Why Dmitry Orlov is Absolutely, Positively the Best Peak Oil Writer Ever
Sharon June 16th, 2009
Read it yourself and find out: http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/06/definancialisation-deglobalisation.html, and if you haven’t already, go read his book.
I should not admit this on the internet, but I got asked to blurb _Reinventing Collapse_ and after reading it, I sent to our shared editor my real blurb (which is on the book if you actually care) and the one that I didn’t want her to publish, which was “After reading this, I’d do Orlov.” I still can’t figure out why they didn’t put that on the back cover.
Now I wouldn’t actually, since I’m married and he’s married and I’d never even met him at that point, and even after I did, it wasn’t that kind of meeting, and it was really more of a metaphor…well, you get the point. But smart and funny are always attractive, and Dmitry Orlov is so smart and so funny that it is well…kind of hot to a certain kind of over-intellectual peak oil geek. (As Sharon prays rapidly under her breath that he doesn’t actually ever read this, but she’s always said that the peak oil movement needs more salacious gossip if it is ever going to attract critical membership mass, so I guess I’m embarassing myself for a good cause 
)
Anyway, all of this is just a long way of saying “Orlov wrote another really fabulous thing – go read it.” I should probably just stop talking now .
Sharon
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*rolls about on the floor laughing*
Fabulous, Sharon, as is Dmitri’s talk.
Thanks for the best laugh of the week.
And, having read his post, I see what you mean
)
Well put Sharon. Er, I think.
I thought of posting something similar after reading Orlov’s latest. Well, I guess not *that* similar now that I think about it.
I should probably stop talking now too….
I am going to give a copy of that essay to each of my kids for Christmas. Amazing!!!!!!
e4: no … really … it IS well put. Dmitri is over-the-top peak-oil hot. Trust Sharon to be brave enough to note that out loud!
I just dropped what I was doing on both of my blogs to demand that people go read this.
He really put his finger on it with the lifeboat-drawing-straws analogy. In times of real disaster, we all volunteer, by drawing that straw, to be the one to go overboard. That has dignity. Insisting on being the exception (insert mental picture of executive jet taking off here) is murder, as any judge working with the Law of the Sea can tell you. Makes everything crystal clear.
I’m not shocked. This is how my DH and I talk all the time — it’s totally a compliment, and it doesn’t even matter if it’s someone of the same gender that we’re talking about.
Off to read the essay and see if I’d do him, too…
Only up to #20 and yup, I’d do him.
Oh, Sharon, you do make me laugh.
I read Dmitry’s essay today and yup, I gotta agree with you.
Should we call Entertainment Tonight to do a 15 second blurb on how sexy peak oil writers can be? (Is ET still on TV? I haven’t watched TV for years!)
All I can add is whooooooooo hoooooooooo!
I must be one of those geeky types too
viv in nz
Now I don’t want to be a spoil sport, and certainly not stand in the way of females in heat, and I, like many others, find Dmitry very readable and mostly right.
Still, he claims that the global economy collapsed in 2008 due to high oil prices. And that is very much not true, and demonstrably so. Which in turn puts much of what follows that statement in a light of shrill doubt, nothing to do.
Basing your ideas on something so poorly understood is not a mere detail, no matter how entertaining you might be.
Ilargi
Bumper stickers!
That’s what we need…
“I’d do Orlov!”
That only peal oil geeks would get. (obtain and understand!)
I read somewhere that the oil spike last year was fundamentally caused by oil demand from China as a result of their staging of the Olympics…..
What is the likelihood that London 2012 will be the ‘last’ Olympics?
You’re hoping Orlov won’t read this, but your blog entry is mentioned all over cluborlov already! Too funny!
Ilargi, you are just mad that I didn’t use that line on you. And trust me I would, if only I didn’t worry about blowing your cover. I’ve got a thing for bass voices
.
Curious, do you still think that oil prices had little or nothing to do with it?
Sharon
Absolutely, Sharon, there is no connection. Or at least not in the way that Orlov and many others claim there is.
The economy started falling apart for real in 2005, when oil was about $40 a barrel. The financial crisis comes from the financial world, where 100s of trillions in (losing) bets were, and still are, outstanding. Similar bets drove up oil prices, by the way, and do so again in today’s supply glut. Supply and demand plays no part, whereas it obviously would have to if -peak- oil would be the cause of the crisis.
I’ve often given this example: Millions of Americans have lost $100.000 or – much- more on the value of their homes, $30.000 or more per year. How many did you say spend that much on gas?
The finance crisis has made peak oil an afterthought; it won’t lead to higher oil prices, but to much less available credit, and much more debt.
Orlov has much of it right, but certainly not the underlying mechanism. And that tends to lead to faulty conclusions.
And no, you can’t do all of us.
Wow, Ilargi, I’m hurt. Does that mean I have to pick between the two of you? I don’t know if I can…sigh, I guess I’ll just have to stick to the husband.
Sharon
Hmm… Having followed the whole thing closely, I’d have to say that Dmitry is right about Peak Oil and Ilargi is right about the housing bubble.
Thing is, it’s a whole lot more complicated with a convergence of Peak Oil, the housing bubble and many factors. For example, the extreme risk taking and short-termism that resulted from obscenely large executive pay and bonuses is recognized as having been a major contributing factor by many, including even our Prime Minister Kevin Rudd here in Australia,.
Another troubling factor is the erosion of social capital in English speaking countries as the ordinary people were convinced that any poverty or troubles were their own fault and that whoever was lucky enough to get control of major corporations was entitled to loot them and the society for crippling amounts. This is of course something that Dmitry alludes to along with a lot of other factors where I totally agree with him.
Just as a quick reality check of how far this has progressed, notice how in the two world wars the children of the elites and oligarchs rushed to the front line (as officers of course) to offer their lives in defense of their nation and people. By Vietnam this sense of duty had about evaporated as the children of the wealthy pulled every string they could to avoid interrupting their privileged lives with active military service.
Another big one of course is the capture of the American political process by Wall Street through a combination of “campaign contributions” and a revolving door of jobs.
And this is what makes things so serious: A whole lot of factors no one is willing to deal with, factors that often have been known for a long time and repeatedly pushed off into the future, are coming due – now.
Mind you, I still think Dmitry is excessively pessimistic.
Being born just after WWII I’m aware of just what wonders can be accomplished when a society unites in a wartime effort (despite the inevitable waste and inefficiencies). While the USA may now be too big and too socially fragmented to succeed in such a project plenty of other nations are not.
In short, I think some countries will be able to make the extreme adaptations necessary get through the next half century with reasonable lives for their people. After that, the unknowns are so great that I don’t think we should make any predictions as who knows what the society and science of that time will be capable of.
Wish I had a reasonable chance of living long enough to find out.
Just in case I’m not clear, I don’t agree 100% with Dmitry, nor do I agree 100% with Ilargi. Ilargi would tell me I should agree with him 100%, I’m sure
. The point is that Orlov is pretty much the best *writer* we’ve got, and while I don’t think he’s precisely right about the economic situation, in some ways, I’m not totally sure that’s the central issue. My own take is that energy did have more to do with this than Ilargi would acknowledge – not directly, but through the cost of food prices, which I think undermined global economic growth, although it certainly didn’t cause the American housing bubble. But since nearly all explanations are insufficient, there’s no reason tnot to appreciate them, even when imperfect – and by this I mean both of them.
Sharon
Orlov has a way of explaining things that most people can understand. The fact that he has witnessed the collapse in Russia adds even more credibility to his arguments. Copies of his speech should be sent to all government officials and be required reading unlike most of the bills they pass. Go to his Club-Orlov web site and read some of his previous writings and I’m sure everyone will be impressed.
Sharon & Ilargi:
Economies are extremely complex phenomena. We tend to grossly simplify them, especially when talking about what “causes” what, because it is simply beyond our mental capability to comprehend them in the totality of their complexity. Those simplifications end up being over-simplifications, of course. The truth of the matter is that what has been currently happening to our economy is a complex of effects with a complex of causes; no-one has it completely and accurately sorted out, nor will they ever.
I suppose that chaos theory people might chime in at this point with something to the effect that we might just as well claim that the chain of causation could be traced back to some customer at a fast food joint back in 2005 who thought for a minute and decided not to “super-size” their order this time. That is not THE cause, of course, but then again, there might not be any such thing as “THE cause”, only a whole bunch of causes.
I’d like to hear Dmitri and Nassim Taleb engaging in a discussion of some subject that would give plenty of scope for their wonderfully dry, inoconoclastic humour.
You don’t come across too many truly picaresque intellectuals of a very high order, so reading their stuff is special. Very, very funny – as well as fascinating.
I believe I read a post of yours on DU, Sharon, expressing the same most cordial liberality towards to Joe Biden, and couldn’t help doubling up at the singularly unpassive way you American women can express yourselves in that regard! Hilarious.
I think the thing I most enjoy about your writing Sharon is that it is positive (I’ll explain what I mean by that in a moment) and can be related to the individual.
In this context, positive doesn’t mean assuming everything will, somehow, be just fine. Rather I mean that you concentrate on what can be done, by individuals and families and communities, to mitigate our current dire predicament.
By contract, many other prominent PO writers seem to specialise in a variant of “We’re all doomed” – Kunstler and Savinar being two of the “worst” offenders in this regard.
Whilst I share their general opinion that things look pretty damn awful, and that current events around the world give relatively little cause for hope, I cannot help but think that “we’re all doomed” is a rallying cry to any cause other than the “hunker down and wait with your tinned beans and loaded shotgun”, which frankly isn’t going to get us anywhere.
Equally, making dire prognostications about oil production cliffs as Mr Orlov did yesterday makes for interesting reading, and a certain black laugh when aliens are invoked to prop up our oil production. But I’m really not sure how it helps anybody (especially those who are, as yet, PO un-aware) to understand.
I first learned about PO in 2004 and with hindsight I think I experienced a couple of years of mild to moderate depression as a result. I now find the best way to stave off those sorts of feelings is to focus on what I *can* do, even if I worry it will all be too little, too late.
Reading about your experiences and attitudes towards this have helped me to feel that there the situation is not entirely hopeless, and to see the potential for positives in the changes we will all face over the coming months and years. So thanks – I hope the ‘net and your own circumstances allows you to keep it up for a while to come yet.
Calum, in the North West of England
nice post and very informative. definitely worth bookmarking