My letter to Derek Thompson at the Atlantic Magazine

Dear Derek,

While I of course understand that it is not the Atlantic's job to help avert disaster, I know I can always go to you for excellent post-disaster analysis of where we all went wrong! In that spirit, I anxiously await your December 2012 post entitled,

"The Oil Supply Warning Signs Everyone Missed"

by Derek Thompson

"In 2010, while America was preoccupied with a contentious mid-term election and the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, several respected institutions issued warnings of an approaching oil supply crunch, what is now widely seen as the onset of Peak Oil. In retrospect, the story of overlooked warnings and missed evidence is eerily similar to the run-up of the Iraq War and the 2008 housing/debt bubble. In each case warnings came from several of America's and Britain's most respected institutions, yet fell on the deaf ears of a mainstream media that continued to rely on optimistic predictions of well-connected experts. Now the public is rallying behind President-elect Palin's call to ban the "lamestream media" because "their repeated failures have shown how completely f-ing useless they are."

The first missed warning came in April 2010 from the US Military's top brass. In their yearly "Joint Operating Environment" report, they warned of a "Peak Oil" situation by 2012, where oil production figures would not be able to keep up with demand , with severe oil shortages crippling the American economy by 2015. Amazingly, only one major newspaper, the Miami Herald, reported on the military's warning. http://www.miamiherald.com/201...

The second and third warnings came from Britain in the summer of 2010, where a group of British industrialists led by Richard Branson issued a similar timeline for Peak Oil. Meanwhile, Lloyds of London warned that the "just-in-time delivery model" of retailers like Wal-Mart was in danger of failing, and that businesses who failed to adapt to an oil supply crunch were in severe danger. However, even as key members of government and business clearly saw the danger, in 2010 most still looked on peak oil as a crackpot theory . The public was completely uninformed, and continued purchasing large numbers of SUVs throughout 2011, looking at cheap oil as a birthright.

Today, the main political question is whether President Plain will receive the blame for the long gas lines and ruined financial landscape that is expected in 2013, or whether voters will blame her predecessor Obama, whose reelection was doomed by voter anger over high gas prices and his inability to fix the situation."