jrtom | things to work on if you buy "peak oil"

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2007/02/the_agenda_rest.html

I'm not really sure how pressing a problem this is. Like a lot of people, I have a job (and a professional background) that puts me in a rather bad way if it turns out that Life As We Know It is going to become considerably more decentralized and energy-poorer...so I may not think about it as much as I should.

Should this all go badly quickly, I will be able to serve as a particularly good (bad) example of why intelligence and forethought are not a substitute for actual preparation. *wry smile*

I'd certainly like to encourage better public transit and less use of cars. Sadly, while there are a few different light rail projects being proposed for the Seattle area, none of them would come anywhere near where we live.

(Side note: yes, there are a lot of wingnuts responding to the original post. I don't necessarily agree with all of his suggested courses of action, either. Regardless, it's good to think about these sorts of things at least occasionally anyway, and to consider what changes of course would at least bring us more in line with those courses of action, even if I'm not presently willing to drop everything and become a peanut farmer in Pasco or something.)

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Ouch, the failure of medicine never occured to me. I'm worried enough trying to figure out what I'd do for heat.

FWIW, I've known about peak oil (and other ecological problems) for years, and I was willing to drop everything and become a farmer. As you know, I actually tried it, with three other people who quit their jobs and decided to try to drop out of fossil fuel society and live off the land.

We failed with flying colors. :) Learned a lot, though, about building and zoning codes, land-buying, and other bureaucratic nightmares, not to mention group dynamics and the limits of my own ability.

I'm still convinced that life is going to change in the ways Kunstler outlines, but I don't know how it will play out or how much time we have. I do what I can in terms of prep, but I don't stress about it these days.

It's odd. He talks about electric railways powered by coal, but forgets to mention solar, wind, tide and nuclear power. Electricity can go a long ways in solving the problems he mentioned.

True, in the last 30 years nuclear has been out of vogue in the USA, but give the sheep the choice between turning off the air conditioning and building nuke plants, it's a safe bet as to what they'll choose.

Thankfully, todays nuke designs would be much safer than what was built in the 50's and 60's.

And Although I'm much more in favor of developing renewable resources (no, ethanol does not count), compared to pollution and global warming, nuclear power is starting to look much more attractive. Not to mention that coal and oil are excellent raw materials for plastics.

I think a much better thought out essay is the 29 year old "Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis".

http://www.npg.org/specialreports/bartlett_index.htm

I haven't personally run the numbers on energy budgets and replacement of our energy infrastructure with other forms of energy. Certainly there's far more energy available in orbit via solar power than we need...if we can get it where it's needed. I think that the contention that the peak oil folks make is generally that alternate sources either (a) will not be ready in time (either in terms of R&D, infrastructure, or both) to cushion the crash, or (b) have insufficient capacity. As I said, though, I'm not in a position to check the numbers.

Personally I'm fine with building more nuclear plants, especially given the new designs (although I should point out that nuclear also involves a nonrenewable resource, albeit one with a longer time horizon). I don't see it happening any time soon, though, and I expect the necessary political will to emerge _after_ a prolonged energy crisis, not before.

I find it ironic that the emerging recognition of global warming might end up addressing this problem (at least sooner than we might have otherwise) in some sense as a side effect. :)

I've been trying not to think too hard about it myself. On the other hand, what academic discipline could be more useful in a post-industrial agricultural economy than astronomy? Tell 'em when to plant things. :)

I have no idea what's actually going to happen, or how quickly. But I try to think of these things in terms of feedback loops. Here are the things I think are certain:

Any energy or raw materials source that involves digging stuff out of the ground is going to have to be phased out, as soon as possible.

We are going to have to accept a ceiling on our standard of living which is defined by our ecological footprint and the speed and capacity of sustainable travel.

We need, collectively, to stop having babies. (No offense to you and yours intended.) It's ridiculous enough to demand an exponentially increasing standard of living for the indefinite future; how much more so, then, to demand an increasing standard of living for an exponentially increasing number of people. There is no way we can enforce this in a truly humane or democratic way, except by each of us individually volunteering, which I believe will never happen en masse. But if we don't impose this constraint ourselves somehow then nature will impose it for us, in the form of a shrinking resource ceiling -- famine, plague, war, death etc. Man, the four horsemen.

That last one is the kicker, if you ask me. The other two I can imagine gaining widespread acceptance... eventually.

Recently I also finished reading Morris Berman's Dark Ages America (bought it at Powell's, couldn't resist the cover), which gives me even less hope -- far from the typical Michael-Moore-style rant, he basically says that it has always been part of our national character (i.e., since Jamestown) to be self-absorbed assholes. And now all the other countries on the planet are trying to emulate us... He goes into a fair amount of commentary and scholarship, but I won't pretend to do it justice here. I don't know enough history to say yes or no; I'll only say that the book makes a lot sense to the part of me that wants to believe the worst, and even a fair amount of sense to the part that wants to believe better.

Pulling back from the brink a bit, I think all of Kunstler's suggestions are good ones -- trying to localize and economize as much as possible. Matt Savinar, who posted a few comments on that entry, would say that only frees up more resources for insane growth (Jespers' Paradox) -- but let's ignore him for now. I tend to be of the opinion that we should salvage as much of modern technology as possible while thinking very carefully about what to save and what to throw out, such that technologies we keep make us more localized, more green, etc. instead of less. The Amish might be a good model, as they are in contact with the old ways while also, occasionally, accepting new technology on the condition that it make their community stronger.

some quick thoughts...

Are you including uranium in the "digging stuff out of the ground" list?

I'm not sure that we need to accept a ceiling on our standard of living, exactly. We may need to redefine, in popular culture, what makes for a good standard of living, though.

Raising the standard of living seems, in time, to lower the birth rate. The question is whether it does it fast enough, of course. *wry smile*

Are you including uranium in the "digging stuff out of the ground" list?

Absolutely. Nuclear power is going to be, at best, a buffer to ease the transition to an all-solar economy. At worst, people will think it's a panacea and use it to ignore truly sustainable solutions -- but given the waste issue, I doubt that will come to pass. The sun is the only source of energy which is truly sustainable over timescales longer than a few hundred years.

I'm not sure that we need to accept a ceiling on our standard of living, exactly. We may need to redefine, in popular culture, what makes for a good standard of living, though.

Actually, yeah, that's a better way of putting it. We need a new metric and that metric needs to consider things other than GDP. It needs to consider the environment and the health and psychological well-being of the populace. But, and here's the trouble, it needs somehow to be numerically measurable, because economists are going to want to optimize for it, to manage its risk, etc. So we need to be able to put some kind of dollar value on public spaces, clean air, well-educated children, etc., even though our sensibilities as human beings may go against it.

Raising the standard of living seems, in time, to lower the birth rate. The question is whether it does it fast enough, of course. *wry smile*

Dude, none of this is going to go nearly fast enough. But another question I have, and I don't really have a solid answer, is whether there is any causation behind that correlation: Why is it that, upon raising the standard of living in a country, the birth rate goes down? hypothetically?

We, too, will fall into the category of forethought without preparation. I feel unprepared for the collapse of our energy-intensive civilization and for the less-gradual local emergency (a la H. Katrina), which around here is likely to be earthquake.

My forethought is usually used up in calculating how many days it would take to walk to the nearest place that a friend of ours has land that could be off the grid and support subsistence farming. And whether I'm willing to consider being armed (not so far) to protect the contents of my backpack from marauding new-savages. At least I no longer live in the often-unwalkable climate of Minnesota.

At least M commutes in a Prius and I commute 4 miles each way. But...

things to work on if you buy "peak oil"

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"oh shit, there goes the planet."

Re: "oh shit, there goes the planet."

Re: "oh shit, there goes the planet."

apocalyptic thoughts