The Boy Who Cried “PEAK!”

For every person out there that thinks the world’s supply of oil will some day peak, there’s another person even further out there that is just as sure it won’t. These are the “Cornucopians”, who see the earth’s supply of oil as virtually inexhaustible. This “Oil Forever” camp can be roughly divided into three broad groups: You have your Economic Cornucopians that believe that demand (price) creates product, the Techno-Cornucopians that are sure that technology will save us and provide a never-ending supply of energy, and my personal favorites, the Chewy Nougat Center Cornucopians that are convinced that the center of the earth is full of “abiotic” oil. I kid you not.

And every one of these wonderful, thoughtful shiny people are more than happy to point out that the people that predict peak oil have been predicting the peak of oil for a very long time. Like for over a hundred years. And it hasn’t happened yet. (As far as we know.) People that do predict the peak of global oil are very often accused of crying wolf. “Remember the boy who cried wolf”, they will say, with a smile and a wink and a sort of knowing nod to dismiss anyone so foolish as to think that we might some day run low on oil. Perish the thought, if not the thinker.

So I’ve been thinking, and here’s my thought for the day: Yes, people that believe that we might some day run low on oil are very much like the boy that cried wolf, but not for quite the same reason. The boy cried wolf because he craved the excitement. We cry wolf because we lack complete, accurate data and must, for lack of a better world, guess at what we are seeing and what it all might mean.

The funny thing is, those that accuse us of crying wolf forget how the story ends. At the end of the story, there’s a wolf, and people don’t listen.

Life imitates art yet again. Woof, woof.