During covid times I heard many interesting conspiracy predictions such as the value is money will fall to zero, the whole society will collapse, the vaccine will kill 99% of the population etc. None of those things have happened yet, but can you add some other predicitons to the list?
Actually, long before covid hit, there were all sorts of predictions floating around. You know, things like the 2008 recession will cause the whole economy to collapse and then we’ll go straight to Mad Max style post-apocalyptic nightmare or 9/11 was supposed to start WW3. I can’t even remember all the predictions I’ve heard over the years, but I’m sure you can help me out. Oh, just remembered that someone said that paper and metal money will disappear completely by year xyz. At the time that date was like only a few years away, but now it’s more like 10 years ago or something. Still waiting for that one to come true…
An excellent take overall, in a frankly bewildering turn, but the explanation is clear in this misunderstanding:
Neither claim was made. After the peak, you get nearly as much oil as last year, every year. It doesn’t just stop. The continental US hit peak drilled oil and took thirty-plus years to taper off. And the workarounds to “oil’s getting expensive” are exactly what we’ve been pushing throughout the twentieth century - public transit, walkable cities, nuclear power, blah blah blah.
The expectation of things going completely tits-up instead was based on the previous eight years of right-wing maniacs actively undermining all of that, specifically to start endless foreign conflicts over resources. We’d done negative preparation for another oil crunch. “Fortunately,” 2008 saw the near-collapse of the fake economy, which severely impacted the real economy, and demand went down. Between that and squeezing oil from dirt, we’ve propped up our way of life again, while the alternatives go from ‘we could just do this and it would be fine’ to ‘and it no longer costs 10% more than your coal-fired Humvee.’
The cost isn’t the only part that’s changed. But it’s the only part that seems to matter, to the kind of dolts who think Mad Max is a documentary, and are convinced they’d run Barter Town.
I think that’s the matured version of the argument. It wasn’t the version my friends were fixated on–though I should say, that version also didn’t claim we were almost out of oil. I did oversimplify that.
The actual claim was more like: (1) production of oil is going to stop growing, and may even start to slowly fall, (2) demand is going to keep growing, because China, India, et al aren’t going to shrug their shoulders and stay undeveloped (and the assumption was that oil == growth), and developed countries aren’t willing to backslide on their prosperity, (3) the increasing demand for a fixed or shrinking supply was going to drive the price up–rapidly, and (4) this was going to cause all hell to break loose.
There was no viable alternative to oil (in the version I’m familiar with), so overall worldwide prosperity would be fixed or falling even as the developed world was hungry for a better life, leading to, basically, World War 3, in which every country would be willing to throw down for every bit of oil they could get their hands on. And it was all downhill from there: things would never get better for the world in general ever again, and when we spent fuel on war (which burns through the stuff in a hurry) it would only accelerate the downfall. Like I said, it was an apocalyptic vision.
Now, obviously, there is a finite amount of oil. We are continuing to burn through it. It’s just not the burning fuse it was made out to be, inches away from the barrels of TNT. Climate change seems like a much more urgent issue, and luckily we can solve them both at once.
I’m not arguing against the concept of a finite oil supply leading to an eventual peak in oil supply (assuming we stay dependent on the stuff), just the apocalyptic vision that was popular in roughly 2007 which was claiming world society was on the verge of collapse in the next decade or so.