The die-off scenario is the real elephant in the room when it comes to discussions about energy depletion. I, too, have found Jay Hanson's logic difficult to put aside. The fact is, when one computes, on a Btu basis, the quantity of alternative energy required to replace post-peak oil depletion, Jay's conclusion is validated: "No combination of renewable energy systems have the potential to generate more than a fraction of the power now being generated by fossil fuels." Result: Die-off.
OK, but who says we need all the energy we're using? We're all living in a cheap energy era. The next era looks like a more expensive energy era. Since most of the world lives on a fraction of the energy of the rich, it seems as though it's possible to live with less.
IMHO, the question is can we adjust to the rate of decline? I suspect the rich world generally will by moving toward more expensive energy, less energy-intensive transportation, less wasteful housing, and less disposable manufactured goods (both less overall and higher quality). That means living more like people in the earlier 20th century, but with much higher technology.
I suspect there will be die-offs (they happen all the time now anyway), but they will largely be in the less developed world and will be attributed to the usual suspects of disease and famine rather than overpopulation, resource depletion, and climate change which will be driving things.
Your missing the point here. Human society is unable, due to psychological hard wiring, to go from a state of high energy use to a lower one without some serious strife and struggle that is typically expressed violently.
A few individuals who are particularly aware of their own mind may be able to, but the masses can not. Look around, how many people profess to take global warming seriously, perhaps recycle, use low energy light bulbs etc. And then take one flight and blow all that was saved and more.
The problem is that the human animal uses possessions and social standing as gauges for how successful we are. We are hard wired to want more and ultimately this translates into energy use.
If we could find a mechanism for translating 'more sustainable' into 'higher social standing' then we would have a winner. But I cannot see a way to do it.
I am not completely with Jay Hanson though. I think it is possible and in the end inevitable that humans will eventually evolve an intelligent way into sustainable consciousness. But it will take a long time... hundreds... thousands, maybe even millions of years. It is either that or die out only for another animal to replace us and make it.
The only short cut would be genetically engineering ourselves to be wired differently. But that opens a whole other can of worms. How can a bunch of monkeys who don't have the moral abilities necessary to program themselves to have them... the process would just be corrupted by our current mindset resulting in even greater violence. Beside the science is not even close to doing that, and we are out of time.
I have a hard time imagining the local population rioting over unaffordable flight tickets or a doubling of the gasolene price as long as the factors giving the high price are external to the local politicians and other sectors work ok. Nobody in Sweden imagines that our government control the world market, perhaps the US population do.
This makes it important to keep electricity production up and price down to keep non oil sectors healthy and people warm and comfortable and to have towns functioning on bicycling and collective transportation and those systems are fairly ok.
The biggest external psycological help with this would probably be if some rich country region crashed and media were full of reports on how awfull it is in the car-only parts of the world who have lacked planning and now cant afford new infrastructure. Be patriotic and accept the lower pension etc, in a few years the new trolley and rail lines will open and plug-in hybrids are slowly getting cheaper, it will be better in 5 years. And if you can afford it, buy a share in the new nuclear powerplants and be guaranteed a maximum price for you kWh!
I think it is time to dust of the old nation state and try to keep the competition on the constructive side, who is better at creating new resources and make savings? Those who are best at it should both compete and trade and thus also get resources to help or keep the riff-raff at bay depending on how desperate people are and how cynical people outside this club are. If war starts resources will contract fast and they will be burned in non constructive competition.
I'm on vacation and only skimming things before the clouds clear up (Seaside, OR). It stikes me that these inclusive fitness -> dieoff arguments pull some proper biology (recent sociobiology) but they seem to me to be selecting the slice that is usefull to the worldview.
I guess the question for those up on both dieoff and modern neurobiology is: how can you be sure this is not confirmation bias?
FWIW, it seems a warning sign when someone shares not just a concern, but a flat certainty of where the fixed and flexible portions of human behavior will take us:
Your missing the point here. Human society is unable, due to psychological hard wiring, to go from a state of high energy use to a lower one without some serious strife and struggle that is typically expressed violently.
My off the cuff blog remark is coming short of a truly balanced response.
I used to be a big poster on forums but hold back these days because I find that to write a really good post that really reflects my views I have to spend several days contemplating and researching, making sure I am covering all the angles. I don't have a chance of keeping up with oil drum posts, each time I check there are another 300 comments and posts become stale very quick.
And I agree, it is very hard to extrapolate the future from what is still a young science and yes humans are adaptable.
however, the point I am trying to make still remains...
As was said by Kevembuangga lower down. the kind of problems we are facing now is dealing with SECOND ORDER regulations, i.e. regulating the dynamics of the system, not just the immediate outcomes.
We simply do not have the wetware that we need to face this situation, past evolutionary response has been to `move to the next island' or `kill off the neighbours.' This means that we have to consciously overrule our instincts. It can be done but it is hard, and many will not even want to try, believing their instinctual response to be the correct one.
Women tend to mate and marry UP the resource ladder, correct? Not saying that happens all the time, but most. I could provide links if you really inssist but I think this is somewhat common knowledge.
This is why men compete to move up the resource ladder. Naturally we each want the best mates: the best looking, most intelligent, etc.
Now when will we powerdown? When women start mating and marrying DOWN the resource ladder.
Question #1: when was the last time you heard a woman say, "I'm looking for a good man, one who is smart, funny, gets along well with others and who makes less money than me."
Question #2: this one is for the married guys and gals: how would the woman in the relationship react if the man came home and said, "honey, I've been reading about this Peak Oil thing and I think we need to reduce both our own consumption and our own economic activity so as to reduce the strain on the planet. So I'm taking a 75% pay cut."?
Alpha Leader,
I am married.
I followed your leadership suggestion in Question #2.
Results not pretty.
Let's say Lorena Bobbitt is starting to look like a kindly gentle lady to me right now.
I am starting to have doubts in your leadership abilities.
(P.S. Just kidding. I'm stupid, but not that stupid to try Question number 2. The results would be total Bobbitthood. I would not be able to join you and Sailorman in those exhibition games anymore. As you know, certain things are non-negotiable.)
Question #2: this one is for the married guys and gals: how would the woman in the relationship react if the man came home and said, "honey, I've been reading about this Peak Oil thing and I think we need to reduce both our own consumption and our own economic activity so as to reduce the strain on the planet. So I'm taking a 75% pay cut."
Thrilled that I was not killing myself for things we don't need. Just wish I had the guts to do it.
I see this as slices again. Men and women both make gambits to enhance their position in life. We can say "position" in a general sense to capture more of the truth in this. Position may be as short term as a dray place to sleep [saw Fort Clatsop yesterday], as moderate term as a good line on a food source [elk through the winter], or as long term as social capital within the group [social position on return to the East].
Why do you always abbreviate that sociobiology to one specific kind of "position" and write "up the resource ladder?"
To be honest, that seems to missing the forest for the tree.
Question #2: this one is for the married guys and gals: how would the woman in the relationship react if the man came home and said, "honey, I've been reading about this Peak Oil thing and I think we need to reduce both our own consumption and our own economic activity so as to reduce the strain on the planet. So I'm taking a 75% pay cut."?
the status of women post peak is not pretty. the reason islam evolved to have their women in veil is I think, scarcity. covering them up means less competition for the males to expense a lot of energy consumption to win the best looking female.
women in the western world will be married off. they will no longer have much freedom. just the other day, the news said teenage girls opt for marriage more. have more children but they're in wedlock.
women can't handle the business world anymore, it seems. a lot of men will go the same way with regard to the business world.
all this is scary to the beta males/the intellectual ones. they feel this will happen to them. they'll be marginalized. the alpha males with the bigger muscles will win. all this is the status quo around the world today.
I'm not convinced by the arguments around human nature making it socially impossible to power down gracefully.
Studies of human happiness have famously shown that once basic needs are met, material wealth doesn't make any real difference to happiness. What does make a difference to happiness is relative status. If you're doing better than the other guy, you feel good. You'll get the girls.
I used to think that this was a terrible thing, because we can never make everyone happy - someone will always be at the bottom of the heap, someone always comes last even in the olympics. Now I see the glass half full - when we power down in may not actually make much difference to human happiness, ie social stability as long as we make sure that the basic needs are met. We can consume a hell of a lot less resources than we (in the developed world) do now and still meet those basic needs.
I think we have a chance if the decline is in fact Stuart's "slow squeeze" and the realisation and transition is slow enough not to induce a panic.
Matt, I voluntarily took an 85% paycut. After 8 years in California with a V8 Mustang, horse and heated swimming pool, I'm now back in the UK. I now have no car, no horse and swim in the ocean (or sea as it called here :) Living very nicely on $15k and, at the risk of sounding like Sailorman, no problems in finding good looking intelligent women. I piss on your theories :)
I suspect that if 100 guys did as you have done, 90% plus would not have such great results.
What you've done is not unlike a bigger/more thorough version of me going without a car here in the car-obsessed U.S. 9 out of 10 guys who might attempt to do what I would do would see a decrease in their status/popularity.
Luckily I am quite charming and handsome so I'm able to get away with it. Proof you ask? Here you go:
Matt - I took a 100% pay cut, but primarily because I envision a time that energy and ecology (which is what Im studying) will be more important than money. But remember its the FEELINGS we get that motivate our actions, not necessarily the actions themselves.
The sad thing is, I won't feel too bad about it as long as everyone else is also taking a 75% pay cut. If everyone else is taking an 80% pay cut, I'll feel I'm doing well.
EXACTLY.
Netherlands has something like top tax bracket of 80%. Yet people still work and they have one of the highest subjective well beings on the planet, (unless the pumps run out of energy and the country sits under 3 feet of water)
People wont voluntarily reduce their income if everyone else is still making full cash - someone needs to tell them to do it. Alternatively, the real forward thinkers will realize the buddhist economic angle that they can never win the relative fitness game and reduce desires to simple pleasures using HROEI - Happiness returned on Energy Invested)
Americans have much different cultural (and possibly genetic - DRD4 dopamine gene) structure than Japanese. Not saying its likely, just saying thats probably what it'll take.
And yes, if I could surround myself with social capital (including one (1) wife), in a setting rich in natural capital, I would attempt to pursue the personal powerdown. I am learning what that takes now though, and its not easy either
It's very well possible that Americans have different genetic characteristics. The nation consists mostly of immigrants, or their (grand)children, so one would expect them more to go away when they don't like something, instead of compromising and stay where they are. This seems to be confirmed by the very high percentage of Americans that move somewhere else each year. It would make it more understandable why "Don't like it, leave" is a slogan that seems to be rather popular. A quote from a song text:
"I do believe
If you don't like things you leave
for some place that's better than before"
This is supposed to be a meaningful question? How?
Do you have pages of math to show us that power-down over the coming decades is equivalent to a 75% pay cut in today's dollars (uniformly on all types of purchasing power), or are you pulling scary numbers out of your butt?
The studies on energy/money and happiness get one thing right but miss a HUGE point:
Happiness is NOT correlated with the absolute amount of money one has. So a person making $100,000 is not any happier than one making $20,000.
What they miss and this is HUGE: happiness is correlated with an increase or decrease in money. If you don't believe me, then wire me half the money in your bank account. I'm pretty sure you'll be less happy and I'll be more happy. (At least for a short period.)
Human society is unable, due to psychological hard wiring, to go from a state of high energy use to a lower one without some serious strife and struggle that is typically expressed violently.
But:
I think it is possible and in the end inevitable that humans will eventually evolve an intelligent way into sustainable consciousness.
I think there's somewhere in the middle that's probably right. I haven't missed the point. I would rephrase your point as "It will be extremely difficult, if possible at all, for people in the rich world to adjust to lower amounts of energy without great violence. It goes against millions of years of genetic selection and thousands of years of recent experience." I certainly agree with that.
I don't agree with the original statement from maximumheaviosity, quoting and paraphrasing Hanson:
Jay's conclusion is validated: "No combination of renewable energy systems have the potential to generate more than a fraction of the power now being generated by fossil fuels." Result: Die-off.
The proposition is that no combination of renewable energy systems have the potential to replace current fossil fuel energy. The unstated assumption is that we need enough energy to replace all current fossil fuel energy. I don't agree with that assumption. I don't disagree that there will be a population reduction, I do agree that there will be increasing violence, and I do expect some amount of premature human deaths in the process (witness Iraq and Lebanon now), but IMHO we can make due with much less energy, so that the adjustment doesn't have to be through massive violence.
I agree with what you say about not needing the amount of energy that we are using.
Personally I live on about a tenth most peoples footprint in the UK. Largely because I work from home, wear jumpers(sweaters) when cold, don't have a car, buy everything locally and don't fly.
However I am unsure that people will respond in the way you think for two reasons.
Firstly because the majority of people are not rational, especially when having their favourite toys removed from them.
But the more important challenge will be how it affects the economy. The current economic system has to continue growing in order to be work (due to the way it is shored up on loaned out savings that have to make an interest.) What would happen if our economic system collapsed?
I'm not really quite the doomer I am probably seeming to be. I actually think it will be a long slow collapse. Lasting several generations.
I came across Jay Hanson's infamous dieoff site back in the 1990s. That was what got me started on the oil peak topic. It was some fascinating stuff back then. I found it when gas was about a buck a gallon. Now it's on a final approach to the airport of Buck A Litre.
Now, people without realising about PO, they are thinking about gas use to where I mention moving to save a fifth of gas they say the move it worth it just to save the fifth each way! Saving a fifth each way is not the only motive to move however, but it sure helps. Once I move, a commuting mission will use "only" 2 fifth of gas each way. It won't be too long until gas costs a buck a fifth, thanks to the oil peak.
What, one the horizon, is going to stop what may already be peak grain, which, of course is not only tied to oil, but to global warming, soil depletion, drowth, salinization, and back to energy again if we keep expanding ethanol production. As we approach zero grain stocks, the price of grain will accelerate, perhaps as much as six fold. Post peak oil or not, the dieoff may have already begun and will just accelerate as this grain situation gets worse.
Right now, it might be prudent to invest in a little beer.
People are always thinking about the problem from only one or two angles. Even if we have less grain produced it doesn't mean we will start to die. What about GM technology to improve yield. What about aquaculture. I am sure we can change our eating habits - less meat maybe so that we have more land for crops. We can eat less and be fitter.
The dieoff hasn't begun and probably will never happen. Perhaps population will decrease but not via some mass death within the next 10-20 years.
Tell that to the majority of Americans who are obese. They could use a diet. Peak grain is really a pretty minor problem compared to peak oil, granted there is some interplay between them.
The energy part of his analysis has merit, but the human behavior part looks like pure garbage to me. He makes it out like humans are hardwired and static and can only change with great difficulty. This is absolute bullshit. Humans are extremely adaptable and able to adjust and come up with innovative ways to overcome difficult situations. If we were truly as described above, we'd have died out hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Just as an example, I recently watched a program about a prison in California where gang members are sent. The gang leaders are segregated from the rest of the population, but they still manage to give orders to their gang members by writing letters in code and then relaying them down from cell to cell using string from their clothing (a practice called "fishing"). These guys make weapons out of all kinds of weird things, including melting down a plastic bag to make a shiv.
I was utterly amazed by just how resourceful and innovative these guys were. I can't imagine that the average population of the prison has better than average intelligence, yet they manage to come up with very complex codes, unique and highly complex social structures/hierarchies, and of course weapons made out of all kinds of weird objects.
So, saying we can't adapt to peak oil and less energy? I say such thoughts are utter crap. We "adapted" to using oil and coal in the first place. If we were so stupid we wouldn't have figured out how to build steam engines in the first place. We built a society based on petroleum, and we can build another one based on alternative energy. Will it be the exact same in every way? Obviously not. Things will be different, maybe dramatically so, but it won't be the end of the world as we know it either.
Once again I have to take issue with this idea that people's brains are wired and cannot adapt. There's a difference between it being harder for someone to pick up a skill, like say learning a language, and adapting to new circumstances. People don't need to learn any major new skills to adjust to a peak oil world, they just need to change their behaviors a little bit. The suggestion here is to the effect that older people are too set in their ways to learn to ride the trolley, rather than drive everywhere.
You can't simplify human thinking down to a computer program of if-then statements. Once again, if our thinking were really that rigid, we'd never have managed to populate the whole world as we have. Who knows maybe something like this is why the Neandertals died out, because their thinking was more rigid? Who knows. In any case, humans are nothing if not adaptable. It is our biggest strength by far. We may lack foresight and long term planning, but when the shit hits the fan we usually find some way to overcome.
In the end, I think what the whole "collapse" argument comes down to is extreme pessimism regarding human nature, looking only at our weaknesses and disregarding all of our strengths, combined with a lack of imagination of how we could do things differently. People are not just going to sit there pumping gas until there is nothing left and then abruptly revert back to caveman ways while our former cities crumble around us. I don't claim that post-peak is going to be easy sailing or that we won't have problems, even quite severe ones, but at the point where we can't ignore the problems anymore, then we'll start to adapt to them. Yes, it's pretty dumb, but it's how we seem to operate.
That's why the fact people are driving around obliviously through LA is irrelevant in my opinion. Yes, they are not aware of the coming problems, maybe they're growing some more awareness as gas approaches $3.50, but they're still in denial. At some point that will end and things will change (already it is changing with SUVs going out of style). It just takes a lot to overcome the initial inertia.
There is no newness... there is adaptation to do the same-old-thing. Isn't this prison cleverness similar to meeting our energy constraints with hybrid cars and ethanol?
I have heard arguements to counter ingenuity. Kunstler I believe talks about that. We're so hopeful and optimistic and our decisions don't seem to have any consequences that threaten us. But all of that ingenuity and optimistism is oil-soaked. I would attribute most great feats done more to the oil than the inventors, engineers, etc. All the alternative fuels have been discredited. It does remind me of the electric car though that could have been an alternative which was killed though. It's too late for that. The peak is already here. Cavemen? That depends on how productive our soil is without petrochemical fertilizer. I've read "The Oil We Eat" and such things but I haven't really been shown how much less the soil would produce without oil. There definitely could be an initial shock depending how much the grain reserves are now, I heard 3 months, and the time of year of the collapse. It would become imperative for a lot of the population to go back to assisting in farming. From 1% farmers to 300 million farmworkers? How may that happen, and what are the conflicts involved in that? I can only imagine.
It depends how abrupt the transition is. If the peak is really a cliff then we might have some bad scenarios develop. We might need more people to farm, or maybe not? There are a lot of ways things can play out. Only in the worst case scenarios do we end up with a catastrophic collapse. Maybe I am just in denial, but I don't see the benefit of planning for the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario being so bad (essentially anarchy) that no amount of planning will really help anyway. Although maybe I will go buy a gun and a lot of bullets, and learn to use them. ;)
At this point we still haven't peaked for sure. We might still keep increasing a bit more. And maybe the post peak decline will be gradual enough for us to make changes. Maybe it won't be and we'll have severe societal collapse and then something new will rise from the ashes. I'll hope for the former only because there is no guarantee that you or I, will be amongst those rising from the ashes, or rather will just be the ashes.
IMHO, the question is can we adjust to the rate of decline? I suspect the rich world generally will by moving toward more expensive energy, less energy-intensive transportation, less wasteful housing, and less disposable manufactured goods (both less overall and higher quality). That means living more like people in the earlier 20th century, but with much higher technology.
I suspect there will be die-offs (they happen all the time now anyway), but they will largely be in the less developed world and will be attributed to the usual suspects of disease and famine rather than overpopulation, resource depletion, and climate change which will be driving things.
Your missing the point here. Human society is unable, due to psychological hard wiring, to go from a state of high energy use to a lower one without some serious strife and struggle that is typically expressed violently.
A few individuals who are particularly aware of their own mind may be able to, but the masses can not. Look around, how many people profess to take global warming seriously, perhaps recycle, use low energy light bulbs etc. And then take one flight and blow all that was saved and more.
The problem is that the human animal uses possessions and social standing as gauges for how successful we are. We are hard wired to want more and ultimately this translates into energy use.
If we could find a mechanism for translating 'more sustainable' into 'higher social standing' then we would have a winner. But I cannot see a way to do it.
I am not completely with Jay Hanson though. I think it is possible and in the end inevitable that humans will eventually evolve an intelligent way into sustainable consciousness. But it will take a long time... hundreds... thousands, maybe even millions of years. It is either that or die out only for another animal to replace us and make it.
The only short cut would be genetically engineering ourselves to be wired differently. But that opens a whole other can of worms. How can a bunch of monkeys who don't have the moral abilities necessary to program themselves to have them... the process would just be corrupted by our current mindset resulting in even greater violence. Beside the science is not even close to doing that, and we are out of time.
This makes it important to keep electricity production up and price down to keep non oil sectors healthy and people warm and comfortable and to have towns functioning on bicycling and collective transportation and those systems are fairly ok.
The biggest external psycological help with this would probably be if some rich country region crashed and media were full of reports on how awfull it is in the car-only parts of the world who have lacked planning and now cant afford new infrastructure. Be patriotic and accept the lower pension etc, in a few years the new trolley and rail lines will open and plug-in hybrids are slowly getting cheaper, it will be better in 5 years. And if you can afford it, buy a share in the new nuclear powerplants and be guaranteed a maximum price for you kWh!
I think it is time to dust of the old nation state and try to keep the competition on the constructive side, who is better at creating new resources and make savings? Those who are best at it should both compete and trade and thus also get resources to help or keep the riff-raff at bay depending on how desperate people are and how cynical people outside this club are. If war starts resources will contract fast and they will be burned in non constructive competition.
I guess the question for those up on both dieoff and modern neurobiology is: how can you be sure this is not confirmation bias?
FWIW, it seems a warning sign when someone shares not just a concern, but a flat certainty of where the fixed and flexible portions of human behavior will take us:
Best.
My off the cuff blog remark is coming short of a truly balanced response.
I used to be a big poster on forums but hold back these days because I find that to write a really good post that really reflects my views I have to spend several days contemplating and researching, making sure I am covering all the angles. I don't have a chance of keeping up with oil drum posts, each time I check there are another 300 comments and posts become stale very quick.
And I agree, it is very hard to extrapolate the future from what is still a young science and yes humans are adaptable.
however, the point I am trying to make still remains...
As was said by Kevembuangga lower down.
the kind of problems we are facing now is dealing with SECOND ORDER regulations, i.e. regulating the dynamics of the system, not just the immediate outcomes.
We simply do not have the wetware that we need to face this situation, past evolutionary response has been to `move to the next island' or `kill off the neighbours.' This means that we have to consciously overrule our instincts. It can be done but it is hard, and many will not even want to try, believing their instinctual response to be the correct one.
This is why men compete to move up the resource ladder. Naturally we each want the best mates: the best looking, most intelligent, etc.
Now when will we powerdown? When women start mating and marrying DOWN the resource ladder.
Question #1: when was the last time you heard a woman say, "I'm looking for a good man, one who is smart, funny, gets along well with others and who makes less money than me."
Question #2: this one is for the married guys and gals: how would the woman in the relationship react if the man came home and said, "honey, I've been reading about this Peak Oil thing and I think we need to reduce both our own consumption and our own economic activity so as to reduce the strain on the planet. So I'm taking a 75% pay cut."?
I am married.
I followed your leadership suggestion in Question #2.
Results not pretty.
Let's say Lorena Bobbitt is starting to look like a kindly gentle lady to me right now.
I am starting to have doubts in your leadership abilities.
(P.S. Just kidding. I'm stupid, but not that stupid to try Question number 2. The results would be total Bobbitthood. I would not be able to join you and Sailorman in those exhibition games anymore. As you know, certain things are non-negotiable.)
lmfao! I'm writing an article on money and happiness and am so including your post!
Why do you always abbreviate that sociobiology to one specific kind of "position" and write "up the resource ladder?"
To be honest, that seems to missing the forest for the tree.
the status of women post peak is not pretty. the reason islam evolved to have their women in veil is I think, scarcity. covering them up means less competition for the males to expense a lot of energy consumption to win the best looking female.
women in the western world will be married off. they will no longer have much freedom. just the other day, the news said teenage girls opt for marriage more. have more children but they're in wedlock.
women can't handle the business world anymore, it seems. a lot of men will go the same way with regard to the business world.
all this is scary to the beta males/the intellectual ones. they feel this will happen to them. they'll be marginalized. the alpha males with the bigger muscles will win. all this is the status quo around the world today.
Studies of human happiness have famously shown that once basic needs are met, material wealth doesn't make any real difference to happiness. What does make a difference to happiness is relative status. If you're doing better than the other guy, you feel good. You'll get the girls.
I used to think that this was a terrible thing, because we can never make everyone happy - someone will always be at the bottom of the heap, someone always comes last even in the olympics. Now I see the glass half full - when we power down in may not actually make much difference to human happiness, ie social stability as long as we make sure that the basic needs are met. We can consume a hell of a lot less resources than we (in the developed world) do now and still meet those basic needs.
I think we have a chance if the decline is in fact Stuart's "slow squeeze" and the realisation and transition is slow enough not to induce a panic.
Very good for you.
I suspect that if 100 guys did as you have done, 90% plus would not have such great results.
What you've done is not unlike a bigger/more thorough version of me going without a car here in the car-obsessed U.S. 9 out of 10 guys who might attempt to do what I would do would see a decrease in their status/popularity.
Luckily I am quite charming and handsome so I'm able to get away with it. Proof you ask? Here you go:
[http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/OriginalArticles/mattandmariacaption.jpg]
My guess is your similary gifted. But let's be honest withourselves: most guys aren't as blessed as you and I, wouldn't you agree?
In any case, I do not piss on your theories.
It's all relative.
Netherlands has something like top tax bracket of 80%. Yet people still work and they have one of the highest subjective well beings on the planet, (unless the pumps run out of energy and the country sits under 3 feet of water)
People wont voluntarily reduce their income if everyone else is still making full cash - someone needs to tell them to do it. Alternatively, the real forward thinkers will realize the buddhist economic angle that they can never win the relative fitness game and reduce desires to simple pleasures using HROEI - Happiness returned on Energy Invested)
Americans have much different cultural (and possibly genetic - DRD4 dopamine gene) structure than Japanese. Not saying its likely, just saying thats probably what it'll take.
And yes, if I could surround myself with social capital (including one (1) wife), in a setting rich in natural capital, I would attempt to pursue the personal powerdown. I am learning what that takes now though, and its not easy either
"I do believe
If you don't like things you leave
for some place that's better than before"
Still a lot though...
This is supposed to be a meaningful question? How?
Do you have pages of math to show us that power-down over the coming decades is equivalent to a 75% pay cut in today's dollars (uniformly on all types of purchasing power), or are you pulling scary numbers out of your butt?
But:
I think there's somewhere in the middle that's probably right. I haven't missed the point. I would rephrase your point as "It will be extremely difficult, if possible at all, for people in the rich world to adjust to lower amounts of energy without great violence. It goes against millions of years of genetic selection and thousands of years of recent experience." I certainly agree with that.
I don't agree with the original statement from maximumheaviosity, quoting and paraphrasing Hanson:
The proposition is that no combination of renewable energy systems have the potential to replace current fossil fuel energy. The unstated assumption is that we need enough energy to replace all current fossil fuel energy. I don't agree with that assumption. I don't disagree that there will be a population reduction, I do agree that there will be increasing violence, and I do expect some amount of premature human deaths in the process (witness Iraq and Lebanon now), but IMHO we can make due with much less energy, so that the adjustment doesn't have to be through massive violence.
Personally I live on about a tenth most peoples footprint in the UK. Largely because I work from home, wear jumpers(sweaters) when cold, don't have a car, buy everything locally and don't fly.
However I am unsure that people will respond in the way you think for two reasons.
Firstly because the majority of people are not rational, especially when having their favourite toys removed from them.
But the more important challenge will be how it affects the economy. The current economic system has to continue growing in order to be work (due to the way it is shored up on loaned out savings that have to make an interest.) What would happen if our economic system collapsed?
I'm not really quite the doomer I am probably seeming to be. I actually think it will be a long slow collapse. Lasting several generations.
Now, people without realising about PO, they are thinking about gas use to where I mention moving to save a fifth of gas they say the move it worth it just to save the fifth each way! Saving a fifth each way is not the only motive to move however, but it sure helps. Once I move, a commuting mission will use "only" 2 fifth of gas each way. It won't be too long until gas costs a buck a fifth, thanks to the oil peak.
Right now, it might be prudent to invest in a little beer.
The dieoff hasn't begun and probably will never happen. Perhaps population will decrease but not via some mass death within the next 10-20 years.
Just as an example, I recently watched a program about a prison in California where gang members are sent. The gang leaders are segregated from the rest of the population, but they still manage to give orders to their gang members by writing letters in code and then relaying them down from cell to cell using string from their clothing (a practice called "fishing"). These guys make weapons out of all kinds of weird things, including melting down a plastic bag to make a shiv.
I was utterly amazed by just how resourceful and innovative these guys were. I can't imagine that the average population of the prison has better than average intelligence, yet they manage to come up with very complex codes, unique and highly complex social structures/hierarchies, and of course weapons made out of all kinds of weird objects.
So, saying we can't adapt to peak oil and less energy? I say such thoughts are utter crap. We "adapted" to using oil and coal in the first place. If we were so stupid we wouldn't have figured out how to build steam engines in the first place. We built a society based on petroleum, and we can build another one based on alternative energy. Will it be the exact same in every way? Obviously not. Things will be different, maybe dramatically so, but it won't be the end of the world as we know it either.
Once again I have to take issue with this idea that people's brains are wired and cannot adapt. There's a difference between it being harder for someone to pick up a skill, like say learning a language, and adapting to new circumstances. People don't need to learn any major new skills to adjust to a peak oil world, they just need to change their behaviors a little bit. The suggestion here is to the effect that older people are too set in their ways to learn to ride the trolley, rather than drive everywhere.
You can't simplify human thinking down to a computer program of if-then statements. Once again, if our thinking were really that rigid, we'd never have managed to populate the whole world as we have. Who knows maybe something like this is why the Neandertals died out, because their thinking was more rigid? Who knows. In any case, humans are nothing if not adaptable. It is our biggest strength by far. We may lack foresight and long term planning, but when the shit hits the fan we usually find some way to overcome.
In the end, I think what the whole "collapse" argument comes down to is extreme pessimism regarding human nature, looking only at our weaknesses and disregarding all of our strengths, combined with a lack of imagination of how we could do things differently. People are not just going to sit there pumping gas until there is nothing left and then abruptly revert back to caveman ways while our former cities crumble around us. I don't claim that post-peak is going to be easy sailing or that we won't have problems, even quite severe ones, but at the point where we can't ignore the problems anymore, then we'll start to adapt to them. Yes, it's pretty dumb, but it's how we seem to operate.
That's why the fact people are driving around obliviously through LA is irrelevant in my opinion. Yes, they are not aware of the coming problems, maybe they're growing some more awareness as gas approaches $3.50, but they're still in denial. At some point that will end and things will change (already it is changing with SUVs going out of style). It just takes a lot to overcome the initial inertia.
There is no newness... there is adaptation to do the same-old-thing. Isn't this prison cleverness similar to meeting our energy constraints with hybrid cars and ethanol?
At this point we still haven't peaked for sure. We might still keep increasing a bit more. And maybe the post peak decline will be gradual enough for us to make changes. Maybe it won't be and we'll have severe societal collapse and then something new will rise from the ashes. I'll hope for the former only because there is no guarantee that you or I, will be amongst those rising from the ashes, or rather will just be the ashes.