Social Attitudes Towards Energy Policy Can Change Quickly

The migration of the farmers out of the Oklahoma dust bowl in the 1930s was a story of gut-wrenching passion and sorrow, but the mainstream press in the U.S. was completely uninterested in covering it—until a very specific instant in time: the publication of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath in 1939. Within just a few weeks of that moment in time, the number of column-inches devoted to the issue had exploded. A single event—in this case a book—had broken the dam.

This seems to be a pervasive characteristic of humankind. We sit around an empty swimming pool on a sweltering summer day, waiting for someone to dive in.  But a few minutes after the first bold soul takes the plunge, the pool is packed with people enjoying great relief.

I bring this up to point out that it’s not irrational to believe that some event (a book, a disaster, the appearance of some new visionary, the launch of a hip new product, etc. – who knows?) could come along and form a similar tipping point for the notion of a sustainable approach to energy.

Of course, as we sit here in the summer of 2014, the oil companies appear to have gotten their way. At least in the U.S., most people are ignorant of (or apathetic to) the vast damage being caused by our de facto energy policy (fossil fuels), and view renewable energy as a sort of trivial fad that will soon fall out of fashion.  Meanwhile, the people are meticulously kept clueless by the utter malarkey we see in our media, e.g., Chevron’s “We Agree” campaign.

But again, all that ignorance can evaporate in the blink of an eye, and I’m betting that this will happen very soon.