Reply #9: Here's a very good response to that article.

[GliderGuider]

Speaking as a doomer, I have admit I like this rebuttal. I thought both the tone and content of both of the referenced articles was facile and unhelpful. But hey, maybe that was just the sound of my own ox being gored. :shrug:

Everybody is a shrink at heart, and we have seen it on the pages of Energy Bulletin lately. The powerdowners are working like sixty to figure out why we “doomers” are so damn stubborn and won’t sign up for their permaculture classes. I refer to the recent articles by Rob Hopkins from Transition Culture and Toby Hemenway , both of whom dig deep into the soul of our doomer gloom. In this essay I would like to change the debate a bit, shift it from reasons for believing, in a collapse, to reasons for preparing for a collapse.

A quick review of the reasons for believing in Peak Oil is in order, though. The first reason given is that all of us doomers are, well, gloomy – we sit in our rooms and brood, counting backwards from our secret Last Judgement day. This does not fit the peakniks I know who believe in a crash (two do sketch comedy!), but perhaps there is another explanation. Rob Hopkins says it is because we feel useless – we are a generation of men who have no practical skills, ergo we believe in doomsday. I do not understand the gender difference, nor do I understand the segue. It is just as reasonable to say that men in the last fifty years have become largely urban dwellers, or have multiple jobs during their work careers, and therefore they believe in doomsday. It is a correlation, not causation, and a fairly questionable correlation at that.

Toby Hemenway on the other hand would have us believe that we are doomers because we are steeped in a Judeo-Christian-medieval-scientific apocalyptic tradition. What about those who are from Western Europe and do not believe in doomsday like (I suppose), Toby himself? Are they immune, smarter, or just more rational? And what of the people in India and Japan who believe in a collapse? Do they too have apocalyptic traditions? Interestingly, Hemenway seems to want to use his extensive (and, ultimately, rather tedious) list of collapses-not-come-to-pass to convince us that it never will, an argument I think we are all familiar with: surprise, it is that same old faulty logic of economists who ridicule past predictions of an oil peak. Read your mutual fund prospectuses: past trends do not guarantee similar future results, as those of us who have General Motors stock may know.

We could debate why doomers believe in a collapse and powerdowners do not, but while it is obviously an interesting debate (Rob’s blog has eighty-eight comments), it does not seem terribly useful. A better debate, and incidentally one I think is more rational anyway, revolves around reasons for preparing for a crash, whether you believe one will occur or not. Here I will trundle out a tired metaphor, but one which I think best represents the case. Without trying to offend anyone, I would bet that both Rob and Toby have homeowner’s insurance on their houses (if they do not rent – in that case the bet is that their landlords have it), and I would bet further that neither Rob nor Toby would exchange that insurance for a fire extinguisher or two.

Homeowner’s Insurance and Fire Extinguishers