average consumer. The greed I mention was about the economy as a whole with each aspect feeling they can just force a higher and higher percentage of the available household funds to come their way. Sooner or later it breaks if people don't modify their situation. In the case where the ability to modify or have choices is limited we see things get drastic even quicker.
As I said unfortunately we see the die hard believers in the idea of "drill baby drill" and their red hats forming the political base that adamantly prevents strategies that would extend the supply of oil such as alternative energy, conservation and mileage standards.
All while they wear their red hats and act like this can go on forever just because a crooked con man tells them it will.
My personal feeling, which I've posted before, is that we missed our opportunity some time ago to make major change regarding energy and climate change matters. I pointed out that even in the best of cases it takes many years to fight through the pig-headed resistance and then many more years for implementations at a scale large enough to have moderating effects of significant size.
When Jimmy Carter, rightly so, tried to get the world to come around to the magnitude of the problem and need for major change he was met with what is always the biggest problem in solving anything. Resistance of human beings and the ability for propaganda against the change to forestall or kill changes until we end up in a deeper and deeper approach to a crisis point.
OPEC+, as pointed out, is bringing even more production on line and the expenses of shale extraction aren't getting any less. As you point out the easier, less expensive to obtain oil is gone and now we are going into a "hangover" period where we bragged about our "oil independence" but knowledgeable people always knew it was short lived. But nobody wanted to listen to us. We were party- poopers and the idea that the "free booze" would run out and that there would be a bill for the band and the hall at the end of the night was something the people in power and the greed merchants didn't want people to think about. Party on and raise the speed limits and drive big pickup trucks to the grocery store to get 10 pounds of groceries. That was the story pushed on their screens and to their ears. Don't just have a hamburger. Have one that is 3 patties high with a half a pound of cheese, half a pound of bacon and a bun the size of a hub cap.
When Professor Newtol Press told us in a class that advertising, propaganda and media was destroying society some of us understood but many thought he was just a crazy anthropologist. Dr. Press was right. As you point out by and large the people in developed societies have surrendered to consumption and lifestyle expectations that demand and depend upon hydrocarbon energy and we have squandered the warnings of the last more than 60 years and the words of people like Press and others who clearly saw where we were going, what was driving it to unsustainable levels and the impact of waiting until times of deep crisis in order to try to change.
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