What can we do to change the minds of decision makers and people in general to actually do something about preparing for the forthcoming economic/energy crises (the ones after this one!)?
snow hope wrote:Will we ever forgive our Governments for not telling us clearly and uniquivocally what is coming and how we are going to have to cope?
Will we ever forgive OURSELVES? WE created, expanded and maintained the pyramid and WE enjoyed the luxuries of modern life, facilitated by cheap and plentiful oil and gas.
I have come to believe that the pyramid is created from the bottom and up - people are constantly looking for other people to promote to high positions and admire. Most people will become very disoriented and confused if they find that they don't have a leader to follow, and they will rapidly appoint a leader of some kind. Most people just cant help themselves - they HAVE to create a pyramid in order to exist.
The sad news for the conspiracy theorists is that all I have ever found (as I wander around the corridors of power - both in local government and national government) is greater evidence of cockup rather than conspiracy.
It is a valid point to criticise parliament for the pension scheme, but that is hardly a case of "looting".
Gordon Brown looted our pensions in the second budget of his exchequership. We have all been paying for it, in terms of reduced pension values since. I would suggest this is one of the main reasons the pension industry is where it is today - in disarray.
Gordon Brown also sold off half the country's gold reserves in 1999 when Gold was at a low point in the price cycle. I have never heard a satisfactory reason for this bizarre action.
Joe Public doesn't seem to know or care about these cock-ups.
All forms of taxation involve the government taking something off someone. Those which seem more anodyne at the start can end up as harsher in the long term. (see ACT and pensions)
Regarding John's comments on where the Government prefers to get it's information from, this is an academic paper on 'Horizon Scanning' (on any number of issues).
Some selected quotes - "Interest in horizon scanning is widespread in the UK government. The HSC's first two pilot projects had in-government ?clients?: the Department of Trade and Industry, the Home Office, the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, and the Department of Constitutional Affairs. In addition to these centralized scanning projects, a number of ministries and departments within the UK government have organized their own foresight activities, many of which have included horizon scans:
The Department of Defence; (sic)
The Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra);
The Department of Health;
The National Health Service; and
The Department of Trade and Industry, among others. Generally, government scanning seems to focus around security issues, health and quality of life issues, economic development issues, and issues of strategic concern."
"The primary protective response to media trauma involves acquiring unimpeachable information with which to inform public opinion and policy planning. This leads to policy research strategies focused on in-depth expert observation and analysis of past data and current statistically verifiable trends. With regard particularly to the last point, government agencies in the UK produce solidly researched policy papers and research monographs on relevant issues, but that draws primarily on past data and present trends, rarely addressing the issue of how change itself will change over time. They assemble the evidence describing the issue at the moment, as if it were frozen in time."
"For ease of research relevant to decision-taking, policy-making, or planning, change is often treated as static: briefing papers, white papers, or research monographs will focus on trends or drivers of change, collating observations and data on a given topic. Yet change itself is neither static nor neatly parceled in unrelated single-issue packets. Thus even the most meticulous traditionally designed research project risks overlooking change emerging from other issue areas with potentially significant impacts."
(In the context of PO, we can see this in the business as usual approach by Governement to such issues as road charging, airport expansion and post office closures.)
By what criteria do we evaluate the robustness of scientific evidence and research data? Excellent research and data are usually:
credible;
documented;
authoritative;
statistically significant;
coherent: the data agree;
consensus-based: the experts agree;
theoretically grounded; and
monodisciplinary.
These also establish the credibility of facts and patterns of present observations that are cited as evidence in policy formulation and decision-making. The cultural contradiction arises because useful environmental scan ?hits? often register on the opposite end of the continua these criteria represent, as indicated:
any emerging issue unusual enough to be useful will probably lack apparent credibility;
it will be difficult to document, as only one or two cases of the change may yet exist;
it will emerge from marginalized populations, and be noticed initially by fringe sources, hardly the sort of authoritative sources that civil servants feel confident in citing;
(Backing up John's observation!)
as emerging issues are by definition only one or two cases, they are also by definition statistically insignificant;
the data will vary widely, converging over time only if the emerging issue matures into a trend;
not only will consensus be lacking, but experts will often violently attack reports of emerging issues of change, as they represent challenges to current paradigms and structures of expertise, power, and entitlement;
(eg, my own comments at the beginning of this thread about not wanting to spook the economy with PO loose talk)
emerging issues of change often challenge previous theoretical structures and necessitate the construction of new theories; and
the most interesting new change emerges where disciplines converge and clash. As the impacts ripple out across all the systems of reality, emerging changes and their impacts require a multi-disciplinary analytic perspective.
A bit academic in style, but this might help to show why PO isn't quite a mainstream topic yet.
snow hope wrote:Will we ever forgive our Governments for not telling us clearly and uniquivocally what is coming and how we are going to have to cope?
Will we ever forgive OURSELVES? WE created, expanded and maintained the pyramid and WE enjoyed the luxuries of modern life, facilitated by cheap and plentiful oil and gas.
I have come to believe that the pyramid is created from the bottom and up - people are constantly looking for other people to promote to high positions and admire. Most people will become very disoriented and confused if they find that they don't have a leader to follow, and they will rapidly appoint a leader of some kind. Most people just cant help themselves - they HAVE to create a pyramid in order to exist.
Our genetic make-up - plus maybe a dash of sociobiology - leads to such social structures.
Sadly those we elect or promote to positions of power often (but not always) get greedy and/or lazy.
It's NOT our fault that the people we place above us then turn on us and cheat us.
snow hope wrote:Gordon Brown looted our pensions in the second budget of his exchequership. We have all been paying for it, in terms of reduced pension values since. I would suggest this is one of the main reasons the pension industry is where it is today - in disarray.
Gordon Brown also sold off half the country's gold reserves in 1999 when Gold was at a low point in the price cycle. I have never heard a satisfactory reason for this bizarre action.
Joe Public doesn't seem to know or care about these cock-ups.
Unfortunately, Joe Public can't see beyond the next episode of 'Eastenders', 'Coronation Street' or 'Big Brother'.
When TSHTF, and the supermarket shelves start to empty, the 'white trash' and '4x4' fraternity may start to realise that we have a problem.
It is only when faced with adversity that 99.99% of our apathetic public will start to look for someone/something to blame.
Vortex wrote:It's NOT our fault that the people we place above us then turn on us and cheat us.
Should we not learn to overcome that little genetic flaw SOMETIME? We had hundreds of thousands of years to learn. Guess not. We seem to be trapped in this ever repeating cycle. How sad.
Vortex wrote:It's NOT our fault that the people we place above us then turn on us and cheat us.
Should we not learn to overcome that little genetic flaw SOMETIME? We had hundreds of thousands of years to learn. Guess not. We seem to be trapped in this ever repeating cycle. How sad.
I think we have started. We have already seen efforts to overcome that fault. Socialism for example and we have see distributed companies for another. Still not quite there but a step in the right direction.
What could our government do, if they come out and talk about peak they could have a stock market panic and the mass of the people anyway will still be in denial.
And all that happens is the party if it?s a major party risks not getting elected.
Telling people they really should stop driving and we should move to a more local economy where most people are involved in the hard physical labour of farming, I don?t see as a vote winner.
I know people lots of people who believe in peak oil and climate change but they are comfortable doing what they do now, I think this is likely to be the majority of people.
I was over at LATOC yesterday and was reading a doomer post and basically we could have nearly the world population that we have now, and it would be sustainable if we lived at the standard of modern day Cubans that?s the world, and we could live with a 20 billion population if we lived at the standard of Madagascans.
And at the time I thought well that?s great we don?t need to have die off because I personally could be happy living like a Cuban , but I don?t think that?s what most humans are like .
If we have a house we want a bigger house if we have a car a fancier car and that?s the problem governments have, their population want lots of what Id say were unnecessary stuff and always more and more.
jonny2mad wrote:What could our government do, if they come out and talk about peak they could have a stock market panic and the mass of the people anyway will still be in denial.
And all that happens is the party if it?s a major party risks not getting elected.
Telling people they really should stop driving and we should move to a more local economy where most people are involved in the hard physical labour of farming, I don?t see as a vote winner.
We need to do a "Transition Nation". If the government came out and explained the situation with big announcements in TV and Press, say closed the banks for a day or two and the and stock markets for a week, then had a national discussion combined with local discussions. Perhaps people would rally round, show the "Blitz" spirit, and sort things out.
Transition Towns seem to work, why not on a bigger scale.
well its always better to try because at least when things turn to shit you yourself will have no regrets about what might have been.
But Im still having conversations with people who believe neither over population or over consumption are problems and that peak oil, global warming, are just some conspiracy.
and theres plenty of oil for us all to live like americans forever and that wont hurt the enviroment at all.
apart from whomping them with a big stick I dont know what you can do to make them see much sense I think yeast are smarter
We have all been paying for it, in terms of reduced pension values since. I would suggest this is one of the main reasons the pension industry is where it is today - in disarray. 
