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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.