Yellow Springs Peak Oil Conference

Averting a War of the Worlds Panic

The night before Halloween was the 69^th anniversary of Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’ science fiction novel War of the Worlds, a classic example of deliberately induced hysteria (though of course Welles’ meant to frighten, it’s doubtful he intended to create public chaos)and intentional manipulation. When the media fully focuses on Peak Oil, might a similar panic unfold?

Shortly after the War of the Worlds hysteria, psychologist Hadley Cantril conducted further studies and detailed the results in his book The Invasion From Mars: A Study of the Psychology of Panic. In his book Cantril analyzes the influence of the media, especially the way in which fear causes people to be indiscriminate and easily persuaded. Cantril later established the office of Public Opinion Research (OPOR) which analyzed the efficacy of “psycho-political operations”, in short, propaganda, then being conducted by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) the predecessor to the CIA. During World War II Cantril teamed with veteran CBS correspondent Edward Murrow to initiate the Princeton Listening Center to better understand Nazi propaganda with the intent of duplicating these techniques. Scary stuff, indeed.

When Peak Oil does “arrive” and is more fully acknowledged and explored by the media, a hysterical reaction far worse than the true effects of depletion might develop. I am especially concerned that General Electric (NBC) and Westinghouse (CBS), as military contractors, stand to profit from a military build-up in response to manufactured threats to the energy supply.

Several of these themes were touched upon, but not fully explored, at the recent U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions at Yellow Springs, Ohio. Although both David Korten and Dr. Thomas Princen sounded clarion calls of the pernicious machinations of the media, it was that venerable dean laureate of oil depletion Richard Heinberg, who drew attention to a 1976 book by Stuart Ewen(recently republished) the Captains of Consciousness. The book that documents the rise of the corporate state and the insidious manipulation of the media. I would offer Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent as a companion volume to Ewen’s central thesis.

The harmful effects of the Empire abound and both Korten’s and Princen’s presentations, with surgical precision and to the great approval of all attending, identified the environmental collapse, the social unraveling and the institutional dysfunction that grips America at the start of the 21^st century (though Korten would rightly argue the US has been in the sociopathic grips of corporations for decades) and threatens to tear civilization asunder.

What became clear to me at the Conference is that the essential work to be done in preparing for the end of cheap oil is first, not recycling, nor retrofitting houses, nor public transportation, nor organic gardening (though all of these are immeasurably valuable) it is the shaping and handling of public opinion. It is not so much the end of cheap energy as a world relentlessly bedeviled by less and less energy. Is it any wonder then that the message itself seems as if made of asbestos. And the messengers themselves stricken with plague.

The most illuminating presentation I attended was in, of all places, the Antioch Inn, the Antioch College cafetria where meals were served. There, Brent McMillan, the political director of the Green Party delivered a sparkling informal chat about public relations and successful methods of avoiding verbal attacks, persuasion using the truth (which unfortunately is not always self evident) and psychological strategies of defending against a bully. He credited many of the stoic, non-confrontational techniques he described as originating from the Quakers. Several of us sat listening at a large dining hall table, spellbound. I say this with the most profound apologies to that great sage Richard Heinberg. Stirring presentations were delivered by Heinberg, Korten and Princen all of which alluded, either directly or indirectly, to the media’s incessant abuse of the tools of manipulation and persuasion. But it was this unscheduled exposition on the tactics and techniques of communication, with the nuts of bolts of human nature thrown in, that had me, and several of my fellow attendees, transfixed.

The true short term enemy, I think, is neither SUV’s nor corporate greed but ordinary ignorance. As any good study on the sociology of panic could describe, we are all together in a theater, enjoying or not enjoying, the show. But the moment someone yells fire, the true conflagration will begin.