One of the First Peakiolers
What would happen if an important political leader, a President of one of the superpowers, were to get up in front of the people of his nation (and the world) and say exactly this:
“Tonight I want to talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. …the greatest challenge [we] will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis.
It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse…
We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.
We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources…I will present my energy proposals… these proposals will be unpopular. Some will [require] you make sacrifices.
This difficult effort will be the moral equivalent of war.
I know that some of you may doubt that we face real energy shortages. [There are no] gasoline lines…our homes are warm… But our energy problem is worse tonight than it was …a few weeks ago. And it will get worse every day…
The [cheap] oil and natural gas we rely on…are running out. In spite of increased effort, production has been dropping… Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption…[soon] the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce.”
In fact, this is exactly what Jimmy Carter did and said on several occasion, beginning with this speech on April 18, 1977. The US had reached domestic peak oil production just a few years earlier.
Current day peakers, myself included, often complain about the lack of vision on the part of past & present day leaders to see this situation and to plan & act to mitigate. In fact, Carter was one of the first overt peakers. He explained the problem with clarity and made a repeated plea to the people to radically change their lifestyles in preparation for the times ahead. In addition to addressing the nation on numerous occasions with emotional pleas, he even went so far as to lay out a 10 step plan of action. However, both the legislators and citizen behavior failed (miserably) to grasp the significance of his message and ultimately Carter was written off and often ridiculed for his position.
In spite of the ongoing decline in post-peak domestic production – and due to the availability of oil from other parts of the world – during the following decades, the US tendency to consume continued to increase and their dependency on foreign imports increased with it, creating a false sense of normalcy and sustainable prosperity. But Carter’s warnings were not a false alarm and we are now experiencing the first effects global peak oil.
