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Page added on March 15, 2012
Peak Oil Denial: Looking Left and Right
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else-by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusion may remain inviolate – Francis Bacon [courtesy of David McRaney]
As I observed in that first post of this Looking Left and Right series: ‘We all act much the same way, ideologies notwithstanding. Human nature, I suppose. The more important questions: might we benefit from a bit of introspection before doing more of the same….We obviously wouldn’t be making use of these psychological tricks of the trade if they didn’t provide us with benefits and gratifications. So is that it? Shrug our shoulders, admit that we are all guilty from time to time and then … nothing?
‘Might we consider the possibility of being ‘ ‘ better’ ’ than that? If we choose to solve what might appear at first blush to be overwhelming and even insoluble problems, we need more. We need more from our systems, more from our leaders, and more from ourselves.’
There is a great deal at stake for all us, and we might all be better served understanding not just what we do in asserting and defending our beliefs, policies, and opinions, but why. Appreciating that might make a world of difference … literally!]
Some food for thought….
The deniers did not decide that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy by uncovering some covert socialist plot. They arrived at this analysis by taking a hard look at what it would take to lower global emissions as drastically and as rapidly as climate science demands. They have concluded that this can be done only by radically reordering our economic and political systems in ways antithetical to their ‘free market’ belief system. [1]
We all make choices all the time. The great majority of them tend to be rather inconsequential in the bigger picture, but no choice is consequence-free. If “radically reordering our economic and political systems” will prove mandatory in order not just to protect us from the serious consequences of climate change (and the effects of declining supplies of energy resources as Peak Oil clearly infers) then what decisions will be made?
Do we preserve the great god of political ideology and free-market capitalism in present form at all costs—consequences be damned—or might we all be better served by adaptation to the inevitable changes these forces of Nature will impose upon us regardless of the passion we hold for our ideologies and beliefs? If slamming headfirst into the wall because one has no intention of changing course seems wise, then we know what your decision will be.
It’s all fine and well to honor the beliefs and convictions each of us holds. But if those ideologies and beliefs are intended to best serve our needs long-term, then wisdom’s role is to alert us to the possibilities of change and an attendant need to adapt so as to carry on.
It’s perfectly “acceptable” if you choose to doubt mankind’s role in—or even the very fact of—global warming. It is a free country, after all. But to go so far in the face of mounting, factual evidence that climate changes are already taking place and fossil fuel supplies are now on a different trajectory that you completely disregard the need to consider at least some adaptations is to practice delusion and denial on a scale beyond all bounds of human behavior!
Who is to “blame” for the climate changes now taking place, or believing it is just the normal way of Earth’s geological history, are in the end irrelevant! These changes, in this day and age, will produce consequences on an order of magnitude we may not be capable of understanding. Your ideology will not save you from the effects of a warming planet, and it will not supply you with unlimited and affordable fossil fuels even close to forever.
I cannot imagine anyone now supporting the validity of Global Warming and Peak Oil who takes any delight whatsoever in the knowledge that they are “right” and that the deniers are wrong—foolishly so. [Sen. James Inhofe’s recent, incredibly idiotic denial is among the more laughable—”leadership”?!]
One reason alone is sufficient for our inability to gloat and take solace in the correctness of our beliefs: what happens to all of us—hemp-wearing, long-haired leftist radicals all the way across the spectrum to tinfoil-hat-wearing right-wingers—will be decidedly unpleasant if we do not begin the process of change and adaptation. (Not that there’s any guarantee of unending joy and prosperity if we do; but the odds are a lot better!)
Personal responsibility as a defining feature of our nation’s character also encompasses the need to demonstrate integrity and honesty and courage. We do so by accepting unpleasant truths, and then dealing with them to the best of our collective abilities regardless of the ideologies we cling to in an abstract environment where outcomes never matter.
If the choice is to preserve and protect the free-market, the only viable way to do so beyond the short-term is to recognize and understand why the concept itself will have to adapt to needed changes.* This will not be the failure of conservative economic ideology nor failure of its practitioners. It will instead be the inevitable (if unintended and unanticipated) outcome of our ingenuity and the inherent characteristics of free-market philosophy.
Our progress and growth has produced the wonder of our greatest technological advances … and the unending depletion of the energy resources which made all of that possible, while simultaneously impacting the environment and atmosphere in unintended but unpleasant ways. This is not an issue of fault or liability. Optimist that I am, I believe that nearly 100% of inventors and industrialists and business owners of all stripes did not intentionally choose an option for growth guaranteed to cause the most environmental or atmospheric harm or waste the most natural resources. Sometimes, outcomes are just outcomes.
So too in a globalized economy far more advanced and interconnected than we could possibly have foreseen decades earlier must we understand and accept that that path leads to certain destinations both unforeseen and unintended—all the good notwithstanding. The ever-increasing and destructive income inequality and distressed economic conditions we find ourselves struggling to escape from have further diminished the opportunities for others to get a foot in the door of success and prosperity. That may not have been the case a decade or two earlier, but the complexity of world economics makes us inextricably bound to one another, and that is not a guarantee that all is well with everyone all the time.
Individualists, at their core, are protectors of choice. Free-market competition is the preferred economic ecosystem because it preserves unencumbered freedom. Their idol, best-selling author Ayn Rand, was famous for a philosophy that condemned moral obligation, fearing that the logical outcome was a dictatorial nanny-state; as such, individualists have a deep-seated fear of government, which almost by definition, coerces citizens into collective action for the greater good. [2]
Asking the 1% to make contributions to the culture which provided them the means to attain their great wealth and success should not automatically be viewed from the tint of ideological frames as punishment, nor is it a blind handout to the lazy. We just need to recognize that conditions (including our own assessments and hopes for the future) have changed dramatically and in many cases have been diminished far beyond our worst fears. If we are to truly maximize all the resources of this nation—which, by the way, we do in fact happen to love just as deeply as do the red-blooded patriots on the Right—changes have to be made in the basic structure of our economic and political systems.*
By all means we should allow the “deserving” to continue on. But unless you are one of the 99% who just happens to believe that all is well as long as the 1% is cared for—regardless of the impact policies and practices have on you and your family—then asking the 1% to shoulder a bit more of the burden in an increasingly complex global economy should not be viewed as the destruction of all that makes us exceptional. In this intricate global economy, maximizing all of our best resources and those of every citizen capable and willing to offer a contribution is what will continue to define us as the pre-eminent nation in a world far different than the one of generations past.
Insisting that we continue to do what we’ve always done across the landscape of political, personal, and economic opportunities is a sure sign that we lack the vision and capacity to adapt and evolve. Letting the world pass us by because of a stubborn insistence that we must not change our ways is an option, I guess, but no one is going to slow down or reverse course to appease the thoughts and wishes of days gone by—thoughts and wishes having almost no place in the 2012 world we live in.
Should that lack of vision be our legacy in this new century?
How much better do we choose to be?
4 Comments on "Peak Oil Denial: Looking Left and Right"
BillT on Thu, 15th Mar 2012 12:12 pm
The Us is no longer a ‘preeminent’ country and has not been for most of a century. It has been an Empire on the build at the expense of the rest of the world.
We are not going to ‘evolve’. We are going to go into oblivion kicking and scratching and whining that it’s ‘their fault’. We are collapsing as a nation. We have lived on the backs of the 3rd world for at least a century. We have become a spoiled, uneducated, greedy people.
No? Look around. Our nation was born by killing the natives and taking their land. It has grown by the same means of pillage and tribute of other countries wealth. It will die by over-reach, just as Rome only much, much faster.
Ham on Thu, 15th Mar 2012 5:09 pm
Couldn’t agree more Bill. There is is no way the excessive consumption we are used to, is going to survive. The propaganda is now in the stage of delusion and complete fantasy. The largest offshore platform in Northern Canadian Arctic (cost $5 billion) is only producing 135,000 bpd and the shale ponzi boom is totally inadequate. Many changes are going to take place. Facts do not change from being facts because you ignore them.
James on Fri, 16th Mar 2012 2:19 am
As a member of the “white race”, I am sorry to be a member of. I would never have endorsed the taking of the land away from the Native Americans and advocate giving it back to them since they are the rightful owners to begin with. I also would never have allowed slavery. The African-Americans performed all the back breaking labor so that the White Elites could live a life of luxury. The slaves didn’t get paid for their labor and were only given subsistence to live on. I advocate giving the families of these slaves back pay with interests. Noe, the white race wants to take over the Worlds oil resources by killing and maiming the members of the Middle East cultures. Soon, if they don’t do something about it, the white elites will take over their lands. It seems that whenever or wherever the white man goes, he wants to dominate and pillage other countries resources for his own gratifications. Again, I am sorry that I am a member of this despicable race.
Mike on Sat, 17th Mar 2012 12:04 am
James, I too am sorry that such a sniveling, self-loathing, white-hating and ignorant racist like you even exists. You seem to think that your moral viewpoint and pompous self-righteousness is inherent to your very being and not learned, acquired. And from where? Ironically, your moral compass was constructed in the European Enlightenment which gave birth to our modern democratic ideals, abolitionism, Geneva Conventions, League of Nations, United Nations, constitutional government, science, the Declaration of Universal Human rights….
With out the West’s deep self-examination and subsequent self-correction, your “morality” would not differ much from the brutal and primitive “natives” you so romantically adore. You, and the entire planet, would still be mired in Iron Age brutality.
As for “natives”, you’d do well to remember that Native Americans are not native to the Americas, the English to England, the Romans to Italy, the Persians to Iran, the Japanese to Japan, etc. People have been shuffling around the globe, killing each other, for 40,000 years.
People have been enslaving one another since at least the Neolithic Age. But no living white man is, or has been, a slave holder. No living African-American is, or has been, a slave. As for reparations to millions of African-Americans who have never been slaves, understand that 9$ trillion has been spent in welfare since 1964 – much of it benefiting African-Americans.
If your moral indignation over historical events is “right” and “proper” for our age or for any age, then understand clearly that that moral viewpoint is not “yours” but inherited from – you guessed it – white men who sought who posed questions the Romans and Mongols never considered. It was not Asians, Africans, Aborigines or Comanches (who were notably violent). It was evil Europeans.