On Peak Everything

I've just spent the last 68 minutes watching Richard Heinberg speaking at a Pie and Politics event in Wisconsin on June 25. He's a mild mannered professorish man with a powerful message. He talks about how life will change, ready or not, and why. This may be a good introduction to the whole peak oil thing for skeptical friends and relatives, as it doesn't sound nearly as scary as Matt Savinar's introduction over at Life After the Oil Crash. That is until you think about it. Perhaps the fact that Heinberg is just so darn nice and mainstream (not that I've met the man - this is how he comes across on video) that makes his message frightening.

Why bother watching, though? After all, what's the point of torturing yourself with this knowledge if the consequences are inevitable anyway? (a paraphrase of something my mother said a while back). Well, because the mainstream media aren't going to explain this to you, and politicians aren't going to tell you this, and big corporations sure aren't - and the politicians and corporations are going to spin the message until it's pure fiction and then they'll ask you to vote for them or invest in their company and maybe you will. And then you'll be complicit in whatever happens. Like the deaths of innocent people in Iraq or the devastation of the environment in northern Alberta. That's why.