A silver lining in the dark clouds of oil price rises

In the longer term oil prices have to rise and there's no getting away from that long term trend. Sometime, somehow, people are going to be paying more both for the raw material and for the on-costs it imposes. We have to face this fact and the answer is not to ask for tax breaks to try to keep business as usual, but to begin to plan to reduce oil consumption and invest in post-oil technologies. In this view there is an interesting note to be made about behaviours already changing. in this article (which is in the form of an open letter to the King of Saudi Arabia): Majesty, We Have Gone Mad. George reminds us. "the high price of oil is currently the only factor implementing British government policy. The government claims that it is seeking to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, by encouraging people to use less fossil fuel. Now, for the first time in years, its wish has come true: people are driving and flying less. The AA reports that about a fifth of drivers are now buying less fuel(8). A new study by the Worldwide Fund for Nature shows that businesses are encouraging their executives to use video conferences instead of flying(9). One of the most fuel-intensive industries of all, business-only air travel, has collapsed altogether" (~There's a reference cited in the article).

The issue is how to help people in the shorter and medium terms to adjust and to make the structural change as just as possible. The problem with that is that most people just want things like they were and don't want to have to face the reality. Heck, I don't want to (and I don't have a car, but I do travel by bus and train and my food is still hauled from place to place), but I do have to recognise that the price will start to concentrate minds and force/encourage different mentalities and opportunities for business and livelihoods. The thing is to help those least willing and able to recognise that they can adjust, but that trying to hang on is a losing option. My worry is that it will be too little, too late and civilisation will revert to a new dark ages, collapsed under it's own greed and having eaten up its own foundations.

I do wonder how far the haulage industry has thought through their protests: in the short term I can't see there being a huge reduction in haulage because we are so committed to moving things around. It will take time for the new decisions to affect infrastructure and in the meantime we will have to pay the increase in prices. It's the medium term that is going to see the changes: as people grow their own and businesses source locally more. So the solution will have to be to invest in training and building capacity to respond. How we do that latter is the real and important political decision here. Now, there is also an issue about competition with other EU hauliers, and perhaps that does need addressing, but let's not miss the point here: this is the leading edge of structural change in the economy which peak oil is (or will shortly) bring. Whether this is the leading edge of peak oil is still debateable, but at the least it is a harbinger.