The author explains how the ongoing methods of coping with limited resources on a finite planet-- especially by spokespeople in the fossil fuel industry, but also leaders of the One Percent throughout industry and finance--correspond very well with the grieving steps outlined by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross to describe how people cope with approaching death.
The application of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief to the process of dealing with peak oil has become common enough in the peak oil scene that an offhand reference to one stage or another in a talk or blog post on the subject rarely needs an explanation. It’s not just peak oil: the sequence of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance has become part of the common currency of thought in the modern world. For all its drawbacks and critics -- and it has plenty of both -- the five stages do a tolerably good job of modeling the way many people go through the grieving process in most contexts, which is after all as much as any theoretical structure can be expected to do.
Whatever its more general applicability, furthermore, it very often fits the experience that people have when they start to wrestle with peak oil and everything that it implies.Like many of his liberal colleagues from academia, he refuses to employ a class and system analysis to this issue--it's "society" that is engaged in denial. Thus, he and his fellow intellectuals can only wring their hands in despair while feeling very superior to those engaged in denial activities.
...industrial society is collectively entering the stage of denial.Still, it is a very thoughtful study of the subject and has attracted a lot of interesting comments following the article. Many comments connect the issue of fossil fuel with the equally, if not more, threatening issue of climate change.
