40 comments on Peak Oil and Community Solutions Conference (Saturday)
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The presentation on Cuba illustrates just that - a totalitarian government is praised for "successfully" coping with oil supply reductions by only having its population lose an average 30 pounds of body weight - all so that they would not be allowed to join the world's free market in energy.
Another presenter preaches sustainability but leaves unanswered the consequence that 70 to 90% of the world's population would starve to death if the policies he advocated were adopted. And the audience cheers, claps, and stomps their feet in encouragement.
Doesn't this sound a bit like Pol Pot talking to the Khmer Rouge?
While I'm on board with the geological prospects of Peak Oil, I vigorously disassociate myself from those advocating mass starvation and totalitarianism. You hang with those people and NOBODY responsible will pay any attention to you. Some of these people are giving Peak Oil a very bad name. Once you lose your reputation, you'll never get anything constructive done.
I don't think any of the speakers are advocating mass starvation. It's my inference that that is a likely outcome of trying to go back to a pre-industrial society - an inference that's worth debating I think (as we did, vigorously, yesterday). There certainly are people in the peak oil movement who think mass starvation is inevitable.
As to Cuba: I was uncomfortable with what I thought was an unbalanced presentation that made no mention of political repression there. At the same time, I think it's extremely questionable that the US could survive a near overnight 50% loss of oil supply and have it be no worse than a weight loss program. I think that really is an achievement and it's well worth studying how they did it. Just because we disagree with a country's political system is no reason not to study them and steal their best ideas. I deplore the current US policy on Cuba and think it only serves to prop up the regime there.
I think there is a huge risk of peak oil triggering a descent into authoritarianism (either of the left wing or right wing variety). I think that's devoutly to be avoided. I also think it's very likely that we'll see greater government involvement in the economy (because it will be politically infeasible for them to let the market run its course - just as major wars tend to trigger rationing etc, I think there's a strong likelihood that peak oil will too.
My own desire is to look at all pieces of evidence, and listen to all points of view, and know something of all relevant academic disciplines, and do my best to understand and synthesize them as objectively as I can, without fear of whether my conclusions make me temporarily popular or unpopular with particular segments of opinion.
Finally, I wanted to say that I appreciate your perspective and encourage you to keep voicing it. I sense that many ODers are a little more left-leaning than you are, and I hope you'll not be deterred by that but continue to give us your thoughts.
The German Wehrmacht (Army) of 1941 was probably the most superb instrument of military aggression ever invented. There was literally no one on the planet who could beat it.
However as conditions changed (one of them being a growing shortage of... oil and petroleum products) and new competitors emerged, the Wehrmacht was eventually defeated and obliterated.
Ecological niches change due to outside forces. Some societies (states, civilisations, organisations, institutions) can, and do, adapt rapidly enough. Some do not.
The Roman Catholic church has adapted rapidly enough to changed circumstances to survive for 1500 years with over 1 billion adherents. The Manichean church, or the Nestorian one, by contrast, are extinct enough that most people will have to look them up.
the point about Cuba is this. In a world of relative abundance of energy and raw materials, a free market, decentralised authority state like the United States is best poised to seize opportunities.
In an environment of sudden and rapid energy scarcity, then a society with greater discipline (and discipline usually means secret police, prisons etc: in the post 9-11 world, Mr. Bush has said as much about the US) may be able to adapt more rapidly.
Not always. North Korea clearly did not (or did so at huge human cost to its people). But Cuba has, and did.
It's not an ideal state (losing 30lbs each) and McKibben is the first to point that out. But survive they did.
One can imagine in a parallel situation the US falling into complete civil disorder. There are over 150 million guns out there, and populations that are locked into needing cars, factory-style food production etc. It's not a recipe for a happy collective sitting down and rationing.
If there was such a breakdown of civil order, I would imagine that it would be followed by the emergence of 'militia states' a la the southern US during the Reconstruction Era, that would impose order (at the cost of the loss of some personal freedoms).
The open water between Castroist Cuba (a totalitarian state) and a USA which is rather more militaristic than now, would be smaller than it is today.
I feel, as a moderate, that all those tools are good and have applications. I'm nonetheless continually saddened by the knee-jerk responses. Folks who think they have the tool will be the first people to jump on a problem, and folks who don't have the tool will be the last.
This makes for a lopsided response at best, and "political holdouts" at worst, who will deny a problem with their last breath.
Just hope peak oil doesn't follow the global warming pattern too far.
Cuba couldn't join if they wanted to, there's an embargo by the US, that virtually no other country in the UN supports.
And to say that a modestly complimentary video about Cuba is akin to Pol Pot might well be seen by many as harboring an extreme right wing agenda - and if we get too much of that it could give Peak Oil a very bad name!
The US embargo does not deny Cubans access to free market energy - their own government does.
Pol Pot was a Communist as is Fidel Castro. Both have ruined the countries they rule or ruled. How is pointing out the self-avowed similarities an extreme right wing marker?
The presenter on sustainable agriculture would argue (if he dared) that the elimination of billions of people would be a "natural" and logical consequence of the policies he sees as necessary. The only way to get to the future he postulates and advocates is mass death. Pol Pot caused the death of millions of his subjects in the name of his ideology too. Granted, Pol Pot was worst but then, none of the presenters have gotten absolute control of a country yet!
I'm criticizing proposals, analysis, and methods that are founded on a strain of political thought that has caused the misery and death of millions of people over the last 100 years - Radical Leftism.
While trying to fathom people's motivations is always risky, I also think that radical leftists are attracted to Peak Oil issues BECAUSE the topic offers the prospect of radical transformation of industrial civilization and would weaken the existing democratic paradigm. One can see this is in the anti-Americanism in Campbell and others, a topic with little to do with the geology and technology of oil extraction. Admit it, doesn't the heart quicken at the thought of being in the Vanguard of Sustainability?
As to Stuart's point about we all have to live together, I'd have to remind people that even Stalin had to give Trotsky the ax for being too radical.
I'm listening too but what I'm hearing is too often not constructive and is too often against the peace, freedom, and tranquility of the great mass of people. And guess what? People are going to catch on and any discussion of "peak oil" will be labeled a subject for cranks and discontents only.
As to me being a Republican - yep. Straight ticket, Rocked Ribbed, and (if those new nukes get ordered), maybe someday a Country Club Republican. Higher gasoline taxes, excess profits taxes, and price controls are all too liberal for me. I will say that the re-regulation of electric utilities is a sensible idea so you can call me a Progressive Republican.
I do feel that peak oil is going to pose some challenges for Republicans. Carter was the first peak-oil president. Your leaders, from Reagan through Bush II, have been extremely clear that it was "Morning in America" and that any effort to conserve energy, or even research conserving energy, was a bad idea. I think that's going to be very politically damaging and hard to shake off, if indeed the near-term peak hypothesis is correct. I also think the interaction of net-present-value calculations with both renewable and non-renewable resources is going to look, well, imprudent, as we get into a post peak world. So I think free-market economics might take a big ideological hit, in the same way that the collapse of the Soviet Union just about finished off Marxism as a credible ideology.
However, all that makes me extremely appreciative of those of you Republicans who are more interested in the truth about peak oil than defending your ideological position. In general, I prefer competence and pragmatism over ideological correctness (eg I would vote for a Schwarzenegger/Giuliani type Republican sooner than a Ralph Nader type leftist and I'm with Dave in his call for a 2008 Roscoe Bartlett presidential campaign).
I am handicapped by not being in attendence but I didn't mean to imply that some presenter is ADVOCATING the immediate death of billions. I'm also sympathetic to a vision of our planet with only 1 billion rather than 8 or 10 billion - but only as a fantasy. To present and advocate policies that condone and facilitate such a policy of involuntary population reduction is morally analogous to building the mythical Doomsday Machine back in the Cold War days and just as repugnant. Both are bad ideas and pointless.
The only morally worthy activity is to engage in physical and mental work to keep the current world population fed, healthy, educated, and prosperous. Zero population growth is an excellent, useful position but willful, involuntary NEGATIVE population change is unethical.
As to Cuba, how an imploding, isolated, comand and control economy can offer meaningful "lessons" to a giant, global, vibrant free market is difficult for me to envision. Also, I don't think that anyone has proposed an overnight 50% reduction in oil supply as a plausible scenario for the US economy.
Remember that Beatles lyric:
"You go talking about Chairman Mao, ain't nobody gonna listen anyhow..."
To reiterate my political point - the Peak Oil community needs to understand the moral and ethical implications of their advocacy. Your efforts will be endorsed by the wider community only as to how it is judged to support the welfare of people. Holding up an enslaved society like Cuba as an exemplar or prescribing the death of 80% of the world's population will get you turned off and ignored.
Secondly, no, we are not going to lose 50% of our oil in one year. But "a giant, global, vibrant free market" is in a way far more sensitive to smaller declines in oil supplies than was Cuba. Once we are on the backside of the oil curve, we could see declines over 5% or more a year. If this were the case, without adequate preparation, the results could be very serious.
two points:
- the point about Cuba is that a command economy might be more capable of making a rapid adjustment to a change in its circumstances, than a more free market economy.
There is precedent. By any measure, the most successful economies in WWII at mobilising resources for war were the British and the Russian. The latter was already a completely socialist state, and the former adopted total market socialism (rationing, the works) for the period of WWII-- so successful was Britain, that despite having a pre war economy only half the size of the Nazi one, and despite the brutal disruptions of the submarine war, in 1941 they managed to outproduce the Nazi economy in terms of total war production. It was a stupendous feat, and, indeed, another part of Britain's 'finest hour'. (see Alan Milward, The World Economies 1939-45. Penguin Books).
- 50% drop in oil supplies is dramatic. But it's not impossible. It would take a serious blowup in the Middle East, but the world is on a very fragile supply line from Middle Eastern oil. If someone found a way to close the mouth of the Gulf, and/or there was a revolution in Saudi Arabia, we would be well on the way to a 50% cut in supply.
Cuba made a dramatic shift. If one believes the Peak Oil thesis, the whole western world will have to make that shift, albeit over a longer time period.
Such a time period may give time for the marketplace to work its magic, create new technologies and new sources of energy. But we can't double the fuel efficiency of the US car fleet overnight for example.
Welcome to the Oil Drum.
The Republican Party has been hijacked by some truly scary groups of people. Whether it is the 'tax cuts, above all' crowd, regardless of the Federal Budgetary position, or the 'the Gospel of Revelations determines our Middle Eastern policy' or 'there is no global warming', the modern Republican party has been hijacked by the radical fringe.
The point about Cuba was what does a society do when it is forced to alter its position radically in a very short time period?
Whatever we might think of Cuba (a fairly unpleasant totalitarian state) the fact that they adapted so quickly and successfully is a tribute to their people and their system. Cuba is not wholly responsible for its current position (the US embargo is mean and irrational) but it is substantially so.
The open question, in light of some of the events of the 1970s in the US, or the petrol strike in the UK in 2000, is whether our societies could adapt as quickly to changed circumstances.
My own view is the global CO2 problem will be the acid test. If we don't tackle it, with substantive measures, and soon, we won't have any options left by mid century.