Our children ....

[J. R. Ewing]

From that Rob Hopkins link, "Your task for the next 10 minutes is to find at least one thing in this room that is not made using oil. "

"This led to lively discussions around what was and what wasn?t made of oil? the only three things one group could come up with were ?ourselves, hair, and the water in that jug?."

Wow! I think this would get the ball rolling with any group of people from about 10 years old upwards (to 100!)

It should be a mandatory class for one period every week in all schools starting yesterday - but of course it never will be.

I've done this with people and they do get the picture but what I can't get through to people is that there isn't 100 years or more Oil left, that there isn't some secret oil stash the government know about but want to use the Middle Easts stash first, we will never use all the Oil that isn't the issue, etc, etc.

So what I ask is how do you get it through to people that Oil could will become a major issue in maybe 2, 5 or 15 years time and not 75 years time?

[kenneal - lagger]

I can't understand how debt will be a real problem when a major crisis hits? The reason I give for this, is that so many people are in debt now and will never get out of the debt. So what can be done when the major energy crisis hits? Surely they won't have enough prison to house non payers and surely thousands maybe millions can't be kickd out of their home, as these homes will just become unocupied as there will be no one and probably no benefits agency to fill them up anyway. All I see is a complete collapse of the economy and world economy and the only thing that can be done then is to build a new infrastucture, if that's possible.

I agree J.R. The banks and building societies have loaned so much to so many that I suspect they will go bust before they can chase all their customers. I would think that the government would have to step in in the end to sort out the chaos.

When you think about it, the borrowings are just bits (or bytes) of information on a computer somewhere. Not much of the money that is lent is money from depositors to the banks, it's all fiat money.

When you sign a loan agreement to borrow money, the bank then loans out even more money on the basis of your loan agreement. Your loan agreement becomes capital for the bank. And so does the loan on the basis of your loan, and so on. That's why the banks are so keen to loan you money.

Unfortunately for the banks, the bubble appears to be about to burst, as has been shown in the US with sub prime lending.

[Pippa]

So what I ask is how do you get it through to people that Oil could will become a major issue in maybe 2, 5 or 15 years time and not 75 years time?

I think that we are going to have to wait until there is so much more evidence than today (and goodness knows there's enough already) for another small percentage of folks to get it.

I'm 44 and the evidence of depletion/debt/population etc has been around since I was born but I only just got it 18 months ago. I really believed that "they" would sort it out and it took reading The Long Emergency (which was more or less forced on me by a persistant friend) to help the pennies to start to drop.

You have already stated that you don't see how debt is really a problem and I agree with you that it's going to be impossible to repay. However, I'm doing my best to pay down my debt at the moment as there is going to be alot of pain in the next 4 - 5 years as debt does put people out of their homes. Everyone is not going to go down together, there is decline first, which we are experiencing now. I want to try to hang onto the boat whilst the first few fall into the water. Try to evade the worst for as long as possible.

The next challenge for me is to work out how I can learn something that might actually be useful in the years to come This is proving much more difficult. At the moment I'm gardening and composting - hardly ground breaking. I have a horse which I should teach to drive, it may come in handy although I can't really make up my mind, I'd like solar water panels and think a large water tank under the back yard would be good. As you can see loads of thoughts but not much happening.

There has never been a time in my life before when I have felt such an urgent need to do something and make decisions but at the same time theres never been a time in my life when I can't work out which decision to take.

[Silas]

If and when the world slides into ressession and possibly on to depression then demand distruction will occure across the board, slowing and stopping economic exspansion and therfore by defualt energy demand and logically also depletion will to a large extent be mitigated, if this happens then 15 or 20 years on from now we will still be debating peak oil energy. Lifes to short live it and roll with the punchess.