Not the Future We Ordered

<p>For well over half a century since the first credible warnings of petroleum depletion were raised in the 1950s contemporary industrial civilization has been caught in a remarkable paradox: a culture more focused on problem solving than any other has repeatedly failed to deal with or even consider the problem most likely to bring its own history to a full stop. The coming of peak oil-the peaking and irreversible decline of world petroleum production-poses an existential threat to societies in which every sector of the economy depends on petroleum-based transport and no known energy source can scale up extensively or quickly enough to replace dwindling oil supplies. <em>Not The Future We Ordered</em> is the first study of the psychological dimensions of that decision and its consequences as a case study in the social psychology of collective failure and as an issue with which psychologists and therapists will be confronted repeatedly in the years ahead. </p>