John Siman, Culture Change
I've always loved to teach and have, over the years, internalized much of the good old Socratic methodology -- teaching not by indoctrination, not by forcing the student’s agreement, but by helping her to discover a clarity of thought which she already had inside of her. Socrates himself referred to this gentle way as intellectual midwifery. So whenever I consider a difficult question, I automatically think to myself, Could a bright and motivated teenager figure this out -- conceive of its implications clearly -- with only a little external guidance from me?

Right now I'm thinking that there is probably not a single bright and motivated teenager in the entire U.S.A. who could figure out the implications of Global Peak Oil without being indoctrinated in some forceful and demanding manner.

For imagine what would happen if we, in the gentle Socratic tradition, tried to guide her, for example, by assigning her an introduction to Global Peak Oil as a term paper project. She would find out fairly quickly that essentially all of the mainstream sources -- the official sources, that is -- from the United States Geological Survey to the International Energy Agency to Daniel Yergin's Cambridge Energy Research Associates -- speak as with one voice about the abounding abundance of oil.

She would also, of course, quickly come across the name of Matthew Simmons and his book about the sudden sodden twilight of cheap oil and the imminent end of all modern economic growth. This is true. Simmons has not yet been excluded from our NationalMediaChatroom. But our bright and motivated student would most likely encounter Simmons in the content of, say, a National Public Radio interview, on which his voice would be expertly edited to sound rather shrill and panicked, as if emanating from the wilderness.

And justifiably so, at least from the point of view of those who run our NationalMediaChatroom. For Simmons's voice does, even for all of his insider and establishment and big-money credentials, evoke a certain ascetic, southwestern-desert prophetic tradition (and, moreover, one suspects that his breath might be faintly redolent of locusts and honey - indeed at a conference sponsored by the Pentagon back in June, he did say, and rather out of the blue as I've been told, that it was time for us Americans to go back to the soil).

So then. Our bright and motivated teenager could only infer that Simmons, this Houston-based clear-thinking super-successful Harvard-educated Republican C.E.O. represents a minority viewpoint. And she would be right.

And she would therefore say to herself, Mention Simmons in a footnote or something like that to let Teacher know that I've been thorough in my research. But leave it at that.

And since she actually is thorough in her research, she would also quickly come across the names of James Howard Kunstler and Richard Heinberg, who, unlike Simmons, are decidedly not interviewed on National Public Radio (to say nothing of FoxNews, though I personally am willing to argue that there are no longer any salient differences between the two).

So she'd link to Kunstler's ClusterfuckNation, and she'd say to herself, Clusterfuck, no way am I even putting this in a footnote. And she'd link to Heinberg's MuseLetter, and she'd see that he's contributing to a book by Project Censored titled The Case for Impeachment of Bush and Cheney, and she'd say to herself, All I need now is to be added to HomeLand Security's database just as I am filling out my college applications.

Peak oil odyssey: the revolution will not be televised, nor will television be revolutionized