
Public Policy; Political and Legal NewsAmong the factors in systemic collapse that should be placed far down on the list are many that might be described as environmental: pollution, global warming, and so on. The fact is that the issue of peak oil and that of the environment are mutually exclusive problems. As oil and other fossil fuels disappear, the environmental problems will also go away, even if very slowly.
By trying to raise the alarm about both issues at once, we are placing ourselves in a self-contradictory position, and our credibility is rapidly undermined. We cannot, on the one hand, wish that oil would go away so that the air will have a crystalline purity, and on the other hand complain because we have spent hours poring over the charts of global oil production and found that the cost of driving to the cottage is becoming prohibitive

