It’s a scary world for us peak oilers, isn’t it?

The mainstream media wants nothing to do with us and is more interested in suggesting deus ex machina ideas that can allow us to have our cake and eat it too. The signs are all around us — food prices, gas prices, the conflict in Libya. But nobody knows, and nobody cares. At least that’s how it seems.

But I would argue that people are beginning to sharpen up just a bit. They haven’t put the pieces together and discovered peak oil, but they know something’s up. Of course we get the usual range of scapegoats, from Obama to speculators. People seem happy enough to blame them.

We get rid of Obama and the speculators and the problem will be all fixed, right?

It’s not Obama and it’s not speculators
Well, any peak oiler will tell you that this has nothing to do with Obama and that this would be happening regardless of who happened to be in the White House. And while oil is indeed a speculative market, hitting around $70 a barrel will bring new oil to the market due to increased incentives for cheap oil.

When doesn’t that happen? When you peak.

There’s an adage I always remember when something like this happens: “People are not fools forever.” We know that peak oil is being deliberately brushed away from the political discussion and media, since it doesn’t help anyone financially or politically to report that we are indeed in an oil crisis.

But we also know that we’ll eventually have to deal with it because there’s simply no other option. I think people are going to be more open to the topic of peak oil as their lifestyle is impacted as a result.

All in all, I think we should recognize that we are not alone. People will eventually wake up to the topic of energy depletion. We should continue talking about peak oil, because we know that it won’t go away if we don’t. And who knows, maybe there’s someone concerned about it now who feels as if he or she has one to talk to. You could make a big difference to that person.

Perhaps in reality, there are more of us than we think.

– Dylan Greene

www.transitionvoice.com/2011/05/more-of-us-than-we-think/