American Thermidor lays out that the root problem is not peaks in oil production, but the response to them. US oil production plateaued in the late 1960's and global oil production peaked in teh early 1980's only to rise again when Saudi Arabia abandoned its "swing" producer role in 1986. In both cases what followed was not more progressive government - but reactionary government.
I often receive emails pointing me to basic peak oil information. Clearly this has become a shibboleth for the left, a piece of occult information which members of the left use to not listen. That some how "peak oil will come, and we will be in charge". It won't work that way. In fact the reverse is the case, mere scarcity leads people to be more conservative.
Peak oil is the technical problem, but there are two responses to it. One is simply to concentrate access to the scarce resource. This is mathematically analogous to creating a famine. As long as the voters in the US think that they can do this, they will. In fact as the previous article, collision course, makes clear, that is what they have backed already - to concentrate oil based growth in the United States.
Vicious circles are far more adaptable than people give them credit for being: addicts will follow the spiral all the way down rather than change, whether the addiction is alcohol for a person, or oil for an economy. Consider cases in the past where a group of people have accepted grossly suboptimal growth in order to hold onto an old system: the American South did not accept the verdict of the civil war in order to maintain a racist - in the most rigorous sense, as the ideology of government - system. If the civil war isn't a big enough crash to shake a peoples willingness to engage in destructive behavior, peak oil won't be either.
The root of the problem is not then, raw oil supplies, but the relationship of culture and monetary system which our current economic arrangements create. And peak oil is not even the only hard limit: anthrogenic global warming is another, and hydrologic cycle depletion - that's water shortage - another.
What is essential then is not merely to point out peak oil scenarios - because peak oil might not be reached for much longer than current scenarios indicate - but that the economic cycle itself is flawed, and the model of government that it rests on is flawed. I've been familiar with the work of Hubert King for over 20 years, and also the work of other, equally serious, people who show that there are possible reserves of hydrocarbons that could be used to extend the life of the hydrocarbon economy for another century - for example by burning coal and using electricity.
The challenge for the progressive movement in the present is to make people realize that we are caught in a cycle of oil addiction, and that, like an addict, there is the belief that "the next bottle" will solve our problems. As long as this cycle of oil addiction is in place - and the corresponding addiction to concentration of wealth - we will not have the resources available to solve the series of technical challenges that are coming - peak of oil being only one of a mountain range.
There are two ways to deal with a vicious cycle - manage it, or break it. It is not clear that peak oil, even if it comes sooner rather than later, will be enough to break our oil addiction. In some fraction, that will only come when people no longer want to be beholden to arab dictatorships, and to mercantile oligarchies - and when they realize not that oil will be scarce - because then the conservatives and reactionaries will argue, probably successfully, that America should just "keep" what is "ours" - particularly absurd in this case, but that isn't important for politics - but that that scarcity leads to a progressive series of unstable points which will have increasingly dire costs. If you need to see how much it can take to shake the old, consider that Europe was caught in a vicious circle in the late 19th century - and even tens of millions of deaths from World War I was not enough to shake the faith in the intellectual and political class in returning to that vicious cycle. Perhaps peak oil will "naturally" produce governments that are farther to the left, but only after the unimaginable costs of a series of global conflicts.
It is not a question of when oil will peak, but what kind of society will be here when it does, and what leadership is in place. Pointing out problems is not enough, solutions, and that means solutions which produce a working polity that people can understand and function with in, are.
When people send me comments that are, essentially, links to peak oil scenarios, it indicates, clearly, that they believe, one that I don't know about them - which is amusing since I referenced them - and second that some how this refutes the need to understand the political and economic framework around them. There is a growing mystical faith on the left that peak oil, in itself, will "solve" our political problems, and that it will "give" us a clear shot at governance. More particularly it is held closely by those who believe that it will be a chance for socialism and marxism to take control.
These beliefs are both pernicious and foolish: our current arrangements can easily survive a decade or more of plateauing oil, simply by "making the poor pay" shock therapy. Without making the point, not merely that supplies of cheap oil are going to peak - a fact already known by right wing think tanks such as Cato and the AEI - but that there are two solution sets: one which is radical austerity based on oligarchic economic and political arrangements of the kind that George Bush and the neoconservative project are pushing, and the other which is of greater abundance based on investment, development and broad progressive action - all that talking about Peak Oil does is act as a set up line for technosloptimism of the right.
For their to be progressive government, the people as a whole must feel that the sacrifices in gross autonomy - that is the ending of politics of spleen - is worth the gains to be made from it. Without this vision of a better future, people will, instead, gravitate towards reactionary systems, which pretend that they do not impose such restrictions of gross autonomy- again, not true, but this is politics - in return for the benefits of being on top.
So what is the upshot of this?
First, Peak OIl is a theory, it might not even be correct, and the error bars are large enough that the point of deprivation in absolute terms is a long way off. (For one reason why you should read this book). The important problem, even from a technical stand point is that oil supplies are going to, at best, go up at a geometric rate, while demand is going to expand at a logarythmic rate. And even should we dodge the oil scarcity bullet, there are others coming, some much harder to envision a work around for.
Second, the root problem is not the technical challenge, but the system of economic and cultural arrangements that we use to make choices and provide incentives. Right now people have an incentive to behave in ways which make the problem worse.
Third, simple alarmism over Peak Oil is counterproductive. The right wing knows how to respond to simple alarmism, and it has stable solution sets to the level of oil scarcity that is coming: namely taxing cities into the ground to protect the gas guzzling classes.
Fourth, and as a result: the progressive movement must, today, now this moment starting with you and each of us, focus on providing leadership to deal with the challenges of an affluent world. The end of the cold war means that billions have come in out of the cold, and we do not have enough resources to feed, clothe and provide for them. They will not let themselves wait for very long, and they have, or can acquire, the means to radically balance the scales.
Once again: mere alarmism is counterproductive, we must lead, follow, or we will be shoved out of the way.