great piece, Andrew. You hit the bullseye precisely.

It really is going to be very interesting to see what the Right does in this country when Peak-Oil really bites down hard. It's going to unvalidate some fundamental premises of the Right's world-view.

And as anyone can discover from doing a little reading in clinical psychology, when that sort of things happens, people get crazy.

Take China for instance. Any effort to put the hard brakes on economic growth would probably cause massive civil disruption or worse. So suddenly raising conservation as the prime mover at least stands a better than zero probability of doing the same thing here. Progressives tend to pooh pood that, being either indifferent to the problems of the poor or they cynically view them as a necessity borne of their cultural revolution.

Yes it is a culture war. Conservatives, neocons, unrestrained capitalists and their elected minions are having their last go at it during these Bush years. Beware the Powers reeling and lashing out in ever more irrational ways.

Time for everyone to wake up. Progressive and rational thought is in the ascendency.

The changes needed must happen NOW. Unfortunately for civilization, that isn't going to happen. But for those of us who are preparing and know what to expect, it will be interesting to watch it play out.

One of your best posts, IMO.

While he does rail against the ugliness created by an out of control automobile-centric culture, what I feel is his most persuasive argument is that current growth (construction) is creating decidedly people unfriendly neighborhoods, communities, cities, etc. Mass transit is almost always given short shrift to building more roads and highways.

How many acres of formerly functioning neighborhoods have been paved over with ten lane highways (that never, ever seem big enough to handle the increase in traffic that naturally results from increasing the size of the previously eight lane highway that replaced the six lane highway that replaced someone's home) so that someone can commute from suburbs that spring up increasingly farther from cities?

The current model of building everything around personal ownership of automobiles seems short-sighted at best, and simply a huge boon to developers, and the auto and oil industries, at worst.

Excellent post. Meaningful solutions to the problems of climate change and resource depletion will require collective action motivated by the spirit of the common good.

Even if the progressive and hippies are right (which it looks like they might be), they will realize at some point that offering a hand of cooperation will accomplish much more than "I told you so." That, as well, may be a tough thing to do, but taking the high road is its own reward.

But it is also true that the people in power, i.e. the people with the guns, seem intent on using up as much oil and melting as many of the ice caps as they can while they remain in power (there is oil in the Arctic now being discovered -- and a Northwest Passage would be profitable as well). So there is also the question concerning how much damage these people will do before the reality of damaged Gaia becomes unavoidable.

How long do you let an abuser keep abusing? This is a social and political question as well as a psychological one.

Partisan conservatives pooh pooh peak oil (and human-caused climate change) because they think that to concede that these challenges are real and must be confronted is to acknowledge that greed is not always good, and that free market capitalism must be restrained, or at least tinkered with substantially.

There could be a neurochemical basis for the difference between conservatives and liberals.

Conservatives like to cling to tradition and hold back change, while liberals tend to embrace change, sometimes even just because it's change.

A great deal of our social dialectic consists of battles between conservatives and liberals over the rate at which our society is willing to embrace change.

Now look at this experiment:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/04/11.18.04/cannabinoid_study.html

This birds given the anti-THC drug SR141716A were excellent at remembering where they'd hidden their food in the past. However, after scientists moved their food, these birds continued in vain their efforts to extract food from now-empty holes, because they remembered that food always used to be there in the past.

The birds who were not given SR141716A were less good at remembering where they'd hidden their food in the past, but they didn't stick around empty holes looking for food after the scientists moved all their food around. They were more willing to embrace the unknown by searching for new food in new locations.

If there's a natural variation in CB1 receptor expression between humans, then there will be some humans who keep trying to pull old worms out of an empty hole, and some humans who are focused on finding new worms in new places.

(BTW this drug SR141716A is currently being marketed in Europe as the miracle diet drug Acomplia, because, being anti-THC, it gives people the anti-munchies. It was refused approval in America by the FDA because the observed side effects have included suicidal depression and multiple sclerosis.)

They just don't want anyone else to know. Matthew Simmons is a petroleum exploration investment banker closely associated with President Bush who has written a book on Peak Oil, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (2005). President Bush has also consulted with Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, conservative Republican from Maryland, the most knowledgeable and persistent voice on Peak Oil in Congress. Top neo-cons definitely know what's coming down, hence the occupation of Iraq, originally intended to prolong America's petroleum based economy a few more years.

Politically, "Morning in America" has worked so well as a propaganda slogan, lulling Americans into the comfort of trusting somnolence, that they are loath to give it up, even in the face of a rapidly approaching catastrophe for which they will be held accountable by future historians.