Peak Behavior

I try to avoid the term "peak oil" because it has cultish overtones, and this is a serious socioeconomic issue, not a belief system. But it seems to me that what we are seeing now in financial and commodity markets, and in the greater economic system itself, is exactly what we ought to expect of peak oil conditions: peak activity. After all, peak is the point where the world is producing the most oil it will ever produce, even while it is also the inflection point where big trouble is apt to begin. And this massive quantity of oil induces a massive amount of work, land development, industrial activity, commercial production, and motor transport. So we shouldn't be surprised that there is a lot happening, that houses and highways are still being built, that TVs are pouring out of the Chinese factories, commuters are still whizzing around the DC Beltway, that obese children still have plenty of microwavable melted cheese pockets to zap for their exhausting sessions with Grand Theft Auto. But in the peak oil situation the world is like a banquet just before the tablecloth is pulled out from under it. There is plenty on the table, but it is about to be overturned, spilled, lost, and broken. There's more oil available then ever before, but also so many people at the banquet table clamoring for it that there is barely enough to go around, and the people may knock some things over trying to get it.

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A Battle For Oil Could Set the World Aflame
International powers will do everything to protect their access to dwindling resources. We are mad not to have an alternative strategy

The £1 litre of petrol is already a reality on some forecourts. Yet the public response has been curiously muted. No threats of national protests or blockaded tanker depots. There's an air of resignation. We've been pulverised into learning our lesson: we can't buck the market with the $70 plus barrel of oil, so there is nothing to do except pay up. There is nothing like the same mood in the United States. There, petrol crashed through the psychological barrier of $3 a gallon; cheap gas, the sacred right of every free-born America, is no more. In Washington, Republicans and Democrats outbid each other with their respective energy plans, all distancing themselves from the energy policy-free zone of do-nothing George W Bush. The US, after all, has no commitment whatsoever to the idea that states and peoples must supinely accept market verdicts. Markets, it is well understood, are shaped by human hand.

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