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309 comments on DrumBeat: September 14, 2006

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PhilRelig on September 14, 2006 - 12:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
A propos little-noted but very thoughtful writers on the web, another person I have come to have a high regard for is John Michael Greer, at http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/
His regular blogs on Peak Oil and the future destiny of society are moderate in tone, intellectually disciplined, and quite thoughtprovoking.  I highly recommend his stuff, even though I don't share his pagan religious convictions.  
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Leanan on September 14, 2006 - 12:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
He's the guy who came up with the theory of catabolic collapse.  Which is probably the most doomerish outcome I can imagine.

The sad thing is, I fear he is correct.

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PhilRelig on September 14, 2006 - 1:29pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
You should read some of his more recent posts, Leanan.  If his pessimism was perhaps extreme in the past, it has moderated somewhat lately.  For example, he now thinks that the collapse will be gradual and protracted (rather than sudden and abrupt), spanning many decades, and that this will leave room for those aware of the situation to implement productive measures for what he terms our "predicament."  I wouldn't say that he is without hope for the long-term future by any stretch of the imagination.
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Leanan on September 14, 2006 - 2:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
He has always thought that way.  That is what catabolic collapse means.

The reason I see that as the most doomerish outcome possible is that it means we do not change our ways.  Instead, we keep trying to do what we are doing, switching to ever poorer sources of energy.  Until all resources and capital are converted to waste, and we simply cannot continue.

The result is a crash to a lower population level and level of complexity than existed before the complex society arose or arrived, because the environment is so poor that it cannot support anything else.

The good news?  I probably won't have to worry about it, since it will take a hundred years or more.  :-/

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dinopello on September 14, 2006 - 3:05pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
This is exactly how I feel.  It would be so nice to live in an age of renaissance, even if it had to be preceeded by an abrupt shock.  But, I fear I may live in an age of slow, relentless descent.  
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PhilRelig on September 14, 2006 - 4:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Another drawback of the slow, relentless collapse scenario is that it greatly facilitates denial on the part of Peak Oil-naysayers; an abrupt collapse would at least be strongly convincing.
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DIYer on September 15, 2006 - 8:41am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Regarding the Archdruid Report, I thought his handle was sort of a joke like "Alpha Male Prophet of Doom", but now I see that he is seriously into that stuff.

But I think he's right — we'll have a slow collapse in which our greed and hunger will allow us to consume every frickin' blade of grass.

A rapid collapse and depopulation wouldn't be much fun for us, but would leave our descendants, and the planet, better off a century or two from now.

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step back on September 15, 2006 - 11:49am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"our greed"

Many here at TOD argue over whether wars are due to:

  1. competition for resources, or
  2. conflict of ideologies (religions).

They don't consider the possibility that #1 and #2 are subsumed by:
3. empires of the elite bumping into each other.

Most of us are just pawns on a chessboard ruled by a short list of Kings. The Kings really don't care whether you suffer or not as you make the "ultimate sacrfice" for King and Country (but actually "Country" is redundant because it also means King as far as the King is concerned.)

Kings use religion as a means of controlling their pawns. In the USA the current religion is called The War on Terra. In other parts of the world the religion is called The War on Infidelism. All that is bullsh*t of course because the pawns are going to get a big fat zero in the end. It's all about the Kings and their greed, not about "our greed".

Bush did win his war on Iraq. He and his buddies got the oil they wanted, and the monies (oops, I mean "honorariums") that flow from it. The fact that so many pawns were sacrificed and continue to be sacrificed for the Noble's Cause is irrelevant. Who gives an eyebrow twinkle for the lower class "them"? They're doing as best as they can for themselves, Dearie --to requote Mamma Bushie's line about the refugees from Hurricane Katrina. Yeah right. "Our" greed.

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davidsmi on September 15, 2006 - 12:29pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Since I'm one of those involved in that discussion I want to respond to your characterization. I never said that wars were fought over ideology. I said they were fought over ideas. This distinction is large and important. For example, your conspiracy approach to "Kings" assumes that they stand in some outside neutral ground unimpacted by the culture around them. Such a notion is patent nonsense on the face of it. Essentially, you have adopted a "realist" notion of politics and assumed that there is a power kabal that works only by the rules of that realist notion.

While you might get some where arguing that a realist approach to politics should be adapted by some state or actor, that realism is the only motive is clearly not the case. "Kings" may use religion for all sorts of things, but it would be naive to think that the religious beliefs of these "kings" doesn't influence what they do.

I'm not sure why this "man behind the curtain" view of politics is so popular here (like the apparent belief by some that there's a group of shady characters who meet in a room somewhere and decide what the price of gas should be in order to get a certain member of their group elected), but, jeez, could we build a model of the world that isn't based on spy novel intrique levels of analysis? I may not agree with the materialist interpretations, but at least its an argument based on reason.

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toilforoil on September 15, 2006 - 5:11pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
While I agree with the general drift of much of what you say, I will say that people do meet behind the curtains to set the stage for electoral victory.  In the case of gasoline prices, the players who screamed that Clinton was releasing oil for the SPR in order to manipulate oil/gasoline prices 6 years ago, are very aware of a) the political importance of gasoline prices, b) repetitive trends in seasonal market prices, and c) of ways to encourage the trend.

Do you honestly believe that persons capable of providing media 'friends' with the identity of intelligence agents are incapable of finding media 'friends' who would welcome talking points about a major oil "discovery", even when the discovery was 2 years old (Jack located the oil, Jack 2 brought some to the surface).  Do you believe them incapable of simultaneously playing to the zionist crowd, while softening their stance vis-a-vis Iran, in order to defuse the geo-political premium affecting the price of oil?
Do you believe them incapable of abandoning Al-Anbar and other areas of Iraq in order to concentrate on the flow of export oil (as well as on providing 'security' in the few tiny parts of Iraq where the media has any presence and from where U.S. electoral opinion might be influenced).

And so we could go on. These are the people who from plans devised in the dark, turned an honorable Secretary of State into a public fool. These are the chicken hawks who turned true patriots and heroes into shirkers and friends of terrorists.  These are the people who systematically work to keep opposition friendly voters from exercising their franchise.

Power is everything to them.  They do not want windfall profit taxes on oil corporations.  They do not want to lose power in KSA to an angry, cheated population. They do not want to pay the cost of confronting climate change. They will do what it takes to win, and in the US, they well know that the price of gasoline is about as significant an issue as any other. So they send out their emmissaries to decry peak oil, repetition and the baldness of the lie being key to its success.  They exaggerate the supply response. They know the herd is made up of cows, not cats.

They do meet behind closed doors and connive to lower the price of gasoline.  That's the nature of "making your own reality".

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309 comments on DrumBeat: September 14, 2006

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