The Oil Drum

Just to make sure that OilCEO reads my reply to his nut monkey comment on the Saturday open thread, I repost what I said there. As I read the comments on this thread, I see the theme of someone "coming to the rescue" playing out. The fantasy lives on. And thus, my repost is actually apropos to this thread.

So, for everyone's enjoyment --- the repost.

To the Oil CEO, which is akin, in my eyes, to calling oneself "Reichsfuhrer," is missing the point of not only the argument of the moment, but the basic underlying assumptions that undergird his techno-utopian vision. I am not saying that tomorrow we will all die, I'm not even saying that we will all die in the next twenty years. (Though obviously we all die.) I am saying that his vision of constant growth is a physically IMPOSSIBLE.

IT CANNOT BE DONE.

The true nut monkeys, or more accuarately the unwitting-dupe monkeys, are people like OilCEO who believe that we will continue to grow: that population will continue to swell, that some magical techno bullet will save all our butts from the reality of simple physics. His is the blarney we all hear from carnival barkers and patent-medicine salesman. He is the man who insists that the dot.com revolution will go on forever and the stock market will rise to ever greater heights, so buy some more dot.com stock. He is the stock brocker who famously, and fatuously, said on October 28th, 1929, the stock market will rise forever. If OilCEO had even a modicum of education he would see the irony in citing the "dark side" in his comment, but he doesn't. He is mired in profit-seeking, hip-deep in moral equivocation, up to his eyeballs in ignorance: a sad and ignorant man bereft of the knowledge that would would set him free and unable to assess that knowledge, should he deign to think critically about it.

He is a booster, he is George Babbit.

What he and his ilk say is a shuck and jive that is guaranteed to ensure the snuffing of all rational action regarding this revolutionary problem. His proffered hope that something/anything, some special technology, some special human quality, will step out of the shadows and fix everything is nonsense for one simple reason:

WE LIVE ON A SPHERE, NIMROD!!!!

Even if we work out perfect, clean, unadulterated fusion, the planet will still be doomed because of population growth, the destruction of arable farmland, the loss of fresh water, the destruction of the oceans and global warming.

The problem is not oil. Oil is only the rickety wooden framework that is holding up our improbable rollercoaster of a species. The problem is ALL the resources. The problem is species footprint.

The problem is there is only so much cheap oil, expensive oil, coal, natural gas, and what ever else you may want to throw in the mix, left to help back us down from the precipice with a minimum of pain. The time to remove the horses from the barn is before the building is engulfed in flames.

Listen to whom you will, but mark this: Nature will go its own way no matter our actions, but it is entirely possible that she will not include us.