Reality check

Finally frustrated with my father (whose childhood involved begging storekeepers for bread on credit) for continuing to buy my kids more plastic garbage (and I mean garbage - stuff that breaks the same day, bought at $2 shops) I began a good natured rant at him about peak oil and found myself stunned at the things coming out of my mouth.
"For every piece of plastic you buy, every bit of cheap oil we consume, that means something that won't be available to them in the future."
"I know" he said sheepishly. I felt compelled to continue.
"That's a diabetes drug they'll need, and will not be able to buy." (his mother had diabetes throughout her life).
"I know" he said again.
"Can you imagine them knowing that their grandfather wasted his money on plastic rubbish, manufactured with oil feedstocks, transported at great expense from China, only to be thrown out the day after it was purchased, cos it was never made to last...can you imagine the day they run out of their medicine, and remember the stuff you bought for them to break and throw out?"
Dad conceded to my hysteria.

What frightened me was not what I was saying. It was the fact that when said out loud it's seriously dramatic (my husband's convinced I'm being melodramatic) and yet, somehow, it doesn't have the impact it should. For a cocktail party on the weekend, I still nearly went out to buy a cocktail shaker (and am eternally grateful to my friend for convincing me to stay true to the compact, and ring around a bit more to borrow one).

Because it's a non-negotiable idea that the oil-supply is non-negotiable. A non-renewable resource is a zero sum game: anything oil-rich you consume now (petrol, plastic, conventional agriculture or just something unnecessarily imported) is something else that can't be bought later. And it breaks my heart much more to think that I'm robbing my kids of the petrol they need to get to a doctor in 50 years. Or the drugs they'll need but that are made only overseas. The stuff of life (not "quality of life"). And yet, we have two cars.

It's a similar perspective check to the one described by Peter Singer. www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/19990905.htm

Somehow, we are psychologically inept at assessing things that are non-specific (even if certain) or distant in time or space.

I understand the ABC is about to screen a documentary "CRUDE" which I'm very much looking forward to.