Peak oil really could destroy the economy – just not in the way greens think

If the global economy goes seriously tits up — as I believe it is about to do — the important thing is that we understand the actual reasons why it went tits up. Otherwise the drastic remedial action we’ll inevitably take to ensure that it never happens again may well result in the exact opposite.

Consider, for example, that disturbingly tentacular collective of self-righteous hippyish busybodies Transition Towns. Here is an ideological movement which senses, as most of us do, that there’s something seriously amiss with western industrial civilisation. It senses — again, wisely and correctly, I believe — that we urgently need to form networks, build stronger and more self-reliant communities, grow more of our own vegetables, and so on, if we’re to weather the storm.

Where the Transition Towns movement couldn’t be more wrong, though, is in its analysis of why these emergency actions are necessary. Transition Towns thinks the problem lies in the greed, wanton resource-depletion and yearning for growth which drive the capitalist system.