Peak Oil Chat

After recently reading an article about research being done on the behavior of lemurs, it seemed to explain the paradox of why our society continues to barrel on down the path of no return. It appears that lemurs, when presented with the option, they prefer to bet on greater returns versus a safe, consistent amount.

“The first experimenter appears to offer three items but each time ultimately gives the monkey two, so the monkey gets a loss, but it’s a safe, consistent loss. The second experimenter starts out offering three but introduces more risk: Sometimes the monkey gets all three, but sometimes it gets only one. We find that the monkeys prefer to go with the second experimenter. They prefer to risk losing more because there is also a chance they will have no loss at all. That is just what humans do.”

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky carried out an experiment in the 80’s, that presented folks with a dilemma. If 600 people were at risk of dying from a disease, but could choose one of two outcomes, which would they choose: 400 people die and 200 survive, or risk all 600 lives with the slim chance of all 600 surviving. Overwhelmingly, people chose option #2. People are willing to risk greater loss, based on the small chance that they may not lose anything.

Lemurs are our distant relative, and by showing that they also show this characteristic, it demonstrates this behavior isn’t unique of humans, it developed long before we walked the earth, before even hominids evolved from apes. So, here we have millions of years of evolution and instinct, and people still persist that we’ll change our ways before it’s too late.

Still, people are willing to bet against all the odds against us of societal collapse that we will somehow pull through. In the case of peak oil, I wonder, what is this slim chance of salvation? Undiscovered, self-replenishing, vast oil wells? In the grand scale of things, peak oil is minor. If we somehow overcome this obstacle, we have scores of bigger, uglier problems such as pollution, global warming, epidemic diseases, environmental destruction, resource depletion (oil isn’t the only resource we’re running out of..). The list goes on.

Peak oil, it seems, will be the crossroads for humanity. I follow the belief that the earth is significantly overpopulated and peak oil will cause a die-off. With no viable alternatives to oil, it seems as if society isn’t even putting it’s chips on the table to bet – we’re just that greedy, or stubborn, or that full of ourselves.

All in all, my fear is compounding that society isn’t even considering hitting the brakes to think about the brick wall ahead. Even though it’s 10 feet thick – of reinforced concrete. And we’re on a motorcycle.

This article’s inspiration came from here: The “Monkey Whisperer” Learns the Secrets of Primate Economics.