made?

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Gale Whitaker

August 17, 2010

This is polyanna nonsense. Peak oil has nothing what so ever to do with running out of oil, it only has to do with production and demand. When production can’t keep up with demand greedy humans will resort to war, murder and thievery to get rich and dominate the rest of the world. Of course it would be possible to change our life styles to conserve what oil we have left and maintain a reasonably organized civilization, but history has shown that humans are motivated by wealth sex and power, not logic.

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freelansing

August 18, 2010

Not sure what part is pollyanna or nonsense, but peak oil is by definition when oil production peaks & begins decline, meaning that additional oil reserves become more difficult & more expensive to retrieve. That could be a huge problem, or it could be a catalyst for necessary change. It’s our call.

Human motivations vary, but it is undeniable that our current capitalist economic system is motivated by wealth & power, & that oil companies, being among the most wealthy & powerful entities on the planet, use their wealth & power to keep us dependent on their product & to otherwise maintain conditions favorable to their continued wealth & power.

You’re right that we’re doomed — as long as we continue to allow narrow private interests to trump wider public interests. But if we decide to put common sense & common interests ahead of private interests, solutions are available. That’s all I’m saying. And that if we’re ever going to get there, we need to begin by framing the problem correctly.

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Sarah

September 20, 2010

Was there some logic behind misspelling “freelancing”?

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1. freelansing
  
  September 29, 2010
  
  Lansing is my first name – freelancing is the way I work. I combined the two.
  
  Reply

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