[Mike Morin]

Somebuddy ought to do a documentary on "The Ruins of the Oil Age". I think the film Crude Awakening showed some sights that almost no one ever sees. (Still, I wonder how many have seen Crude Awakening, so I expect those sights and the other ruins of industrial age and fossil fuel age environments go unnoticed, particularly as they are still able to glide by on freeways and busy streets oblivious to the noise and other forms of pollution, and let's not forget the squandering of such a precious resource, the fossil fuels.

It is a shame that we choose to give up, although to keep hope alive requires either stupidity or ignorance of the fact that we would have to drastically alter at least 100 years of evolutionary progress/damage done with and around the automobile. Would rebuilding neighborhoods to make goods and services available within walking distance for almost all (reducing automobile usage in the United States by 80% in the next twenty to forty years) go far enough, fast enough to conserve fuel for the great uses for future generations (heating, cooking, hot water, agriculture, electricity, NECESSARY transport)?

Or do we just give in to the momentum? The "culture" that defines freedom as lack of responsibility, the culture that defines freedom as the availability of entertainmnet rules but are we stuck in a complex evolution of the dominance of the simple mind at a time when we have the most advanced communications technologies ever assembled and employed?

This is a very small discussion group. Certainly, the inter-net, for all its promise, has degenerated into a commercial and info-tainment media, somewhat like an inter-active television culture. It is diffuse, it is unfocused.; It is entropic. It is mostly irrelevant. Can that be changed?

I'm 55 years old. I'm too young to give up trying. Everywhere I look, everything I see as evolutionary evidence, the lack of response I get to positive proposals, the whole culture of defeatism among the intellectuals who understand the predicament, everything forces me to throw in the towel, again and again and again and ... It is only due to that this has become my life and my hobbies don't satisfy, that keeps me coming back to it again. This post will not be answered and I will quickly sink back into the depression of despair and boredom. Virtually nothing I read or watch enlightens me.

Is there anybuddy out there that hangs on to a shred of hope for the future? Is there anybuddy out there that is willing to brainstorm and try to identify ways of raising awareness of the plight and commitment to recognizing and realizing solutions?

Is it that most are unaware of the hell that is coming our way? Has it been too easy for too long? Do they think that they have hardships now, so why worry about the 10 million fold increase in hardship that will befall the children if we don't all work together to implement some radical solutions?

Can I at least get some engagement in the form of commiseration?

Let's discuss why there is no hope, only doom. Let's discuss if that is the only possible outcome.

It is only human to try to cling to hope.

Mike Morin ;-(


Mike Morin

[dunewalker]

I'll commiserate with you but can't offer any hope, sorry. If we were able to continue in this mode, it would just be worse for every living thing. If a pandemic took out 90% of humans in one fell swoop, the remainders would just rebuild the same boat...

[Mike Morin]

Why no hope?

Are we stuck "in this mode"?

How many years of evolution is it anyway?

Years ago, there was a lot of talk about "lifeboats", but that got talked out, recently the "Transition Towns" and "Transition Media" tried to infuse hope, but these were romantics wedded to wind PVs, gardening, and permaculture.

I've seen jokes about finding and building "doomsteads". At least we're trying to keep our sense of humour.

Some tried instituting the concept of "a great turning", which is really what we need, but the only turning we are seeing is the rapacious, military cultures turning their fury towards the very last untouched places and resources on earth, refusing to see their actions within historical and/or geological perspective and/or understanding or just feeling that WMD (for the Capitalist ruling class and their minions only) also stands for World Manifest Destiny. We'll get those oil resources in Iran, into the tanks of our Excursions, Denalis, Highlanders, etc. , yet!

I recently saw a report about a great coal field and natural gas resources existing under the fertile farm fields of the Great Plains. Surely, the United States will maximize their military might and hold the Middle East, Iraq, other places, take Iran and the Stans before they do something as stupid as despoil their own breadbasket. Then again, there is no telling how irrational the pressures to fuel an insatiable automobile demand will become.

A 90% pandemic will change the way people employ resources. The loss of economies of scale and the disappearance of the service culture will see to that. However, I don't expect to be one of those 10% survivors, and if anything like that did happen, I suspect that it would get down very close to, if not to extinction for the human race.

Good riddance.

[Ferretlover]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mike Morin', ' ')Would rebuilding neighborhoods to make goods and services available within walking distance for almost all (reducing automobile usage in the United States by 80% in the next twenty to forty years) go far enough, fast enough to conserve fuel for the great uses for future generations (heating, cooking, hot water, agriculture, electricity, NECESSARY transport)?

[eXpat]

Excellent post Ferretlover that sums it all up really.

[Mike Morin]

Hilarious and poignant responses to my questions, Ferretlover.

However, since I have a problem with reasoning, you left me with an infitessimal glimmer of hope with the following inter-change:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mike Morin', ' ')are we stuck in a complex evolution of the dominance of the simple mind at a time when we have the most advanced communications technologies ever assembled and employed?

[sicophiliac]

I'm still banking on fusion powered flying cars, antimatter powered rockets for vacations to the newly terraformed Mars and personal robot assistants helping me get through the days mundane tasks so I can enjoy my 200 year long life thanks to bionics and superhuman genetic engineering. No doubt this is 10 maybe 20 years away TOPS !

[mos6507]

If you're talking about sparing humanity a die off, I think we're beyond hope. Some groups somewhere are going to get the short end of the stick once oil prices skyrocket permanently, which wil linvariably happen before the world is ready for it. Maybe the culling won't be that severe, but to think that nobody will see their deaths hastened by oil depletion is unrealistic. So you have to lower your expectations for what can be done to mitigate peak oil. The world as we know it will not be maintained. The only hope can come at a more localized level. For instance, asking the question: "can the US be saved"? or "Can my state be saved?" and move on down through the county, city, block, and individual doomstead. And by saved I just mean the bare essentials of life to be preserved, not that life could remain as luxuriant as it does today. I wish those who are working towards ecotopia the best, but I'm not counting on any of that to scale out. It's just too little too late, but I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

[Ferretlover]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mike Morin', 'H')ilarious and poignant responses to my questions, Ferretlover.
However, since I have a problem with reasoning, you left me with an infitessimal glimmer of hope with the following inter-change:

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mike Morin', 'C')an I at least get some engagement in the form of commiseration? Let's discuss why there is no hope, only doom. Let's discuss if that is the only possible outcome.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mike Morin', '[')b]I'm 55 years old. I'm too young to give up trying.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'T')he hopelessness you describe is what I felt 30 years ago as a recent graduate in Environmental Sciences. I recognized at that time that the struggle was ideological in nature and that protecting our biosphere was in competition with another ideology, one of mass consumption and materialism. These past 30 years have been the most hopeless and mindless and full of dispair. --snip--
What many don't realize is that the hopelessness is not coming up ahead but rather that we are finally leaving it behind. By the way I am 52 years old.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')On this forum, we all get so romantic about the "peak oil apocalypse" and whatnot. What really faces us isn't romantic at all, and is in fact much more mundane and is currently lived by most humans on this planet. What faces us, this thing we obsess over so much, is grinding poverty, malnutrition, and exposure to violence.

Instead of being depressed, perhaps you should feel lucky that you were born into a first world nation. If you'd been Haitian, Rwandan, etc., you'd already know what hell on earth is like and there would be no good times to miss.
.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')
Excellent post, Ibon. Please don't take this the wrong way, but you do mention that you went through 30 years of hopelessness. A lot of guys have heart attacks at age 50 and thats all she wrote -- so in retrospect, is it really prudent to worry about Doom for THIRTY YEARS? Why trade enjoyment of what is currently a stable and functioning society for worries about an apacolpytic future?

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'Y')ou would immensely benefit from spending some time in developing countries. You bring up Haiti and Rwanda as examples and hen make the statement that grinding poverty, malnutrition and exposure to violence is what most humans are experiencing on the planet. There are today a few pockets of the developing world like this but it is such a gross misrepresentation to say the majority of humans today on the planet live like this.
I have lived half of my 52 years in developing countries due to my work and family. It is from seeing how the majority of the developing countries exist that has provided the insights from which I derive a more hopeful forecast culturally for us modern westerners for the decades unfolding in this century.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')
Excellent post, Ibon. Please don't take this the wrong way, but you do mention that you went through 30 years of hopelessness. A lot of guys have heart attacks at age 50 and thats all she wrote -- so in retrospect, is it really prudent to worry about Doom for THIRTY YEARS? Why trade enjoyment of what is currently a stable and functioning society for worries about an apacolpytic future?

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')Almost half of humanity lives on less than $2.50 per day. 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 per day. By suburban, Big Box Store plasma TV-buying American standards THAT is poverty.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')Almost half of humanity lives on less than $2.50 per day. 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 per day. By suburban, Big Box Store plasma TV-buying American standards THAT is poverty.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

[hardtootell-2]

Hope?

Ya there is hope.

As long as we are breathing...