Sunday, October 24, 2010

Chicken Little, peak oil and Y2K

At the recent conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas-USA in Washington, D.C., an unknown person hired two people to dress as Chicken Little and walk around outside the conference venue.

The trouble with Chicken Little is that he neither had a practical plan to address the problem of the falling sky nor the sense to discern the intentions of Foxy Loxy who ultimately devoured Chicken Little and his friends before they could reach the king to tell him that the sky is falling. As such, Chicken Little gives us poor guidance about the effect that the efforts of those involved in the peak oil movement will likely have. A better analogy would be the so-called Y2K problem.

Y2K refers to the problem of two-digit year notation previously used in computers, notation which could only accommodate years up to 1999. Many experts believed that computer failures related to this problem had the potential to be highly disruptive of global society if not corrected before the year 2000. As a result of this concern, firms and governments spent large sums to update or replace outdated software and hardware.

Critics of extensive Y2K preparations said that the problem was overblown and that any necessary corrections could me made after January 1, 2000 on an as-needed basis. Those who supported extensive Y2K preparation cited the almost completely smooth rollover to January 1, 2000 as a vindication for their strategy. Oddly, their opponents cited the same smooth rollover as proof that such preparation, which was by no means complete in all sectors of the economy, was largely unnecessary.

The peak oil movement is facing a similar scenario. If those concerned about peak oil were miraculously able to get governments, communities and households to begin rapid and extensive preparations for oil decline, the effects of such a decline, when it arrived, would, of course, be mitigated to a considerable extent. No doubt, at that point those who claimed that peak oil would not be a problem would say that the less than catastrophic result proves that peak oil was never a serious threat to civilization. In other words, don't expect to be thanked if preparations urged on your community prevent problems. Heroic measures after a crisis always get more attention and attract more awards.

Of course, many of those in the peak oil movement would say that it is far too late in the game to prevent the catastrophic consequences of an oil decline because that decline is imminent. But it is a common mistake to underestimate the adaptive power of human communities when faced with a crisis. The real difficulty remains in convincing the public that such a crisis may actually be nearby and that an ounce of prevention will be far preferable to the pound of cure which will surely have to be applied.

3 comments:

Chris Harries said...

At one point immediately post Y2K I read that the combined government and private sector investment in overcoming the problem added up to 31 trillion dollars (US). At that time this was recognised as the largest single investment in any single human enterprise.

It was useful for that potential crisis to be pinpointed around an unmovable point in time, exactly midnight 1999. Bang!

If the peak oil moment was similar then I believe it would attract a similar global response. It is the rather vague, indeterminate timing of both climate change and peak oil that allows us to sit and wait for it all to happen.

brill333 said...

Thank you for this short essay. As the previous poster mentioned it would be a more urgent problem if we had a date certain for peak oil. I has probably passed. And unfortunately it is something only made certain in hindsight like the US peak of 1972.

Dunc said...

Critics of extensive Y2K preparations said that the problem was overblown and that any necessary corrections could me made after January 1, 2000 on an as-needed basis. Those who supported extensive Y2K preparation cited the almost completely smooth rollover to January 1, 2000 as a vindication for their strategy.

It was useful for that potential crisis to be pinpointed around an unmovable point in time, exactly midnight 1999. Bang!

All of these statements are wrong to some extent. Many (probably most) of the serious Y2K problems reared their heads well before the actual roll-over, because they involved calculations or other date-related operations in the future - such as calculating loan interest or projecting required inventories. There actually were a lot of real problems caused by the Y2K bug, but they never made the news because (a) they didn't actually occur on 31st December 1999, and (b) most corporations don't like to advertise the fact that their IT systems are riddled with problems.