Search The Oil Drum with Google
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Local
- Home Buyers Demand Short Commutes, Efficient Homes (with Backyards, Parking, lots of Square Feet)
- Streets: Utilitarian Corridors or Livable Public Space
- Summer Streets a Success!
TOD:Europe
- IEA WEO 2008 - NGLs to the Rescue?
- IEA WEO 2008 - Fossil Fuel Ultimates and CO2 Emissions Scenarios
- The IEA WEO 2008: Will coal usage be phased out?
TOD:Canada
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
- Oil Megaproject Update (July 2008)
TOD:ANZ
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- Calculated Risk
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Prof. Goose, Heading Out, Stuart Staniford, Nate Hagens
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Gail the Actuary, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Khebab, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Local: Glenn
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
A different kind of Power to the People: From Fast Company, a business magazine:
I guess the question would have to be, Who are the people? Robb's article in Fast Company gives us a little glimpse into the dystopic world of Naomi Klein's disaster capitalism complex (subscription required).
I've been reading:
Derrick Jenson's book of conversations "Listening to the Land" (2002)
Also:
"The Weather Makers" by Tim Flannery (2005).
The conversations between DJ and people like william Catton, Jr. are inspiring but sobering at the same time.
The Weathermakers is especially sobering, even though Tim Flannery has worked to make the book very readable and has aimed his work at educating and motivating people to take specific action atmany levels.
Flannery mentions the possibility of a humourously-but accurately-named totalitarian "Earth Commission for Thermostatic Control" and "carbon dictatorship."
He suggests that the upheavals to come may very well break down civilization so that an Orwellian nightmare government takes control -- at least for a time.
It to me like that is very much the direction things are taking. More than one ambitious elite is vying for control.
The possibility that we will all become educated and motivated to make positive change is small, but still there. We do not have much time -- if any -- to make needed changes in the way we relate to our planet and to one another. The task of educating and engaging folks in the dialogue is huge.
I'm working on not being overwhelmed by the odds.
beggar,
regarding.."The possibility that we will all become educated and motivated to make positive change is small, but still there."
The possibility that a critical mass, much less all of us will make the changes necessary,,presupposing it is not already too late is Zero.
Prepare yourself and your family. Reduce your dependence on the US$, fossil fuels and the endless growth paradigm.
Regards,
Gunga
I suspect that most of us feel the same way. We try not to be emotionally overwhelmed, and feeling powerless, we take the attitude of being cynically amused at humankind, sitting back and watching the show.
We never talk about the one thing that is needed - dramatic population reduction. It is too unsettling and uncomfortable to confront. And until we do, all other efforts at making "small changes" is just that - inconsequential in the long run.
Francois.
It is interesting that Tim Flannery imagines this scenario when imagining a future "Earth Commission for Thermostatic Control."
"Inevitably, one day some commissioner will suggest that their work would be more effectively done were they to concentrate on the root cause of the issue -- the total number of people on the planet....."
This issue is the one that would, in Flannery's scenario,transform the commission into a global totalitarian government.
My guess is that we are already nearer to this than most people are aware. The policy of allowing maximum die-off from catatrophes is a start at reducing population. The policy of concentrating wealth and power into the hands of ever fewer people is also an attempt to squeeze out the "useless eaters" than drain resources. Finally, the policy of endless Resource War (however disguised) is the current form of the policy of "Kill Off" or genocide.
Remember the Indian Wars? The Europeans found over 12 million Native Americans here and eventually herded the remaining couple of hundred thousand onto reservations to wither away there.
Now the "Indian Wars" have gone global. Soldiers often refer to Iraq as "Injun Country." Over one million Iraqis have died as a result of the Invasion/Occupation, and millions more have fled to overburden neighboring countries with refugees. Recent Indian Wars have been carried on in Central and South America more covertly -- for the most part. Now the battle is being taken more overttly to the continent of Africa as well. This involves a process of destroying infrastructure in such a way as to thin population quickly as well as to sieze resources.
We continue the work of "Manifest Destiny" and continue to interpret "The White Man's Burden" in a violent way. We have to destroy the planet in order to save it.
Maybe we need a new name for global warfare: GIW, or "Global Indian War."
I propose dieoff from the top down, by extreme prejudice. More buck for the bang.
Bad Super. No casino for you. :-)
Many may believe more kids means more chances to win the lottery- they cannot recognize that more kids means losing more in the lottery
1 million iphones sold, rah, rah!
It is absolutely true that without population reduction all else is in vain. But this must be accompanied by other changes which will not be inconsequential in the long run so long as the population problem IS addressed along with these changes. Both issues, population and all else need wide international cooperation in order to protect and foster the needed changes at local levels.
Ironically, Cheney/Bush may be key players in bringing this about. This may be the last empire. The unity achieved in defeating it might be turned to creating a framework in which reality can be addressed on an global scale. The
coming 20-50 years promise to be perhaps the most interesting in the history of the species. Survival of the species in anything approaching a civilized condition depends on our acting as a species with a collective will and brain (meaning all the little brains and wills that make it up are able to argue and think freely).
To laugh at the folly of the species -- which is us --is fine, otherwise we go nuts. But as one gets older and there's less and less of one's own future to care about, what's left is to care about if not the future of the species? There's no hope for my grandchildren if there's no hope for the species.
The key isn't the population per se, but what humans that DO exist are creating that is more useful than what they consume. We know that the current answer is a negative relationship: we just consume stuff and don't think about what our species should be contributing overall.
If we took all the 'overpopulated' humans and put them on a grass diet and let them roam the plains like bison used to, they could contribute to the fertility of the soil. In the pragmatic sense, that is how we have to apply our technology: through a Net Creative paradigm, rather than a Net Consumptive one.
Most of the 'overpopulation' of the world doesn't consume all that much in resources. It is the 'civilized' world that is raping the planet while complaining about lack of purpose and the 'meanness' of their competitive way of living.
Cooperation, Creativity, Community. That is what the future will be, whether we choose it as a large group or as a smaller, surviving one.
I agree with almost all of what you say -- BUT population itself does matter. The earth has a finite carrying capacity, even though we might not yet know exactly what it is There are strong indications that it has exceeded what it will be once one no longer has hydrocarbons for energy, chemicals, fertilizer and all else. There is some maximum sustainable population and sooner or later we'll have to find out what it is. Population control and reduction can be done by US via education, restraining reproduction, taking care of the elderly OR it can be done by NATURE via war and famine and pestilence.
The agricultural revolution, starting 10,000 years ago, occurred on a planet with thick forests and rich soils, although the stock of big mammals had already been considerably depleted by the hunter-gathering revolution of the preceding 50,000-100,000 (maybe more) years. At the end of the industrial age we will not be able to simply revert to one of the prior eras: the condition of the earth is no longer the same. Our involvement with the earth is going to have to be far more intimate and is going to involve carefully controlling our numbers and imprint as well, since we too are part of nature, not some alien force that can simply exploit it with abandon.
Your comments are reminiscent of Neil Stephensen's "Snowcrash" set in a post-apocalyptic world following a vast hyper-inflationary melt-down in which virtually all state functions become privatized--a good read.
Awesome read. Especially if you get the audio book version and listen to it.
Americans should be required at birth to have "Poor Impulse Control" tattooed on their foreheads, forward and reversed, so they can read it in the mirror every morning.
"Movies, Microcode, and Pizza Delivery"- America's future Economy. The only thing wrong with Stephenson's prediction is that the first two are already moving to India.
Stephensen's best book, by far----
The others seemed to stay in the shallow end of the pool, but were somewhat entertaining.
Snowcrash is in a class by itself (although not up to the standards of Gibson's Neuromancer)
The cyberpunk and near future genera has been a interesting phase, but it is drawing to a close, as the visions turn into reality.
Where's the love for Bruce Sterling? Go read Distraction - a political thriller set in dystopian, post collapse Louisiana. Its as tight as Brazil in terms of predictive power, at least from my perspective.