A rant about Peak Oil and the media
Left as a comment on theferrett's LJ.
the media's always shouting that...Peak Oil's coming
You just hit a pet peeve of mine.
First, Peak Oil has barely scratched the surface of the corporate media's attention. Even though a search of Google News yields a lot of hits, nearly all are from blogs or from small or specialized publications. The hits from the best known sites are from Forbes (and this is a blog, not a regular article), The Guardian (also from one of their blogs) and Huffington Post (another blog--and the latter was in a comment not the article itself). This is despite an event that has brought oil dependence to the forefront of American's consciousness. As the current top hit in the search observes, "In the popular media, very little has been done to connect this oil crisis to the crisis of peak oil...Effectively, the crisis of peak oil is de-politicized through popular media coverage of short-term solutions to the incalculable ecological and financial losses accrued. The media is the unofficial accomplice to the officially labeled scapegoats."
Second, pay attention to the gray area in the graph below. That's global oil production. It peaked in 2008, so Peak Oil may have already arrived.
OK, end rant. It doesn't help that I'm showing "The End of Suburbia," which is about Peak Oil, to my classes this week.
the media's always shouting that...Peak Oil's coming
You just hit a pet peeve of mine.
First, Peak Oil has barely scratched the surface of the corporate media's attention. Even though a search of Google News yields a lot of hits, nearly all are from blogs or from small or specialized publications. The hits from the best known sites are from Forbes (and this is a blog, not a regular article), The Guardian (also from one of their blogs) and Huffington Post (another blog--and the latter was in a comment not the article itself). This is despite an event that has brought oil dependence to the forefront of American's consciousness. As the current top hit in the search observes, "In the popular media, very little has been done to connect this oil crisis to the crisis of peak oil...Effectively, the crisis of peak oil is de-politicized through popular media coverage of short-term solutions to the incalculable ecological and financial losses accrued. The media is the unofficial accomplice to the officially labeled scapegoats."
Second, pay attention to the gray area in the graph below. That's global oil production. It peaked in 2008, so Peak Oil may have already arrived.
OK, end rant. It doesn't help that I'm showing "The End of Suburbia," which is about Peak Oil, to my classes this week.