Some interesting observations here.

Interesting especially that we are now crossing a new threshold in public debate.

Whereas the dangers of global warming and climate change have been aired a lot in the media in recent years - and perhaps have become manifest in disastrous cyclones and droughts - the most people have thought about peak oil to date is mooting a slightly higher cost of living, perhaps having to downscale the size of the family car and so forth. Farily trivial stuff,

That is, until we look at the reality of massive price hikes for oil. Beyong a certain tipping point, large corporations will go bust (look at GM in the US as an example of an oil dependent industry that did not read the changing market ), major national economies will go bust, oil-dependent tourism industries that go bust and terrible hardship for people at the bottom end who can no longer afford very basic (energy supplied) services, such as transport to and from work.

The ingredients are all there for widespread civil war.

I will contend that the oil peak will have much faster ramifications for society that will climate change. And arguably even more potentially calamatous.

This all presumes we do not act fast enough to avert the worst.

To that end, bring on the debate. Let's imagine the best and the worst and go for the best. It needs a touch of humility and a bridging of the philosophical gap between green and anti-green.

There is no sane future if tribal warfare is the order of the day

“There is no sane future if tribal warfare is the order of the day”

Gecko I think you have a pretty realistic impression of the magnitude of this issue.

It might not come to tribal warfare or civil war, but I reckon it certainly could come down to massive civil strife.

At any rate, it is by far our most important issue, far greater than climate change, or anything else discussed on OLO. Just about everything else discussed on this forum is dependent on the maintenance of a healthy properly functioning society. So everyone who is concerned enough to comment on any other topic on OLO should be concerned enough to research and comment on peak oil.

There is a great deal of concern about climate change. But this is a much longer time-frame event. Peak oil will largely take care that issue, in terms of drastically reducing GHG emissions. So it is time for all that energy and concern to be modified a little and put directly into peak oil planning.

A good starting point is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and gas - http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/

Ludwig: Europeans survived the Great Depression and they also survived World War 2 (and there was rationing after WW2 for several years).

If necessary, the government would basically seize control of certain industries, particularly transportation/fuel and food production and distribution and most people would go along with it if it weren't done at the very last moment. Yes, it would be pretty tough probably for a decade whilst everything was changed over and re-aligned (this country could get viable solar and ethanol industries up and running in that time and do all the conversions), but people could do it. People actually wouldn't starve to death. You can grow virtually all your own vegies on land the size of your nature strip; or public parks and gardens, sports ovals, etc. would be turned into market gardens for entire suburbs. You could also keep chickens and other small animals. It wouldn't exactly be an all you can eat smorgasbord, but it wouldn't exactly be the Siege of Leningrad either. People would probably have to be largely vegetarian for that time, but if major grain crops (and transportation) were nationalised there'd be enough of all that too. Furthermore, since we're not affected by severe winters in this country, people wouldn't freeze to death through lack of heating fuel.

Rather than being politically suicidal, it may actually be quite expedient. If a sizeable portion of the populace could no longer afford fuel to go to work, food became really expensive, businesses started going under in large numbers and unemployment really rose, I think there'd be a very strong mandate from the populace for government to step in and nationalise certain industries or provide really strong (dis)incentives on a whole lot of matters. This would occur well before the point of no return.

What I'm saying is people may indeed be self-centred, but they're not suicidal. If petrol looks like it's heading to $5/litre, people are hardly going to say, "well that's it then, I guess we'll all just have to stay home from work today and kill our neighbours or starve to death!"

Shorbe

Your scenario sounds highly feasible. But I suggest that it could well be a whole lot worse.

Yes government could do all sorts of ‘hardline’ things, but only if the populace and business community appreciate the need for it. And that’s what makes it so politically untenable to do things in advance to the extent necessary to really set ourselves up for this crisis.

So from the political point of view the timing for concerted action has got to be just right. Basically, a government has to find a point of balance between sufficient public concern for its radical changes to be accepted, and waiting too long and thus allowing too much damage to be done.

However, the timing that is just right politically does not align with the ideal timing, which is a full-on effort right NOW.

Narcissist et al appear to be confusing 'peak oil' with the end of oil. Peak oil means that the supply of oil will taper off over more than a century, not stop altogether in a decade or two. So to imply that a plant for the conversion of coal to fuel will take longer than 10 years to build and then conclude that there will be a gap in the supply of fuel is plain silly.

And frankly, if one lives in the Blue Mountains and is too dumb to work out that he can take his bicycle on the train to the city and back and use the bike at either end, then you have much more serious and immediate problems than peak oil.

And there seems to be some considerable ignorance about what happens when a company goes bust. If a resort goes bust due to a shortage of long distance tourists, the creditors are not in the habit of nuking the facilities. Instead, these are sold to a new operator at a lower price than that which needed to be covered by the former one and the new owner operates at a lower cost, and survives in the adjusted conditions.

But don't mind me. If you need to see the sky falling then by all means, indulge yourself. Just don't bother trying to claim that it is intellectual discourse.

Perseus, I couln't agree more. One could put the attitude of the Greenies down to economic illiteracy, but somehow I think there is a deeper political motive, engendered mainly by envy.
Strange that people are still trying to promote a certain social system even after it has long been abandoned by its main protagonists, because of its abject failure to perform.