Consumption & Demand

Matt Simmons and the Five Psychological Stages of Grief

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This is a wonderful clip. When Matt Simmons was recently asked to go on CNBC’s ‘Fast Money’ to discuss the high oil prices, he clearly stunned the presenters with his forthright analysis of society’s current perilous situation. When asked if $147 a barrel is a ‘wake up call’ he replied “yes, but we’re not having a wake up call, we’re having a witch hunt for who got us here”, a succinct analysis of the current world situation.

Rob Hopkins uses the reaction to the situation by the studio panel to illustrate the Five Psychological Stages of Grief that he believes people go through in coming to terms with this information.

Colleges should plan – and teach – for an oil-scarce world

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College leaders, with help from facilities managers, sustainability directors, faculty members, and even students, should think hard about how systems on their campus would operate in an energy-scarce world. That thinking should range beyond running part of the campus fleet on a cafeteria’s fryer oil, a seemingly-popular response at the moment.

Peak oil and the Olduvai catastrophe: is there a link?

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The Olduvai Theory is about the declining total world energy supplies and the catastrophic consequences. Peak Oil is a more confined thesis about oil supply declining due to the looming exhaustion of oil reserves in the ground. So Olduvai addresses all energy sources, but Peak Oil is only about one of the energy sources – oil.

In a recent article (Leigh, 2008), I failed to explain the Olduvai and Peak Oil relationship fully and clearly, and I would like to do so in this brief article. So what is the relationship between Olduvai and Peak Oil? Indeed, is there one at all?