“When are you going to solve peak oil?” asks a random stranger on the internet.  I must be getting old.  The answer to this one goes like this: “I’m not quite sure what you mean by “solve peak oil.” So, I’ll make something up and attribute it wrongly to you. When you said “solve peak oil,” you really meant solve the next extinction crisis and jump start civilization 2.0 with Georgia Guidestones levels of humans on the planet. (at this point, I’m interrupted rudely by a loud “THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID!”) But see, I’m female, and in the culture wars, I’m allowed to interpret anything a male says as offensively as possible, and claim dominance hierarchy points by being the most offended person in the room. Therefore, if I say that that is what you said, then that is what 1 million women will claim that you said, even if you plainly didn’t.

Since catabolic collapse of industrial civilization is a “wicked problem” with no solution possible, perhaps the best solution is to collapse first and avoid the rush by blatant and ongoing infighting amongst those who stare at the data the most. Surely bankruptcy of public services and moderate levels of civil unrest could cause the nuclear reactors to scram well in advance of the vastly increased climate disruption events such as volcanoes, fracking earthquakes, tsunamis, and major flooding. Furthermore, a modest proposal could be made that those in the fedghettos could eat, well, soylent green, while their numbers are reduced via infertility.

Then again, perhaps we should embrace positive thinking for a change. Peak oil is not a problem, so much as an opportunity. This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for! The breakdown of law and order on a local scale to commit all the illegal acts your soul has been pining away to perpetrate. Like, you know, collecting your own rainwater, or growing things, or (gasp) growing livestock where the city ordinances prohibit such things. Why, you could even focus on the basics of civilization: soup kitchens, hospitals, and schools. See, he who feeds you owns you. Clearly, the occupying government has no intention of feeding you, or providing adequate schooling, nor of providing adequate medical care. If you can provide these things within your community, free from taxation as much as possible, then your community will come up with the solution for the effects of peak oil on an ongoing basis, for as long as it can.”

If you caught all of the hidden references, you’re obviously corded, and need to crawl out of your apartment full of freeze-dried food stacked in the shape of a fallout bunker, and start a hiking and amateur astrology business.  Why is it that all of the conspiracy people who receive regular encrypted emails from high-ranking officials and business CEOs eventually get into astrology?  Is it because the Queen does?

See, peak oil is a wicked problem, and a single individual can not “solve” it.  You can cope with it.  You can organize your communities or go off into the woods alone.  You can protest or use direct action against oil drilling and transportation infrastructure.  You can’t stop peak oil any more than you can stop the stars from spinning up above the Earth (thanks Einstein), or the climate from changing, or Earthquakes from occurring.  You can’t stop the currency crisis, the germs from mutating and killing, the greedy from hoarding, the love and desperation in the mothers’ eyes as death walks the streets.  Whatever made you think that we should respond to our differing environments in the exact same way?  We can’t all move to isolated parts of the countryside, so therefore, don’t feel guilty if you don’t.  We can’t all grow crops and feed livestock.  We can’t all hunt, and we can’t all gather.

You can relax if you give up your dream of planetary control, and get back to the simple things, like cleaning your room and having a shiny kitchen sink, or at least that’s what the lifehack gurus say.  I can’t though.  Though the burden is great, I don’t falter, I don’t put it down.  How do I solve NTHE?  Well, first I cut myself some slack.  I know the Deep State is interested in this problem, so I know I’m not working on it alone.  Unfortunately, I think the answer involves slavery.  I don’t like it, but that’s what the probabilities show in multiple models.