Our own kind of rapture???

[Javaman]

Something that has been rolling around in my head these last few weeks that has keep popping up.

The fundies are all a twitter over their coming rapture and how there will be nothing left of them except their clothes, cars, etc...(the thought of all those fundies running around naked somewhere scares me)
Anyway, while they while their days away hoping and praying for the odd event...

I was thinking that, in a way, us on the left have our own type of rapture dealy going on. The only difference, ours is actually real.
I'm talking about peak oil.

As I think about this, personally, although I don't particularly like the fact that we use fossil fuels to create energy, products and ways to feed us, I know deep down, being a product of the 20th century oil dependant generation, the thought of oil running out, scares the living crap out of me.

Not so much because I won't get the useless things that I feel I need, but because there really isn't any plan on the table to convert to another form of energy. More so, the universal head in the ground plan from our elected leaders to deal with the problem, terrifies me.

Granted we all here on DU tend to be better informed and at least somewhat mentally prepared for the event of Peak Oil, but what of the millions of others out there that aren't?

While the fundies rapture tends to exclude all the "non-believers" our "rapture" Peak oil includes everyone.

Aside from all the obvious concerns and worries, I'm curious as to what effect this will have on the fundies who are grossly unprepared and live in a limitless fossil fuel fantasy?

Other nations in the world are either making plans, have plans or are actively converting to other forms of energy as we speak. However, nothing on any large scale is happening here.

Some very interesting choices are going to have to be made and I get this feeling that although we in on the know will not like many of them, I am honestly worried about the bottom feeders on the right, when suddenly, that TV set housed and operated on plastic parts costs 5 times what it did only a couple of months prior, or sneakers and toys for their kids or when the price of food takes off because it's shipped from several other countries rather that just a few miles away goes up, how exactly will they react?

We don't really know what it's going to be like but at first,it's not going to be very pleasant at all. However, I believe, it's going to seem like the end of the world to the fundies.

[Dogmudgeon]

1. This is a good point

But the Peak Oil phenomenon isn't the death knell for our world. It is more of a warning bell.

We could easily let things just go as they will. At that point, there would be a massive die-off in about 40-50 years, following 20-30 years of increasing misery. But I doubt that it will go that far. As with the Great Depression, the pain of the situation will prompt us to change. The only question that remains is whether we'll do it the easy way or hard way.

There's a better analog to the Rapture -- the Singularity. That's the point when technological progress becomes faster than it can be incorporated into society, so it begins to incorporate society into IT. The most common version of it is a nanotech ecology that becomes superintelligent and subsumes the physical universe.

Believe it or not, good arguments (logically speaking) are being made for it.

--p!

[motocicleta]

2. ummm... that's scary

Is that scenario supposed to make us feel better?

[melody]

5. It means amazing things, if it happens

Basically, doing everything possible in the immediate moment -- in a grossly simplistic way, it means a universe based on Star Trek "food replicator" (or whatever that frickin' thing is called) paradigm.

Naturally, there are dangers, but then there always are in any thing with great positive potential.

[melody]

4. One of my favorite subjects these days

And that's the reason the singularists call it the Techno-Rapture, I think.

[motocicleta]

3. Right now I'm just making my own personal plans, and plans

for my family. I have not been able to read anything that gave me much more to hope for. Those who ignore this issue do so at their own peril. Pigwidgeon is definitely right about the general scheme: 20 to 30 years of increasing misery followed by a massive die-off. That sounds about right.