So what exactly is a Peak Oil Pragmatist and what is this blog about? Well, firstly it is about the dreaded 'Peak Oil' reality the world is now facing and secondly it is about addressing with a pragmatic approach. Let me address each part individually.
Peak Oil is the fact that the (formerly) ever increasing rate of oil extraction will eventually stop increasing and then eventually begin falling. Peak Oil is not about running out of oil. Let me say that again for emphasis: Peak Oil is NOT ABOUT RUNNING OUT OF OIL. People will still be extracting oil from the Earth long after I am dead. But the fact that the rate of oil production will no longer be ever increasing means that there will be less oil available per capita as time goes on.
So what does that mean? Well, on a practical level it means this: The long-term trend of oil prices is that Oil prices will continue to go up and up until it hits levels where various substitutes can be used to replace oil for some things. It won't be a monotonic rise, there will be ups & downs caused by wars, economic cycles, political revolutions, natural disasters, etc. But the long term trend will be a continuous upward direction.
So what do we do? PANIC! No, don't panic. We need to examine the problem and work the problem. And that brings us to the second part of this blog's title: "Pragmatist". Here is a useful definition I found for pragmatism: "Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas are to be rejected." Or to put it in more simple terms "We need to do what works best".
Like all communities, the peak oil community is divided into various sub-groups. On the issue of the ultimate outcome from peak oil, there are the "doomsters" and the "Techno-utopians". There doomster peakists ('Peakists' is a term for people that are concerned about peak oil) believe that society is going to collapse, there will be die-offs, resource wars, and humanity is going to revert to a lot of organic agriculture in order to survive. Not a pretty picture. The Techno-utopians believe that scientists and engineers will find some 'solution' to the peak oil predicament. That is a nice view, but it requires a leap of faith that I do not have.
My views lie between the doomsters and the Techno-utopians. I don't believe the doomster apocalypses stories. We humans are too resilient and adaptive for that. We have faced two world wars, countless natural disasters, world-wide plagues, and we not only survived them all but have come out better and stronger in the end. But I also don't believe in the Techno-utopians. We humans are very clever and we have come up with some very amazing technology. But not matter how clever we are, we cannot violate the laws of physics and the laws of thermodynamics.
So this blog will explore the peak oil issue from a pragmatic perspective. It will explore science, economics, public policy, the environment, and engineering with regards to the peak oil issue from a pragmatic perspective.
