dana

I came across an interesting essay by John Michael Greer yesterday about
where the western world is heading. JMG is a historian, member of OBOD,
published author & part of the Stormwatch Project & all-round interesting
guy. The most important bit of the essay for me was:


".... Quite a few people nowadays are insisting that it's not true, that we
can continue our present lavish, energy-wasting lifestyle indefinitely by
switching from oil to some other energy source: hydrogen, biodiesel, abiotic
oil, fusion power, "free energy" technology, and so on down the list of
technological snake oil. Crippling issues of scale, and the massive
technical problems involved in switching an oil-based civilization to some
other fuel in time to make a difference, stand in the path of such projects,
but those get little air time; if we want endless supplies of energy badly
enough, the logic seems to be, the universe will give it to us. The problem
is that the universe did give it to us - in the form of immense deposits of
fossil fuels stored up over hundreds of millions of years of
photosynthesis - and we wasted it. Now we're in the position of a lottery
winner who's spent millions of dollars in a few short years and is running
out of money. The odds of hitting another million-dollar jackpot are minute,
and no amount of wishful thinking will enable us to keep up our current
lifestyle by getting a job at the local hamburger joint.
"We - and by this I mean people throughout the industrial world - have to
make the transition to a Third World lifestyle. There's no way to sugar-coat
that very unpalatable reality. Fossil fuels made it possible for most people
in the industrial world to have a lifestyle that doesn't depend on hard
physical labor, and to wallow in a flood of mostly unnecessary consumer
goods and services. As fossil fuels deplete, all that will inevitably go
away. How many people would be willing to listen to such a suggestion? More
to the point, how many people would vote for a politician or a party who
proposed to bring on these changes deliberately, now, in order to prevent
total disaster later on?

change. He compares today's American political class (those people who vote
and involve themselves in politics) to the French aristocracy before the
Revolution. Everybody knew that the situation was insupportable, and that
eventually there would be an explosion, but the immediate costs of doing
something about it were so unpalatable that everyone decided to do nothing
and hope that things would somehow work out. We're in exactly the same
situation here and now."

The entire essay can be found at:

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/whatToDo/DeindustrialAge.htm

Dana

wade

These apocryphal views are little more than gloom and
doom scare tactics. They've been done before many
times. The most famous of the fringe ideology "experts"
is of course Paul Erlich. Below is an excerpt from a web
site that describes his "end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it"
predictions. They were for the most part pure bunk.
The web site I got the text from is somewhat right-leaning,
but, that doesn't change the facts of the issues involved.
As usual, the truth of a thing frequently lies somewhere
in-between the extremes.

As people looking to follow the druid path, it behooves us
to look for the truth, and not to swallow unchallenged the
scenarios of environmental activists or the psycho-babble
of feel-good (or bad as the case may be) authors trying to
sell a book. "End times" scenarios seem to be endlessly
popular.

Should we be better stewards of the land: of course.
Should we be involved in issues of global energy, and
environmental protection: I tend to think so. Does that
mean we should accept the notion that we're doomed to
revert to a third world standard of living: absolutely not.

Mr. Greer's description of the exploration of alternative
energy sources as "technological snake oil" is seriously
misguided. His assertion that "immense deposits of
fossil fuels" are the only gifts of energy we're likely to get
from nature - and we've wasted them - is patently absurd.

There are genetic scientists who've tinkered with green
algae and gotten it to inhale plain air and exhale hydrogen.
So hydrogen fuel can be created cheaply using only sunlight,
common algae, photosynthesis, and water. There's no
reason we can't switch over to a hydrogen based economy.
Hydrogen fuel cells produce electricity and create no pollution:
their only byproducts are heat and pure water. Yes, handling
hydrogen presents technological challenges, but overcoming
those challenges is probably not as difficult as some would
suggest. And, yes hydrogen fuel cells are still an immature
technology with some problematic issues. That will change.
The technology will improve and it will mature as research
and development dollars are spent.

====================================

"Dr. Paul Ehrlich is a Stanford University biologist and author
of the best-selling book The Population Bomb. Since the
release of this book in 1968, Ehrlich has been one of the
most frequently cited "experts" on environmental issues by
the media, despite the fact that his predictions on the fate
of the planet, more often than not, have been wrong. In _The
Population Bomb_, Ehrlich predicted that hundreds of millions
of people would die of starvation during the 1970s because
the earth's inhabitants would multiply at a faster rate than
world's ability to supply food. Six years later, in _The End
of Affluence_, a book he co-authored with his wife Anne,
Ehrlich increased his death toll estimate suggesting that a
billion or more could die from starvation by the mid-1980s.
By 1985, Ehrlich predicted, the world would enter a genuine
era of scarcity. Ehrlich's predicted famines never materialized.
Indeed, the death toll from famines steadily declined over the
twenty-five year period. Though world population has grown
by more 50% since 1968, food production has grown at an
even faster rate due to technological advances.

Perhaps Ehrlich's best known blunder is a 1980 bet he made
with University of Maryland economist Julian Simon. Dr. Simon,
who believes that human ingenuity holds the answers to
population growth problems, asserted that if Ehrlich were
correct and the world truly was heading toward an era of
scarcity, then the price of various commodities would rise over
time. Simon predicted that prices would fall instead and
challenged Ehrlich to pick any commodity and any future date
to illustrate his point. Ehrlich accepted the challenge: In
October 1980, he purchased $1,000 worth of five metals
($200 each) -- tin, tungsten, copper, nickel and chrome.
Ehrlich bet that if the combined value of all five metals he
purchased was higher in 1990, Simon would have to pay
him the difference. If the prices turned out to be lower,
Ehrlich would pay Simon the difference. Ten years later,
Ehrlich sent Simon a check for $576 -- all five metals had
fallen in price."
=================================
--
Wade

jim

That's it, its all over but the shoutin!!!!!!

Fuel is but one problem, by our very numbers we have either seriously
depleted or entirely destroyed the natural occurring food sources.

In the last forty years I have seen the California lobster and abaloney
occurrences all but disappear. In the sixties I was on dive boats off of
L.A. and San Diego where each of the thirty divers on board were allowed by
the fish and game department to take ten lobsters each. I have seen piles of
three hundred lobsters on the deck. I went to the state fish and game
commission and said you must stop. They laughed at what I was saying and now
the look!

As an old forest ranger, I have seen the forests ruthlessly clear cut and
entire species and watersheds totally decimated. Where a balanced flora once
occurred there is now only dust. Where pure water creeks once run now their
is only a dried up water course that runs only when it rains or the snow
melts only to carry away the top soil.

Niall

surrendermonkey

learn Chinese...you will have better luck in the food lines next decade.

I couldn't agree more. In fact, I was thinking
about this just this morning. (To be fair, I
do alot of thinking, so this is not so much of a
coincidence after all). Anyways, I was having a
conversation with myself, as I often do, and I
took the position of joe-average, who asked me
if it would not be simpler to just do as
(almost) everybody else does, and why did I not
do that? I replied that it would be simpler for
a while, but that the majority were like
lemmings running over a cliff, and so it would
not be better for long.

I am not a lawyer. I do not even see email sent to this address, due to
past DOS attacks. If you wish to respond, do so through this newsgroup.

odubhain

Aside from talking about it, what are you doing about it? What's the
effect of your actions on the problems? Do you think that others will
do the same things? I ask to see if there is something real that can
be done.

Searles

surrendermonkey

hummmm...he is a Flamen too, of course, but I wonder if he is actively
involved in the Murder Machine like some others here?

odubhain

Whose food are you? Who do you feed? Who is your food? These are the
questions whose answers reveal your place in a world where everyone
and every thing feeds off of something or someone else; where
everything has its price and every action has its consequences. So
quit pretending already. :-)

Searles

I'm not doing anything about it, really, because
(IMHO) there is nothing that can be done to
prevent it. There are things that can be done,
however, for example to save yourself or save the
cultural and scientific heritage that we have created.


I am not a lawyer. I do not even see email sent to this address, due to
past DOS attacks. If you wish to respond, do so through this newsgroup.

odubhain

<snip>


Are you saying that people can take responsibility for themselves and
do what it takes to insure/learn survival in this world that we're all
destroying? How specifically does a person save theirself? Saving
heritage reminds me of the movie and book "Farenheit 451" by Ray
Bradbury (where people become living books, memorizing and reciting
them to preserve knowledge).

Searles