[Soft_Landing]

Here's an interesting article attempting to forecast to consequences of peak oil extraction. In particular, the author is interested in debasing the more apocalyptic post peak predictions. It's really a very good read.


The Coming of Deindustrial Society: A Practical Response

Tell everyone what you think.

From my perspective, I think the review provides a good perspective of likely outcome, with the caveat that catastrophic collapse is a non-neglible possibility. With regard to the notion that previous civilization collapse should serve as a guide to what we expect, well this is fine, but we might want to pay attention to the things that are unique about our particular civilization. In particular, I am thinking of the remarkable integration and interdependency throught our current system. I suspect that the complex interdepenecies in our society are the most extreme that have ever existed on the face of the planet, and suggest that this leaves open the possibility for the most rapid descent in history also. Thus, although I agree that the 'punctuated equilibrium' of decline proposed in this article seems most likely, it's also worth considering more extreme possibilities...

[MonteQuest]

Yes, I found many of the points of this article to be quite salient, but like Soft_Landing, I believe that because of our complexity, we are more likely to experience a more rapid and catastrophic collapse. We are not just facing peak-oil, but all the other concerns of the 21st Century I laid out in the Peak-Oil Perfect Storm thread.

[Jack]

Yes, I agree - the key is to become a part of a general community. In fact, an article such as this makes a nice introduction to the Peak Oil issue - it speaks with urgency, but not panic. And, it makes practical suggestions that can be implemented over the course of years....

[Kingcoal]

The doomsday senarios are built around Ghawar going off-line. That would really suck. If things happen gradually, I think that the world will adjust. Yes, there will be less people in the world, but that decline is happening already in Europe and China to name a few.

Unfortunately however, the abrupt decline of large producers such as Ghawar is extreamely likely.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kingcoal', 'I')f things happen gradually, I think that the world will adjust. Yes, there will be less people in the world, but that decline is happening already in Europe and China to name a few.

[Markos101]

I think it's misleading to talk about a 3%+2% ~ 5% 'net loss' in energy each year. What will be happening is that we will be losing 2-3% a year of a very useful substance that is used for virtually all products in the market place, creating jobs and assets with value.

In terms of energy strictly, gas imports will have to rise (for electricity purposes); coal use will rise, but in the shorter term yes I think it will be very difficult to continue to grow energy usage by 2-3%. But I don't think peak oil will immediately cause peak energy - it will however gradually create havoc, with scarcity of oil (physical scarcity) being reflected in the economy by loss of jobs, loss of businesses, bankrupcies, a declining stock market, and in general a decline in value of many, many assets due to inflation in world currencies.

The dollar is a very concerning issue.

I'm personally looking in to a short term profit in oil shocks, followed by a withdrawl into cash and an investment in physical gold. Gold will likely be a mainstay currency if inflation becomes out of hand.

And as for the bankers who originally got us into this situation in the first place, well they are responsible for the largest catastrophy man will likely face. I have little doubt that they were perfectly aware of the consequences of their actions when they formed this financial system. The commercial bankers have made obscene profits from other people's labour for too long, and now we all have to pay the price.

Mark

[backstop]

Markos - I would like, gently but firmly, to point out that your writing

"Gas imports will have to rise"

is exactly the thinking that has driven us to the present crisis. It is essentially 'me first', in assuming that the US will import more, which cannot be done except at somebody else's expense. The days of the US living at other peoples' expense are coming to an end. The only question is how fair a deal the US is allowed in terms of 'compensating' other nations for its present decadence.

This thinking surely reflects the precepts of Expansionism, firstly that we can always borrow more money to pay the bills because we'are America, and secondly that Usury, the charging of interest on monies loaned, doesn't actually delimit US growth.

I see you're looking beyond these precepts and mean no offence at all in pointing out just how easily habits of mind keep them operating to constrain our perspectives.

regards,

Backstop

[Barbara]

backstop,
maybe I'm wrong but I've read US can't import gas from out of Americas.
Gas can't be shipped on ships or under the ocean in pipelines. That's why I think EU will be advantaged on PO getting gas from Russia and ME.

[jato]

Barbara, It's called LNG. Check this article out. This is explains some of the mess we are in here in California:

http://www.energybulletin.net/2398.html

[Markos101]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('backstop', 'M')arkos - I would like, gently but firmly, to point out that your writing

"Gas imports will have to rise"

is exactly the thinking that has driven us to the present crisis. It is essentially 'me first', in assuming that the US will import more, which cannot be done except at somebody else's expense. The days of the US living at other peoples' expense are coming to an end. The only question is how fair a deal the US is allowed in terms of 'compensating' other nations for its present decadence.

This thinking surely reflects the precepts of Expansionism, firstly that we can always borrow more money to pay the bills because we'are America, and secondly that Usury, the charging of interest on monies loaned, doesn't actually delimit US growth.

I see you're looking beyond these precepts and mean no offence at all in pointing out just how easily habits of mind keep them operating to constrain our perspectives.

regards,

Backstop

[gg3]

Interesting article (Deindustrial Society).

(Odd coincidence, as I was writing this, the lights flickered off for a moment, and the DSL went down. If you see this posting, we're not having a lengthier outage...)

Though, I think there are two factors that make the present era radically different from previous ones:

a) population, including density thereof, and b) speed of communication and financial transactions.

When high-density populations go into collapse mode, it's almost certain that there will be pandemic disease outbreaks. We're overdue for another killer flu pandemic, and it's not unrealistic to suggest other possibilities (e.g. terrorist use of bioweapons).

The fact of rapid international travel also can't be ignored; even if air travel largely declines, it will still exist for decades to come. All it takes is one person to spread a pandemic, AIDS being a good example.

b) Economic interdependencies, the proclivity of bad-news to spread globally in minutes if not seconds, and the legendary irrational nervousness of investors, can multiply economic dislocations far beyond their actual radius of impact. The interconnectedness of currencies is a factor. Recall that the Evil Communist Empire wasn't affected by the Great Depression because they were not connected to the Western economies.

So I think it's safe to say that processes of decline that took from one to four centuries in previous eras could take place in a tenth of that time today. That is, within our lifetimes.

Aside from the question of "how far, how fast," Greer seems pretty realistic. I think his suggestion that existing fraternal orders start getting organized to help, is brilliant. With two caveats:

a) No Secret Societies! Secret societies breed all kinds of problems I hardly need to explain here. They are entirely inimical to the principles of a republic governed by citizens who are free and equal under the law.

b) I'm not entirely comfortable with organizations that even to this day exclude women from membership. I can't speak from experience, having never belonged to any such, but something about it doesn't sit right in the modern age. If these fraternal orders start to take on a more critical role in crisis times, and they consist solely of men, or solely of women for that matter, then what we have is a gender-segregated de-facto power structure.

Pure speculation, but I think it would be interesting to see something like a geeks' version of the Grange. The Grange is predominantly agriculturally oriented; there should also be something similar for engineers and people in the technical trades. People who can build and repair technology of any kind.

In my immediate community we use the word "toolmaker" as a term of high praise. This suggests a kind of affinity with what was meant, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, by the term "mechanic." Today that's a slightly oldschool term for an automotive technician, but originally it had the connotations of both mechanical engineer and craftsman, with a wide range of generalist skills including manufacturing, machining, drafting, and so on. So perhaps it's appropriate to bring back the old language, and call this something like the Mechanics' Association...?

There is also a serious need to differentiate "service" orientation from "advocacy" orientation. I go to the Grange pages and quickly discover an enormous "legislative agenda," which is inherently political and bound to be divisive. In times of emergency, we have got to stand for our common ground first.

A friend of mine in the Army says his fellow soldiers, most of them conservative as soldiers tend to be, don't give a damn if someone is gay, what matters is their warrior skills & ethos. When your house is on fire you don't ask or care whether the firefighters are Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, Christians, Jews, Muslims, or Secular Humanists, what matters is that they have the skills and courage to save lives and put out the fire.

So if I were setting up a hypothetical Mechanics Association, I would make it open to anyone with the skills and experience to qualify as a journeyman, technician, engineer, or scientist. The Association would not support candidates for public office, nor would it comment on pending legislation. It might require that all members who are citizens be registered to vote, and perhaps even show evidence of having done so at each election, but have nothing to say about who/what to vote for. It would disqualify for membership anyone convicted of a crime of force or fraud. It would require membership in subcommittees working on specific projects. And beyond that it would simply be engaged in specific service projects, including preparing for the transitions of the coming crises.

There are already a couple of precedents I know of. One is the ARRL, the Amateur Radio Relay League, which is active in local disaster preparedness and is often a vital link -or the only link- between disaster zones and the outside world. The Telephone Pioneers' Association originally consisted of retired Telco employees, and focused on projects relating to disability access to the network, for example using Bell Telephone Company workshops to build accessability devices long before such things were popular. These are examples of specifics, what I'd be looking to set up would be more generalist.

Then if you go back in Hubbert's personal history you find a curious organization called the Technical Alliance. This eventually turned into Technocracy, and that word itself was somehow turned into a pejorative by the media, perhaps because one of its early tenets -in the 1930s!- was that the economic system should be based on energy accounting rather than financial accounting.

So now it occurs to me, it might be interesting to revive the Technical Alliance...? Look up Technocracy on the web and you find some very interesting stuff. Perhaps we should start a topic on that...

Anyone want to comment on these ideas so far...?

Other:

Don't go blaming "bankers" as a category, for our economic quagmire. Most bankers are people who are in fact committed to serving their communities. However they, like corporate leaders, are trapped inside a system that is fatally flawed. Consider that the Board of Directors of any publicly-held corporation is required by law to not just earn a profit, but to *maximize* profit. The latter term (maximize) gives rise to positive-feedback loops of unsustainable growth. Similar cases exist specifically in the banking & finance worlds, which flat-out prevent these institutions from aligning themselves with the long-term view.

What we need to do is not scapegoat the bankers, but liberate their potential. We need to create new types of private-sector financial institutions, starting with credit unions and micro-lending institutions, and various types of financial co-ops and venture capital associations, that can operate as viable (i.e. profitable) entities without being shackled to the wheel of "maximization," unsustainable growth, and related policies. We can continue a viable and sustainable economy based on private ownership and freedom of enterprise, even if it looks nothing like what we have today.

[knoppix2004]

[Permanently_Baffled]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('knoppix2004', '
')
However I will not give-up my SUV even if price went $10 per gallon. I can afford it and it will take lot more then that to take me away from my fantasy world. Lot more!

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Markos101', 'I') think it's misleading to talk about a 3%+2% ~ 5% 'net loss' in energy each year. What will be happening is that we will be losing 2-3% a year of a very useful substance that is used for virtually all products in the market place, creating jobs and assets with value.

[smiley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')erhaps, it might be, but we know that when the economy grows, we increase electrical generation to meet the new demand. Does a 3% growth in GDP translate to a 3% increase in electrical demand and oil consumption? If we lose 2-3% a year of oil when we need a 2-3% increase of energy use, doesn't that add up to a 4-6% net loss in what we need to maintain the status quo? Am I missing something here?

[backstop]

Monte - My guess is all three of the above, but I just wish that those who pride themselves on pulling financial levers (the ones in the really dark suits -high priests' robes?) that will initiate the demand destruction had the faintest clue as to the scale of demand destruction that climate impacts are already having around the world.

EG, Hurricanes Charlie, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne took out a mass of oil and gas demand that would otherwise have exacerbated shortages due to the 'production deferrment' problems that Ivan achieved.

What's the betting therefore that when finance ministers do pull on the brakes that they do so far harder than is helpful ?

This term conservation I distrusted long before meeting with Jevon's analysis, both from practical observation of its use as a marketting tool and from its isolationist undertones. Yet at the moment, we haven't a better one in circulation. Therefore what about collaring it with a qualification as a stop-gap ?

Even "Efficent Conservation" would clearly disallow the marketting tool usage while accomodating, say, the per-capita tradable fuel-ration option.

Any thoughts on such a qualifier ?


regards,

Backstop

[MonteQuest]

It's like I told Canuck, conservation, increased efficiencies, etc, are useless unless the energy saved is not allowed on the market. In the past, every time something became more efficient, people used more of it. Demand destruction must be permanent, and not subject to supply and demand. I'm dreaming right? Such is our dilemma.

[smiley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t's like I told Canuck, conservation, increased efficiencies, etc, are useless unless the energy saved is not allowed on the market.

[backstop]

Soft_Landing - While I'd agree that the article has a variety of insighful perspectives I have to disagree fundamently with its seductively veiled central proposal, namely that Americans should give up on national democracy.

The suggestion that "there's nothing a president can do to make a real difference" is just a pernicious assertion, without any evidence beyond the further assertion that for one to try "would be political suicide." In reality there are critically important things that only an American president can do, both for the planet and for the US.

As to politicians' potential effectiveness, consider how Gorbachev took apart the whole Soviet empire with scarcely a shot fired (until somebody preferred to have a drunk in power).

Furthermore, it would be far better for the future of democracy, for its legend, to elect a decent individual who is visibly destroyed for trying to make a difference, than to lay down the history that "democracy didn't work".

With Simmons (ex-Bush) as something of an oracle for this site, I'm wary of anything that discourages democratic participation to any extent.

I'd take it as far as saying that advocating giving up on democracy is cultural nihilism. For an obviously intelligent writer to advocate it just before this pivotal election seems to me either wanton defeatism or simply corrupt.

Americans seem unaware that if they pulled together, took stock, rationed resources and got their hands dirty they could weather what's coming and with any luck achieve a soft landing. Its only their conditioning that 'they' (all the rest), won't do it, and the lack of leadership, that hamstrings such a nationwide resolution.

Given that the country is heading into a depression plus quite likely hyper-inflation plus a sense of greivance over the 'unfair' end of imperial delusions, if democratic participation for the common good is not strongly encouraged, then what are the chances of a re-run of the Weimar republic and its aftermath ?

Whether there are any phsycopaths with comparable charisma is unknown, but we can be certain that a crash will energize the power-hungry with a fascistic sense of mission, and the weaker popular commitment to democracy is, the easier open fascism becomes.

Hoping that you won't be at all offended by this post and may reconsider you're support for the article,

regards,

Backstop

[gg3]

Interesting point, Backstop, you got *me* to reconsider my support for that article, if that's worth anything.

I didn't even catch the implication of giving up on democracy. The way I read that part, it seemed like he was being somewhat cynical about change, but I see that kind of cynicism so much these days that I tend to factor it out of the arguement. Wrong move this time.

I'm not sure he even intends that implication, perhaps all he intends is cynicism, but either way, the implication can be derived fairly readily from the words and therefore it needs to be challenged.

Seen in light of giving up on democracy, support for fraternal organizations serving as para-statal disaster relief entities is also questionable: in a worst-case scenario they could supplant and thereby weaken the normal processes of the republic, in a manner similar to that of special-interest money in campaigns, but at a grass-roots level.

Huxley's quote "Nothing less than *everything* is truly sufficient," has become one of my operational maxims: wind, nuclear, solar, efficiency; democratic processes, private sector efforts, nonprofits, and now add in fraternal orders and suchlike. But "and/both" gets us to a different place than "either/or." I would say that in general, "either/or" thinking doesn't help, simply because it's incomplete.

Re. the c-word: I don't see a problem with the word "conservation." Use it in combination with "efficiency," and we should all be getting used to the fact that even beyond switching technologies, we have to start tightening our belts. I can undersand how belt-tightening could be unpopular in a nation with an obesity pandemic reaching down into elementary school, but one either faces reality or gets slapped in the face by it sooner or later.

Re. where Smiley says "Pure conservation can have a negative effect on the economy if it means that you are cutting back on articles or activities which hold economic value." Try switching that around: "Pure economics can have a negative effect on vital resources if it means that you are spending money on wasteful consumption or activities for the sake of economic value." Economics is our tool, not our master.

Knoppix, I hope you were being satirical or ironic or sarcastic or whatever about SUVs and flat-earth economics.

"I want" is not a moral imperative.

"Enough is enough," is.