Doug wrote: It's not going to work that way. Talking about peak oil will probably encourage more reckless drilling and an ugly dog-eat-dog Malthusian competition. And it may well be wrong. Besides, 40 years of reserves is a lot. If a possible climate catstrophe inside a decade doesn't inspire action, an even less possible exhaustion of oil in four isn't going to. The rhetorical emphasis is wrong, since there's more danger in burning what we have than there is in worrying about what we might not have. ___________
- Well as you know the Peak Oil genie is already out of the bottle and is being talked about not only oil company economist and geologists, but by environmentalists and neither seem to be advocating more drilling though some are making alarmist Malthusian noises about population control - but then this has been happening for some time independent of peak oil. So shushing the peakoilistas as you seem to suggest is not an option. It's already being talked about. Of course, part of the neo-con agenda is to control and madly drill the worlds oil reserves, but this the impetus did not come from talk about peak oil, but from the energy demands of the system they seek to defend and propagate.
Whether it is wrong or not, we should act as though it is right, we should in a sense, *want* it to be right - just as a cocaine addict trying to kick the habit might wish that it was just no longer available so he/she would have no choice but to quit - it is the most compelling argument for a serious reassessment of the current industrial model and indeed, many of the peakoilistas are from the oil industry and are advocating just that.
As to climate change, it is a much less (so far) tangible and practical problem than oil prices even though it is a serious problem, the impact of climate change due to fossil fuel use has already been severe over the last several decades, but it has been easier to argue away because it is hard to convince people that too much sun is not a good thing and might give them skin cancer - but not so hard to argue - in fact you don't even have to argue to show people that the cost of living is rising due to gas - in short - climate change does not hit people in the pocket book (in the short term) - as directly peak oil does - and the two are interrelated - more heatwaves - mor energy use etc.
Finally one of the core arguments of peakoilistas *is* as you say, essentially that "there's more danger in burning what we have than there is in worrying about what we might not have." But is it realizing what we don't have that *might* make us not burn what we do have.
And 40 years of reserves doesn't sound like very much to me at all.
Joe W.