Jato
It seems to me that the key issue, advancing the sustainable economy, wasn't addressed in Canuck's post.
The judicious raising of fuel taxes to suppress frivolous oil demand (including racing petrol cars for fun) and using the proceeds to fund sustainable energy projects, seems only sensible.
Obviously taxing the fuel-dependent consumer has its limits of usefulness: we won't get the energy industry turned round until we tax specifically those who profit from production, namely the shareholders.
Where I may differ with Canuck is in my inference (maybe wrong) from his post that such an advance of the sustainable economy can't happen until the old economy is trashed. Plainly Sus. enterprise has been denied investment thus far, but I'd say under present circs. we have more chance of this now than ever before.
Equally plainly, innovative investment during a depression tends to be pretty rare, so the next few years appear critical to the advance of that sustainable economy.
regards,
Backstop
PeakOil is You
Crashing the Global Economy
by JohnDenver » Tue 12 Oct 2004, 06:40:51
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jato', 'G')ood morning JD.
Morning Jato.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jato', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e could happily survive consuming a lot less, but the economy can't survive it. If the economy can't survive neither can we.
I read this as: Humans can make due with consuming less fossil fuels. Our economy can't. We need a new, overhauled economy. If we are lucky and make it though the coming economic crash, I we are going to see a new economy rise from the ashes (so to speak). What form that will take...I have no clue.
To sum it up: Canuck is not talking in circles.
I see what you mean, and it's a good reason to be optimistic about peak oil. It means that the "trap" we are facing is not entirely based on physics and geology. We may be able to greatly improve our position simply by modifying our economic system, and there's nothing physically impossible about that.
On the other hand, we don't have a new economic system at the moment, and it seems to me that we can't really deeply conserve oil until somebody comes up with an economic system that allows it. Crashing the current economy without having the new one ready yet doesn't sound like a good idea.
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by gg3 » Tue 12 Oct 2004, 06:59:34
Jato's got it exactly right with "Humans can make due with consuming less fossil fuels. Our economy can't. We need a new, overhauled economy."
An economy is nothing more than a system for exchanging and allocating resources among humans. In other words it's a tool. When the tool ceases to perform the job it was designed for, it's time to fix it or replace it with a tool that works. When the nature of the job changes such that the tool you're using isn't appropriate, it's time to replace it with the appropriate tool for the job. You dig a hole with a shovel and cut a fence-post with a saw. If someone tried cutting a fence-post with a shovel we would recognize them as incompetent or insane.
Presently we have a tool that only works when it's stuck in a positive feedback loop called growth. Think of a home heating system that only works when it can keep adding three degrees Fahrenheit to whatever the current temperature is: eventually it makes the house uncomfortably hot, and after a while, it causes the house to burn down.
The rationale for economic growth is that it keeps making life better for more and more people. That in turn is predicated on "more and more people," another assumption that is also killing us. Assuming population holds static, the only remaining rationale for growth is to make life better for the existing number of people.
At which point you have to ask, "what does *better* mean"? Does it mean that I can go to the store and buy a soda-pop bottle opener that contains a battery and sound-chip, that plays a little song when I open my soda? Or does it mean that children in Kenya have clean drinking water? And who decides? (Someone, after all, does decide: whether deliberately, or "by default" as a "side-effect" of behavior directed toward different ends.)
Increasing growth may be "necessary" (a-priori assumption) for the *present* economy, but it's *not* going to be necessary (in fact it's not going to occur) for the future economy, whether we like the outcome of that or not. At which point comes the question of distributional equity. Or to put it in terms of my example, the tradeoff between me wanting my singing soda-pop bottle opener, and Joe Kenya wanting clean water so he's not constantly sick with dysentery.
Now what about that question of "decreasing consumption"...? Humans are hard-wired with an "instinct for increase" since the days when we lived in caves and never had "enough" of anything. "Enough" was always "more than" what we had, so over time it came to be that "more" used the same brain-circuitry as "enough." Fixing this is going to be as difficult as fixing the population crisis, since the latter also depends on a piece of archaic brain-wiring called the orgasm, which we have to learn to disentangle from its usual reproductive consequences. Our ape-instincts are powerful masters but we have got to stop being their slaves.
So the first place to start, is to ennumerate exactly what is meant by decreasing consumption. "Drive slower." Okay, I can drive at ...well the general traffic speeds are about 70, so I can safely manage 60 without getting rammed, but that's a start. Install more efficient appliances. Okay, out go the incandescents, in go compact fluorescents; and repeat process for the fridge, washing machine, etc. Do not buy stupid trinkets that are pure waste. Okay, bye-bye singing soda-pop opener (by the way this horrid little piece of pure waste really does exist, I saw them the other day), and at the same time, hello clean water for Joe Kenya. Fix & re-use rather than disposing & replacing. Check, done.
What this also means is, people who have more to start out with, have a larger responsibility to do something about it. A tenant in an apartment can do little about replacing the inefficient washing-machines in the basement laundry room; only the owner can do that. A working poor family with a 20-year-old inefficient car can do little about buying a hybrid, but taxes and transportation policy can change, so there's a reliable bus that runs by their block regularly.
This is merely an application of the moral principle of responsibility: you are responsible for those things you have control over; the more you control (including the more you own), the greater the level of responsibility. The attempt by anyone to gain control (or gain ownership) of anything, without simultaneously taking on a commensurate share of responsibility for what they have gained control (or ownership) of, should be seen as an immoral act similar to abandoning a child.
Let's not forget that the entitlement mentality runs through our entire economy. It's not just "welfare mothers," it's anyone who thinks that they have a "right" to an endless increase in their level of resource throughput.
The key question that needs to become part of the foundation of our entire moral code as a civilization, is: "When is enough enough?"
An economy is nothing more than a system for exchanging and allocating resources among humans. In other words it's a tool. When the tool ceases to perform the job it was designed for, it's time to fix it or replace it with a tool that works. When the nature of the job changes such that the tool you're using isn't appropriate, it's time to replace it with the appropriate tool for the job. You dig a hole with a shovel and cut a fence-post with a saw. If someone tried cutting a fence-post with a shovel we would recognize them as incompetent or insane.
Presently we have a tool that only works when it's stuck in a positive feedback loop called growth. Think of a home heating system that only works when it can keep adding three degrees Fahrenheit to whatever the current temperature is: eventually it makes the house uncomfortably hot, and after a while, it causes the house to burn down.
The rationale for economic growth is that it keeps making life better for more and more people. That in turn is predicated on "more and more people," another assumption that is also killing us. Assuming population holds static, the only remaining rationale for growth is to make life better for the existing number of people.
At which point you have to ask, "what does *better* mean"? Does it mean that I can go to the store and buy a soda-pop bottle opener that contains a battery and sound-chip, that plays a little song when I open my soda? Or does it mean that children in Kenya have clean drinking water? And who decides? (Someone, after all, does decide: whether deliberately, or "by default" as a "side-effect" of behavior directed toward different ends.)
Increasing growth may be "necessary" (a-priori assumption) for the *present* economy, but it's *not* going to be necessary (in fact it's not going to occur) for the future economy, whether we like the outcome of that or not. At which point comes the question of distributional equity. Or to put it in terms of my example, the tradeoff between me wanting my singing soda-pop bottle opener, and Joe Kenya wanting clean water so he's not constantly sick with dysentery.
Now what about that question of "decreasing consumption"...? Humans are hard-wired with an "instinct for increase" since the days when we lived in caves and never had "enough" of anything. "Enough" was always "more than" what we had, so over time it came to be that "more" used the same brain-circuitry as "enough." Fixing this is going to be as difficult as fixing the population crisis, since the latter also depends on a piece of archaic brain-wiring called the orgasm, which we have to learn to disentangle from its usual reproductive consequences. Our ape-instincts are powerful masters but we have got to stop being their slaves.
So the first place to start, is to ennumerate exactly what is meant by decreasing consumption. "Drive slower." Okay, I can drive at ...well the general traffic speeds are about 70, so I can safely manage 60 without getting rammed, but that's a start. Install more efficient appliances. Okay, out go the incandescents, in go compact fluorescents; and repeat process for the fridge, washing machine, etc. Do not buy stupid trinkets that are pure waste. Okay, bye-bye singing soda-pop opener (by the way this horrid little piece of pure waste really does exist, I saw them the other day), and at the same time, hello clean water for Joe Kenya. Fix & re-use rather than disposing & replacing. Check, done.
What this also means is, people who have more to start out with, have a larger responsibility to do something about it. A tenant in an apartment can do little about replacing the inefficient washing-machines in the basement laundry room; only the owner can do that. A working poor family with a 20-year-old inefficient car can do little about buying a hybrid, but taxes and transportation policy can change, so there's a reliable bus that runs by their block regularly.
This is merely an application of the moral principle of responsibility: you are responsible for those things you have control over; the more you control (including the more you own), the greater the level of responsibility. The attempt by anyone to gain control (or gain ownership) of anything, without simultaneously taking on a commensurate share of responsibility for what they have gained control (or ownership) of, should be seen as an immoral act similar to abandoning a child.
Let's not forget that the entitlement mentality runs through our entire economy. It's not just "welfare mothers," it's anyone who thinks that they have a "right" to an endless increase in their level of resource throughput.
The key question that needs to become part of the foundation of our entire moral code as a civilization, is: "When is enough enough?"
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by backstop » Tue 12 Oct 2004, 07:21:02
gg3 - Some pivotally good news for you -
There is no credible evidence I've seen in thirtyfive years' interest in the issue of "wanting more" being hard-wired into peoples' brain circutry.
On the contrary, for the million years we lived without defensive walls or an arms race there is no archaeology of escalating material wealth. In the ten millenia since, we've gone from hunting weapons to the present obsenities, and from a huge variety of highly evolved dwellings to the mass production of suburbia stuffed with endless tat.
The point about "wanting more" being a reflex conditioned by propaganda rather than by instinct is maybe best illustrated by the number of indigenous peoples who actively strive to maintain their independence of the present materialist cock-up. Older values still endure.
One of the few bits of the coming crash I look forward to is the end of mass propaganda. Sadly it will predictably be fairly late in the process as its critical to the status quo.
regards,
Backstop
There is no credible evidence I've seen in thirtyfive years' interest in the issue of "wanting more" being hard-wired into peoples' brain circutry.
On the contrary, for the million years we lived without defensive walls or an arms race there is no archaeology of escalating material wealth. In the ten millenia since, we've gone from hunting weapons to the present obsenities, and from a huge variety of highly evolved dwellings to the mass production of suburbia stuffed with endless tat.
The point about "wanting more" being a reflex conditioned by propaganda rather than by instinct is maybe best illustrated by the number of indigenous peoples who actively strive to maintain their independence of the present materialist cock-up. Older values still endure.
One of the few bits of the coming crash I look forward to is the end of mass propaganda. Sadly it will predictably be fairly late in the process as its critical to the status quo.
regards,
Backstop
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by chris-h » Tue 12 Oct 2004, 10:04:28
We need an ecogreen culture instead of a capitalistic culture.
We need biomachinery instead of a machine civilization.
The problem is that nothing like that is going to happen unless a major major disaster happens first.
If peaple can have oil all the time regardless of the price no change is going to happen.
Major oil disruptions are needed to convince the X George consumer that change is needed.
How can a suv owned be convinced that he/she has to change cars ?
Simple. Only stones thown at his car by small car owners when everybody is waiting to refill gas and there is not enough gas for everybody will convince him.
Lets see them how safe hummers really are.
We need biomachinery instead of a machine civilization.
The problem is that nothing like that is going to happen unless a major major disaster happens first.
If peaple can have oil all the time regardless of the price no change is going to happen.
Major oil disruptions are needed to convince the X George consumer that change is needed.
How can a suv owned be convinced that he/she has to change cars ?
Simple. Only stones thown at his car by small car owners when everybody is waiting to refill gas and there is not enough gas for everybody will convince him.
Lets see them how safe hummers really are.
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by lowem » Tue 12 Oct 2004, 10:21:23
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('chris-h', 'W')e need an ecogreen culture instead of a capitalistic culture. We need biomachinery instead of a machine civilization.
Totally off-topic, but at this point when reading this I am imagining the bio-organic Vorlons [Babylon 5] versus the machine Borg [Star Trek] ...
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('chris-h', 'M')ajor oil disruptions are needed to convince the X George consumer that change is needed. How can a suv owned be convinced that he/she has to change cars ?
Hmm, was thinking of that. I don't know about the American context, but in my local context, if total fuel costs per month threaten to surpass, or actually do surpass the actual monthly car loan payments, that would really piss people off, and wake people up.
Incidentally, that's also a factor of say, 4x to 5x. Over here, we pay for about $100-$200 per month in petrol, and car loan is anywhere between say $500 to $1000 per month. When petrol goes to $400, $600, $800 per month there'll be a lot of screaming going on ...
There goes the "demand destruction" theory again ...
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lowem - Expert
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