PowerSwitch

Not sure if this is the correct area to post but here it goes:

Interesting Peak Oil website: Peak Oil

What are your thoughts? I found it extremily enlightening.

Interesting is certainly one word for it. I was surprised to see that Nick Griffin made an appearance at the Edinburgh conference back in April. It's interesting that the BNP are the most popular party (polling around 2% where they contest) talking about peak oil. It's also scary since if the collapse is particularly bad the public could lose faith in the current government and look around for an alternative. The BNP could in an instant pop up from nowhere with a peak oil agenda. Desperate people in desperate times could vote in desperate ways.

Remember in 1928 the Nazi Party won only 2.8% of the popular vote, in 1930 it won 18.3% and in July 1932 it gained a massive 37.3%. Books have been written on why this was but I think the depression was a significant factor. Peak oil could bring a similar depression to UK shores.

Indeed the Nazis are a warning from history. I have been interested for some time now in how they managed to turn a significant part of their population into believing they are the "Master Race" and commit (or be complicit in) all of the crimes they did. The Auschwitz programme on the BBC was particularly interesting in this regard.

In a way that attitude is not too dissimilar from Christians who believe that humans are "above all other forms of life" when really we are animals like the rest of them and we don't deserve to live at the expense of other species. Ultimately we dismantle biodiversity at our peril.

Nazis have often been dismissed as "just evil" but to me that is a mere copout. People do things for a reason, and respond in pretty much similar ways to a given set of circumstances. What is interesting about Hitler is that he was (in part) an environmentalist, and may have thought that imposing his ideals on others would be a good thing overall (sound familiar?). He may have started a war for the sake of peace. However, any such operation ends up taking a life of its own, and it always ends up in tears (sound familiar?). I guess the thinking behind the "Arean race" at the time was for selective breeding of people, in exactly the same way farmers have done with animals. We now know that that is precisely the wrong thing to do as it reduces biodiversity, with all of the problems that entails.

I believe that all of the evils committed by the Nazis will happen again, and that the 21st Century is going to be one associated with mass starvation and genocide. The Nazis are a warning from history. What I've finally come to realise, however, is that the lesson from history is we don't learn from history.

I can see the human race heading for a "Global Easter Island" scenario. The fact that we don't learn from history, and that it repeats itself, is what has depressed me the most. Now I just accept that that is the way things may go, and it does disturb people when they see me dispassionate about any mass murder or starvation happening in the world.

Sorry.

And now onto the subject of oil?

The BNP aren't saying anything new about oil - just reproducing what many others are saying. This thread is in the Government Policy section, I think there's more value in discussing what it means that the BNP have adopted peak oil, this is about the politics not the energy.

clv101 wrote:The BNP aren't saying anything new about oil - just reproducing what many others are saying. This thread is in the Government Policy section, I think there's more value in discussing what it means that the BNP have adopted peak oil, this is about the politics not the energy.

I happen to disagree. If it was brought to my attention by any other party then I would be wary but I happen to know different.

If it's in the wrong section then please move it. I am here to learn more on the subject NOT the politics.

I've had a brief scan of the website and the information is good.

What's needed, though, is:

1) More use of bullet-points etc to make the information easier to digest.

2) A section on "pumped storage" for alternatives. That's what's needed the most but appears to be missing from Government programmes. Batteries are only useful in a domestic setting.

Check out Dinorwig, the "Electric Mountain" place you can visit at Llanberis at the foot of Mount Snowdon. It's very interesting to see pumped storage in action.

EXTREMELY interesting! THis is absolutely MAJOR input to the entire process, and it has already started to change my own thinking.

Immediate reflexions:

A) The fact that BNP is hijacking the entire subject will provide a rude awakening for the other parties, and they will likely not be passive for very much longer.

B) Although the other parties could use the BNP hijacking do dive deeper in denial and use the hijacking to discredit the entire PO movement. That could get really nasty and the similarities with Germany in the 1930's make me shudder.

C) These "extreme right" types have a loose European network, so we might see the same stuff translated to French, German and Swedish within months.

D) They have choosen to adopt the "Apocalypse-memeplex", and this fact alone make me very optimistic that this will NOT be the outcome. Since yesterday I have been fiddling a little with a text on the theme "The case for a slow transformation rather than a fast crash", and the BNP engagement give me increased confidence to write!

I'll be back!

As far as Peak Oil sites go, there are many that I would call more enlightening. It doesn't present the arguments that well either, and suffers from using terms like 'boffins'. As far as I could see they don't even link to sites such as peakoil.net.

Nonetheless, as I have said before, it is very interesting to see the BNP trying to make people aware of it, but then again, I haven't seen them do much to actually talk about it - I haven't seen them advertising this concept in the papers or anything like that. I haven't heard of them leafleting door to door about this issue. I haven't even seen a press release from them. They think they're being smart, but what are they actually doing with this information? They're spending their time and money using pictures of blown up buses as campaign material!

However, I must say I find this line very funny:
"When the BNP does win political power Peak Oil will not be something that we can postpone. " If that ever happened, we will be so far past peak we'd have lost sight of it (unless the BNP have some way of winning power within the next 10 years!)

PowerSwitchJames wrote:As far as Peak Oil sites go, there are many that I would call more enlightening. It doesn't present the arguments that well either, and suffers from using terms like 'boffins'. As far as I could see they don't even link to sites such as peakoil.net.

Though they do reference powerswitch, calling us a loose alliance of energy professionals

I actually watched one of their video presentations and was quite impressed by the level of understanding demonstrated and the (to my mind) balanced delivery (ie not too much apocalypse, not too much 'tech will save us').

That said, they are quite open about using the issue to prove that they are not "knuckle-dragging losers". I just hope we dont see any of them trying to infiltrate and 'redirect' peak oil groups, though I'm sure the permaculture crowd will be hard for them to crack

Now, if the BNP started promoting permaculture too...

p.s. POAN, I presume you are from the BNP...maybe even Mr.Lee...if you can clarify this that would be great.

Anyhow there is a big talk about it on PeakOil.com

This really could get completely off track but...

On the subject of immigration...especially with regards to population levels, it is a tough one, illustrated by Norman at Peak Speak when he said that if you have saved up plenty of food for yourself and your spouse and your kids and disaster strikes and then people come knocking at your door...even if it is friends and family...what do you do...let everyone in and the resources spread so thin that no one survives, or make the hard choice of keeping people out.

The answer depends on which side of the door you are on.

The optimum population trust said we need a population in the UK of 29million by 2050. That is losing roughly 1 million people a year. From now.

Even the Optimum Population Trust refused to come out and say that we need to introduce a policy of 1 child per couple, they deemed it to controversial. But it is a topic that needs to be discussed because if you are going to tackle over population not only do you need to talk about population movements, you need to talk about how many people are being brought into this world.

There are 2 ways of reducing population pressure - have more people die younger or have fewer people being born. Or both. We generally see death as a bad thing, something we want to avoid...so the only other option is a major birth control programme. It'd be nice if we didn't have to think about it or even contemplate it, but what other options do we have?

Births are just a different kind of immigration.

If you want a site that'll make you think about population, click here.

Hmmm...

It just goes to prove that there is an inherent danger in viewing politics in a purely dualistic manner - imagining that the 'bad' guys will never say anything of worth. That a group of people like the BNP can be both enlightened enough to present PO in this way (along with a variety of other acceptable policies - opposition to EU centralisation/promotion of organic farming etc.) and yet be so incredibly fascistic at the same time, is truly frightening.

They obviously haven't thought through the ramifications for their own policies yet, as a cursory glance at their home page will quickly show; no doubt they will though. I'm guessing that they've always hoped for a profound upheaval of society to come along which might then enable them to spread their particular brand of hateful nationalism; in PO they suddenly see their great opportunity.

Our response? I think it just hastens further the dire need to get awareness and sensible debate of this issue into the public domain. We must keep incessantly badgering mainstream politicians and green pressure groups to accept the seriousness of the situation. If we let the BNP do the running and it merely becomes a weapon for their political advantage then we could be in even more trouble than we are now, hard as that might be to imagine.

Later on I had a browse around other parts of their site. They almost had me fooled into thinking that they supported the cohesiveness of our multicultural society, quite soberly demonstrated during the recent London bombings.

However, it is pretty obvious that they are playing "divide and conquer" with the Asian communities, specifically Sikhs and Hindus against Muslims. Those 3 groups do fight one another in Slough, and to see the BNP capitalising on their differences is rather disturbing.

I think that the Opt.Pop.Trust people were saying (at Peak Speak) 56 million by 2030 and 30 million as a long term aim.

I don't think it's accurate to say that peak oil is being hijacked by the BNP - they are quite legitimately aware of the issue and we should be 'grateful' for that in as much as it means more awareness. What it does do is present us (PowerSwitch) with a challenge to raise awareness among others in way that doesn't play into the BNP's hands.

It's interesting that it should be the BNP among all the parties that break cover with this issue, and do so in such a comprehensive manner.

I wrote in another thread that no political party could ever admit to Peak Oil and have ambitions to form a government. Perhaps the BNP are so far on the fringe that they realise they never can form a government in any credible scenario, thus they have nothing to lose.

Political parties make their pitch by saying that they can make the future better than the present. A party that admits to the coming Oil Peak has to admit that the future will be much worse than the present - not exactly a vote winner!

Of course Peak Oil does mesh nicely with the BNP's big issue of immigration. Clearly when energy and food are in short supply it will be important to have as few mouths to feed as possible and immigration is the last thing you want. So to that extent I'm not surprised they've gone with it.

I do agree that there is a big danger of the BNP connection discrediting Peak Oil as an issue. We need to spread the word as wide as poss so that people realise it's not a lunatic fringe issue.