I am all in favor of Heinberg's efforts, but I wonder if the rate of social change will be fast enough to prevent widespread violence and senseless infrastructure decimation. AMPOD has an excellent article at LATOC called "When is the Revolution Coming?" linked here.
One of the best all-time Peal Oil/Dieoff articles EVER.
What
can
I
say.................
Read Matt's article, then go check out the recent Chomsky paper where Cheerful Noam says the kind of mind necessary to have high intelligence and live sustainably on this planet is probably not attainable through the process of evolution. Or not, that's the one interesting point in the Chomsky article, that it may not be possible to get a self-limiting cooperative being out of a competitive process like evolution.
Liar. No one writes 2000 words in 30 minutes and formats HTML to boot. I also think you did a very good job in writing and advancing your argument, but by boasting how fast you wrote it, it looks like you are flaunting your own "gourd". Just goes to show that everyone is on an ego trip, as the seeking of adulation remains a permament part of human nature.
I'm an attorney by training. You ever sit through a law school final? They're called "horseraces" typically. You sit and spew bullshit as though there's no tomorrow.
Has anyone noticed that societies like Germany are actually building things, such as an electric grid which integrates wind power in a realistic, daily life way? Do you really think that the reason such large industrial scale projects are being built because the engineers get more chicks? Or that recycling and using less chemicals in agriculture is not based on hard headed pragmatism, since utterly destroying where you live is a surefire way to bow out of the evolutionary race.
Or to keep this (flawed in my view) evolutionary analogy going - do you think the society that can keep more children alive when it is freezing will lose out to the society which is concerned about meaningless displays of pomp to attract chicks, since obviously, it is having the women that matters, not whether in a decade or two, the women's children grow up.
Perfect example of why America seems incapable of handling anything but celebrity or money as a measure of human existence while simultaneously denying that planning or engineering play any significant role in human affairs. Oddly, it wasn't celebrity which seemed to drive the success of the German Greens, it was the fact that a program of sustainable living and pacifism made sense to a large number of people living here, for a number of reasons, most of them based on self-interest - such as the idea that having your children grow up in a post WWIII landscape was not considered attractive, at least in Germany.
Sure, celebrity plays a role in human affairs, but it is pretty hard to flip a light switch without having an electrical system in place - regardless of how magical it seems, a grid is not the result of magic, it is the result of engineering. This attitude that one's external possessions are the only measure of human value drove me crazy in America, to be honest. But then, I live in the world's largest exporter, not the world's largest importer.
Strange - hard to find many well known German celebrities, but it seems a majority of the entire world's celebrities and powerful prefer Porsche, Mercedes, BMW (and those vehicles were not gifts from the companies, by the way). Hmmm - must be a correlation there somewhere. Probably has something to do with reality.
Organisations, companies, military forces, societies, civilisations all correspond to an ecological model.
When they are in their particular ecological 'niche' they outperform other creatures and dominate. Think the Giant Sloth, the Dire Wolf, Ursus Major, the Tyranosaurus Rex.
Every so often, external forces change the environment. The entity is then threatened with extinction, or significant marginalisation.
Western Civilisation is optimised around individual autonomy and personal freedom, and cheap energy, and a benign environmental context (not too hot, not too cold). And the US is the canonical, and most powerful example of that adaptation to its niche. It outperforms all other western economies in size, demographics, growth, productivity etc.
Change that, and we have a problem.
What then becomes important is the ability of the company, military organisation, society etc. to recognise, plan and adapt to the new environment. changing that environment is usually less possible.
So Cuba, a socialist and totalitarian state, could survive what was at least a 60% fall in its energy inputs in the course of a couple of years. Not survive easily (the average Cuban lost something like 20 lbs I believe), but survive they have without evident civil chaos or mass starvation.
I don't think any western society could have survived that without serious social chaos. In Cuba if you go on strike, you go to prison. In Britain, if you block a petrol refinery in protest at high fuel prices, you become a national hero.
I wouldn't say Germany is going to survive a crisis of the kind that Peak Oil moots, nor necessarily the challenge of Global Warming. But being a more centralised, socialist state than the USA, with stronger forces of law and order (eg the illegality of private firearms), it has a chance to make very rapid adjustments based on collective decisions.
The US has innate advantages: huge potential non fossil fueled resources (wind and solar), lots of coal (bad for global warming, good for Peak Oil), military power to compel energy supplies from its neighbours (Canada, Mexico, even Venezuela). Borders and dominates only 2 countries, and one is a cultural satellite (Canada). Best universities in the world. Adaptable and resilient populace.
What Germany (or even better, Sweden and Denmark) show is how a smaller country, without those natural advantages, can plan ahead, and plan to survive.
But being a more centralised, socialist state than the USA, with stronger forces of law and order (eg the illegality of private firearms), it has a chance to make very rapid adjustments based on collective decisions.
There's absolutely no correlation, in fact strong centralized states are historically more likely to ride their established power structures down the tube. That being said, the US is very centralized state, it's controlled by large corporations, the government works for them. I love how people think because tne US government has completely abandoned any social or egalitarian ethics, that it somehow isn't centralized, in fact it shows just the opposite.
I think many here underestimate the capability for change the US can still hold. Not saying it will execute that change when it is critical, but the potential is there.
One of the problems with the US in prepping for PO is I think the fact that we are NOT very centrist. In a representative form of government the populace is going to be more apt to reactively behave instead of proactively behave. So long as the status QUO is "good" then no changes in voting(at least on energy policy) will occur.
Once things get bad, that is when changes occur. The old saying "Its the economy stupid" is a perfect example of American (Democracy) reactiveness. So long as the Economy is "good" voters tend to not rock the boat. When the economy is bad, that is when politicians go changing(even though politicians don't have as much influence as most voters think).
I really don't think America is going to make an effort to transition until it has something more substantial than a few dollars of gas price increase to react to.
Its a morbid thought, but I almost think forcing Iran into a war, and causing a major oil shock for the world right now could be the best thing for the US in terms of its energy planning(the oil shocks would force us to deal with the problem now as opposed to later when supply is truly diminished instead of artificially diminished through war) and possibly the best thing for the rest of the world as they would see that building their version of the "American Dream" means setting themselves up for dependence.
Dependence is a notion most nations are keen on only when economic benefits are overwhelming. Without oil, the economic benefits will disappear and a return to self reliance and localization would have to follow for those countries which want to remain viable.
I'm not underestimating the ability for America to change, it's the only hope we have. My point is the idea that centralization better effects change is ahistoric, in fact it's just the opposite.
The other thing is that just because the government is not doing what you think it should be doing, doesn't mean it has no power or that it's too distributed, it's just the opposite. There's some very large forces and institutions that think how the government operates is just fine and they pay very close attention to it, that the American people in general don't is a problem, but they have now been socialized to think they have no control -- that's a big problem.
I suppose in this extreme 'war time' scenario (which is what Cuba went through) I was thinking of examples like:
Russia 1941-45. Lost 25 million people, but still managed to beat the Wehrmacht, which was probably the best Army in history up to that point
Britain 1939-45. By nearly complete socialisation of the economy, managed to (in 1942) produce more armaments than Germany, despite submarine war. Highest level of civilian mobilisation achieved by any country other than Russia
(Germany by contrast was a totalitarian state, but only managed to fully mobilise for war in 1944-- so you could argue it either way)
More generally, countries with more decentralised decision making may be able to adjust more rapidly. I can just imagine an American version of decision making which includes considerable civil disorder.
The problem is if the market gives signals early enough. Right now it gives no signal on CO2, and if PO is a reality, precious little signal of that (I don't count an oil price below its 1980 peak as a signal of PO).
I am a big admirer of the Scandinavian states, eg Denmark, which have obviously taken a long term view of energy supply and self sufficiency. That said, the Swedes have ducked the problem (they are not for new nuclear, but they don't have a replacement for the nukes they have now).
Um, what is the current ethanol debate, if not infighting during adaption?
We say " the US is not adapting" when we really mean "the US is not adapting fast enough to suit me." I actually agree with the latter sentiment, but I try to keep things straight.
We do not have a straw man, non-adapting, nation to shoot holes in.
Oh, I wouldn't say it's a strawman. If you consider three decades ago the idea of limited oil supply entered the American conscience and since that time oil consumption has risen 25%, I'd say non-adaption is pretty accurate.
In the long run -- which Keynes says didn't matter casue were all dead -- the rate of adaption would seem the long thing that does matter.
Why does California work so hard to get everyone on Energy Star appliances?
Why do so many states have targets in play for renewable energy?
... if we ignore that stuff, and just call it "no action" we are simply lying to ourselves. Of course it is a strawman, and one that allows us to overlook all the troublesome details in energy policy.
I'll repeat, if you have a fairly fixed deadline, say peak oil, then the rate of change is all that counts. For the United States, the present problem isn't one of details, it's a a culture of gross waste encouraged by some very large, centralized, powerful actors. Until there is significant popular mindshift on how we do energy in this country, worrying about all the details is self-delusion.
If your driving a hundred miles an hour toward a cliff that's a half mile away and you begin slowly turning the wheel, but only enough so that you go over the cliff at a 45 degree angle instead of 90, what difference does it make?
The only thing that matters is the rate of adaption because all future possibilities are tied to the environments created by that rate of change. If you believe peak is in the next two decades our current rate of adaption leads to a pretty grim future environment, hardly a strawman or changing goal posts.
Of course you just changed your goalposts. Believing "peak is in the next two decades our current rate of adaption leads to a pretty grim future environment" is not the same as saying, as the poster did above, "The reason the US is not adapting is due [...]"
BTW, I think the question below about rates of change in adaption, acceleration, relates to whether fixing on "our current rate of adaption" might also be a strawman.
These last two years, of all times, should show that rate of response is not fixed.
Has the rate of adaption remained fixed as energy prices increased over the last 2-3 years, or did those prices result in an acceleration and greater public focus.
IMO, the State Of The Union "addicted to oil" blurb coincided nicely with a rebirth of alt-energy schemes and investment.
Silicon Valley was not gaga on alt-eng 5 years ago.
But a number of other countries are further ahead.
Germany is ahead in use of wind power. So is Spain and Denmark.
Japanese companies dominate solar cell production. A Japanese auto company has driven the Hybrid Car technology forward.
The US is the world's biggest (large) consumer of oil per capita. It's clearly not been a priority for the last 20 or so years.
I read that solar water heater Carter put on the roof of the White House, and Reagan ripped off, is still in use at a college in Maine. We may come to think of the Carter era as a lost opportunity.
That's true too. I think it's very fortunate for us that the Japanese, dependent as they are on energy imports, are also a source of design and technology for us.
I'll repeat, if you have a fairly fixed deadline, say peak oil, then the rate of change is all that counts.
And pray tell when is that deadline? Is that not the subject of debate amongst these forums. GUESSES range anywhere from now to 50 years from now. That is a pretty big window of GUESSES.
I agree the pace probably needs to be picked up, but to say no action is being taken is false. It may be slow action, but action is beginning to snowball. How many solar and wind initiatives did you see 10 years ago in the US? How many do you see now?
How popular was high fuel efficiency 10 years ago, how popular is it now?
How much awareness was there to oil issues, and global warming issues 10 years ago? How much awareness is there now?
There is quite a bit of change going on, but it doesn't happen over night.
Well one deadline came, we're in Iraq spending trillions of dollars trying to secure remaining reserves, which I personally find despicable.
My friend we wasted 30 years. I unfortunately am old enough to remember the 70s when energy was on the front page every day and then disappeared for two decades. I haven't argued things aren't being done, I'm arguing the rate of change isn't fast enough. We haven't even cut off the grossest fat to this point and little of the debate about change is not fessing up to Americans that they have to change their lifestyles(for example were all going to run a cars on switch gas, when that becomes the focus of the debate, I'll say we're getting somewhere.
$70 a barrel and other factors may in fact have tanked the economy. We may be going into a recession, in which case energy prices will drop and the little progress made will falter. How are you going to keep the focus on energy in a recession and convince Americans that all the New Dealers and Free Marketeer garbage about bringing back gross consumption is wrong.
All' I've heard from the NRDC and other enviro groups the past decade is how potemkin programs were great. It's not enough and we shouldnt fool ourselves or others that it is.
Well if that makes you feel better. Evolutionary wise, too slow adaptation to a changing environment leads to extinction, I'd rather focus on what would bring success.
I'd rather focus on what will work also. And in that vein, the fact that awareness and projects are increasing means that there is momentum and inertia. Its got a lot of counter inertia to fight, but its something. If we can snowball the inertia of alternatives then we might be able to just turn this ship around. And rather than denying things are happening we need to be trumping up the things that are happening to encourage more of it.
Fair point, but the question is not whether we are changing fast enough to survive, but whether we are changing fast enough to avoid some of the more serious consequences of inaction.
I am all in favor of Heinberg's efforts, but I wonder if the rate of social change will be fast enough to prevent widespread violence and senseless infrastructure decimation. AMPOD has an excellent article at LATOC called "When is the Revolution Coming?" linked here.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
One of the best all-time Peal Oil/Dieoff articles EVER.
What
can
I
say.................
Read Matt's article, then go check out the recent Chomsky paper where Cheerful Noam says the kind of mind necessary to have high intelligence and live sustainably on this planet is probably not attainable through the process of evolution. Or not, that's the one interesting point in the Chomsky article, that it may not be possible to get a self-limiting cooperative being out of a competitive process like evolution.
Matt's article is pure gold.
Just wanted to make sure you saw AngryChimp's link to the BBC video series: "The Century of Self" on Google Video.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are HumansSmarter than Yeast?
As Freud would say, "Velly interesting".
Have you see this, "Oh my God" google video? (named "what we saw")
Well, yes.
Part of us is sheep= herd animal.
Part of us lizard= terrorized lizard brain.
And a wee teeny part of us is rational ... but not in control.
You just got your first Neo-Nazi follower. Apparently you are not aware of fleam's writing. That's OK. Any acolyte is a good one, right?
His ideas might repulse you, but certainly he can head up your AlphaMonkey Ministry of Hate. That might come in handy.
By the way, have you read Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?"
I'll be across the hall whenever you want to borrow a cup of sugar.
Cheers,
OilMonkey
Liar. No one writes 2000 words in 30 minutes and formats HTML to boot. I also think you did a very good job in writing and advancing your argument, but by boasting how fast you wrote it, it looks like you are flaunting your own "gourd". Just goes to show that everyone is on an ego trip, as the seeking of adulation remains a permament part of human nature.
:) :) :)
Has anyone noticed that societies like Germany are actually building things, such as an electric grid which integrates wind power in a realistic, daily life way? Do you really think that the reason such large industrial scale projects are being built because the engineers get more chicks? Or that recycling and using less chemicals in agriculture is not based on hard headed pragmatism, since utterly destroying where you live is a surefire way to bow out of the evolutionary race.
Or to keep this (flawed in my view) evolutionary analogy going - do you think the society that can keep more children alive when it is freezing will lose out to the society which is concerned about meaningless displays of pomp to attract chicks, since obviously, it is having the women that matters, not whether in a decade or two, the women's children grow up.
Perfect example of why America seems incapable of handling anything but celebrity or money as a measure of human existence while simultaneously denying that planning or engineering play any significant role in human affairs. Oddly, it wasn't celebrity which seemed to drive the success of the German Greens, it was the fact that a program of sustainable living and pacifism made sense to a large number of people living here, for a number of reasons, most of them based on self-interest - such as the idea that having your children grow up in a post WWIII landscape was not considered attractive, at least in Germany.
Sure, celebrity plays a role in human affairs, but it is pretty hard to flip a light switch without having an electrical system in place - regardless of how magical it seems, a grid is not the result of magic, it is the result of engineering. This attitude that one's external possessions are the only measure of human value drove me crazy in America, to be honest. But then, I live in the world's largest exporter, not the world's largest importer.
Strange - hard to find many well known German celebrities, but it seems a majority of the entire world's celebrities and powerful prefer Porsche, Mercedes, BMW (and those vehicles were not gifts from the companies, by the way). Hmmm - must be a correlation there somewhere. Probably has something to do with reality.
Organisations, companies, military forces, societies, civilisations all correspond to an ecological model.
When they are in their particular ecological 'niche' they outperform other creatures and dominate. Think the Giant Sloth, the Dire Wolf, Ursus Major, the Tyranosaurus Rex.
Every so often, external forces change the environment. The entity is then threatened with extinction, or significant marginalisation.
Western Civilisation is optimised around individual autonomy and personal freedom, and cheap energy, and a benign environmental context (not too hot, not too cold). And the US is the canonical, and most powerful example of that adaptation to its niche. It outperforms all other western economies in size, demographics, growth, productivity etc.
Change that, and we have a problem.
What then becomes important is the ability of the company, military organisation, society etc. to recognise, plan and adapt to the new environment. changing that environment is usually less possible.
So Cuba, a socialist and totalitarian state, could survive what was at least a 60% fall in its energy inputs in the course of a couple of years. Not survive easily (the average Cuban lost something like 20 lbs I believe), but survive they have without evident civil chaos or mass starvation.
I don't think any western society could have survived that without serious social chaos. In Cuba if you go on strike, you go to prison. In Britain, if you block a petrol refinery in protest at high fuel prices, you become a national hero.
I wouldn't say Germany is going to survive a crisis of the kind that Peak Oil moots, nor necessarily the challenge of Global Warming. But being a more centralised, socialist state than the USA, with stronger forces of law and order (eg the illegality of private firearms), it has a chance to make very rapid adjustments based on collective decisions.
The US has innate advantages: huge potential non fossil fueled resources (wind and solar), lots of coal (bad for global warming, good for Peak Oil), military power to compel energy supplies from its neighbours (Canada, Mexico, even Venezuela). Borders and dominates only 2 countries, and one is a cultural satellite (Canada). Best universities in the world. Adaptable and resilient populace.
What Germany (or even better, Sweden and Denmark) show is how a smaller country, without those natural advantages, can plan ahead, and plan to survive.
There's absolutely no correlation, in fact strong centralized states are historically more likely to ride their established power structures down the tube. That being said, the US is very centralized state, it's controlled by large corporations, the government works for them. I love how people think because tne US government has completely abandoned any social or egalitarian ethics, that it somehow isn't centralized, in fact it shows just the opposite.
One of the problems with the US in prepping for PO is I think the fact that we are NOT very centrist. In a representative form of government the populace is going to be more apt to reactively behave instead of proactively behave. So long as the status QUO is "good" then no changes in voting(at least on energy policy) will occur.
Once things get bad, that is when changes occur. The old saying "Its the economy stupid" is a perfect example of American (Democracy) reactiveness. So long as the Economy is "good" voters tend to not rock the boat. When the economy is bad, that is when politicians go changing(even though politicians don't have as much influence as most voters think).
I really don't think America is going to make an effort to transition until it has something more substantial than a few dollars of gas price increase to react to.
Its a morbid thought, but I almost think forcing Iran into a war, and causing a major oil shock for the world right now could be the best thing for the US in terms of its energy planning(the oil shocks would force us to deal with the problem now as opposed to later when supply is truly diminished instead of artificially diminished through war) and possibly the best thing for the rest of the world as they would see that building their version of the "American Dream" means setting themselves up for dependence.
Dependence is a notion most nations are keen on only when economic benefits are overwhelming. Without oil, the economic benefits will disappear and a return to self reliance and localization would have to follow for those countries which want to remain viable.
The other thing is that just because the government is not doing what you think it should be doing, doesn't mean it has no power or that it's too distributed, it's just the opposite. There's some very large forces and institutions that think how the government operates is just fine and they pay very close attention to it, that the American people in general don't is a problem, but they have now been socialized to think they have no control -- that's a big problem.
I suppose in this extreme 'war time' scenario (which is what Cuba went through) I was thinking of examples like:
- Russia 1941-45. Lost 25 million people, but still managed to beat the Wehrmacht, which was probably the best Army in history up to that point
- Britain 1939-45. By nearly complete socialisation of the economy, managed to (in 1942) produce more armaments than Germany, despite submarine war. Highest level of civilian mobilisation achieved by any country other than Russia
(Germany by contrast was a totalitarian state, but only managed to fully mobilise for war in 1944-- so you could argue it either way)More generally, countries with more decentralised decision making may be able to adjust more rapidly. I can just imagine an American version of decision making which includes considerable civil disorder.
The problem is if the market gives signals early enough. Right now it gives no signal on CO2, and if PO is a reality, precious little signal of that (I don't count an oil price below its 1980 peak as a signal of PO).
I am a big admirer of the Scandinavian states, eg Denmark, which have obviously taken a long term view of energy supply and self sufficiency. That said, the Swedes have ducked the problem (they are not for new nuclear, but they don't have a replacement for the nukes they have now).
Also these nations are small, and homogeneous.
We say " the US is not adapting" when we really mean "the US is not adapting fast enough to suit me." I actually agree with the latter sentiment, but I try to keep things straight.
We do not have a straw man, non-adapting, nation to shoot holes in.
In the long run -- which Keynes says didn't matter casue were all dead -- the rate of adaption would seem the long thing that does matter.
Why do so many states have targets in play for renewable energy?
... if we ignore that stuff, and just call it "no action" we are simply lying to ourselves. Of course it is a strawman, and one that allows us to overlook all the troublesome details in energy policy.
I said in my very first post that we weren't responding fast enough for me.
I hope you aren't claiming that since this "isn't fast enough" we get to rationally believe that is the same as not at all.
If your driving a hundred miles an hour toward a cliff that's a half mile away and you begin slowly turning the wheel, but only enough so that you go over the cliff at a 45 degree angle instead of 90, what difference does it make?
The only thing that matters is the rate of adaption because all future possibilities are tied to the environments created by that rate of change. If you believe peak is in the next two decades our current rate of adaption leads to a pretty grim future environment, hardly a strawman or changing goal posts.
BTW, I think the question below about rates of change in adaption, acceleration, relates to whether fixing on "our current rate of adaption" might also be a strawman.
These last two years, of all times, should show that rate of response is not fixed.
Has the rate of adaption remained fixed as energy prices increased over the last 2-3 years, or did those prices result in an acceleration and greater public focus.
IMO, the State Of The Union "addicted to oil" blurb coincided nicely with a rebirth of alt-energy schemes and investment.
Silicon Valley was not gaga on alt-eng 5 years ago.
Germany is ahead in use of wind power. So is Spain and Denmark.
Japanese companies dominate solar cell production. A Japanese auto company has driven the Hybrid Car technology forward.
The US is the world's biggest (large) consumer of oil per capita. It's clearly not been a priority for the last 20 or so years.
I read that solar water heater Carter put on the roof of the White House, and Reagan ripped off, is still in use at a college in Maine. We may come to think of the Carter era as a lost opportunity.
They are "leading" of necessity.
And pray tell when is that deadline? Is that not the subject of debate amongst these forums. GUESSES range anywhere from now to 50 years from now. That is a pretty big window of GUESSES.
I agree the pace probably needs to be picked up, but to say no action is being taken is false. It may be slow action, but action is beginning to snowball. How many solar and wind initiatives did you see 10 years ago in the US? How many do you see now?
How popular was high fuel efficiency 10 years ago, how popular is it now?
How much awareness was there to oil issues, and global warming issues 10 years ago? How much awareness is there now?
There is quite a bit of change going on, but it doesn't happen over night.
My friend we wasted 30 years. I unfortunately am old enough to remember the 70s when energy was on the front page every day and then disappeared for two decades. I haven't argued things aren't being done, I'm arguing the rate of change isn't fast enough. We haven't even cut off the grossest fat to this point and little of the debate about change is not fessing up to Americans that they have to change their lifestyles(for example were all going to run a cars on switch gas, when that becomes the focus of the debate, I'll say we're getting somewhere.
$70 a barrel and other factors may in fact have tanked the economy. We may be going into a recession, in which case energy prices will drop and the little progress made will falter. How are you going to keep the focus on energy in a recession and convince Americans that all the New Dealers and Free Marketeer garbage about bringing back gross consumption is wrong.
All' I've heard from the NRDC and other enviro groups the past decade is how potemkin programs were great. It's not enough and we shouldnt fool ourselves or others that it is.
My, that seems a far cry from the strawman you were promoting a few minutes earlier:
Doing Nothing = 0 progress
Doing something Slow > 0 Progress
Doing something slow may still not be enough to save us, but its not the same as doing nothing.
Real ethanol commitment would be to buy ethanol from the Brasilians (the low cost producer).
And it doesn't really do anything about the CO2 problem.