Comments on: Peak Crisco

By: Cleverchimp blog » Blog Archive » More red pills

Cleverchimp blog » Blog Archive » More red pills — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 05:55:39 +0000

[...] While I’m as disturbed as anybody at the prospect of violent mayhem, more wars, starvation, etc., I can’t help but rejoice at the idea of cars as we know them going down with the cheap energy that brought them into being, a 20th-century bad-idea blip in human history like Crisco. [...]

By: Todd

Todd — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 17:14:02 +0000

Thanks Matt! In an age less progressive than our own, I’d have to print a correction. The error was one of expression rather than of fact, meaning I screwed up the conversion to tons instead of thinking SUVs are in fact heavier.

Jim’s comment, too, suggests that I’ve failed to convey the less-than-scholarly tone I intended with this piece. It’s a reverie, driven by wordplay, Google, and a certain willfulness rather than a historian’s earnest caution.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 16:55:05 +0000

I think a couple of facts are a bit dodgy. You say “…it had come to be considered normal for people to pilot 4-6 ton vehicles several miles to drop off a couple videotapes…”. I don’t think many people are driving 8,000lb+ vehicles to the grocery store. If you said 4,000- to 6,000-pound rather than 4-6 ton, the range would be much closer to accurate. One has to be careful of factual missteps because readers start to wonder about other assertions of fact too.

I like the idea of a supplemental-powered Xtracycle. I recently got a used bike I’m thinking of making into an Xtracycle. I don’t know that I’ll change society, but I can fiddle with my little part of it.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 13:09:47 +0000

This is a very interesting parallel, and a well written account of it. It seems, however, that “peak Crisco” and “peak oil” are driven by different mechanisms. In the Crisco case, it is simply that the stuff is unhealthy, and that we now know that healthier alternatives exist. In the oil case, it is that we are running out of the stuff. What is left in reserve is that which was too difficult (uneconomical) to extract at a lower price.

I agree completely about “reasonable choices before the chance to choose is withdrawn”, but I can’t say that I believe that the vast majority of people have reached this conclusion, nor will they anytime soon.