And the Band Played On

As the Titanic sank beneath the waves, apparently the orchestra continued to play on. In his piece on Peak oil blindness, Brandon Marhsall carefully dots the i's and crosses the t's of how we systemically discount, de-emphasise and exclude evidence of approaching disruption, not just as individuals, but as part of the collective construction of the society in which we live.

A particularly pernicious aspect of heuristics is that people are typically very confident about judgments based on them. The psychological basis for this unwarranted certainty seems to be people’s insensitivity to the tenuousness of the assumptions on which their judgments are based (in this case, the validity of the Availability heuristic).

Such overconfidence is dangerous. It indicates that we often do not realize how little we know and how much additional information we need about the various problems and risks we face.

Through empirical research Slovic et al, determined that laypeople’s risk perceptions and attitudes concerning a potential hazard are measurable against the idea of ‘dread risk’. Dread risk is characterized at its high end by perceived lack of control, catastrophic potential, high risk to future generations, and not being easily reduced.

These are all potential components of a global energy crisis left unmitigated. High levels of perceived risk are in conflict with the individual’s desire for certainty and thus a cause of anxiety. One way to reduce the anxiety generated by confronting uncertainty is to deny that uncertainty.

The denial resulting from this anxiety-reducing search for certainty thus represents an additional source of overconfidence. Denial is even more problematic than the reduction of perceived risk due to the use of heuristics. Once the individual views the potentialities associated with the Peak Oil phenomenon as uncontrollable or catastrophic, their tendency toward denial only helps to increase the likelihood of these potentialities.

By denying its existence we are guaranteeing the absence of Peak Oil in our discourse. If Peak Oil is absent in our discourse, individuals remain uninformed about it, collective effort does not materialize to address it, resources are not allocated to mitigate it, and perceived lack of control moves that much closer to actual lack of control. We then have the beginnings of a cycle where not acting to mitigate a problem in the present reduces our agency concerning that problem in the future.

Its a fairly academic article and at times, treacle on the mental gumboots, but underneath it is enough to make my hair curl. In essence he is saying that the very things that enable us to "see" the world in which we live, prevent us from seeing anything else that is there. I am a pessimist not because I am naturally a gloomy sod, anyone who knows me can tell you the opposite, but because I spend my life looking for the bits that don't fit. Its hugely fascinating and stimulating, but its not for everyone. Until  it is.

Read the whole thing, or at the very least, the quote from James R. Schlesinger, the first energy secretary, in 1977, on the country's approach to energy

“We have only two modes—complacency and panic.”

Comments

[Phil Hart]

For those interested in more about peak oil, the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil is hosting the opening night of a new Peak Oil movie in Melbourne on Tuesday 5th June. Details and national release dates on our website:

www.aspo-australia.org.au

Watch it and you'll be less surprised when petrol prices reach $1.50/litre.

cheers
Phil.

[Earl Mardle]

$1.50? I'm betting $4 within the next 2 years.

If you really want to give yourself a sinking feeling, try this with a hat tip to Jerome a Paris from Kos