[Leanan]

Stirling Newberry, who often writes about economic topics at DailyKos, wrote about peak oil the other day. He started with the Rainwater article, then did a detailed analysis of the economy over the last hundreds years or so. (Among other things, he explains why gold was monetary standard of the coal age; the implication is that it may not be in the future, since we are unlikely to return to the "rock economy.")

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')m I a prophet of doom? Not really, looking at the technology I see that it is possible to put together a different kind of society, one that does not involve denial, imperialism, technosloptimism or mega-austerity. However it does require a shift in our fundamental ways of doing business. It requires shifts in politics, economics, technology - and art and culture as well. It requires a shift in our monetary system to measure these changes. The view that we can either "swap out" the old technology for new, or that we can just "shut down" the old economy and live without it are not supportable by the numbers. The "Swap out" models all produce too much CO2 for supportable levels of affluence. The "shut down" models all produce too little GDP to sustain current populations. We can only pursue either if someone is willing to pick out a couple of billion people who aren't going to make it to the otherside of the transformation.

Thus the only real option is radical transformation. We can do this in one of the relatively easier ways, or we can do it in one of the much harder ways, after a series of increasing conflicts culminates in the long worried about "World War III". Radical transformation is difficult and painful, because it means that people who expected to get rewards by slam dunk methods aren't going to get them - and if there is anything people don't want to give up, it is no brainer profits. Radical transformation is also uncomfortable, because it means recognizing that the entire artistic capital of an age is, well, antiquated. Those who are well paid by the current system will not want to give up either their privileges, or their uninterupted corridor to power later on. Those who are outside will often not realize that there are painful tradeoffs involved in being inside.

[EnergySpin]

Why is this :
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')We stand at a cross roads - either the US can make a big bet on the phony fuel economy - get one more half generation out of the petro-economy at the cost of trillions of dollars in wars and capital - or we can decide to radically restructure the economy around telecommunications, electricity, substitution away from carbon and a political system that has the mandate to guide this transformation.

[Leanan]

Relatively dark. Only a few months ago, he seemed to think the status quo would continue indefinitely. Now he writes this:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e can only pursue either if someone is willing to pick out a couple of billion people who aren't going to make it to the otherside of the transformation.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ince petroleum puts a limit on mechanization, and our economic expectations - our money system, our financial system and our political promises made - rest on the continual expansion of the mechanized economy - something has to give. Either the environment gives out as we over sink, the sources give out as we over consume, or the promises give out - and we have to slash living standard so that everyone can get a piece of the mechanized economy's dwindling surplus.

This then is the case for alarmism - if we don't run out of oil, we run out of air. And we run out of both before we run out of people who want into the system. And because our monetary system is based on the ability of people to become affluent mechanized consumers and workers - there isn't enough money on the planet to meet our promises, which rely on expanding the economy indefinitely at over 2% per year.

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')e calls for the paradigm shift like I do. Peak oil is a symptom of a greater disease: a false assumption of infinite growth in a finite world with an elaborate unsustainable infrastructure to support that assumption.

[MicroHydro]

A paradigm shift would be nice. I have made one in my personal life this year by moving to a place where one can live without heating or cooling.

Unfortunately, the elite plan is to reduce world population by a couple of billion. That has been the elite thinking for over 30 years. Note the psychological preparations with all the media talk of bird flu, while the labs are working on modifications of the 1918 strain. When the great epidemic comes, most people will believe it is a natural event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_S ... randum_200

[sameu]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')He calls for the paradigm shift like I do. Peak oil is a symptom of a greater disease: a false assumption of infinite growth in a finite world with an elaborate unsustainable infrastructure to support that assumption.

[Heineken]

Obviously the elite didn't think much of that NSC memo, since "more people," not "less people" has in fact been the mantra, microhydro. More people equals more consumers, as they see it, and endlessly expanding corporate bottom lines.

[backstop]

Sameu -

Its a bastard of a question isn't it ?

The nearest I've come to an answer is that Thatcher and Reagan, or more accurately the people they served, were so heavily programmed to a coercive centralized society that obliterating Carter's proposals from the public mind was just a first priority auto-reaction.

They gave us a heavy recession and then a massive war-scare in quick succession, forced university students into ever-greater debt, pushed motor-cars and roads at us from every orifice, conned millions into house mortguages, etc. All of which made quite sure that the issue of sustainability (for which my generation has now faced ridicule for forty years) was firmly suppressed from public concern.

Some gesture politics over green issues has kept the whole idea of sustainability from ever yet gaining serious profile, added to which is the incredibly incompetent conduct of the Environmental movement. (I use the word incredibly intentionally - if I ran Texaco or Aramco, Greenpeace strategy since 1990 would be pretty much my ideal).

In short, we've been herded to our present position, with the fetters being financial and the whips being peoples' programmed fear of material embarrassment.

Radical transformation isn't the only real option - (a second one is to press on still harder) - it is just the requisite option to minimize a catastrophic global decline.
As ever, it is still our choice whether, as the mass of the people, we choose to make ourselves heard !

Regards,

Backstop

[MicroHydro]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'O')bviously the elite didn't think much of that NSC memo, since "more people," not "less people" has in fact been the mantra, microhydro. More people equals more consumers, as they see it, and endlessly expanding corporate bottom lines.

[Liamj]

I find it a relief actually. The more people grasp the scale and complexity of our problems the better. The more can bring themselves to talk about it, the better too. We truly live in uniquely perilous times, and nearly everybody ignoring that fact hasn't helped so far. Call it 'dark' if you like, to me its light.

What radical transformation by who is the reactionary question, which i'm not going to touch except to say i think if the how is done right (via unprecedented public education, genuine participatory democracy, constitutional & monetary reform/innovation) then a tranformative set of (Powerdown-like) solutions could be cobbled together.
Else, 'There is [still] hope, but not for us.'

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MicroHydro', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'O')bviously the elite didn't think much of that NSC memo, since "more people," not "less people" has in fact been the mantra, microhydro. More people equals more consumers, as they see it, and endlessly expanding corporate bottom lines.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('sameu', ' ') So tell me, why aren't we doing anything? Why are we walking to the cliff wit a big smile (a real or prozac induced) on our faces? Tell me, because I want t be able to answer the one million dollar question.

[Leanan]

In the article, Newberry touches on the reasons for complacency:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')ne of the reasons people are complacent now is because of the survivor's illusion - that is, we are made it, or are the descendants of people who made it. One reason for the centrality of the Holocaust experience is that it disrupts this illusion - the Jews who escaped Europe are people who made it, but who saw their friends, fathers, mothers, relatives - not make it. There are at the boundary between the quick and the dead.

The question is "where are we?" After all, by the mid 19th century, even as the coal economy was getting established, the misery that it created, the limits on its expansion, and the dangers of allowing "decadence" to knock the few off the top of the perch, were well known. Dozens of figures - from Marx to Wagner - warned of what came at the end of that historical age: conflagration. They were right, merely not for a long time. It would, in fact, take 60 years for these warnings to begin coming to pass. And the longer they took, the more they were disregarded. Up to the very day that "The Great War" broke out, the prevalent view was that economic and political inter-relatedness made war unthinkable.

[Novus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', '
')
IOW...the more power you have to make changes - wealth, influence, etc. - the least likely you are to want to make changes. You've got it good under the current system. Under a new system, you might find yourself at the bottom. Why would you want to change when you've already won the societal lottery?

[cube]

It's always nice to see a rich person have a doom and gloom mentality. Granted having money doesn't automatically make someone right but I guess if you managed to acquire at least a billion dollars you must have some basic understanding of economics. Either that or it was an extreme statistical anomaly aka (luck).

Having money makes one's opinion carry more weight (rightfully so) IMHO.

[Novus]

This reminds me a bit of the "Parable of the box"

In a certain villiage there existed a Box. The box is full of salmon, and a man sits atop the box. Long ago this man hired armed guards to keep anyone from eating his fish. The many people who sit next to the empty river starve to death. But they do not die of starvation. They die of a belief. Everyone believes that the man atop the box owns the fish. The soldiers believe it, and they will kill to protect the illusion. The others believe it enough that they are willing to starve. But the truth is that there is a box, there is an emptied river, there is a man sitting atop the box, there are guns, and there are starving people.

The Box sitter is what we would call a rich man. We think of him as great because he was successfull at filling his box. He is a creator and representative of progress and civilization. But the box sitter is not a good man. He is a distroyer. A distroyer of men and a distroyer of all things. Filling his box came at the cost of removing all the fish from the river which was a finite resourse. Befor the box sitter the villiagers all fished and had food. The Box sitter came from another villiage with a new and better way of fishing that soon emptied the river. Some of the starving villiagers will leave the area in search for another river which does not have a box sitter so they can copy his methods and become a box sitter themselves.

To the box sitter there is only one way to live and it is progress. Find a newer, better, faster, and more efficient way to exploit the earth's resources and then educate others to make more Box Sitters. To all ends of the earth box sitters now dwell. Every river, mountain, plain, hill, and desert has a box sitter. Their one culture has taken over the world for there is no culture left in existance which does not praise the efficient and exploitive ways of the Box sitter.

Creating a coal box sitter, or a nuclear box sitter, or wind box sitter, or any other box sitter will not solve the world wide problem that the earth itself is a finite resource. The world does not need another box sitter. It needs a paradime shift of not 50 or 100 years but a shift of 1000s years to a time before the box sitter. Thousands of years ago this modern time raping of mother earth would have been called for it is. Anyone who distroyed a river or a forrest of its sustainablity would have been shuned and thrown from his box and had his box burned and his ways made taboo.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', '
')
IOW...the more power you have to make changes - wealth, influence, etc. - the least likely you are to want to make changes. You've got it good under the current system. Under a new system, you might find yourself at the bottom. Why would you want to change when you've already won the societal lottery?

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('sameu', ' ') So tell me, why aren't we doing anything? Why are we walking to the cliff wit a big smile (a real or prozac induced) on our faces? Tell me, because I want t be able to answer the one million dollar question.

[RdSnt]

A cautionary note needs to be injected here. As we wring our hands saying "radical change" is the only solution, leads to calls for a "strong" leader to make things better. That way leads to Hitler and Musollini.
The US is half way there already.