Things to Come
A consensus of sorts is emerging, spilling over from the left and right margins into the mainstream, regarding the state of the world as we start a new year. Essentially, we're doomed. Or put it this way: the world that we knew, that was hospitable to global human civilization, is as good as finished.
I agree. In fact, it's the only way I can make sense of America today. Its policy makers aren't really crazy; they're aren't really stupid. They've known for some time that multiple global crises - environmental, energy-resource, economic - are approaching a singularity which will trigger a calamatous population crash. And because they know, and because they can, they mean to turn the calamity into opportunity by "managing change." I'm sure it makes them the heroes of their own mythologies.
America's religious right largely receive bad news as glad tidings. The sooner to see Jesus, my dear! To the fundamentalist Christian, the only meaningful debate left is whether we have already entered the Seven Years of Tribulation. This is an uncomfortable prospect for the Pre-Trib crowd, whose theology presumes the "Rapture," when they expect to bodily meet Christ in the air and be spared the outpouring of God's wrath. That the past four years seems like something that slithered out of the Book of Revelations may account in part for George Bush's "astonishing" low approval rating - the lowest in modern polling for a "re-elected" President at inauguration. As xymphora wonders, when will the cognitive dissonance over the rigged election begin to cause heads to explode?
Many of those on the left who share the assessment of looming catastrophe seem either paralyzed by a dreadful but ultimately ineffectual knowledge, or are stocking up on canned goods and taking out gun permits. I'm not pointing fingers. Both are perhaps equally appropriate responses, at least initially. Jerry Falwell aside, the end of the world is a hard one to spin.
Dale Allen Pfeiffer forecasts that we may have a period of grace for a year or two to prepare for the exigencies of peak oil, but come 2007, "if you are not prepared in a supportive community intent on transitioning to self-sufficiency, then your chances of surviving are drastically reduced." So, as we have a little while yet before we meet again in the Olduvai Gorge, how do we best pass the time?
It's late, I'm tired, and I'm still thinking about this. So I'll have get back to you.
I agree. In fact, it's the only way I can make sense of America today. Its policy makers aren't really crazy; they're aren't really stupid. They've known for some time that multiple global crises - environmental, energy-resource, economic - are approaching a singularity which will trigger a calamatous population crash. And because they know, and because they can, they mean to turn the calamity into opportunity by "managing change." I'm sure it makes them the heroes of their own mythologies.
America's religious right largely receive bad news as glad tidings. The sooner to see Jesus, my dear! To the fundamentalist Christian, the only meaningful debate left is whether we have already entered the Seven Years of Tribulation. This is an uncomfortable prospect for the Pre-Trib crowd, whose theology presumes the "Rapture," when they expect to bodily meet Christ in the air and be spared the outpouring of God's wrath. That the past four years seems like something that slithered out of the Book of Revelations may account in part for George Bush's "astonishing" low approval rating - the lowest in modern polling for a "re-elected" President at inauguration. As xymphora wonders, when will the cognitive dissonance over the rigged election begin to cause heads to explode?
Many of those on the left who share the assessment of looming catastrophe seem either paralyzed by a dreadful but ultimately ineffectual knowledge, or are stocking up on canned goods and taking out gun permits. I'm not pointing fingers. Both are perhaps equally appropriate responses, at least initially. Jerry Falwell aside, the end of the world is a hard one to spin.
Dale Allen Pfeiffer forecasts that we may have a period of grace for a year or two to prepare for the exigencies of peak oil, but come 2007, "if you are not prepared in a supportive community intent on transitioning to self-sufficiency, then your chances of surviving are drastically reduced." So, as we have a little while yet before we meet again in the Olduvai Gorge, how do we best pass the time?
It's late, I'm tired, and I'm still thinking about this. So I'll have get back to you.
posted by Jeff Wells at 1:44 a.m.
4 Comments:
or as Richard Heinberg put it in one of his recent lectures--- "just eat, drink and be merry. Living at the end times of of an empire is not such a bad thing"-- or words to that effect.
It's true that the left is either paralyzed by this upcoming date with destiny, or is stocking up on essentials.
I think hoever, that Pfeiffer is a little off-- we have another ten years or more before things degenerate as badly as he foresees. No doubt in the next five years, things will get worse, oil more expensive, more wars, politicians avoiding the upcoming catastrophe-- but I doubt there will be any cataclysmic event for quite some time, if ever, for that matter. I tend to be an optimist and think these things often work out better than the doomsayers expect. Perhaps some new technology will greatly ease the transition to a post-petroleum world. Perhaps we'll actually get some sane and honest political leadership.
Well, you know--it's the new year: a time to be optimistic.
Although I agree with you most of the time, I think you are wrong this time.
As I´ve noticed you are a great fan of Michael Ruppert. However why not try to imagine that he might be wrong:
There is no Peak Oil crisis.
First of all it´s possible to use gas instead of oil, which even according to conservative estimate will hold for another 75 years.
The other thing is, that oil as Russian engineers have found out is not fossil but leeks out from deep under any fossil ground from under the mantel of the earth and so is constantly replenished.
The climate changes throught the burning of oil might be a bigger problem.
However it is the Pentagon who is now doomsaying on this. And whatever comes out of the Pentagon I would say is at least partly untrue and mostly used for political social engeneering.
Even the population explosion that most of mainstream takes for holy truth is in reality a myth, created by the powerful to oppress the poor. Population will probably peak at about 9 billion. And there is a Havard study which says, that earth can support and feed 9 billion people without any problem if industrial countries would start to eat mostly plant food instead of meat.
As a European I think you are influenced by American culture and (even while not being religious) by their prophets of doom.
With a solidaric effort and a change of our greed infested culture human kind can solve some of the problems we have created the last few hundred years without killing each other off.
And other problems we can live through and survive.
However if we let the totally insane part of the economic and intellectual elite go through with their plans we might not survive, because they are planning genocide for most of humanity. And the not insane part of the elite knows this and there is a power-struggle going on right now.
If we, the political awake people give in to the doomsayers, we are taken the side of the insane. And so the end will be near as a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Peak Oil isn't the only resource limitation.
Fresh water, arable soils, forests, food production (which has peaked per capita), mineral ores, fish, clean air, etc. are also limitations.
Richard Heinberg's excellent book "The Party's Over" quotes geologist M. King Hubbert saying that civilization could cope with Peak Oil if it abandoned the idea of economic growth (since one cannot have ever expanding consumption on a finite planet). In 1956, Hubbert accurately predicted the timing of Peak Oil for the US (1970) and globally as around the year 2000, which is close to what will probably happen (delayed slightly by the efficiency spurred by the Saudi oil embargo).
Yes, shifting to a vegan diet and drastic reductions of energy overconsumption are needed -- but that would also shatter the value of the dollar (and probably other currencies). How to have a graceful transition is the key question. Using the remaining oil for the transition to a more sane society is the key point, and that requires reallocating the military budget and that in turn requires exposing 9/11 complicity.
As for the claims about natural gas, North America is past Peak Gas and ocean transport of gas is not very practical (it is done by a few very desperate countries - the US imports about 2% of its gas via boats). We definitely do NOT have 75 years of natural gas, unless we were to drastically reduce energy combustion.
Solar and wind are great, but they don't have the energy density that petroleum has. And we've wasted decades that should have been used to implement as much of this as possible.
Perhaps "zero point" or similar technologies really exist and can be implemented at the eleventh hour -- but even with that "pie in the sky" (or saucer in the sky?) solution, we will still have to tear up the parking lots to grow food.
Finally, regarding the Russian claims of "abiotic" petroleum, those theories are based on science that predates the understanding of plate tectonics. See http://www.oilempire.us/abiotic.html for a background. But even if some very deep oil can be proven not to have a biotic origin, it is unlikely to make much difference, since pumping oil from very deep sources would be extremely difficult and consume much more energy than oil from conventional fields.
Energy return for energy invested is the key concept regardless of the technology that is used.
1111111111111111111111111111111
Post a Comment
<< Home