Peak Oil and the European Social Forum

julianj

Last weekend I attended the European Social Forum at the gigantic Alexandra Palace in London. It was a large (30,000+) 3 day anti-globalisation event. I went because I thought some of the sessions would cover Peak Oil and to meet Mandy from Depletion Scotland www.depletion-scotland.org.uk

I had specifically gone to attend Friday morning Plenary Session â€œOil Addiction: energy politics, corporate power, and global climate changeâ€. This was in less than half of the West Hall to about 800 people, with simultaneous translation into five languages. The panel was five speakers, none of whom mentioned Peak Oil. After an hour of this I was pretty irritated. At the Q & A session (2 mins each max) I spoke about Peak Oil, and so did 3 other people.

Nobody took any notice. I had an interesting discussion with the other 3 peakers, one of whom was Mandy.

The Friday was a thoroughly disorientating experience â€“ I felt I was a Jehovahâ€™s Witness at an atheists' convention. Everybody I spoke to except one treated us as though we were barmy. (possibly one of us was â€“ see the blog)

The Workshop with Depletion Scotland on Day 2 was better, attended by about 20 people and Mandy explained Peak Oil very clearly. Although I doubt that many people took in the implications; Mandy deliberately tries to avoid scaring people: she points them in the direction of further websites so they can find out for themselves.

What I learned from this is that there is going to be a huge uphill struggle to inform even people who might be receptive to the idea.

Depletion Scotland are a small but energetic group: they are planning a Peak Oil event in Edinburgh in Spring 05 â€“ canâ€™t say more yet but it sounds good. I will post more to this forum when the details are confirmed.

I did a whole longer blog about what happened, you can look at it here, please excuse the typos (this forum doesnâ€™t seem to render punctuation properly):

http://www.peakoil.com/static/european_social_forum.htm

chris-h · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 11, 2004 Posts: 447

Do not worry. When prices of oil goes up to $100 the will start understanding.
Remember. People like to think that fault lies with their leaders and not with their own way of life.
_________________
IMHO great war will happen soon.
Start preparing now.

MrBean · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Sep 26, 2004 Posts: 1144

Thanks, Julian!

Getting blank stares as response is nothing new, even from fellow Greens. PO is a mouthfull to digest, to say the least.

I put lot of hope in WSFs, they are good place to spread the word. But I wonder, perhaps in some SF anticapitalist contexts the positive example of Cuba could be good way to get attention, positive way to introduce the consept of PO as something that has locally already happened to one society, and that it need not to mean the end of civilization?