The Oil Drum

95 comments on Peak Oil: A View from Planet Talos

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AlphaMaleProphetOfDoom on November 3, 2006 - 12:23pm

Ember,,

Let's say we follow your advice. We end up with a world of happy, healthy people tending gardens and playing bochi-ball with their neighbors instead of going to vegas.

Well do you know what happy, healthy people do? They f--k. A lot. Sans modern (generally oil-based) forms of birth control the population is almost guaranteed to continue to climb in this situation.

Even at a much lower rate of per-capita energy consumption, the continually growing populatiion will eventually send us into overshoot and we're back in the same spot.

Then what?

Well then we're going to try to go interplanetary (technology permitting) which means you Talosians are going to have to kick our asses before we come to take your stuff.

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First Talosian on November 3, 2006 - 12:36pm

To the human AlphaMaleProphetofDoom,

I assume you are a tribal leader of sorts on your planet. You ask a central question that is difficult to answer, given our inability to reproduce (our planets have opposite problems). Likely you will continue to produce offspring, there will not be enough resources to have them all grow to maturity, and your childhood mortality rate will skyrocket.

And there is the rhythym method.

We don't have much 'stuff' and its not 'stuff' that would fit into your value system in any case. But perhaps the 'taking' of our stuff would be consistent with your evolved mechanisms?
On Talos, with very few exceptions, we share. Long ago, we switched over from individual selection to group selection because of the leverage we receive from doing so. Your species however cannot just 'choose' to do this. It has to evolve from selective pressure, which takes a very very long time.
Thank you though. Good questions.

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Franz on November 4, 2006 - 9:38am

Okay, so this is a joke thread (more or less) but let me f*ck it up by being serious.

Unitl the Neolithic, and particularly the modern era, human populations were more or less stable for very long periods of time. From ethnographic evidence we know that hunter-gatherers have always practiced very severe birth control to keep population down. So it's complete and utter BS to pretend that humans are hard-wired to breed like rabbits no matter what.

Yeah, we like sex, but sex hasn't got that much to do with the direct production of offspring in humans. From Diamond: newly-weds going at it at maximum frequency have only a twenty-eight percent chance of conception... pathetic by animal standards. Not only can humans f*ck a lot without conceiving, they actually can't help it working out that way.

Large human families are a Neolithic aberration.

It's not in our genes. We can reach a steady-state population under the right combination of circumstances (Tikopia, or - at the opposite, and continental, scale, Australia before white settlement). Or rather, we have done in the past. Whether we can do it again, having gone off on the completely wrong track... it's a slightly different question. The present always conditions the future.

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First Talosian on November 4, 2006 - 11:38am

Human Franz
This was not intended to be a 'joke' thread. Thank you for your questions.

Yes, humans like to f*ck as you say, but this is not why the population has exploded. Terrestrial organisms eventually increase up to the food supply that will support them, irrespective of how much they f*ck. The population then ebbs and flows depending on environmental conditions until it stabilizes or a new variable is introduced.

Spreading out on the planet in the last 100,000 years started to increase your population. Until a few hundred years ago, you just filled the planets open spaces easily because of your knowledge of agriculture and overall creativity. It was not until your system was subsidized by the power in oil and gas when your population really mushroomed.

Without oil or without changing your system to local in time, you are f*cked. (not you personally, but the aggregate human population)

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Franz on November 5, 2006 - 3:25am

Just to clarify ... it's AMPOD who brought up the f*cking, not me.

The point is that environmental circumstances dictate behaviour. Under the right circumstances, humans are capable of long-term population stability.

Doom's not in our genes (alone). It's in the interaction of our behaviours (flexible but within the limits of genetic predisposition) with the environments we exist in. In some environments, with a particular genetic setup, we can last virtually forever. In another, with the same setup, we not only wipe out most life on the planet but perhaps go extinct ourselves.

The question is: in destroying our current situation, do we give rise to another environment where we can survive and exhibit a different and more sustainable set of social, cultural and economic characteristics? Or will it be too late, and everything goes?

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First Talosian on November 5, 2006 - 11:18am

Human Franz,

In some senses, the sooner you have a small dieoff or collapse, the better it is for sustainability and future generations, not because of resources remaining, but because this possiblity will a)influence human cultural evolution - (cultures that died off in earths past, by definition dont have remaining cultural representatives to teach others about it) and b)the sustainable, local communities will fare better in this mini 'dieoff', therefore putting more copies of their genes and memes in next generation