The Oil Drum

218 comments on Book Review: World Made by Hand

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joemichaels on May 4, 2008 - 10:37am

Teoc - Thank-you for the referral for Seven Tomorrows. That is now on my reading list.

I have tried to consider life as I have observed it in America from a personal perspective. Growing up in the 60's and 70's in a nation dominated by "car culture". I remember being a child seeing orchards and large open areas around LA that are now paved over as far as the eye can see. Until you witness the I-10 and I-405 Interchange at 4 p.m. on a Friday (24 lanes of traffic that have stopped moving) you can't fathom despair!

I think the notion of the U.S.A. getting a Marshall Plan together to herald our national might to the challenge is niave. When the Marshall Plan was put in place there were a fraction of the world's population and we were climbing up the Big Rock Candy Mountain (Peak Oil). The "Psycology of Previous Investment" will prevent us from acting either in a timely or effective fashion. As a society we are now so fragmented that consensus on anything is impossible. By the time the population at large "get it" I think it will be far too late and Kunstlers' notion of "The Long Emergency" will be playing out in a thousand different ways simultaneously.

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teoc on May 5, 2008 - 1:51pm

I have experienced the 405—405 from 101 interchange and Sepulveda Pass south bound to LAX/Playa del Rey, three hours to go roughly 18 miles is common anytime after 3 p.m. and surface streets after you get through the pass into Santa Monica offers a 90 minute to 2 hour alternative.

Not a surprise. What is a surprise is that so many endure it day in and day out and think it—normal, tolerable, an endurable nuisance, just another day in the big city, fun, an adventure, good excuse for being late for a meeting—and not straight up insanity.

Insanity, now there is a word that, along with normalcy, has lost all meaning.

What we see unfolding was foretold—not in a oracle of delphi way, but in a Stanford Research Institute way—forty years ago in Seven Tomorrows. (come to think of it what was the Stanford Research Institute might very well have been a doppelganger for the oracle of delphi).

Half a century later and we are still in the same place confronting the same issues only now they are exponentially more urgent.

After all that we have seen and experienced denial trumps reality and we fill it up one more time cause you know it can't stay at $0.75; $1.22; $2.35; $3.43; $4.17; $5.85; $6.66 (a nod to Lucifer who makes an appearance further on in this thread) and I need the room for the kids, the dogs, the dirt bikes, the snowmobiles, the personal watercrafts, and the cases of food and paper products from Costco/Sam's Club.

And who are we to say the residents of the rest of the planet can't enjoy what we consider our birthright?

Besides science, technology and the free market will find a way through. I mean they have done such a bang up job to this point.