What new peak oil posters & flyers would people put up?

[Eclipsenow]

HI all,
I'm brainstorming posters for peak oil — I've been lazy and burnt out lately, and need to do a few more. Any ideas for a new poster? What little US Letter flyer would you post up at your local library or public bulletin board for all those uni-students and shoppers that don't do a lot in cyberspace, and might not know about peak oil? What gets the message across quickly and clearly?

I've done 2 basic posters — one with the graph and the basic concepts, and one a bit more Doomer. check them out. Download them, put them everywhere, just in your weekly routine adopt ONE public bulletin board and stick up a poster once a week. It's the only way I can think of cheaply informing your local town. The more individuals know about this, the better. ONE poster a week... each poster will at least seed the idea to a few hundred people that walk by.

Can you do it?

I feel like I'm going crazy — everyone talks about Global Warming, but where the heck is peak oil?

Posters "The Final Oil Crisis" here
http://eclipsenow.blogspot.com/2007/04/final-oil-crisis.html

Poster "$300 to fill up? Let it RUST!" here
http://eclipsenow.blogspot.com/2007/04/let-it-rust.html

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Why posters? (With some notes and observations)

You're really applying the hard sell to activists to use your posters. And they're good posters, but postering itself is a lot less effective than you probably believe. Even worse, many activists think of themselves as masters of postering, especially if they've been in art school and have so much as designed a single poster for thoir girl- or boyfriend's rock band. I've done a fair bit of political postering, too, in my day, from promoting the Democratic Party to an Esperanto group. (No rock bands, though. Most of my girlfriends have been tone-deaf.)

Sadly for posterists like you and me, they can not be the backbone of an educational campaign. People tune them out within 300 msec of seeing them; those who DO respond to the message account for fewer than one person in a thousand, and are often unfortunately idle (from unemployment, being young, etc.).

The real strength of a poster is to quickly "imprint" an image or a phrase, the way advertising is used -- or, more accurately, the way posters are used in advertising.

Here's an example of what I mean:

Peak Oil Is Here
What does it mean for YOU?
www.PeakOilWebsite.org

Bang! Instant imprint! The question sinks in, and the mind is primed -- without coercing the recipient in any way. And even if they don't take the URL, they will respond to the phrase in the press. The question is in their mind, so at some point, they will read more, and probably become an "early adopter" -- and possibly a community leader at the point things start to get unpleasant.

Here's a nastier one:

Superfamine 2017
Imagine a world without oil.
www.PeakOilWebsite.org

It's a "Mad Max" story delivered in a quarter of a second. It also uses the "imagine ..." trope with the late Mr. Lennon's connotations -- in reverse. Future dates are very dramatic and can be delivered in four characters.

People will automatically think of the future when presented with a future date, even completely context-free. When I was in college in 1979, as one of those undergrad psych "experiments", I put up a single 4"x6" (landscape) poster in one building that simply said "1995". A week later, I asked a number of students about it. Most had actually seen the poster, and a fair number asked me anxiously what would happen in 1995. (The Internets, as it turned out!)

The example also promotes the use of a buzzphrase that can widen the concern of the consequences of Peak Oil. Other single-word buzzes could be: Superdepression. Powerdown. Blackout. Supercrash. Hypercrash. Foodless.

Now for the Obligatory Crit Section:

Your "$300" poster (I read your bio, and I guess that's AU$300 for you) is catchy, but the text is unbelievable, and some people will quickly evaluate it to be incorrect, so you risk losing audience. IMO, using the text "Let It Rust" alone has more impact (and evokes Beatles and Stones songs). The "Final" poster is excellent, but way too didactic for quick impact, and would be better produced as a pamphlet for high-interest people.

But they're both well-designed and produced. Criticism aside, both are quite workable.

If you want to concentrate entirely on postering, you will probably have to stay away from education and focus on drama. But you'll also have to deal with a big helping of frustration, since posters have slow, hard-to-quantify effects. You may find relief from that helpless, crazy feeling by starting a local group, and/or writing more in your blog.

Peak oil blogs get read. Oh, yes, indeed, they get read.

--p!

[Eclipsenow]

2. I agree

I like it.

I agree with the "bang" effect and also with the didactic effect. (I will be doing more with the "bang" effect though, and I like your list of suggestions for the quick imprint headline. Thank you. Great stuff.)

I helped form http://Sydneypeakoil.com and we have done peak oil presentations to the NSW Senate (Legislative Council — the minority parties only), got permission from End of Suburbia Directors for a 30 minute EOS cut that went to each Parliamentarian and Senator in NSW (Thanks again Gregory Greene, that was an amazingly kind offer.) We have helped promote and fund the Heinberg Australian tour, in co-operation with "Sustainable Population Australia" and ASPO Australia. 700 people turned up on 2 separate nights in Sydney, and good turn outs in the other capital cities.

It got a little airplay on radio. Still nothing, no public groundswell.

So now I'm back to posters, because Sydney Peak Oil are great value but still a bunch of volunteers, and everyone has only so much energy.

For some reason the hyperlinks above do not work.

Anyway, I'm not really an "expert" but more of a campaigner, and think there are MORE than enough blogs out there. I have trouble reading them all. So, it's time for me to nag the activists. The thing about my posters is they have these tear off tabs. If someone is interested, they tear off the tab and that gives you some feeling of people actually responding and checking stuff out online that they might otherwise have missed.

EG: My local suburb, very loyal community suburb (only one road in and out gives a feeling of community) has local shops. I put my "FInal oil crisis" poster up and a week later 5 tabs were gone. People took the little instruction, "Google peak oil" home with them and hopefully were bombarded by all sorts of information.

In other words, I think it works! We need all the help we can get, and if each peaknik in here put up just one poster a fortnight that could be a significant new number of peakniks leading to informed communities, etc. I have NEVER campaigned for anything in my life, and yet when I was confronted by Matt Savinar's site in 2004 it changed my whole world. Next thing, I'm encouraging total strangers to do a presentation to Senators.

Global warming is all the rage, and so it should be... ALONG with peak oil. But where is peak oil? Where is Greenpeace on it? Where are all the thousands of "Green" organizations that rave about global warming? Where are their adds? How do we BREAK this news?

Oh well, back to more posters.

[Eclipsenow]

4. But...

The Ghawar one doesn't really explain it. What's Ghawar? Some company? Etc. Joe public moves on.

[IDemo]

6. It'll get their curiosity up, and they may investigate further.

The website provides a pretty good and readable explanation. The last paragraph provides a good summary of what you are trying to do, and why a short, cryptic message may work better than laying it out up front.

I think pigwidgeon was just using an example for his links..

[Dogmudgeon]

9. Ghawar -- the world's biggest oil field

Between 10 and 12% of all the oil ever produced has come from the Ghawar field.

Cantarell (Mexico), Burgan (Kuwait), Samlotor (Russia) and Daqing (PRC (China)) are other fields of note.

Here's the Wikipedia List of Oilfields. Cantarell is rated a little low and Burgan a little high, IMO, but you can and should hold Wikipedia to be more authoritative than me.

Joe Public is not as unconcerned as you may think; they're overloaded on things to worry about. This will be a generational effort, and we're seeing the first effects of it in Mexico, Nigeria, and the increasing stagnation of the world high-finance economy.

--p!

[IDemo]

3. Short and to the point

[Eclipsenow]

5. What about "Move over Global Warming"?

I was wondering if I should highlight that Global Warming is about to be shoved aside by peak oil? Global Warming is a nice, domesticated "out there" environmental concern. People think that it just means changing a few light globes, and everything will be OK. People think that "clean coal" will arrive just in time... and that if it gets bad, a few sea-levels might rise in few hundred years and the coral reefs will die.

Peak oil questions whether or not there will be food for your kids in 5 years.

[IDemo]

8. I don't think you have to play one against the other

Peak oil may impact you and me sooner than global warming, but the effects of climate change are anything but 'nice' or 'out there'. It will continue to have devastating impacts for the planet and your children and grandchildren long after we're gone. I have also found, in my own experience anyway, that global warming deniers seem to also be peak oil deniers. Anything to argue against having to give up that SUV.

[Dogmudgeon]

7. Excellent!

Quick idea:

"Cantarell is Dying ..."
Superimposed on a graphic of the nation of Mexico.

Ghawar is collapsing fairly slowly; Cantarell is going quite fast, and the "illegal immigrant" problem will soon be an "illegal refugee" problem.

--p!

[IDemo]

10. Ghawar's collapse may be accelerating quickly

Saudi production may have declined as much as 8% last year according to this story over on the Oil Drum. Cantarell and Ghawar collapsing this rapidly together may make any other PO subject irrelevant.

[Dogmudgeon]

11. Good point, leading to more issues

(Mainly rambling.)

First, I think the Ghawar IS in slower decline than overall Saudi production. But accurate numbers are hard to get out of SA. Even the numbers we have are based on publicly-available data, which have (often) been incorrect in the past. So that's #1: lack of verifiable information.

PEMEX is a little better, due in part to the US government's nagging, but if political instability develops from the collapse of the Cantarell and unprofitability of the Chicontepec (as big as Cantarell but much thicker and more sour), that will stop.

Second, assuming that the numbers are accurate, or even representative, it points to an even-worse problem. The Saudis might be concentrating their efforts on Ghawar because of its size and importance, like so many termites servicing their queen. Thus, the myriad of lesser Saudi oil fields are declining at greater than 8% per year.

Now, I personally think that is a short-term number. Saudi oil engineers are sinking new shafts as fast as they can in all the oil fields they can develop. I am certain that they will level that number out -- but the days of high output are over. In fact, they may never again equal the output max they achieved in mid-2005. If they do, it may not be by much, or for very long.

The frustrating truth is that it's nearly impossible to project the decline in local production over short periods of time, even as "long" as three or four years. This, again, is in line with Hubbert's original work; his curve is, mathematically, a summation of a large number of smaller, less-predictable output curves.

World production has been just about dead level for over 20 months. There has been a recent drop-off, but that will probably level off soon -- for a while. Eventually, the decline will become established; certainly by 2010 without major commitment to conservation and the development of new liquids resources. So the official Peak is likely to be reckoned as having occurred in 2005, followed by a 5-year-long plateau, with the slow decline (2-5%/yr) taking 5-10 years, followed by the actual oil crash (>5%/yr) -- even supposing that major commitment is made.

On the other hand, the economic crash is likely "any time now" but certainly in the slow-decline phase, when all liquid fuel dependent product futures crash. It is also possible the crash in currently in process, but happening slowly, the perhaps-fortuitous result of our economy having become extremely complex itself. It will give us at least a few years to deal with it.

Sound complicated? Sure is, and I can't even work the calculus. In the past couple of years, I have gained an appreciation of just how complex all this is. But it also has allowed us to close our eyes and pretend it isn't happening. There is no conspiracy, just a thicket of mathematically-dense realities that end along with the world system as we have known it for over a century.

I devoutly hope I am wrong.

--p!

[Eclipsenow]

12. I hope we are all wrong

Yeah... gets me thinking about the Peaknik through to Doomer scale.
Where do you sit on that?

http://eclipsenow.blogspot.com/2007/03/peakniks-doomers-and-collapse.html