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169 comments on Advice To Pres. Obama (#3): Change you must
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169 comments on Advice To Pres. Obama (#3): Change you must
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To me at least, these posts are as much for people behind the scenes, future leaders, and raising the general bar of energy discourse for the future than they are really directed at current politicians. As dire as the economic situation is, we have a $50 million inauguration event - 4 times (I am told) the previous record. At a time when we have tough truths to convey to people about the status of our real assets, to be spending so much on a frenetic departure from the starting gate strikes me as ill-matched. Hope, if not followed through on in tenor and act, can do more harm than good. Dunno. If it were me, I might cancel the whole affair and say we need to change the way things are done in Washington and in our country - lets save that $50 million for 5 wind turbines off the Maryland coast, and get down to business.
But what do I know - I'm just a blogger...
Yuppers. No time like the present to... um... change. Or lead by example. Or, shucks, we could just have a big party intended to show how hopeful the future is!
4x bigger? Let's see... that's about 37 million... or 7,400 homes significantly more energy efficient or closer to being off the grid... or 7,400 acres of land bought and turned into farms/CSA's/co-ops... or grants to, say 37 towns or cities for renewable energy projects... or...
This bash is a the equivalent of, "Trust me. Really. This time is different."
Cheers
Sometimes you just have to party, besides the fact that these are funds donated specifically for the purposes of partying. There will be plenty of time for austerity once the part is over. Not that I think we are ready for austerity.
Gloom and doom 24/7 is not sustainable. Maybe this is just our last big Potlatch. I am as doomy and gloomy as the next person but even I can still remember how to dance.
Obama said yesterday that we are in tough times and will take all our efforts to fix the problems we have. My guess, however, that the problem, as we sees it, can be solved by pretty much getting back to where we came from with maybe a little green energy thrown in.
But this is America, folks, and Obama is the American President. If Obama knows the real truth, the truth that we need to downsize, telling the truth would have resulted in the inauguration of President McCain and VP Palin tomorrow.
If there are leaders out there suited for the times we live in, there is no way they could be elected President.
Not that I am not happy to see Bush go away and Obama replace him.
Regardless, I will use the mantra of Alan from Big Easy. Best Hopes for the Obama administration.
Ohhh. I see, this is leadership by....
Watch what I say and forget what I do.
My actions are not your actions.
Its called 'talking the walk but not walking the walk'. Its $#%^^&% bullshit.
Airdale-we now see the future by observing the present
Willa Cather, in either her novel O Pioneers or My Antonia, describes the scene of the crops being burnt from drought so that there is no hope of harvest. The farmer comes in the house and tells his young wife to pack a picnic. They pull the canned goods off the shelf and the family enjoys a hot summers day picnicing. Later the farmer tells his wife there will be no crop that year.
But he gifted his family that one summer's day picnic.
Who knows?
It's my understanding that the $50M is not derived from a slush fund of random money that Obama can simply divert to other uses. Many people have donated money to that account for the explicit purpose of holding an inauguration to mark both (1) the end of the Bush presidency (Hurray!) and (2) the election of an African American president, an historic event. What sort of trust would be engendered by turning to those donors and saying "thanks for the money, but the situation has changed and now I must spend this on something else"? Didn't Bernanke do this with the $350B of TARP money? What fans has he garnered as a result?
Making a fuss over the inauguration while Rome is burning all around seems a waste.
Back to the post- thanks to TOD for the letters series. I think it may help to show how the actions Euan outlines here have helped to increase the economic (an perhaps ecological) resiliency of nations that have followed similar paths. In other words, where is the role model?
The global population in aggregate has never been in global overshoot before this past generation.
YOU are the role model.
My question was, what nation's lifestyle should we use as a contemporary example of where the U.S. needs to be? Canada, US, Europe are all contributing disproportionately to the overshoot. Who is living today the way that (on average) Americans need to begin living to avoid catastrophe? The Moroccans? The people of Bhutan? Of Cambodia? Of Costa Rica? Can we illustrate their lifestyle, show how they live happily (assuming, as you have shown, that they are happy) and begin to modify our ways to emulate theirs? Make real what is otherwise rather abstract?
The France of 2020 might be a goal for the USA of 2030.
10+% of urban trips by bicycle, more by shoe leather and tram. Every town of 100,000 with a couple of tram lines, a TGV system and ordinary rail system that handle most trips and most freight, Urban growth boundaries, local agriculture, good quality and well prepared food :-) heat pump heating, low GHG emissions (nuke + hydro + solar + wind supply most of the energy in a society run primarily on electricity), and more.
Alan
And eating less meat on top of that. Of course, high discount rates might be difficult for some to overcome...
I think it was James Merkel in Radical Simplicity who estimated that the entire current world population could live at approximately the lifestyle of the average Parisian in the fifties. That doesn't sound too horrific to most, I would hope, although post-war France was no cakewalk.
Cuba was the only country to meet both minimal human well being criteria (low infant mortality, high literacy...) and sustainable living criteria in a study by WWF a couple years back.
The main point is that through most of human life and even human civilization the vast majority lived far below the "one earth" threshold. It is the human norm to do so. We are now living in the bizarrely extreme exception.
Change is coming--radical, wrenching change, in fact--but we collectively have some choice as to whether the change will be at least somewhat in our control or whether we will be completely the victim of the consequences of our former and current profligacy.
Yes, but Costa Rica and Uruguay both came very close.
Looking at those three countries, it appears to me that for the US to approach anything close to a "sustainable" economy, our per capita GDP would have to be somewhere around 25% of present levels.
Another way to look at it: In terms of real purchasing power, that is the same per capita GDP that the US had in 1941.
So, think about what life is like in places like Cuba, Costa Rica, and Uruguay, and think about what life was like in the US in 1941, and you just might be close to imagining what the long term BEST CASE scenario might be for the US.
I think we would be very lucky indeed if we ended up anywhere close to being that well off. People need hope though, and this is about the most hopeful scenario within the bounds of realism that I can imagine.
Add most aspects of modern technology to USA 1941/Costa Rica.
Computers, killer software, HDTV (lower cost than a radio in 1941, perhaps an average of 1/family, 19"- 26" perhaps most common sizes), internet.
High quality bicycles with some high tech (folding with carbon fiber/magnesium frames, etc.)
and so forth.
Alan
To some extent, yes. But there are lots of flies in that ointment.
I wonder how sustainable the manufacture of computers and other high tech electronic goodies really is? We might be able to keep some minimum manufacturing capability going for the highest priority stuff for a very long time, but I'm really doubtful if a lot of electronic gizmos are going to be part of the lifestyle of the average person a century or more from now.
Some have wondered here whether the internet will be sustained or not. As more people become poorer, the market penetration of computers into households will start to go into reverse. Powering server arrays is going to become more expensive. As more companies and institutions slash budgets, and as people buy less and advertisers thus advertise less, the growth of content on the web is likely to slow and might even start to decline. Thus, we might very well see Peak Internet within the next decade or so. How much must it decline before it goes below a critical mass and starts losing a lot of its value?
Materials science has made amazing advances. Long-term, however, the ability to recycle materials over and over again is likely to trump just about all other considerations. A bicycle frame made of solid tubular steel or aluminum might be inferior to some composite materials, but the fact that it can be melted down and the metal reused will be more important.
Life will be different than it was in 1941. There will certainly be some things that will be better, and also some things that are worse.
The "old story" for new microprocessors is that the first one costs $1 billion, the second one 25 cents.
I could see chips making a slight/not so slight retreat from maximum petaflops to a lower watts/gigaflop version with a longer service life and the world ending up with one, two or three standard designs. Still LOTS of "25 cents" microchips. Same for memory chips.
Once Moore's Law is revoked, and development plateaus, the marginal value of microprocessors *FAR* exceeds their marginal cost (25 cents + "packaging"). Conceive of a standard PC chip designed for low watts and multiple decades long service life and 1/10th or 1/100th the CPU power of "Peak Computers".
SPECULATION: Many server farms located in cheap renewable energy locations (Iceland, Brazil, Quebec/Labrador, Grand Inga, Tibet, Siberia, etc.) using lower power (and slower) chips (Google takes 2 to 120 seconds depending upon search criteria ???, and charges you the equivalent of 1 cent/second).
A world with three microprocessors (one with a monopoly on PCs, standard video, etc. on chip), and three types of memory chips should be able to meet the basic computing needs of a "2041" world. Perhaps produced in just a dozen factories around the world (dual source each type).
I think Magnesium has a greater future, as well as Lithium-Aluminum alloys (see recycling). However, a carbon fiber bicycle with an average daily service life of 35 years can "justify" some "one use" resources.
Best Hopes for A Sustainable Future,
Alan
There's a scary thought ... Peak Moore's Law with a decline following the peak.
It is plausible. Production of modern computer chips is a very complex process involving hundreds of specialized vendors. If just a few critical ones fall over the cliff, the entire house of cards (or computers chips in this case) comes tumbling down. Not something we want to wish for.
Best hopes it won't happen.
A world where one can only order a 80486 powered computer (options 2, 4, 8 and 16 CPUs) ?
HORRORS !!
Best Hopes for more efficient software,
Alan
If I remember right, the Nation of France is about the size of the State of Texas. The population density of France is dramatically higher than that of the USA.
Comparing France to the USA is comparing apples to oranges.
Urban areas can be made quite comparable, and the areas where most Americans live (california, Florida, East Texas, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Great Lakes, Mississippi & Ohio Valleys, etc.) can be comparable.
Yes, France has no Montana or Alaska, and those lightly populated areas have less to learn from the French experience. But (SWAG) 3/4ths of American do live in areas that can learn from France.
Alan
Nate,
It's the area under the curve that will get us in trouble.
http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator.cfm?IndicatorID=199&country=CD#rowCD
Perhaps Sweden, Norway? Well-run economies, democratic governments which enjoy the trust of their polis. Agreed, energy use is still a little high at 50% and 75% N America per capita, though GHG emissions much lower and Norway is a huge petroleum producer and exporter which hurts their numbers disproportionately.
Hands up those doomers who'd like to make it India? That's a lot of what goes around here.