Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Eating, Pooping, Fighting and Fucking

A few nights ago, I met some very nice people at an art opening, and we got to talking about energy, culture, etc. I wrote an email to a few of them, and I thought it was interesting and would make a good Early-Warning post.

So, I edited out the personal chunks and re-wrote other sections, and came up with the following. Lately I’ve been sick with the Devil Bug, and my head is full of snot. As a consequence, I’ve been sleeping a lot and taking it easy.

First, I should point out there is a HUGE debate raging in the energy community between the Nihilists and the Cornicopians. The Nihilists are of the opinion that

“We’re all fucking doomed – try what you will you foolish mortals!!! IT WILL BE FOR NAUGHT AND YOU WILL ALL DIE!!!!”

This is occasionally followed by the cynical chuckle of true despair that sounds something like “Muuuwahahahahaaaa…”

Then there are the Cornucopians. They are often referred to as “idiots”. They actually aren’t idiots – they just have greater levels of confidence in certain factors and data than the Nihilist think is rational and many of the rest of us think is justified.

Then there’s the “rest of us”. A diverse mix of people, of course, and rather than try to distill such a crowd into components, I’ll describe my own position, which runs like this:

The Nihilists are correct in one sense. We are all completely doomed *IF WE DO NOTHING*. If we do a little, it will postpone the disaster, but won’t avert it. If we do a lot we can cushion the downslope and evolve our society into a depopulated and sustainable system. If we do everything we can, we can not only evolve into that “good place” we can do it with relatively little loss of life.

The Cornucopians do have a few good points – mostly centered around technology. The Cornucopian technology fixes can certainly help avert a die off.

The problem boils down to one of population. If we don’t reduce our birth rate immediately, we are looking at an uncontrolled and violent die off, and possible extinction. I’m not saying “No More Babies, period” but that they need to be fewer in number, and much better cared for when they appear. With reduced population, there will be reduced pressure on the planet’s resources. Combined with sustainable practices (recycling technologies, permaculture farming, etc.) the future of the species is much brighter than the dark night envisioned by the Nihilists. But if we continue to crowd the planet with more and more people, the resources will give out, and result in massive warfare over the scraps. Not one, but several (small) nuclear wars would easily result.

Personally, I don’t want to see the world go down the path of trading nuclear tipped insults, massive starvation, or freezing to death in the winter on a ruined deforested planet.

The long term key is demographic. The short term key is culture and technology.

We can do this, but it will take enormous effort. I have come to the conclusion that the people who will matter the most to the species will prove to be those people born between 1945 and 2010. It is up to the older boomers (1945 – 55) to set the course as they settle into positions of power. It is up to the younger boomers (1955 – 1965) to agitate and do the planning and innovating. They are young enough and smart enough to realise it, and have sufficient numbers to make movements in the markets – their children are older and can focus on these issues with the clarity borne of experience. The generations of 1965 – 75 and 75 – 85 will end up doing the heavy lifting. They will get it in the neck, as they will be in the prime of their lives as the oil system peaks out in the 2010’s. The children of the 1990s will be crucial as they will be the parents of the first post-petroleum generation. This is a position of such crucial importance, I can’t emphasize it enough – their victories and failures will loom large on their children and grandchildren. Also, the children of the 1990s will have the greatest pressure on them to innovate and organise the new society. By their adulthood in the 2020s, the first wave of boomers will begin dying in great numbers, soon followed by the late boomers. The Children born in the 2000s (children of people born in the 70s and 80s) will be the last petroleum generation and will be pivotal in the transition. It is of extra-ordinary importance that they be raised with the knowledge and impetus to continue building the new sustainable civilisation.

People born after 2010 will simply have to cope with what I call the “Peak Generations” deal them. If the Peak Generations can come through and do the right thing, step up to the plate and set civilisation along a path of permacultural sustainability and graceful depopulation, then those born at and after the oil peak will will not curse their memory for having squandered the world, but will revere the Peak Generations for having had the wisdom and intelligence to look forward and help rather than stand around, do nothing, and hinder the human project.

Many Nihilists feel we are slaves to our basest natures. They are probably right, but I would submit that we are not chattel slaves – we are wage slaves! And as wage slaves to our basest natures, we have the ability in our leisure time to do something other than eat, poop, fight and fuck. It is this time we spend not exercising our base instincts that allows us to plan and culturally blunt our base instincts.

There is distinct pleasures to be had from our base instincts and processes: food is a delight when well prepared and shared with love. And after a big meal, a good healthy crap is a distinct (if smelly) pleasure. Fighting can be good, especially when the fight is one of principle and wisdom against ignorance and stupidity, and is fought on the battlefield of ideas. Nothing can oppose the force of millions of people peacefully united behind the ideas of justice and freedom. And the extra-ordinary pleasures of good sex is not to be underestimated, especially, if not most of all, when it is in the context of a deep, loving, and caring relationship.

However: each of these pleasures comes with a series responsibilities. The food comes with the responsibility to not waste the food left over, and for food to be produced in a sustainable and healthy manner for not only the people eating it, but for the soil and environment that produced it.

And the good healthy crap that follows a good meal, we must realise that our bodily waste is a very valuable resource. Which is why we must reduce our consumption of hormones, chemicals, and medicines – it all comes out in our wastes to poison the earth and it endangers other creatures. We will need our (“clean”) waste in order to fertilise our fields.

The fighting must continue as long as there is injustice and exploitation in this world, as long as people are denied the simplest freedoms, the fight must continue. However, the fight must be along the lines envisioned by Ghandi and Martin Luther King: it must be a fight of peaceful masses of people moving and demanding justice and freedom. This requires the same level of solidarity one would find in any military unit – the forces of hate and violence will seek to divide and conquer the forces of good and progress and provoke them into violent confrontation. The movements must maintain solidarity and peace, but must also not compromise either their ideals or integrity, even as their comrades are blown to bits or beaten to bloody pulps. It is from this solidarity that the communities of the sustainable future will evolve.

And the fucking must continue, for reasons too obvious to mention. However, as sex is the source of the demographic problem that is essential to our predicament, on the socio-political front, we need to greatly expand birth control and voluntary sterilisation programs. I would recommend that birth control methods be heavily subsidised by the .gov and sterilisation procedures (vasectomies and tubal ligations) be free of charge. This would reduce pregnancy and the transmission of diseases – a net gain in both directions. But beyond the policy wonkery: sex is a good thing, and I recommend it…

So, in each case, we can see how even our “basest instincts” can be routed into constructive and positive directions that will lead to the development of the civilisation we need: a non-petroleum based sustainable, permacultural depopulated world civilisation of 500 million souls living full, rich, and colourful lives slowly evolving into homo futuris – the human of the future.

Thursday, December 01, 2005
Nihilism part 02

One of my esteemed listmates on Energy Resources responded to my note on Nihilism, and had some good points. I responded to his post as follows.

Mr C wrote:

>You have more than a good point.

Thanks for noticing! I get so much grief so often, it’s nice to hear a positive voice.

>So lets be constructive.
>Let me start by modifying your proposition
>into an If-then-else.

OK.

>IF (conditions are met)
>THEN {we will migrate into a sustainable future }
>ELSE {we will have severe economic depression;
>a final obliteration of the biosphere;
>and ultimately a crash of the human population due to
>overshoot exhausting essential resources};
>We may want to make some modifications to the THEN and ELSE
>statements. But this is easy. Defining the conditions to be
>met is where all the work is at. Believe me, this is the way
> hardest part, and probably the reason so many intellectuals on
>this subject come to rest in the doomer category, myself
>included.

I agree, it is a daunting task.

>So lets make it easy for the first step. Lets only name the
>conditions that need to be met without getting hung up just
>yet on “how” that condition is to be met, or ever could be
>met. This way at least we can say we defined the problem just
>a little better by reducing it into its components.

I agree. Also, to mis-use/apply an old Marxist term, the “prevailing conditions” at the time of will have their own dynamic and set of contradictions, which are largely unpredictable in specific, even though the substructural political economy is essentially unchanged since the 19th century. Which is a coplicated way to say: we don’t know what it will be like then, although the economic fundamentals will probably be similar to today.

>Here are just a couple of the conditions that need to be met
>to bring us into the THEN clause and out of the ELSE clause.

(I’ve snipped a bit for clarity’s sake:)

>A: present energy consumption is within the sun’s annual
>budget for Earth
>B: non-renewable petroleum is reserved for use as a mineral
>and not a fuel
>AND solar, hydro, wind and biomass at sustainable levels
>are the only fuel sources used for all human activities.
>AND ??…
>As you hopefully can see, the lists will be long and decompose
> ever more into further lists of conditions if you attempt to
>properly deconstruct the problem.

>I’ll jump way ahead and bubble it all back up and say stupid >things like “the people in the Los Angeles basin can no longer
> drive fossil fuel powered vehicles to carry out their daily
>lives”. It is near impossible to impose such a conclusion,
>and yet it is impossible to avoid external reality imposing
>the same conclusion over time given our draw down and exhaustion
>of stored fossil energy.

OK: try this: how to double the effective mileage of a given fleet? Even/Odd driving restrictions. Forces people to buddy up.

How to get old clunkers off the road? CA’s plan is fairly ingenious. Up the smog restrictions preventing older cars from passing. If it fails, the state will buy the car for $1000 and send it to the crusher for recycling. My 1991 Toyota Corolla has a weak oil ring in one of the cylinders, causing it to just *barely* fail. I could have leaned out the injectors and have it shake and shudder through the test, but the car is only worth $1200, and has some nasty dents thanks to a certain clueless asshole who lives down the street… But anyway – I’ll be getting a cheque for $1000 in January.

You see- there are lots of ways – each one plays a small role, but in agregate, they amount to something. The problem is, right now, they don’t amount to enough. THAT has to change, and that’s why we have to work on making it happen. The alternative is not acceptable.

>I’ll shift back to doomer now and just say that I find the
>scale and complexity of our problems so intractable when
>confronted with the reality of politics that it does indeed
>seem hopeless. Yet I agree with you that nihilism is not any
>answer at all. This is probably why so many people are on the
>ROE2 list, in my words, “trying to figure out how best to survive
>the coming dark ages”. Homesteading, communities and forming
>other kinds of safety bubbles is the repeating theme. Plus the
>occassional side themes of “guns, and how best to defend your >family from roaming dog packs and the occassional looter”.

Could you send me a URL so I can get on that list? thanks.

>Like you, I refuse to say it is hopeless. But I’m quite
>stymied on how to create a positive future for the big
>picture pre-collapse. There is some amount of hope to be
>found in constructing small pictures that form refuge from
>this very large catastrophe in the making.

I belive it is to be done one step at a time, with more and more people making one step at a time. Eventually you have an entire flood of people doing the right thing.

The first thing to do is to Get The Message Across, and even though I despise them, I must say that the TV ads for BP are a step in the right direction. I don’t believe BP is *actually* doing all it can to help avert catastrophe, but at least in the past few months with all the money they made after Katrina, they do seem to have bought a clue or two and are doing what they can to inform people that Things Are Going To Change.

The next thing to do is to MARKET the change. It’s kind of like dieting. You don’t lose weight by not eating. Yes, you will lose weight that way, but you eventually DIE. The way you lose weight is by eating LESS, eating BETTER, and EXERCISING. If you pigged out and slothed your way into obesity, then you have to eat properly and exercise your way into svelteness. Same goes for the first world. We pigged our way into this, so now we have to manage our intake to get out of it.

Eating less: Consume fewer items, consume less energy.
Eating right: acquire things that are built to last and are functional and integral. Acquire energy from green sources.
Exercising: develop local sources for the acquisition of food, clothing, and shelter. Have this process even atomised into household production systems (growing gardens, beer, cheese, etc.) and then into neighbourhood/town exchange systems.

Also, the solar diet isn’t the only energy source – there is wind, geothermal, tides, etc. Technically, wind is solar, and tides are lunar, but you get the idea.

As I said before: it’s not going to be easy, and the longer all this gets put off, the more dire the transition is *guaranteed* to be. I’m not discounting the “doomer” scenario – I’m simply giving it some perspective and USEFULNESS contexted in the IF/THEN or (by your angle, which is a good one) IF/THEN/ELSE. WiI *thin that context, it has a great deal of meaning. Outside that context, it’s an invitation to paralysis.

I *really* appreciate your take on this. Yes, it is *HARD*. But if we don’t figure it out, it won’t get figured, and then we’re screwed.

That’s why I’ve been hammering away at issues of Victory/Crash conditions. It’s kind of like classical software testing. You have to test the boundary conditions, load, race conditions, input/output, usability, design, etc. It’s all part of making a proper piece of software work.

WE, and I mean WE, as in everyone born since 1945, has a responsibility to Help Figure It Out. Now. Not later. And that’s why I’m bringing up these “meta-issues” of Victory/Crash conditions and definitions. Once we have a grip on what we need to have happen, we can set about inventing our way to that conclusion. Otherwise, we’re just wasting our time.

I’m going to post this to my blog – it’s a good discussion.

Again, thanks for the feedback. This weekend I will be looking at these parameters in greater detail, and I hope I can arrive at some suggestions or ideas for directions and policies and other points of debate and action.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Nihilism

I’ve been having a discussion with a fellow on the Energy Resources List. He is of an extremely nihilistic bend in terms of the peak oil issue. Some of our discussion follows, as I think it is of some broader and more general interest:

>On the other hand one could favor business as usual.

No. It’s not binary. It’s not black and white – it’s not like that. The next few paragraphs run according to your straw man argument, but I’ll comment on a few points:

> The population is still increasing, the rain forest is still being destroyed,
> lakes and rivers are still being polluted, topsoil is still being blown
> away and animal species are still going extinct. We are literally
> destroying the biosphere.

And even if we were all teletransported instantly to some Star Trek Fantasy land never to return to the earth, these species would continue dying off and the biosphere would still be a sinking wreck. It would return to an equilibrium faster without us, but we’re still talking many thousands of years.

>We could hope to delay the peak, and the collapse until around 2040 or 2050.

Well, if Deffeyes is correct, the peak is already here. I don’t think delaying the peak is interesting. I don’t find the binary logic behind the argument useful. What IS interesting is how we are going to manage the transition to other fuels and gracefully depopulate the planet.

I think we can all agree that Peak Oil is a fact, and an inevitability. However: imagine something totally extra-ordinary happens: they come up with something like cold-fusion that’s cheap and easy to do. Then oil could peak and no one would really notice…

It’s not the transition itself that’s in question or doubt – it’s more the character of said transition. While I am usually loathe to agree with the likes of Lomborg on anything, he does have a specific insight when he says “You don’t buy gasoline, you buy transportation”. If cars no longer ran on gas, you would still have to buy traonsportation, but gas wouldn’t be part of the equation.

This doesn’t solve te ecological problem, but that’s another issue. I’m simply demonstrating that the reduction in oil production doesn’t *by necessity* require a die off. It CAN, and if things don’t change, and quickly, probability reduces to certainty, but presuming certainty I feel is illegitimate as I discuss below.

>Peak oil in this decade would be terrible.

I tink it’s already here – we’re just cruising on the glutted plateau.

>But peak oil forty years from now would be far, far worse.

I see – I see – you’re conflating the demand/production curve crossings in the economics of petroleum production with some kind of instant die-off.

Well: it looks like you now have a test case. If we are around in 30 years, you’re wrong. If we’re not, you’re right, but it doesn’t matter. Now how is that a useful position?

>I find hoping for a much-delayed peak absolutely morally and ethically repugnant.

I think it’s a non-issue. The peak is upon us – it’s just a question of how it is managed, and the character of the transition to other energy sources takes on.

>And anyone who thinks the earth can support such a population indefinite for half
>a century without destroying what little flora and fauna is left upon this earth simply
>has not a clue as to what is happening to the earth.

I agree – it looks bleak. But not impossible.

>If we had a choice, now or later, it would not be a choice between
>good and evil. It would be a choice between evil and a much greater
>evil.

So we should all vote CHTHULU for president? After all, why settle for the lesser evil?

I’m too cynical to believe in nihilism, and I find the doomsaying in the peak oil debate has its uses as a goad when it is understood in an if/then context. But if it is presented as a certainty, then there is:

a: no point in discussing the issue
b: there is no point to this forum, except as a form of black humour
c: no point in even trying to survive the catastrophe, as those who do will be living lives of a Hobbesian sort, and who wants to live like that?

As a consequence, the nihilist position can be seen as a parasitic middle class luxury. If there are things needing change, the proper thing to do is to change them and to form communities of people to help change them. What needs to be done can be scaled according to need at point. In the USA getting people out of their cars and getting them to turn the damn lights off when they go to bed would be a good “start.” Getting people to grow food instead of lawns would be a really good idea as well. Developing neighbourhood windmill energy projects would also help. But, most of all: GETTING PEOPLE TO STOP HAVING SO MANY DAMN KIDS would be the best thing of all.

The list is long, and there is much to be done. I find the nihilist position disuseful and unconvincing outside of an if/then context. Within such a context, it is EXTREMELY useful and actually, necessary. But outside of such a context, *at this present time* it has no value. Given the stakes involved, the extreme nihilist position outside of the if/then context, is therefore immoral. Russia had nihilists first, in the 1880s, 1890s. Once the nihilists were discredited/jailed/killed off, they had a proper revolution. That the revolution resulted in a disaster of an empire is not relevent – the point is nihilism goes nowhere, and is just as much of a detriment to free and creative thinking as the cornicopian neocon fascists presently running the show.

The only thing that results from nihilism is a cult. Nihilism won’t keep the hospitals open, won’t make the discoveries we need, or even reduce the population – after all – if it doesn’t matter, then it doesn’t matter- have a jillion kids – their lives are their problem, not yours, and besides – it doesn’t matter.

You can’t forge a new society from doom. People need someplace to go and have fun. If it’s dancing in some over lit discotheque in Las Vegas with a buffet of meatballs and oysters, or dancing in front of a camp fire by some rawhide tents cooking up a chunk of buffalo – it’s still fun. People are social primates. As such they need to be led. Pointing a direction into an abyss is not leading. Pointing a direction into a foggy area that seems to go down around the abyss will have to do- travelling down that foggy bottom is all we really have.

So, hold hands, stay close, keep walking, and sing!

Tuesday, November 29, 2005
How to Avert Catastrophe: Community
There’s been a great deal of discussion about Peak Oil, and much of it has taken on a kind of narcissistic schadenfreude – where there is a kind of cruel laughter “Muuuaahahahahahahaaa” that seems to permeate the discussion and defines The Real Peak Oilers from the noobs and the cornicopians. Why it is narcissistic is that we’re talking about Ourselves in such a dismissive and gloating manner. That is not the way to win friends and influence people. You can’t build a community of concerned citizens by telling them “Most of you are going to die”. All you get out of that is a nihilistic cult.

This does not invalidate their position: there is a non-zero probability that we could see a massive die-off in the next 30 years. How? If nations do nothing to prepare for a post-petroleum world, and are then hit with avian flu and regional nuclear resource wars – that would pretty much insure the elimination of about 80% of the human race, right off the bat. Between the starvation, the disease, and the radiation, there wouldn’t be much left to work with.

However, I don’t see that as a genuine likelyhood – more as a possibility that becomes increasingly probable if specific conditions aren’t met. One of the factors that will most greatly mitigate against such a massive and immediate die off is Community. People working with people to the collective good. One development toward said community is this blog. I know this is not the first blog regarding this issue, nor will it be the last. But it’s the one you’re reading now, and so, in this immediate sense, we share an attention and can form a community, however temporary it is as you read this, of two.

You, my dear reader, and I are now linked together – from the words I type at 9.30 in the morning on a cool grey Tuesday to whenever and where ever you read them – we can communicate – you can leave a comment below, and we can discuss ideas. There are other blogs and I will be collecting links to them.

The first one you will see to your right, under the “Blogs” heading, is to the New York City Oil Drum blog – run by PeakGuy. He writes well and with precision about energy issues related to New York City – eevrything from Bike Lanes on Second Ave to more philosophical and insightful issues regarding the social integration of Peak Oil theory. Check him out!

In order to avert true catastrophe, we will all need to “pull together”. To quote Ben Franklin – “We must hang together or surely we will all hang separately.” Local groups need to take action to get their neighbours aware of the problem and working to immediate mitigation solutions. This can be on very small scales: just getting the old geezer across the street to use CFL bulbs and to turn off his porch light at night is a good first step. Things scale from there. If each city works at that level, we can see significant mitigation efforts come to fruition – everything from community food banks and backyard farm associations to neighbourhood energy management via windmills.

The facts are plain to see – we’re quickly approaching or have actually arrived at Peak Oil. The time to act is now, before it all hits the fan. If we wait for it to hit the fan, it will be too late. Community organising at a neighbourhood level is easier than organising at a state or national level. This is especially true if such organisations are helped and/or guided by local government. Officials in local government need to be educated on the facts of the issue, and need to understand what is at stake for their constituencies, including the mayor or the county supervisor. If approached properly, they can be brought on to help in the process, and could actually be a source of funding to get these programs going and co-ordinated.

Every community has its own priorities and complexities, so there can never be a top-down formula for success. That’s why local organising is critical – each community will have its own set of skills and needs and if organised from the bottom up, and then co-ordinated across from larger city-wide/county/regional perspective, significant mitigation efforts can be brought to bear and all uniquely tailored and perfectly fitted to the local conditions.

In future entries I hope to feature more about such efforts. An immediate example that comes to mind is what is going on in Willets, California.

There is also this interesting article regarding Local Governments Role in the Transition to a Post-Petroleum Society.

If we organise ourselves now, we can more easily ride out the storm later – we can Transition to a Post-Petroleum World instead of Collapsing Into It. This is not to say such a transition will be painless – on the contrary – we are looking at some difficult times ahead. But difficult is better than the bleaker visions of the more extreme theories surrounding Peak Oil.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

I’ve noticed that many blogs use Google Ads to support themselves. I am considering much the same – so over the next few weeks you might see a major adjustment to the appearance of Early Warning.

Monday, November 28, 2005
Victory Conditions

Let’s pretend that people were the size of mice and consumed the ratio of resources of a mouse to an average ethiopian, the earth could possibley sustain 100 billion or even more of us. But that’s not how we’re built – we’re bigger and require more food and space. In order to procure the basics of food, clothing, and shelter, we need (X) resources and when said resources are divided among ever larger numbers of people, the amount per capita goes down. As it is presently structured, the USA/Canada, Japan, and Europe (.i.e. the First World and the now quickly ramping up China and India) consume way more resources than the earth can possibly provide and this is clearly going to come to a halt (not an end) fairly soon in an historical sense.

If we could reduce the resource consumption per capita by some crazy multiple, there wouldn’t be a problem. So: the challenge is clear: how do we get from point A (here, today) to point B (there, later) with the least amount of catastrophic events? Continued research (combined with consciousness raising, appropriate energy policy decision making, grassroots mobilisation, consumption reduction, etc.) may lead to other innovations to help us get to point B.

I think an interesting problem is some thing I discussed several weeks ago, and got some, but not much response on:

What IS a CRASH?
What IS VICTORY?

I’ll paraphrase/modify the previous discussion – if the end result of a Crash is defined as “living in tents and chasing buffalo” but it takes 200,000 years to get there, IS IT A “CRASH”? How about 100,000 years? Or 5,000 years? Or 1,000 years? Or 500 years? It seems the closer we get to present day, the more it is seen as a “Crash”. Therefore: the “crash” does not exist, and will not exist except in the sense that it becomes an object of perception and experience.

What constitutes Victory over the Energy Crisis? Would a gradual transition to “living in tents and chasing buffalo” ever be considered a Victory? If so, and it takes 200,000 years to get there, then is the Crash ans the Victory the same thing? If so, then the nihilist wing of the Cassandran position comes to the fore: rather than wait to live in tents and chase buffalo in 200,000 years, make it happen by 2015.

However, this only has weight with the assumption that “living in tents and chasing buffalo” is a Victory. If it is not a victory condition, then other issues come to the fore, by necessity, depending on the choice of victory conditions. As a consequence, I see a lot of gloating on the part of the Cassandras and a lot of pigheadedness on the part of the cornicopians. As I have also noted, the Cassandras have a really good stick, and the cornicopians have a pretty weak looking carrot. However – if we are to prevent catastrophe, the Cassandran position must be maintained in order to goad the populace into action. However, the innovations by the Cornicopians shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand as a “day late and a dollar short”.

I think it is of paramount importance that we establish Victory Conditions. Once we figure out what is required, we can set about inventing our way to such targets. If we don’t establish Victory Conditions, then we’ll be on the same hamster cage roller as the capitalist system itself: not knowing where it’s going, but getting there really fast.

It is also imperative that Crash Conditions be defined relative to Victory Conditions – as I noted above, it is a simple matter to define them as identical at some great distance in the future. Since such a scenario is of a remote probability, Crash conditions need to be defined in near term points, and the Cassandran position is very clear on this. The only problem is this: a near-term crash could create a logical condition of irrelevence.

Socrates is a man
All men are mortal
: Socrates must die

The problem is: in order to prove the middle you’d have to kill everyone including yourself, in which case, the point is moot. The same goes for the Cassandra position: if the worst fears are realised, then it simply doesn’t matter. Therefore, the Cassandran position fails to persuade, and (worst of all) actually gives ammunition to the Cornicopians, only this time, it’s live Ammo, because people will suffer because of it.

Therefore, the logic of the Cassandran position must always be a few years away – not next year – maybe five, 10, 25 years away – much like the cornicopian brags of plenty. (I’m thinking of Kurzweil’s idiotic notions of the SIngularity occuring around 2030 – very convenient for it to happen AFTER HE’LL LIKELY BE DEAD.) These projections have to be in the future – if they were immediate and imminent, then there would be the loss of face and credibility should they not occur.

This brings me back to my point earlier about perception. If we define the crash as “no grid, all food locally and organically grown, a reduced self powering communications infrastructure, decentralised government and currency” and it takes 30 years to get there, IS IT A CRASH? If it happens so slowly that it takes two or three or five generations to complete, the perception of any given generation will be one of great hardship, but not “Crash”.

That’s why I think it is of critical importance that there be a debate about Crash and Victory Conditions. The sooner we get that out of the way, the sooner we can set about correcting or at least managing the situation.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Happy Peak Oil Day (?)

Today is Thanksgiving Day, where citizens of the United States give thanks for all the crap they’ve stolen from everyone else. First it was the Indians, then it was Mexico (France cashed out when the gettin’ was good), then it was Spain, and ever since then, the world has been America’s target. And how did America do it? Oil. Black Gold. Texas Tea. Well the first thing you know, Uncle Sam’s a trillionaire, and his advisors said “Sam – fly away from there” They said “The Middle East is the place you oughta be!” So they loaded up the planes and bombed the Iraqis – for the oil that is… black gold… Texas Tea…

I suppose it is meet and right to give thanks, even if you are a lugubrious empire of plutocrats and prisoners, guards and soldiers, unwilling wage slaves and obsequious lackies.

And let us give thanks that the lights are still on, eh?

Acccording to Ken Deffeyes, Today (or sometime right around today) will prove to be Peak Oil Day – from here on out, it’s all downhill.

Frankly, I don’t think he’s correct – from what I can gather, Peak Oil Day is probably another 5 years off – but I am willing to be wrong on that. In the greater scheme of things, it seems that 5 years doesn’t amount to a whole lot of anything. Heck – it seems that Portishead goes that long between records… However – 5 years here, 5 years there – pretty soon, it adds up to something useful. But more on that later.

The interesting part of such a notion is: What Exactly Is Peak Oil? When the pumping of crude goes into irreversible decline? There are several alternatives to liquid crude oil – tar sands, vegetable oil, even shale oil and methane hydrates. Yes, they all have fairly miserable ER/EI ratios, but one can get oil (or at least fuel) out of those sources.

This, of course, dodges the question as to whether it is in our best interests to go down that path at all, and I think that is where the real debate lies. I tend to think it is not, and the reason is simple: climate change due to CO2. Of all the “oil sources” vegetable oil is the one that can be carbon neutral. However, the cultivation of vegetable oil requires huge swaths of land for “oil harvesting” at today’s energy consumption rates. And given the arrival of India and China on the “Modern Lifestyle Scene” I don’t see the consumption of high density liquid energy going down anytime soon – not to mention the morality of growing huge amounts of food (soybeans, etc.) to be burned up in some fat ass suburbanite’s SUV so they can schlep their mewling Ritalin addled obese crotchfruit to and from Soccer Practice.

This, of course, brings us back to Peak Oil. What’s it going to be?

Recently the libertarian dorks (Have you noticed I have a really bad attitude? Deal.) over at WIRED published an article that basically says “Technology Will Save Our Fat Asses”. They are of course, only half right. Technology WILL change things, but it won’t save the fat – it will save the thin…

Jebus said “A rich man can go to heaven as a camel may pass through the eye of a needle.” The “Eye of the Needle” was one of the gates of Jerusalem. Back in those days, roving hordes of assholes would run rampant across the landscape – chopping, burning and killing each other and anyone in sight. If you liked the idea of indoor living and a peaceful life, you had to wall off your city. The gates in and out were often small – barely large enough for a person to go through. Often there was a single large main gate for horses and camels and other large things to pass, but most of the egress was done by way of the smaller gates – hence: The Eye of the Needle as a nickname for an especially minor gate, and the difficulty in getting a camel through one.

The world is facing just such a gate – an energy gate. And FAT countries, like the USA, are less equipped to get through it. Their citizens aren’t trained in methods of restraint and preservation – all they know is excess and waste. The Kogi living in the hills of Peru will survive much better than the poor bastards living in the slums of the Bronx or East LA or Newark NJ or the rich slime moulds living in the Hamptons, Beverly Hills, or Short Hills NJ. What is “Rich” in this context is not money – you can’t eat money or put it in your tank – what is “Rich” is one’s energy diet…

This doesn’t mean that we’re (necessarily) facing some kind of a massive die-off. We ARE facing such a die off, if things don’t change and change fast. But if we immediately instill some serious policies to curb the use of oil, we can extend the Peak Plateau for another five years, maybe ten. If we get really good at it, maybe fifteen. This will allow us the time to put into practice new lifestyles that are:

a: inherently lower in energy use
b: inherently richer in social content
c: able to get us through the “eye of the needle”

The important thing to remember is that in this particular case, once you’re through the eye of the needle, you’re not back in open space. You’re in The City. It will be crowded and delicate, and require enormous ingenuity to keep from going into a die off. Which is why another part of the lifestyle change will have to be:

d: a voluntary die off.

Basically: a massive global population reduction program. The Third World (South) will tend to have higher death rates from disease and poverty than the First World (North), but because the North is gobbling up all the goodies, it is the North that needs to reduce its population the most and really get on the stick. Luckily, there are some few signs that such is actually happening – many European countries are going into population decline, and this is good. If I recall correctly, the same would be true of the USA if it wasn’t for immigration (legal or otherwise).

By my calculations, the world needs to lose at least 100 million people more per year than it gains, and continue that number for about 100 years before we are at a sustainable population. At that point, the City will be smaller, cleaner, and much more capable of keeping the human project going.

I’m not a doomsayer – I’m not a total Cassandra. BUT: I’m not stupid and I can see the writing on the wall. We need to mobilise, and do it now.

Well, maybe not now. It is Thanksgiving. I’ll chat this up at the dinner table, so we can get people thinking tomorrow. The bigger the boat, the slower it turns…

would you be so kind as to pass me the gravy? Thanks…