Dear Candidate - What Will You Do if Growth Is Over...?


(Intro: In talks with friends (not of the PO cloth), I've recently sensed more consideration of the possibility that economic growth may not return and what that might imply. As such yet I think there is a vast dissonance that such a possibility is not remotely discussed in political circles. The essay below the fold was adapted from the Institute for Integrated Economic Research website (under construction)- I've been working with the people there lately on what possible benign trajectories exist in a world after growth.)



Fig 1: Official and alternative scenarios for U.S. GDP growth

To me, one of the most surreal phenomena one encounters these days is that no country, no established economic research institute (that I'm aware of), and no international organization (such as the IMF) publicly discusses scenarios that don't plan for a return to stable economic (GDP) growth. Even Greece's government, after 2012, expects growth, which would allow the country to slowly reduce its monster debt load. Similarly, the U.S. government forecasts annual average (real) growth rates of 4.4% for the years 2012-2014, and 2.4% thereafter until 2020. This theme is globally ubiquitous. (ADDENDUM: Today Lloyds of London said global institutions are underestimating impacts of peak oil).



The above graph is one organization's view of the general magnitude of risks facing societies. Whether or not you agree with their projections is secondary to their ranking in mainstream discussions. On a long term horizon, clearly the health of our environment is of upmost importance. And, along with climate change and other potential externalities, resource depletion issues of various stripes pose large risks to the system as we know it. But before we face the long term we have to go through the short term, which will have to navigate the energy/debt/growth gauntlet. For all the effort being undertaken internationally to address climate, little if any is being made towards building bridges through and past a period of declining growth and wealth. Cognitive dissonance meet group think...

Given the stakes, it is quite worrying that in all the institutionalized economic projections of late, decline or zero growth aren't even mentioned as a possibility. One can speculate why this is the case, but I think there is significant evidence that only limited efforts- if any - are being allocated to understanding the possible consequences and required mitigation strategies of such a trajectory. I'm not so sanguine about the fact that so few people seem to be ready to think the not-so-unthinkable.

We have no insurance for no-growth scenarios



Given the constraints in natural resources, our currently unprecedented levels of debt on a global scale, and the absence of ideas for the next grand "leap forward" for mankind, it seems plausible that we might have to bid adieu to economic growth, and not just for a year or two, but for a long time. Some models at IIER (and other whisper numbers at boutique firms and the blogosphere) suggest the chances for steady economic growth after 2010 are below 10-20%. Even if you disagree with such low odds and put the probability for "more growth" to, say, 80%, doesn't it seem a bit irresponsible to not at least consider the other 20%? Not buying insurance for a risk that might hit you with some pretty negative consequences with a one in five chance strikes me as not the best strategy for a resilient and forward thinking society.

Consequences of "no growth" are quite unpleasant

Our current world is about as prepared for "no growth" as is a fish to walk on land. All our current claims systems, the credit outstanding, including government debt, our pension expectations, our savings, our hopes and dreams, are mostly focused on a "there will be more tomorrow" mentality. Should this "more" disappear as a possibility, we will likely not just see small implications, but rather a disruptive destruction of both perceived wealth and security, accompanied by the shattering of hopes and dreams, the perception alone which might cause further trouble in our highly complex societies. Choosing to go forward to a world with different aspirations than growth might have some unexpected positive surprises. But one could argue the worst will happen if we run into such a world completely unprepared. This is why we urgently need policymakers to face the risk of "no-growth," to understand possible implications and to work on transition approaches.

Why not use upcoming elections to ask a few questions?

So with elections coming up in a number of places, particularly for mid-term this fall, why not ask some questions to those people who want our vote? Why not at least instill awareness, concern and caution into the candidates who wish to represent us in the future? Why not have them ask themselves how they'd deal with a situation where they can no longer promise "more" to their constituents, but instead have to think about how to make "less" more appealing to everyone...?

Dear candidate - have you ever... ?

Below is a draft of a letter to an imaginary politician up for election later this year:

Dear ______________

You are currently running for office as _____________________ in ____________________. As you know, we are living through economically tough times, and I hear a lot about how the economy can be brought back to stability and prosperity.

However, have you ever considered that economic growth might actually not return? That we might have to build a societal infrastructure based on less?

If so, what would be your plans to mitigate such a situation, to make sure that life can go on for your constituents in a future where "more each year" is no longer possible?

Or alternatively, if you don't have any plans - are you 100 percent certain that growth and prosperity will ever return, and if so, why is it that you see no risk worth looking at?

I am personally as worried about the risk accompanying awareness of "no more growth" in the foreseeable future than I am about the reality of no growth. But my real concern is about the absence of anyone making any plans for either possibility.

With that backdrop, here are tonight's Campfire questions:

=====================================================================
1. Is there a reason why this kind of letter shouldn't be sent to real people who want our vote?

2a. Would a candidate addressing these issues/questions stand any chance of winning?

2b. If not, might such a candidate, even in a losing effort, influence the election issues and as a result positively impact transition efforts away from growth based economy?

"Would a candidate addressing these issues/questions stand a chance of winning?"
In a word NO.

Though it is a question well worth asking any politician, whenever the opportunity arises.

I don't really know if a point will arise when people will "get it", but this coming election in the US is all about jobs and all about growth. I think we might have to have a couple more changes of the guard over a faltering economy before the underlying causes are put on the table, and a realistic future planned for.

1. No. Indeed, the more people who ask such a question, the more likely it is to be taken seriously

2a. In the primaries, definitely not. The chances of success would be slim as the delegates are listening for the obeisance to the party platform above all else. In the general election, only if they cloak it in vague, broad brushstroke terms, much the way Obama did on similar issues.

2b. Not if an ideological opponent won. This subject needs careful grooming from a number of sectors (economics, manufacturing, energy, infrastructure, etc), and I don't see it holding sway in economic circles anytime soon, as Friedman is revered as a demi-god.

I am personally as worried about the risk accompanying awareness of "no more growth" in the foreseeable future than I am about the reality of no growth.

Can I assume you fear market crashes, much as the US did wrt the IEA?

If that is the case, then wouldn't it behoove those who are aware to create lifeboat communities to ride out the storm, or at least show the way?

The coming U.S. election will likely be a bloodletting for the Democrats due to public anger and frustration over the economy. Any candidate with the temerity to openly suggest that economic growth is unattainable would never be elected. That is reality. People will desperately cling to the illusion of growth, because they cannot imagine a future without it. In the early years of the Great Depression most people lived in rural areas and had the wherewithal to meet their basic needs. That is no longer the case. The vast majority of today's population live in urban/suburban settings and are almost completely dependent on supplies and goods that magically appear on store shelves. Most have no basic agricultural skills or inclination to learn them - even if they had access to productive farmland. When the hard realities of a post peak oil future become obvious the political fabric of the U.S. may may not survive the strain.

Economic Growth, has, for almost all human history been close to a dream, a distant possibility, a utopia.

For the vast majority of humanity, leaving mostly as peasants, producing a small surplus that was then purloined by various ruling elites, the economy didn't really exist and growth, in a close to static social and economic order, was irrelevant.

We've been spoiled by the last couple of centuries of massive economic growth, based on the explosion of technology, collosal population growth, imperialism, colonialism, the agricultural revolution, urbanization... and probably most important of all... the enormous bounty of cheap and plentiful fossil fuels, which have formed the energy basis of our growth civilization.

Take that cheap energy away and our civilization changes too.

'Capitalism' feeds on economic growth and without it it's arguably whether Capitalism in any form we would recognise can survive.

My bet is that we will return to the type of social and economic systems that 'flourished' before the fossil fuel era, with all that this implies.

"My bet is that we will return to the type of social and economic systems that 'flourished' before the fossil fuel era, with all that this implies."
I agree, which eliminates the need for elections.

Economic Growth, has, for almost all human history been close to a dream, a distant possibility, a utopia.

...
Capitalism' feeds on economic growth and without it it's arguably whether Capitalism in any form we would recognise can survive.

The thing I fear most is the interaction of crushed expectations and mass politics. Expect unscrupulous tyrannical sorts to try to exploit the situation. "Put me in power, I will deal with the XXX(insert scapegoat of choice), and bring back the good old days.."

So the more people who are given an inkling of why the era of rapid growth is ending, the better are our odds of a smooth transition. But, given the ascendency of outright outrageous lying, and the echoing of others lie, all in the service of someones political agendas, the odds are greatly against us.

.
There is an abundance of historical examples of a depressed economic activity increasing social conflicts
the flemish cities in the late middle age ,Germany during the reformation , Europe of the late 19th century during the regular depressions etc..etc..
when the wealth pie shrink , the lower classes see their standard of living crushed
usually by having a larger part of their income to spend on food , their discretionary spending simply evaporate .
In an election driven system one can predict the rise of populism if not rabble rousing
It turn naturally to angry resentment toward the administrative machine see as having failed
since , no matter how incompetent , the ruling Elites cannot really do much about it
it remains as a stabilizer only a diversion of so much popular energy
the usual remedy is a "good war" , some mass entertainment ,
mass religion or grand building project (it's your fault you are sinful)
or into channeling hatred into someone else (Jews,Chinese ,foreigners, whatever )

One thing you will never see or hear is a politician telling you to elect him but he cannot do much to improve things
.

That's not true at all. There was a steady advance up until the mid or end of the 6th century A.D., when piracy in the mediterranean became so ubiquitous that it prevented most, if not all, economic activity. Obviously, collapse followed.

Even then, the plunder eventually stopped, mostly thanks to Charles Martel and the Eastern Roman Empire, and while the situation had to restart from a very low level, there were steady advancements on an exponential curve, all throughout history. Yes, most civilizations never recovered from even mild collapses, like the mayas or incas or easter island, athenian atheist democracy (and many other atheist -and otherwise- democracies, tyrannies, dictatorships, communism), vikings, ... yet "chinese civilization" has recovered from dozens of crises, "western christianity" has recovered from about 3 huge crises now (4 or 5 if you count wars like WWII), hindu civilization from 1 and islamic "civilization" from 1 (though islam only recovered from it's last crisis through massive amounts of christian aid).

Everyone born since, oh, say 740 A.D., with few exceptions like WWI and WWII (which were the first wars to affect more than a million people), would have seen their economic possibilities rise steadily during their lifetimes, just like us. Yes, wars, overtaxing "noble"men, thieves ... have claimed lots of lives, however on average I doubt 1 in 10 humans that were ever alive have seen their livelihoods destroyed.

Hi Ron.

I agree with you, but I think it is important to get at why this question is so unthinkable that you don't think it needs any more clarification than "NO."

The question Nate asked in this post:

"However, have you ever considered that economic growth might actually not return?"

requires a consideration of the subtext of the question, which is, "Why has our economy grown over the last 200 years?"

My experience with Americans (of the USA variety) has been that the answer is "because of freedom, democracy, hard work, and because god willed it."

The answer is usually not "because of freedom, democracy, hard work, and because we had a huge supply of easy oil and coal that we were able to exploit in a not-totally-inequitable way, and after it peaked, we bought a whole lot of the rest of the world's easy oil cheap for the next 40 years."

Arguing against Manifest Destiny is the core of Nate's letter. The mere mention of these ideas brand you as "anti-christian" and "some kind of commie."

Because you are.

Perhaps in a subtle way and without you actually realizing it, but the ideas Nate is espousing require a denial of American exceptionalism. Any alternate narrative requires it, and without an alternate narrative, political change is impossible.

Up here in Canada, there is, in my opinion, a realization that each individual's share of the resource base (the overwhelming source of our economic power, such as it is) is a matter of careful and/or lucky selection by one's ancestors (or oneself) when they emigrated (can't speak for the Native Peoples here.) Realpolitik in dealing with the US has made us accept that we are not a fundamentalist regime (we can't have identical Manifest Destinies, after all, and a contradictory religious-political reasoning would be suicidal) and that we are "some kind of commies" (the inoffensive Western-European/Socialist kind.)

We have an alternate different narrative, largely in response to your narrative.

But back to your problems:

Unless a politician can prove that god is willing his constituents to drive smaller cars and live in row houses, well, he's screwed if he follows this path.

And so are we all.

Lloyd

P.S. I realize that proving there is no god is also a viable solution to the issue, but it's problematic on so many fronts...

Hi Lloyd, loved your comment. Also USA (& Canada?) has/had tons of mineral resources like iron, coal, trees, land etc. I lived for 10 years in the USA but returned to Europe to be in a place where it's OK to be a godless semi-commie :)

The answer is usually not "because of freedom, democracy, hard work, and because we had a huge supply of easy oil and coal that we were able to exploit in a not-totally-inequitable way, and after it peaked, we bought a whole lot of the rest of the world's easy oil cheap for the next 40 years."

If the public understood this statement, there would be no need for this type of discussion. At this point I'm ready for something other than the American Imperial narrative.

I'm not sure why political scientists don't reframe their discussions on an energetic basis. If someone were to trace the relative degrees of freedom and equality through history on an energetic basis, I think we would find a fairly tight correlation between eras of bountiful resources and more equality/freedom (socialism) versus less (fascism) from Rokeach, below. Or do a current international comparison; gross emergy product compared to Gini coefficients and some human rights measure. Societies with surplus energy have the time to enable enlightened principles and culture.

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-127433764.html

Is there much of a point in engaging national politicians in the debate? No, they either already know, or will be dragged kicking and screaming into the debate only after all of their focus groups tell them that the people are demanding it. Local activism is well worth the effort, however.

Hi Iaato

I just wanted to catch up with you, since I only just now could reply to your comment. (My reply here: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6704/674182).

I notice you bring up the same issue of "national" v. "local."

re: "Is there much of a point in engaging national politicians in the debate? No, they either already know, or will be dragged kicking and screaming into the debate only after all of their focus groups tell them that the people are demanding it. Local activism is well worth the effort, however."

Part of what I'm saying is that perhaps these two terms and modes of action need not be mutually exclusive.

If "national politicians" have a specific action demanded of them, perhaps this is a way to engage them - and see the specific action accomplished. (www.oildepletion.wordpress.com).

Thanks for your response, Aniya. The two are not mutually exclusive, but national politics have been infiltrated with lobbying money to the point that only crisis and pressure from grass roots activism will create change, IMO. The candidates here in Alaska have always been focused on energy, but there is now a universal emphasis on new energy sources as a priority, with democrats leaning towards renewable mixes and republicans towards fossil fuels. Some of that does transfer up to a national level, where it meets heavy pressure from corporate lobbying for the magic pony project of the week.

On the NAS, it is good to hear that they at least allowed poor Boulding to place some comments in the Appendix. I'm sure he was very frustrated sitting on this panel. This is a classic example of reductionist science, which is in the vast majority, and drowns out big picture thinking because it is easier to grasp, IMO. The same dynamic can be seen on this forum. Scientists are taught to reduce in school, through research, and statistics, and math. Examine no more than two or three variables at a time, and ask the narrowest, smallest, most refined question that you can, in order to accommodate your tools, which are classic statistical methods. How many angels can fit on the head of a pin is a very narrow, precise question that can be answered with authority, but the answer is not very useful in a dynamic complex world. Research methods using statistics drill down rather than aggregate up. Scientists are people, and thus don't like to change their spots readily. If they've been trained in reductionist methods over the period of a decade (BS, MS, PhD) along with reinforcement from peers (colleges, scientific associations, journal peer review, funding entities), they may not abandon the thinking patterns without help and/or crisis. That is why I have hope for the GOM catastrophe to turn awareness around. People start realizing that one thing is connected to another, which is then connected to another. Scientists will be dragged kicking and screaming to view large complex systems with an ecosystem approach. Yes, local activism is critical, and national groups will follow. Thanks for pursuing this important point, and these are just my opinions.


http://sofia.usgs.gov/publications/papers/pp1403a/gwchemistry.html

Society has been led astray by capitalism to think that happiness can only be increased by having more stuff. As a kid I think half of our games were imaginary, requiring little substance. We should be thinking about what increases our quality of living and think about how that can be better during material descent. We live in excess but largely do not realize it, especially in US.

A 10" thin crust pizza with exotic toppings can taste a whole lot better than the 16" thick crust, lipid-slathered pie...

We need to ask these questions, even if the politicians are not willing to answer them.

It's like when you ask your kids just before you go home after work, "did you finish your chores yet?" and you really don't care about the answer, you just wanted to get the message across again. Maybe the message is the more important thing here and getting some one elected that gets the message is not possible or not as important right now. Building awareness is the key next step.

Unfortunately the federal train is going to take forever to change course and i am sure we don't have that amount of time. These changes will happen at the local scale first and I think these questions should be asked of your councilors, mayors, etc. first. Or even better yet, all of us should run (and I am) for local council to get our message across. Seed the question period room with people who ask the right questions and get the message across. Who knows we may get elected.

All aboard, next stop Washington (or in my case Ottawa).

Dear Nate Hagens,

Great question? Thanks for asking it because the gigantic scale and anticipated growth rate of the economic collossus called the global economy appears to be approaching the point of its unsustainability on Earth.

Sincerely,

Steve

I was working with a candidate for local office, a moderate Republican who was actually considering this question and some localisation ideas. He lost in the primary to a hard core liberal-basher.

I agree that even considering that the economy won't return to a growth senario (and fairly soon) is a sign of weakness and pessimism. The electorate will quickly show you the political door. The children want to be told that there is no monster under the bed as long as you say the "monster words". It helps them sleep at night.

Here's the monster under the bed: the economy is growing right now.

Not really - that is solely a result of a one time (or possibly 2) debt orgy by government, borrowing from periphery (i.e. china and saudi arabia) and future (lower living standards for our children due to higher debt burdens or currency reform). I.e. its growth with a large asterisk.

C'mon Nate. He's just speaking the "monster words" so we can all sleep better.
Or is growth the real monster?

All growth has an asterisk. Growth is growth. Recession is recession. These are simple concepts.

Not when artificial resuscitation is involved. The assumption is that it will work, but future growth will be shackled by high debt.

Sonofsam

Any growth we see at this moment has been kept buoyant by government intervention since Oct 2008. When the money printing, and other smoke and mirror techniques stop, the Titanic stops. Then we will have to face the reality that the hull of our economic paradigm is holed irreparably.

To push the Titanic analogy further. Is it wise or even fair for any political spokesperson to say to 6.8 billion people, “Our ship is slowly sinking, and our best guess is that we have lifeboats for 1.2 billion at most”?

I understand and believe in peak oil. I desperately want my family and friends to get it too. I want my local community to get it. When the tipping point percentage of 6.8 billion get it, that will be a different world entirely. Be careful what you wish for.

Perhaps the question is whether we can "grow" faster than we can accumulate debt. A few years ago, private debt exploded, now it's public debt. Repeat ad nauseum.

Perhaps the question is whether we can "grow" faster than we can accumulate debt. A few years ago, private debt exploded, now it's public debt. Repeat ad nauseum.

Democracy, or to be more precise, a republican form of government in the U.S. has failed. It promised economic growth and a rising tide that would raise all boats. Growth is (nearly) over. In light of the failure of representative government in the U.S., it is useful to speculate what comes next.

IMO the worst alternative would be George Orwell's 1984 of a perfect totalitarian system. Let us hope that when Big Brother comes forth he will decide on a mere authoritarian fascist form of government, as opposed to going the totalitarian route.

Elections are becoming increasingly meaningless; the presidency has ever less true power. My conjecture is that a populist leader--somebody like Huey Long--will emerge to become first dictator for life in the U.S. Nobody with a brain will run for president in 2012, and where President Palin will lead us I prefer not to speculate on that issue. By 2020 the presidential elections will will become a complete farce, much as the elections for consuls were during the Roman Empire.

With luck we'll get a Huey Long rather than a Stalin or a Hitler. Americans have always been lucky; let us hope that we don't run out of it--now that we really need some good fortune.

Big government is a luxury of energy rich times - basic economics says that government lives on the surplus available after basic living is covered, and after business activity is paid for. Historically, 10% was considered heavy taxation.

To keep an authoritarian or distant empire together in a low-energy regime would require a strong dependence on ideology, or some powerful myth to indoctrinate the masses.

I agree-- there will be a short term lock down on rights (it accelerated in 2001, and has not let up), but as infrastructure goes, there will be no one there to even answer the phone.
As someone involved in the political process, no growth is not even considered, let alone rejected.

.

true a big government need a large surplus, but the government can rest on coercion to maintain its share of spoil of the national wealth
the biggest the government the stronger the police ,
it reached amazing level in totalitarian states , usually they fail not because the theory is faulty as such , just because they are very top heavy

.

Democracy invokes the tragedy of the commons, as outlined by the Greek philosophers when it was proposed: the demos, the people, will vote themselves more benefits that any one of them can support, because they receive more from stressing the commons (the tax base) than the tax base stresses them.

Humans don't think well of large systems beyond the Dunbar Limit of Socialization (q.v.) that indicates that effective social relations are limited by brain size.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

Humans can efficiently socialize with about 146 people. When society needs more size, it sacrifices efficiency, or as we call it, happiness.

Remarks on why TOD is becoming fractious in its new popularity:

http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html

We're just not built for civilization, and so we have discontents. Some are deadly.

in practice, we get around the Dunbar number fairly easily in our overpopulated daily lives simply by lumping people in categories, within which we don't really recognize individuality. I have even read (indirectly) that mental health is best in people who are so lumped as they gain clearly defined social roles and relations - "fitting in" becomes very easy. What we sacrifice is individuality, and the "reality", to some extent, of what it is to be a person.

In many business and social environments once you know the types thats all you need to know; even thinking further than that is generally discouraged by all involved as it complicates things greatly, virtually demanding an expansion of one's already taxed Dunbar limit...

Don,

Forgive me, I am confused by some of your comments.

First you say:

...the presidency has ever less true power.

Then you say:

Nobody with a brain will run for president in 2012, and where President Palin will lead us I prefer not to speculate on that issue.

If the Presidency has 'no true power', then why would you fear what a 'President Palin' (or anyone else) could do?

You speculate that the best we could hope for is another Huey Long...

Is it the case that perhaps what you meant to say is that the Congress has no true power?

Or maybe we cut to the chase: The media have become full partners with the impending fascists and the people have no real power, because the people are spoiled, weak, and refuse to consider reality?

Congress does have some potential power, but currently that power is frozen to support BAU for three reasons:

1. The special-interest effect: Vested interests contribute to political campaigns, and legislators fear to bite the hands that feed it. We have a government of the special interests, for the special interests, and by the special interests.

2. The shortsightedness effect: Members of the U.S. House of Representatives face a two year time horizon. Thus there are enormous incentives to vote legislation that will provide immediate benefits to constituents as costs are shoved out into the future. Thus there is always the tendency to spend too much and to tax too little.

3. The rational ignorance of voters: Each citizen knows that his or her one vote is unlikely to make any difference to an election result; hence there is little rational incentive to become an informed voter. Indeed, it may not be rational for an individual to vote at all--looking strictly at costs and benefits from voting.

Don,

As usual, thank you for the courtesy of providing your reasoned reply.

I would hope that we can be better than this...

'Hope is never a strategy'...saying from the U.S. Army

Don:

I find it quite disturbing that we are seeing a steady stream of articles praising the Chinese/Asian "State Capitalism" style of system, and so very little attacking it while defending our existing liberal/democratic capitalist model. It is really starting to look like the early stages of pre-conditioning the population. Get us used to the idea now, give the impression that their system is what works best, so when the time comes to make the change there will be minimum resistance.

I don't know exactly how it will happen. There are enough different possible scenarios to keep novelists busy for decades. But it does look like a more centralized, authoritarian-corporatist system is what some very powerful people are gravitating toward.

But it does look like a more centralized, authoritarian-corporatist system is what some very powerful people are gravitating toward.

Have you seen the original Rollerball? Or with a different twist, Brazil?

The questions seem to assume there is a political answer when in fact there may be no answer other than time and pain. El Erian (Pimco) has postulated a new normal of 2% growth and 7-10% unemployment. If there is an answer it is likely far above the pay grade of the political class and likely unpleasant in its implementation and duration.

How about a new normal of minus 2% growth in real GDP along with unemployment in the 20% to 30% range? That is what I expect post-Peak, and now I think Peak Oil will most likely be in 2014.

The future is bleak. Demagogues will thrive.

Don
I really don't want to sidetrack the discussion off topic but...if 2% GDP contraction and 20-30% unemployment does happen, Peak Oil was almost certainly 2005... There will be positive feedback (in negative way) on decline rates and the highs will have been long seen...

Nate,

I used to believe that Peak Oil was 2005 and posted a score of times to that effect. Now I see new evidence, and I think the most likely Peak is 2014. But the exact date of Peak Oil matters not a whit. The big picture has changed not at all.

It might be 2014 if we are able to issue more debt, but I strongly doubt it.

But the exact date of Peak Oil matters not a whit. The big picture has changed not at all.

On this, the larger point, we are in total agreement.

Perhaps Don means to say he believes 2014 is when world oil extraction drops off the present plateau and enters terminal decline.

I think there will be a small but significant rise in the global output of oil from 2010 to 2014. We are going to move off the plateau: If Nate and Darwinian and many others are correct it will be to lower output of oil after a final peak on the current plateau. My own WAG is that there is about 3 mb/day of excess capacity at the current time, and that current megaprojects will be able to push capacity--and output--up a bit for three or four or five more years.

As Leanan has frequently stated, we will only be able to recognize Peak Oil for sure when it is some (several) years in the rear view mirror.

After all, though I do not believe this to be the case, CERA could be right. There is no way to prove them wrong at this time.

I wish you were right, Don. Consider, though, the impact of the Saudi announcement that they have discontinued all oil exploration. The implications are huge!

I think we are at the middle to late part of the plateau, and by 2014 we will see oil in terminal decline. And, by then, there could well be some bad news in the NG scene as well, since the vaunted shale plays may be very short lived.

Not that I am a doomer. I think someone will find a way to do cold fusion, we will mine oil from the astroid belt and Titan, time travelers will show up to show us the way, and all will be fine in this, the best of all possible worlds.

Craig

...you forgot the part where we all upload our consciousnesses to the internet and live free forever in cyberspace :).

Isn't that what we're doing now?

Join us... We are the Borg... Resistance is futile...

Craig

And the singularity is near.

BORG Misfit

There are times, Fred, when the best I can come up with is, "borban van az igazság."

Szia.

Craig

Or better yet, दो नोट वोर्री, बे हप्प्य

What's the translation from Tibetan to English?

"Don't worry, be happy"...

I see...Thanks.

Hmm, time travel... Maybe that's the answer to the Fermi paradox - all alien civilizations found that colonization of alternate past/present/future realities on their own home planets easier than traversing the vastness of space.
( inhales another hit of potsmoke ) lol

I have similarly wondered about the timing of the peak and after doubting my earlier beliefe in a 2005 peak, I now find myself adopting (heresy?) the view that at around $20-40/bbl the peak has happened and if mankind can summon up enough money and effort for $200/bbl oil in order to maintain the ilusion of current living standards then the peak may be moved out somewhat.

Until when? Who knows.

But what we do know is that $200/bbl oil will change the economics of many things. And while people may then conjecture that we have yet to reach peak oil, growth will have probably stalled - at least in real terms.

Then of course governments have ways to use statistics to satisfy their own arguments about the growth illusion.

I suppose we will have an inflationary "muddle through" while politicians suppress the inflation statistics and inflate the GDP growth statistics.

I believe that the US is not the only country in the world consuming oil. Perhaps the US, and the west in gereral, the furthest down the slope and consumption therefore may be slowing / even have peaked, but the other 6bn-ish people have to increase their consumption but just a tiny bit for the total consumption number to go up.
And as the marginal value of a gallon of gas used by 3 guys on a scooter on their way to the factory is arguably greater than the marginal value of that same gallon used by a teenager taking an SUV to the mall to go windowshopping in all likelyhood the 3 guys on the scooter will outbid the mall hopper.

Rgds
WeekendPeak

This is a great point. The energy return on investment is much higher in developing nations. The US could be so much more competitive globally if we used energy more efficiently. $1 invested in africa has the potential to amplify growth much more than $1 in US or Europe. The problem in the US is that our oil addiction was invested in a 100 year problem...ie suburban living. How do you get that monkey off our backs? A match has a powerful amplifier effect????

Don / Nate
I think you are both right about the difficulty in the positioning of Peak Oil’s year zero. But the real effects will be much sooner.

I’m not smart enough to elaborate further with any clarity. But Stoneleigh of The Automatic Earth is.

This is a link to a talk she gave. Very worthwhile listen.

http://sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/2010/06/453356.html

Thanks for the link.
The second time I listened to Stoneleigh's talk I took notes.
(Warning-high baud rate. Drink coffee first.)

It IS surreal, Nate. Beyond surreal really. And I suspect that -- as Guest says -- more time and pain is the only thing which will get enough ordinary citizens to sober up to what's really happening so that the politicians and the economists can begin to dare to think and actually talk about it.

Shouldn't be too long. We haven't much time left on the Peak plateau. What did those First South Americans know about 2012.....?

I prefer to reframe the issue.

Lower income combined with more wealth.

GDP is, after all, a measure of income streams. Wealth is, in one form or another, the assets we own.

Reduce consumption below current levels (lots of ills associated with excessive consumption BTW) and increase investment (primarily in long lasting energy producing and energy efficient infrastructure).

Such a strategy, even in a modestly contracting GDP, can result in what looks like a "good economy". Unemployment 5% to 6%, balanced budget, fewer homeless & beggars on the streets, etc. The loss of consumption is explained by the rise in investment. Our income may be dropping, but our wealth is increasing.

To take one example, wind turbines. Perhaps (guess) 90% of the lifetime investment is made at start-up. "We" then get an economic good (electricity), for 25 or so years with minimal additional input. And in 25 years, we recover a few % as scrap and reuse the base, tower and electrical infrastructure (40% ??) for a second generation of wind turbines.

Such a base of real investment returns will help buffer the other effects of a shrinking GDP.

And there is a "gold mine" of real returns in efficiency.

To take one of my favorites, shift intercity freight from truck to double stack container trains and trade 20 BTUs of refined diesel for 1 BTU of electricity. Surely such an efficiency gain will have positive ripple effects through the economy. Comparable for Urban Rail and even better for bicycling.

Add to this that the more one uses roads, the higher the marginal cost. And the more one uses railroads (till a very high upper limit), the lower the marginal cost.

Shift from roads to rail and roads will become more efficient (as the marginal layers are peeled back) and rails will become more efficient as load factors increase. Again with positive ripple effects throughout the economy.

But also, more efficient appliances, insulation, etc.

Best Hopes for Better General Welfare with less GDP,

Alan

Alan,

I think all of your proposals are sound. If implemented they would do much to mitigate the effects of the coming Long Descent.

However, I do not believe that reason and enlightened self-interest rule in politics or business.

Masssive unemployment is coming, and the responses to this--if history is any guide--will be dark.

You have my greatest admiration for defending the last bastions of reason and hope in our society and our economy. Alas, fine ideas perish in the fire of politics.

Politics is the art of the possible. It is a possibility that BAU can persist for another generation, and I think all political energies will be focused on "a return to normalcy" or BAU.

But I could be wrong. I deeply hope that I am wrong and that your enlightenment approach can be implemented--perhaps as the program of a dictator.

I don't want any of my children to become president; at best they could become advisors to the man (or woman) to rule as first dictator of the U.S. republic. Of course, he won't be called a dictator; he'll be President for Life, or something like that as repeal of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution is rammed through a dozen or so years from now.

Two quotes.

"The surest way to fail is to fail to try".

"US energy [and other] policies have only two modes; complacency and panic".

I expect a panic stage, in fact I am counting on it. Perhaps 20+% unemployment, perhaps panic hits earlier.

The key is to have the best possible plan "in place" and looking new (people like new plans, also not as much time to nit pick it apart) so it is the straw grasped in panic. And it kind of, sort of works :-)

Significant steps are coming together to work out the details of such a plan.

Still, a very high probability of failure, I agree. But what else should I do with my time ? :-))

Again, a refocus away from consumption and towards both well being and increasing wealth,

Best Hopes for New Paradigms,

Alan

Sadly Don I agree. The question then becomes where do you go? From all I see this scenario was moving quicker than I thought even several years ago.
Alan and I disagree on the contribution of wind generation. I think the Chinese agree with me considering they have cornered the market on Boron Nitride for generator magnets.

I have always loved the railroads. Rode the IC from Chicago to N.O. once! The ride of a lifetime! Used to ride Monon from Chicago to Bloomington, Indiana. Loved it!

Maybe my grandkids will have a career as gandy dancers!

I've been workin' on the railroad...
all the live long day!!!

Craig

Yair...Alan, here in Queensland our Govt.spent several hundreds of millions of dollars electrifying and realigning track on about seven hundred kilometers of our eastern seaboard for a "high speed" (160 kilometer per hour) tilt train.
It's a good service but it runs at a loss...most of the passengers get some form of concession...and all the freight trains seem to be diesels. I'm told the diesels are much cheaper to run, some thing to do with the costs of replacing the overhead conductors.
Any railway folks out there who can shed any light on this?

Properly done, the overhead wires should last 50 years or so. Depends on the traffic loads of course, but they are running (from memory) up to 400 electric trains/day on the bridge/tunnel between Sweden & Denmark (perhaps Magnus can help) and I do not remember that being 3rd rail.

SBB (Swiss rail) has plans to run up to electric 300 trains/day, at speeds of 100 to 240 kph, through their new tunnels.

More likely, 1) the diesels are not worn out and 2) they do not want to change locos when they cross into diesel territory south of Queensland. 700 km is too short for an economic loco change (per US rail rules of thumb). Just a guess.

Queensland Rail has a generally good reputation. And as the price of oil rises, the subsidy may well decrease.

Best Hopes for Queensland,

Alan

There is no third rail in the railway and bridge connection between Sweden and Denmark. The odd thing with that connection is that it is between an old 16 2/3 Hz 16 kV and a new 50 HZ 25 kV system. Sweden and Germany who electrified early used 16 Hz since it made it easier to build high torque motor and the impedance in long and weak lines were less of a problem. The Danes started electrifying much later and did not plan for several connections to older systems and used a cheaper system with another set of technical benefits. There is also a hand over of signalling systems, those are getting EU-standardized in a very slow process that will take decades to complete. It is probably easier to large scale electrifie in the US since you got the same standards over very large areas.

50 years, give or take is ok, some catenaries in Sweden are about 70 years, 70 year old lines that have heavy traffic has had a few wire changes. The new steel posts will last longer then 70 years since they are sturdier and are better galvanized, the old ones are swithed out due to higher forces from higher line tension to uprate the top speed or simply due to rusting.

I second you, Allan.

> 1. Is there a reason why this kind of letter shouldn't be sent to real people who want our vote?

Why not? I would enjoy having this question becoming an important one in Swedish politics since it forces all issues to become more practical and that is good for my party since our credability in getting stuf done is good and it is even good for the way I think myself. Engineer minded people thrive on limitations, PR-minded people thrive on limitless possibilities.

> 2a. Would a candidate addressing these issues/questions stand any chance of winning?

Sure thing! The question is only a little worse then what were adressed during the financial crisis.

> 2b. If not, might such a candidate, even in a losing effort, influence the election issues and as a result positively impact transition efforts away from growth based economy?

No way I or we in the party I am part of would get Sweden away from a growth oriented economy. The mechanisms for growth are the same as the mechanisms for change and change and continued investments would be absolutely essential during a dire depression to ever get to the approriate society for the other side of the bottleneck. When growth in some sectors do not add up to a growing GDP it still provides change, change that has usefull direction. I would stick with the basic economical structure for 5-10-20 years untill it is recalibrated for measuring the new things that are possible to do during the new situation.

Then in 20 years we might have some good exampels in other parts of the world and new ideas that will be contemplated by the next generation that has lived thru a lot of change. I would rather have them changing the basic economical system then the current dreamers and theorists that recommend dramatic and form my point of view more or less random changes.

But the gradual changes could of course add up to a major change over one or two generations, that could be realy good. My own guess abut the financial system is that the currency gradually could become directly linked to the usefull mineral, ecosystem, factory, logistics and knowledge resources and thus relate more to real and usefull capital within our society and market economy.

I would really like to see candidates taking up this issue. If BO was any sort of leader, he would be doing it now.

The fact is, the big corporations don't want the issues discussed, and will not finance anyone who does. They will bury anyone who tries to say that BAU cannot continue. In money!

Consider, the millionaires of America saw a 19% growth in wealth during 2009! 2009!!!! That says it all.

Craig

Regarding the suggestion that we need "no-growth insurance", it has been clear to me that the financial elite have been insuring themselves against this probability for some time now. My now deceased mother described Reagan's trickle down policies as insurance for the wealthy almost thirty years ago (a remarkable insight from a woman that came from a wealthy background).

Witness the phenominal up-transfer of capitol in recent decades. Offshoring, complex financial instuments, consolidation (TBTF), and deregulation all represent "insurance" against an end to growth, though not for the general population and economy.

Real per capita growth in the US has ended. Growth peaked in 1900-1910 decade, the decade of the beginning electrification of factories and the peak growth of the electric street railway system.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5437/is_n2_v29/ai_n28658086/?tag...

Growth remained high until 1929. Structural deflation existed for decades under the gold standard due to rising productivity. Productivity was high with electrification and Ford-Taylor mass production. Electricity generation became much more efficient with steam turbines and the consolidation of utilities under Samuel Insull and others. City homes were electrified by the end of the 1920’s, telephones were widespread, as were radios and household appliances like ovens, washing machines, vacuum cleanser, electric irons, toasters and refrigerators. Running water and appliances greatly reduced the hours women spent on household chores, as did an increasing variety of partially prepared foods available in supermarkets. Tractors and trucks greatly reduced the price of food.
The Great Depression of the 1930’s ended with the average work week 9 hours shorter, for the same or higher real weekly pay, adjusted for the lower cost of living.

As with productivity improvements, almost all of the great innovations took place in the early 20th C. The last half of the 20th C. gave us the combustion turbine (jet engine and high temperature half of combined cycle electricity), nuclear energy, lasers and fiber optics and the computer and Internet. The Green Revolution was the most important last half wave 5 innovation.

The slowdown in growth was noticeable by the 1960’s and was discussed by leading economists. Globalization in the last two decades wiped out almost half of US factory jobs. The real estate bubble created by negative real interest rates was the result of trying to prolong the Kondratieff wave. Wave 5 crested few years ago. It is different from all previous cycles because of resource depletion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave

The USSR collapsed when the government could no longer pay employees and the military. CA, IL and other states are in a similar situation, and the US would be too if they could not print money.

A better title would be "Dear Future Former Candidate". Otherwise, the answer to the question is: "Lose the re-election".

That quote of Ghandi:

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."

I suggest maybe we are at second base here, with two outs. You need a candidate a la Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, or someone else with a lot of money who could use it to raise the issue as a faux candidate, but nobody else will get much traction.

Insurance is for the rare catastrophic event, except for life insurance (where death is a sure thing and the variable is time). Perhaps a better analogy is packing a reserve parachute. But as you have suggested before, the very message you wish to deliver will have the effect of speeding up the crash. What if everybody gets it? Construct a realistic scenario, starting with a collapse of credit and the means for doing anything practical in the way of transitioning. Sort of like the Gulf Coast preparing for a hurricane, with runs on stores for flashlights and batteries, and evacuations. Then add wingnut radio and guns.

Speaking of insurance, aren't claims paid using the investment returns of the premiums? That is, isn't growth imperative for the financial viability of the insurance industry? Gail would know.

Ghandi learned of the next phase also. Then they kill you.

Craig

What annoys me is that we don't have colleges and universities teaching that decline is a real possibility, regardless of what we do.

Even the Solutions Journal and the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy folks don't seem to bring up the possibility that growth may disappear, without our trying to stop growth, and that we may face a very different world in not too long. The focus is more on preventing global warming, taking better care of the soil, and the wonders of biofuel. CASSE is very much focused on trying to reduce growth.

Maybe they don't really understand the limits we are facing, or maybe they aren't willing to talk honestly about the likely consequences. But I don't get the impression academic groups (except for probably Charlie Hall's group, which I don't think publishes material for lay audiences) are really willing to bring up the tough issues we are facing.

I like the strategy of reducing growth. China regulates their population growth. Nothing like that is happening much that I know. As far as I know, the world population growth curve is continuing on an upward curve.

The possibility of a growthless economy was discussed here, in a program called Prosperity without Growth in Australia.

The good professor spoke about a demographic transition as people got richer.
He did not mention the other sort of demographic transition.
The one from Hell.

Thanks for the link, I've been looking for this & couldn't find it.

Gail,

What's your source for the statement that CASSE is focused on reducing growth, rather than dealing with the end of growth? I raised this question with them and there seemed to be agreement that (a) we are in overshoot, (b) we need to eliminate, not reduce growth, and (c) that the level of economic production in this zero-growth economy would be quite a bit less than exists currently.

This was on a discussion board but several people prominent in the organization responded. Since it was technically a private discussion I don't want to quote them directly, but their responses indicated that they didn't think this was much of an issue with them. They think we're in overshoot and the economy has to decline in terms of physical output.

Keith

I like to ask Zen koans: Did the Cyanobacteria discuss the impact of causing the great Oxygenation event?

Yes. They voted. I heard that they wanted to open up new endosymbiotic opportunities.

Cell Respiration Rap-Glucose Breakdown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlZZUtpyCgQ&feature=related

In my admittedly offbeat opinion, considering democracy as it exists in the USA to be an intelligent problem-solving engine is a fallacy, except in the sense of it responding to competitive pressures within the putative power structure. For other issues it offers a mechanism for coin-flip resolution, not a mechanism for rational sorting of complex options.

1. Is there a reason why this kind of letter shouldn't be sent to real people who want our vote?

It wouldn't do any direct harm as long as they weren't pressed to make their answers public. Giving them good information for incorporating into a covert agenda could arguably be valuable. That is, candidates have a "platform", and then they have what they're really hoping to do once they're elected. It might be useful, I suppose, to meet with them and give a kick-ass presentation of what you hope they'll do once elected, and then hope they do it. You can believe candidates take a lot of meetings like that. Kind of a lefthanded way to get something done, though. It would be a stretch to call it a mechanism.

In terms of low-key indirect harm, it'd be a time sink that made us feel we had done something useful, thus potentially preventing our doing something more useful with our time and dissonance. You'd think Kurt Vonnegut would have made up a word for that class of things, but I don't recall it if so. Maybe a "dissonot" or "moailet".

Most people - candidates or not - are true enough believers in the "growth must continue" mindset that publicly asking them questions like this is received a bit like asking them if they'll support mutant's rights in the aftermath of a nuclear war. As rudely inappropriate and grotesque, in other words.

2a. Would a candidate addressing these issues/questions stand any chance of winning?

As long as they address the issues after being elected and not before, and are OK with serving a single term. See Carter, Jimmy. Though we're heading toward what may be authoritarian times, so perhaps presenting them with an authoritarian "plan B" might be remembered fondly. And perhaps no need to limit ourselves to candidates in that case; nuclear sub captains and aggressive religious leaders might also be worth having a chat with.

2b. If not, might such a candidate, even in a losing effort, influence the election issues and as a result positively impact transition efforts away from growth based economy?

Not impossible, but such a candidate might "naderize" the process and push the election in the opposite direction by splitting the vote of the less-delusional. Though the less-delusional are not exactly a swing vote yet.

Again, I'll plug "unromanticized behaviorism" as a way to steer office-holders, corporations, and others from outside the system. It mostly doesn't matter what they believe.

cheers....

thanks
answers like this are why campfire may still bear fruit...

Most comments on this blog I find comprehensible and interesting. (Quite often I feel like adding my own voice but decide not to - the way these things hang together (PO/money/localism/employment &c) is complex and most things worth saying are beyond just a few dozen words long.)

And it seems that greenish has a big fan base among the "usual suspects" here so presumably his comments are worth understanding, yet to be honest I don't understand what he says! Am I alone? If not - and seriously - would it be worth having someone paraphrase his posts if that can be done without losing the subtlety of meaning his words doubtless contain?

Let me try.

"Someone trying to do the right thing" needs to use the best possible thought, logic and analysis, somewhat dispassionately, to determine what is the better (note: not the ideal best) things (plural) to do.

Looking at the world in a probabilistic world view (which I do).

After determining what is the better path to follow/promote, the means to promote it are passionate, have only a passing relationship with logic (except in manipulating our fellow beings).

There is a myth that "we", the body politic/popular culture, chose what is in our own long term self interest. Ain't so.

There needs to be two separate processes. In one, a necessarily small group determines what is the better way forward. "Cold" probabilistic determination.

In the other, one searches for the levers to actually change things and does what is necessary to make change happen.

I have a slightly different, very nuanced, POV delta with Greenish.

More on that later,

Alan

I thank Alan for his summation; as he knows I'm a fan and ally of his and an admirer of the way he has committed and engaged, and he knows where our methods, perceptions, and targets somewhat differ.

First, I'll note that in some posts by me there may be less than meets the eye. They can't all be gems, and the comment above in particular isn't one I'd rate highly, except for the closing note about behaviorism. Or they may represent the continuing of previous conversations with the "regulars" here, online and off, which provides those people more of a context, and might imply more substance than what you see leaping off the page. I'm really posting an ongoing communication to the regulars when I post, and it's a pretty sophisticated crowd. If some pay attention, I trust there's a reason.

Moreover, I only tend to post if what I have to say is at right angles to what's otherwise being said; if I have an odd perspective which is not likely to be brought up by others. This runs a fairly high risk of seeming opaque or simply odd, which I don't mind. So my bad there; I'd say that if my comments resonate with anyone, great. If not, I'm unsurprised.

best

Greenish has a way of communicating that appears to me to require a slight twisting of the mind away from what is considered normalcy by most.To me somewhat akin to the writings of Thoreau and others who plumb/plumbed the depths of thought and deed.

He has IMO divined the depths and carries back what he found and sets it in words.
Words that on first reading might indicate a differing manner of thought process is perhaps required.

Very, very dense. Yes. Very appropriate. Yes.
Not a quick read.

Thanks, g. I always feel a little better after reading your posts,,,,,though I'm not sure why....kinda like chicken soup :-0

thanks for the thanks. When it comes down to it, I feel there's a lot productive to be done. Despite being an ultra-doomer under most taxonomies.

We have a lot to unlearn. We're not individually powerless, far from it. That's part of the consensus trance, the unquestioned mental boxes which circumscribe what we believe to be possible.

So ironically, I must be an optimist. To have been an activist/secret agent/provocateur/propagandist/mad scientist etc for 35 years and still find it worth doing is somewhat surprising.

Back in the late '90's before I realized other humans had figured out "peak oil" & the various converging crises, one of the working titles for an unsettling book draft meant to make a buck off pre-y2k hysteria was "Chicken Soup for your Crotch". Of course, it turned out that several authors were well ahead of me by the time I got to it, so it got shelved.

I get a smile out of your posts too... keep it up.

Is an ultra doomer someone who has a gut feeling that what we think we are, say we are and what we do is like looking at 3 different species =:- ?
The Doomer becomes aware he is not 1 but 3!

I think about them also as the Id (reptilian), the analog mind (neocortex), and the mammalian or social brain.

It’s very obvious that most people use the mammalian brain most extensively. Our news broadcasts have devolved into human-interest forums where gossip about individuals and lowering or raising their status in the hierarchy is predominant.

The reptilian brain asserts itself regularly to make sure the body’s basic needs and wants are taken care of, often without any moral considerations.

The analog mind is often poorly developed and using it does not come naturally. It is usually occupied by fuzzy logic and large voids resulting from bibliophobia.

Those people dominated by the neocortex (thinkers) may spend most of their time building and refining their analog minds and find mammalian interaction and politics primitive and almost distasteful. After watching a few episodes of "Oprah" even the most stalwart intellectual might renounce civilization. Bringing new ideas to those that have not opened a book in thirty years or do not own books, may be a challenge.

Some years ago I had an epiphany while reading an interview with psychologist who helped design the Hummer. He tried, very hard, to appeal to the reptile brain.

The reptile brain is directly connected to many consumer/consumption choices.

And I further connected the dots with the reports that Hummer buyers were overwhelmingly Republican. Car buyers were sorted by political affiliation and the highest % R buyers were Hummer buyers and the highest % D buyers were Prius buyers (tied with Fit or Yaris from vague memory).

Hummer buyers = reptile brain appeal (deliberately designed to be so).
Hummer buyers = Republican buyers

Prius buyers = either mammalian brain or neocortex appeal (the Prius was deliberately designed to "look different" so whatever cache' it had would be easily apparent).
Fit/Yaris buyers = neocortex (my supposition) appeal
Prius buyers = Democratic buyers
Fit/Yaris buyers = Democratic buyers

It is difficult not to apply the Transitive relation to the above, but reality and people are more complex than the above. None-the-less, I see it as a stereotypical trend or associative bias in world view.

Alan

After watching a few episodes of "Oprah" even the most stalwart intellectual might renounce civilization. Bringing new ideas to those that have not opened a book in thirty years or do not own books, may be a challenge.

Dopamine, loved your post. Keep it up.

So, this is a little loony, but I actually will be a candidate for reelection in about eight months, to our local town meeting.

Problem #1 with asking me to deal with this is that this is not necessarily something we can do a lot about locally (more in a bit) and we have pressing local problems (budget problems, mostly, as well as a need to pick a site, SOON, for a new electric substation -- and for that, we care A LOT about what happens energy-wise in the future. Is everything going to go electric, including heat, as heat pumps? Will we be able to use plugged-in rechargeable vehicles as a buffer against load peaks?). But mostly, we have a pile of pressing local problems, mostly caused by no money. In my short campaign blurb in the voter information thingie, what is important for me to say, is where I stand on spending cuts (no more cuts to schools, for example) and tax increases (I'm for them; it takes money to run a government, and we can prove that over half of it, the schools, are extremely well-run). So that's the sort of thing that matters locally.

Thankfully, I don't need to express an opinion on Gay Marriage (Massachusetts, it's settled law here, it has been as positive an outcome as I can imagine ever coming from any government action).

Problem #2 is, given that we're local, what should our angle on probable peak oil and possible no-growth be?
We cannot single-handedly solve global-warming, but we can attempt to position ourselves so that when carbon is "taxed" (one way or another) it will not hurt us. We could attempt to position ourselves so that people in our town would continue to have fulfilling lives, despite a lack of growth (how? Not 100% sure, I think it involves bicycles, we are very close to Boston etc, but there has to be more to it than just bicycles.) It would be damn nice if we could do this in a way that helps our neighboring towns, instead of burdening them. I suspect that this would involve more things that conservatives would call "big government", but if there is less pie to go around, government often spreads it around more efficiently than the private sector (example, Social Security, much lower overheads than my 401-K; example, socialized health insurance or health care in other countries, cheaper, better, universal; example, in some places, municipal broadband -- and ours is certainly nothing to be proud of, in terms of cost or quality).

So there you go. I'm trained as an engineer and a scientist, if I see a problem, I try to solve it, and both government and the free market are useful tools.

"Problem #2 is, given that we're local, what should our angle on probable peak oil and possible no-growth be?"

The answer is: The shape of your built environment.

You have a hunch that bicycles are involved. You're right. Now, think about an environment in which bicycles, and walking, and transit will be viable ways to travel to and from that places people need to go.

The focus must be on accessibility, rather than mobility.

Stop subsidizing automobility over walkability. End single-use zoning. Encourage mixed uses, including non-noxious industrial uses.

In point of fact, local government is probably in a position to move toward 50% savings in per-capita energy use, in ways that are actually achievable without cornucopian magic. You may be able to accomplish more than any head of state, in your own neighborhoods.

Yeah, but actually getting people to buy into this, right now, is difficult. There's a good-sized minority in town that does see things this way, but there is also a good-sized minority in town that (for various reasons) does not. As I see it, for them, this sort of talk is some combination of fascism and fuzzy-headed feel-good that won't work in practice. People have quite a lot of their selves tied up in their cars, it's a mistake, but it's a common mistake, and once you've made it, it's hard to unmake it without losing an awful lot of face. Look at all the money people spent on cars that, even as cars, are unnecessarily large, and then they work hard to make them pretty and shiny, and keep them that way, free of any blemish. I know that somewhere, some engineer is working hard to design the system exhaust of a future car/truck so that, above and beyond all the practical considerations, it will sound just-so, because that is important to people.

The zoning thing, I almost think we could make progress on, but unfortunately the reason we could make progress is that our current zoning is insane on its face -- the current houses, that we claim to like, mostly do not conform (they are grandfathered), and when an old house is scraped and replaced with a conforming new house, most people say "whooah, that's big and ugly!". HOWEVER, when people think about how to improve on this, they do not agree, hence, the insane status quo. (Daylight-plane regulations would probably help, but then you just added a few thousand dollars to the cost of any fiddling with your roofline.)

Mixed-use makes people nervous; also, the tax situation means that we don't want a net influx of families with children (that is, we have financial reasons to not want this, because too much of town government is funded by property taxes, which are only loosely correlated with ability to pay them -- as always, "follow the money").

Another possible route is dealing with "traffic". Again, two views, and at least two views on solving it. One view of "traffic problem" is "I cannot get places quickly in my car, there is too much traffic". Another view of "traffic problem" is "I do not feel safe walking/biking along/on major roads, there is too much traffic". Both favor less traffic, but the first group wants it flowing fast, the second group wants it flowing slow. The state highway department, which still makes the rules for big roads, is much in favor of flowing fast -- renovated roads get big, wide, comfy lanes.

Concerning mixed-use neighborhoods:

I hark back to my youth in a town of ~ 65,000 in central PA.

I lived in what I know know to call a mixed use neighborhood.

Most of the houses were what we called 'row houses'...about 3 feet,between them with an asphalt walkway from foundation-to-foundation, and the edges of the eaves from both roofs would be very close together...narrow yards in back leading to a gravel or maybe asphalt alley...with or without garages facing the alley...parking on the street in front, no driveways.

Elementary school: 5 blocks away; corner bar where a kid could go in and pick up takeout sandwiches: 4 houses away; corner dairy with small convenience store to get milk, bread, aspirin, etc: across the street from the corner bar. barber shops and hair salons and pizza joints: in first floors of converted houses...proprietors lived above the establishments.

I look back in wonder now at how many functions I could get to by walking or bike riding.

Steep streets closed off by the city during snowy parts of the winter with saw horses to allow kids to sled-ride past 4-5 cross-avenues without fear of being run over.

Since then I have been living my life in the sterile monolithic residential tracts which, combined with the strip malls (yea they look nicer now with brick face etc so what and the Wal-Mos and Targets and Lowes... force the car culture on us.

It will be a real fight to undo current zoning rules...I have been to local and city and county zoning board meetings, and it usually is heated and ugly.

Reading this made me think of a very small city I lived in about 15 yrs. ago, population 600 give or take. My youngest son and I walked everywhere. There was a small bank, even smaller post office that was closed at lunch time because the 2 people that worked there wanted to go to lunch together. There was the market, a gas station that also offered home cooking, a 2 chair hair salon where you had to be careful what you said or it would be all over town, a video store that rented "tapes" not dvd's, sold helium balloons too. There was 1 Dr and nurse and of course our favorite place the sno cone stand. My son had a lemonade stand and remembers a man that stopped and gave him $20.00 for a glass.

Now we too live in a cold, sterile, monolithic housing tract and drive everywhere. We don't enjoy theater, restaurants, sporting events or anything else the big city has to offer. I see a whole bunch of unhappy people bitching at each other about everything. When I go out I don't see happy people. Where are all the happy people?

Maybe what the world needs is smaller towns, porch swings, sno cones and balloons. Couldn't hurt?

"Maybe what the world needs is smaller towns, porch swings, sno cones and balloons. Couldn't hurt?"

To over-simplify just a bit, that's exactly what the over-developed West needs. Except... that it works just as well, better in many ways, in the neighborhoods of larger towns and cities.

Sno-cones are made with crushed ice. In New Orleans, the Hansen family invented a special machine which shaves the ice, making the Sno-ball as different from a Sno-cone as cotton candy is from taffy. They are light and melt in your mouth and you can get just about anything you want on top, including syrup, ice cream, whipped cream, sweetened condensed milk and chocolate sauce.

Best Hopes for Improved technology and a good Sno-ball :-)

Alan

Actually, that's exactly the opposite of what's happening. Urban areas are increasing in size and population, at the expense of small towns and rural countryside. The blue collar jobs that were the lifeblood of the small towns have vanished, replaced with service jobs or nothing at all, and the white collar jobs increasingly locate in larger metropolitan regions. Here in NC I see this happen across the state; there is a slow drain of young people leaving the rural/small town areas for the larger urban places, because that's where the better jobs are. Thinking that small towns are the future is going to require a massive sea change in not only society, but the economy and industry as well.

Repeating myself: "Except... that it works just as well, better in many ways, in the neighborhoods of larger towns and cities."

yep.

Camel, The small towns are still there and 'fairly' happy people.

You were the one who left.

I ran into town to pick up a few items. Stopped and talked for an hour and caught up on all the latest gossip. I love gossip.

I know most of the folks. I grew up with many.

You will NOT find the same in the city.

Why did you think all them moved to the city? You did. I moved back many years ago.
And I am not leaving , ever.

Edited to add: Let me say this. Small town folks do NOT like strangers. They know nothing about the strangers history so they naturally do not trust them. They are an 'unknown'. Now most on TOD find that unreasonable and expect when bad times come to just up and flee to the rural areas and think they are acceptable. They will have a hard time dealing with that. There are some reasons for this but I will not go into it.

If you were born in the town and live in that town you are a known entity, even if you are a slimeball. You are a known slimeball and its expected of you. Sounds weird but its the way it is. At least in most of the south.

"I know most of the folks. I grew up with many.

You will NOT find the same in the city. "

That's just not true. Not partially true. Not true at all. An anti-urban myth.

That's just not true. Not partially true. Not true at all. An anti-urban myth.

Confirmed, from another urban resident, it's a myth. Makes me wonder if those making such claims have ever lived in cities for extended periods of time. I feel like some rural folks have this idea that every part of every city is like Wall Street or K Street and have never experienced the more neighborly parts. Try Brooklyn or Petworth sometime, not everything in all parts of all cities is dictated by the gods of Mammon.

On a related note, urban areas make it easier to implement multi-use communities, rail and other forms of mass transit. Another common myth is that rural areas are more resilient to PO and its effects, when rural areas are in fact far more oil-dependent. I can get anything I need by walking or taking a bus, and oil prices will get too high for personal transport well before they get too high for freight carriage, so we can forget about that whole "but what about getting the food to the grocery stores?" thing too. By that time we will be well on our way to converting suburban lots and abandoned patches in cities into farms, and will be better off than those who have no alternative but mechanized transportation. The rise of urban farming and CSA's we have already seen confirms that cities have ways to cope in a no-growth or negative-growth world where globalization collapses. Granted, it won't be pretty anywhere, but I'd bet it will be a hell of a lot uglier in rural Montana than here in Washington, DC.

The rural communities in the best shape right now are those that are most connected to other communities, like those building wind farms connected to the grid, a real source of revenue to help offset the loss of manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs.

Now suburbs, that's another matter entirely. Those who bought Hummers and McMansions but soon have nothing to fill them and no gas to heat for the winter and become unable to make that 60-mile commute into the city work anymore might just be entirely screwed. In any case, the first thing to do in a no-growth economy is live within our means and eliminate such excessive waste, not slash government spending on essential services and job-creating sectors as far too many have proposed. In other words, more stimulus and less bailout.

"The rise of urban farming and CSA's we have already seen confirms that cities have ways to cope in a no-growth or negative-growth world where globalization collapses."

I'm all for Urban farming on abandoned lots and rooftops, etc. but to suggest that densly populated areas such as NYC and LA will ever be able to provide more than a tiny fraction of their own food needs is a stretch, IMO. These large urban areas will always need to import massive amounts of food from........somewhere. Whether in rural or urban areas, food security will be an issue during production and transport.

I foresee an increasing symbiosis between large urban areas and their nearby more rural neighbors. Cities like NYC and Atlanta will need the cooperation of the surrounding communities to ensure their food and water supplies. The population density of the North East leaves little hope of their being self-sufficient regionally. Too many people, not enough arable land or other food sources. These areas are utterly reliant upon being able to import food from many miles away. Farm communities near rail corridors will be in a unique position economically.

You can walk to get what you want now, but its still a store shelf.

If the JIT 18 wheelers stop running due to fuel costs or lack thereof then your shelves will be empty.

What then? Grow something on the rooftop?
I can think of no worse place to be.

But its your choice. Good luck with it.

I'll go with the myth.

City life isn't for everyone, but some prefer it (yours truly included). It can be done in a way that is pretty sustainable and is easier to plan for such eventualities than in rural areas, certainly far easier than in the suburbs.

I think when things really start to go south in oil production, DC will be one of the better places to be. We have rail links to other cities already in place (could use some more high speed), good nearby offshore wind, wave and biomass resources, and an extensive urban transit system. I agree with Ghung's above assessment that cities won't likely be able to produce a lot of their own caloric needs, but they won't need to, as rail links will be in place to do a lot of hauling, and growing fruits and vegetables (and raising chickens or other small livestock, say goats) is pretty easy in such an environment too. We have an extensive park network that could be utilized for such purposes, and already is to some extent,not to mention plenty of backyards and abandoned lots that can be converted with relative ease. We also have a lot of older industrial facilities that could be converted to cleantech manufacturing as needed.

Also, sometimes it's just more fun having more (and more different kinds of) people around, and as someone who was schooled in a rural area, I can say that becomes a bit of a drag at times, especially for the younger crowd. Plus you pretty much need oil to get anywhere.

My prediction, if I have to make one: some of our largest and most successful "transition towns" will be big cities, Washington and New York included.

Washington exists merely due to a wealth transfer from other areas and NYC exists due to the financial sector. If this does not continue these places will become much worse than they already are. The big cities will become ungovernable, disaster zones.

I've just about given up on this one, Floridian. One last attempt, with a question for Wasted and K. It is January, in NYC, or LA, or Seattle, or Miami. You live in the 15th floor of a 30 floor apartment building. The grid overloaded and shut down, or there was an earthquake, or an epidemic, or a catastrophic fire, or a tornado, or a hurricane, or power/water plant shut down due to oil. You are going on week 3 without power. How are you dealing with basic needs (water, food, heat, plumbing, sanitation, and security)? I'm guessing that this will be another unanswered, rhetorical question that I can add to my list of "blindspot queries."

I know you don't want it to be rhetorical. ;^)

So, in the sort of emergency you are discussing, assuming long-term disruption of services necessary to supplying basic needs, things might get very ugly, indeed.

One of the very real possibilities is that some of the desperate masses would make their way to the suburbs/exurbs/hinterland and take what they need/want by force and violence, from those who imagine that their gardens and wells and homes are their own.

If you live very far away, you may be safe for a time. But when the cities stop working, your medication will stop arriving. Et cetera.

While you're painting pictures of the (very) possibly awful future, consider a scenario in which the cities are abandoned and 7-9 billion humans attempt subsistence agriculture (after forcible redistribution of land, no doubt). Not pretty at all.

The kinds of catastrophes that would induce this level of emergency situation would be;

1. Asteroid impact
2. EMP
3. Severe pandemic with multiple waves
4. Extreme solar burst
5. Regional nuclear war (nuclear 'winter' of 1-3 years)

If there is a cessation of the infrastructure and food supplies as described above, then one would need to have at least one year of food and access to water with sufficient filter recharges, not to mention secure shelter. A localized EMP might not preclude aid from outside the EMP-affected area.

The strongest solar burst known to humans was in 1859.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_031027.html

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090902-1859-solar-storm.html

However, there is no reason to think that is the upper limit.

IMVHO, the best course of action when we see a super storm is a precautionary blackout. Save the equipment & infrastructure and just accept a one day or so blackout. I would certainly disconnect my solar cells.

More likely is a grid where bits and pieces come back quickly and others stay down for weeks and months.

Not so good.

But the Odds in my remaining years ? Pretty low.

Best Hopes for a Quiet Sun (which we have ATM),

Alan

I consider all of the above to be essentially unsurvivable scenarios. There will be a few survivors, perhaps, but their survival will mostly come down to a matter of luck - being in the right place at the right time, and not being at the wrong place at the wrong time. It will not be possible to know with any certainty in advance where those right and wrong places are. They may actually not consider themselves to be very lucky at all, but rather might envy those who got it over with quickly.

I lose no sleep at all over any of these. If they happen, I'll soon be dead. I'll be dead in a little over two decades or so anyway. So what?

I regard all of them to be survivable for most of the population as long as you are not too close to ground zero for focused disasters and live in a country with a civil defence organization equalling what Sweden had during the second half of the cold war. It has unfortunately been disbanded.

Magnus, could I ask you to provide a few sentences (or links) describing this civil defence organization?

It was built on the experiences from the second world war.

The physically largest part were blast and fallout shelters for most of the population, almost all of them still exist and are being minimally maintained. Every second or third house where I live has one.

Every municipiality had extra firefighting and rescue units that could be mobilized outside of the cities and towns to put out fires after bombings, rescue people out of shelters and feed people. These have been completely disbanded.

Every municipiality had complete bunkers for the command and control of this, the old ones only had workplaces and people slept somewere else, the new ones built in the 70:s had sleeping quarters, were EMP proof, etc. here is one of the largest: http://www.flickr.com/photos/henrik_larsson/sets/72157608864332743/
Some of these command posts are still in use, they have in manny municipialities been replaced by non nuclear bomb proof ones situated at fire stations or city halls to allow for faster mobilization when there are ordinary accidents. Some old ones has become computer centers and in the larger tows there were also blast proof garages for firetrucks, here is one that were converted for hosting computer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwlATf9xse4

There were also reserve organization for feedig all of the population during a war, we had for instance about three times the needed flour mill capacity, such overcapacity has now been outcompeted. There were very large stockpiles of cereals, sugar, peas, etc, probably enough for the basic need for close to a year. All of this has been sold out but at least half of the storage facilities still exist.

There were also civil defence stockpiles of manny types of goods in case international trade werer halted but this part of the planning failed during the 1960:s and definately during the 1970:s since it could not keep up with the developments in technology. This organization were also abused to support local industry by ordering unnecesserry stockpiles, this made its demise faster.

The stockpiling capacity for diesel, petrol and heating oil were about 3/4 of a year and that did not include the stocpiles of crude oil and the military fuel storages that still are classified. This were sold out when we had minimal oil prices... Most of the facilities have been deconatminated and scrapped. http://www.sgu.se/sgu/sv/samhalle/miljo/avveckling/bergrum_info_s.htm
Most of the military organization with hundreds of about 1000 m3 storage depots is now scrapped.

There were also very large stockpiles of fertilizers etc to keep producing food during several years of almost no foreign trade. Medical goods etc were also stockpiled and locally produced.

This extensive planning for trying to survive the thirld world war is probably also one of the reasons most of our railway network survided the all car, truck and aerplane era of the 1960:s.

Most of the defence budget went to the military. We had a large conscription army and local development of radars, cannons, submarines, light ships, IFV:s and jet fighters. We had a nuclear weapons program but it were wound down in the late 1960:s. Some of this is still competitive on the global arms market, myself i live in the town where the Gripen figher is being produced and developed further. It is odd how a country with a population smaller then New York can develop so much technology, we have much more industry then the arms industry, I guess we have a knack for lean organizations and the fruitfull programs ran for multiple decades and carefully built up a knowledge base and technical infrastructure.

The level of militarization were extreme but still not dominating our society. I did not understand the size of the organisation untill several year after most of it were gone. It were shrunk fast as an economical adaptation to the end of the cold war and it were probably a minor part of the policy that gave us large governmnet bugdet surpluses and a significant reduction of governmnet debt before the financial crisis.

I use both the civil defence and the military technology development as a reference on how the resource problems due to peak oil and climate change should be handled. They are already partly handled in this way in Sweden, there are directed programs that aim over more then a decade and 2020 issues are on todays agendas.

Wow, a short article all in itself! Thanks for your detailed historical background, comments, and links. Clearly, with the right focus, humans are able to effectively plan and implement mitigations for future risks. And knowing the Swiss, these plans were prepared and followed carefully.

How can we motivate the current population to undertake a similar planning and execution model for something that is of higher probability? We have grown soft and comfortable...

‎"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds;
our planet is the mental institution of the universe."
- Johann von Goethe

I try not to answer you, but New York City has secure, pure water, zero energy up to about the 6th floor.

Better than Anchorage in the winter.

Alan

Better than Anchorage in the winter.

You have me there, Alan. I have two back up sources of heat because a sustained power outage in Anchorage in winter would be a very bad thing indeed--most people up here have great faith that their thermostat will always work. I asked 20 college freshmen where the heat in their houses came from, and not a single one knew.

I looked up cock-eyed optimist, Alan, trying to remember where the phrase came from. This one's for you, 2 minutes, very appropos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vXqKGpP4jo&feature=related

"I asked 20 college freshmen where the heat in their houses came from, and not a single one knew."

I think you need to have a talk with your admissions people, Iaato. ;^)

Small towns and cities with farmland surrounding will be best for survival. Too rural and isolation and lack of options (little resilience) are a problem. Too large and there is no way to support the population's food needs, at the least, and security will be a nightmare.

Small town or cities- you can walk or bike to any amenities or services; there is a good balance of farmland/farms to small urban population- that is enough land to feed that many people; and there is a diversity of skills enough to build resilience. Plus, the size is small enough to provide pressure and accountability for individual behavior, leading to great cohesiveness and better security.

Best- a lot of small towns linked by raised light rail. Ha ha.

I thought you lived in Australia.

Different paradigms perhaps?

I speak of the US of A.

Where do you live then , if I may ask?

"Yeah, but actually getting people to buy into this, right now, is difficult."

Well, of course it is. It requires courage and imagination, creativity with a twist of deviousness.

I know well the litany of obstacles that make up your "yes-but" list. We all do.

Forgive me for asking so bluntly: If you understand PO and the dangers your community faces because of it, yet you see the relatively modest challenges you describe as politically insuperable, why run for office at all? What good will you do for your community if you surrender to pressures to attempt to continue BAU?

Why? Again, a mix of local and global. It would be nice to preserve our excellent schools, just for example. We need that electrical station, I have at least been able to contribute to that (principally, suggested improvements to the presentations by the committee picking a site, which Have Been Horrible, and ended in hours wasted arguing about irrelevant shit that shouldn't even have been brought up). When the subject of road renovation comes up, it is good to have people who will vote for more walkable and more bikeable, instead of more driveable.

And we're (we = people who think we need to cut back our carbon consumption) are pushing. It's not insuperable, it's just not smooth sailing. So, we don't get Netherlands-style wide-smooth-separated bike facilities, but we do get useful lanes. We might get a "path", either on a non-busy street, or an old rail bed alongside an active line.

The whale in the room is fuel oil heating in the Northeast.

"The whale in the room is fuel oil heating in the Northeast."

Yes. I've been amazed how long oil furnaces have lingered in that region. Especially a problem in oversized, standalone, single-family dwellings.

One of the answers may be, Free entertainment. Yes circuses could be our friend. I make this odd remark because I am fortunate (well, we made the choice) to live in a small town that is haltingly taking some local steps to be more prepared for the future. For one thing we are a Transitions Town, a movement that is gathering momentum in the US. We are also the first Fair Trade town in the US. These kind of initiatives are espoused by a tiny majority of the local population, but cultural influences are really important.
People in the town and the surrounding areas see how pleasant it is to live here, where there are frequent events in town, free and otherwise. If the town weren't pretty dense and can easily close off a few streets, we couldn't do it. Our active civic life whether directly linked to sustainabiity right now or not, prepares us well I think to adjust to the lower energy future.

"To me, one of the most surreal phenomena one encounters these days is that no country, no established economic research institute (that I'm aware of), and no international organization (such as the IMF) publicly discusses scenarios that don't plan for a return to stable economic (GDP) growth."

I quite often listen to Bloomberg and NPR when I am doing renos. I am astounded that a decline is never discussed except with an occasional reference to a double dip.

I believe that peak was 2005, but its' effect will be masked with plateau swings and financial concerns.

It seems that politicians will not admit to a decline anytime soon, let alone answer a questionaire. In my Province of BC, our right wing politicians have been building bridges and highways and call it the Gateway. The Olympics over-run is not discussed or admitted and the left wing opposition simply seems out of touch and grasping for position.. Our unemployment is at an official 7.8%, but in my rural home valley my wife and I are some of the lucky ones with stable jobs. (20% is probably accurate) Many adults are under-employed or simply not working at all...(for years).

20% unemployment across the Province will be unimaginable and will create all kinds of unrest and anger. It is interesting to see the boundary between sought after BAU and reality. It looks like a murky tideline and I feel like a stranger in the strange land when I go to town. It reminds me of those movies when some know the meteor is on an intercept course.

They just announced this week that our 60 year old pulp and paper mill will never reopen. We have two mines left and very little logging trying to resuscitate our regional dreams.

If Sarah Palin gets in I will blow up my tv and get drunk.

All the best....Paul

20% unemployment across the Province will be unimaginable and will create all kinds of unrest and anger.

Paul, what direction do you think that anger and unrest will go? Is there a way that rational debate, ala Nate's questions, can redirect it into a construcive venue? What could possibly be done in a constructive way, after PO and the debacle most seem to envision? How can we help that process?

College kids today are still being taught that growth is going to be continuous, business as usual will continue, and nothing will change. They actually believe that this is a minor slowdown, and that we are past the worst of it, and things are going to get better and better.

Of course, I realize that hope springs eternal. Still, shouldn't college professors be sufficiently aware of reality, and shouldn't they teach it? I have mixed feelings about it. I suppose that if the truth was known, supposing the truth to be the grim reality discussed on TOD, that anger and unrest would be hightened. And, yet, might it not things wind up worse when people finally wake up in the midst of the decline, more angry than they would have been had they been told what was going on, and even more at not having been presented with any alternative choices in, say, stimulus expenditures. Perhaps they would rather spend on inter and intra city mass transit than new roads? Or, a new electricity infrastructure and production facility, rather than propping up GM, Fod, Chrysler and the big investment banks?

So... I don't have an answer to Nate's questions above. Only more questions... and misgivings.

Sad species, homo sapiens. Wonder if they will be missed.

Craig

Craig,

I don't know which way it will go? Although, people will be forced to listen and consider alternatives. Someone posted here something like, Anger, then scapegoating, .....as a progression.

One thing I would like to echo, it may be good and also terrible. It may cause people to work hard and plan for the future as opposed to accepting BAU and entitlement. When our mill closed it was a many year process. The steps were, entitlement/seniority, disbelief, anger, resignation, and our community is now moving on. However, the only real building besides Walmart, and retiree Mcmansions,is Govt. funded stimulus crap. Spirit Square, a runway expansion, trails, stuff like that.

Tradesman work away as well as equipment operators, etc. others have simply disappeared. Many many houses are for sale but I haven't a clue where they are moving to.

One question....and comment. People move from the big cities to our smaller city. They take their equity and build huge multi-level homes on postage lots with quasi views. Don't they know about seniors and stairs? Cleaning? No kids but 3 plus bathrooms! It is crazy. It is still happening here.

There have been the rich and the rest....the good jobs and the poorer paying jobs. Now there will be the rich and those lucky ones with jobs. There will be many disenfranchised. I suppose drinking and drug use will go up as well as family violence and crime. As taxes decline the cuts to education will increase and stuff will start to look shabby. beyond that who knows?

I picked up my son at the airport two weeks ago, (returning from an oil patch shift). I noticed the usual amount of private jets parked on the tarmac....here for the salmon fishing. One guy, Dennis Washington, spent years building a luxury resort with a golf course, huge docks, etc. just to entertain his friends. People like Shwartzcoff? (of Gulf war fame) stay there as well as no-name billionaires. When I used to fly in to drop stuff off commoners were not allowed off the dock. That stuff is still going on.

Even after low no growth is firmly in the saddle, there will be years of arguing about the causes with the ideologues of CNBC ilk arguing that all we have to do is unleash private enterprise. No growth will be blamed on the so called socialists which will result in the Palinistas demanding that we drill anywhere and everywhere.

You'd think that hundreds of billions of stimulus money would do a better job of pushing the needle forward a bit, including having some significant impact on unemployment. The very thing that is keeping the country sinking into total oblivion is being blamed for the failure of free enterprise capitalists to get the economy moving again.

A no growth world will require a lot more redistribution of income which is the primary reason that no growth will be denied long after it is obvious that the days of growth are over.

There is only one party -- the growth party.

Yes, all true.

Please don't overlook, however, the progress that is at least conceivably possible at the local level, where, in much of America at least, many of the decisions that shape societal behavior, consumption and the built environment are made—and where we "little people" can still have real impact on politics.

Gotta start somewhere. Or, not start at all, of course.

Whadda we gots ta lose?

Whadda we gots ta lose?

Here's a very well researched and written up piece detailing the life and times of the Mexican natives, most interesting here as it treats how things were before Columbus. Mexico was a low-tech, very populous collection of settled agricultural societies without any strong central authority, such as any modern nation could devolve into...something of a snapshot of a "natural" human condition, and fairly hair-raising in many details; well worth reading as an answer to how things were, and could be again.

http://www.hist.umn.edu/~rmccaa/mxpoprev/cambridg3.htm

I scanned the referenced piece, briefly. It does look like competent work. Most of the hair-raising details are more or less familiar to me and, I suspect, to many who read widely.

I'm not sure, however, what you are suggesting. Certainly, modern societies could devolve to conditions like these, or even much worse. What does that mean to you, in terms of selecting a course to follow in light of our (presumably correct) awareness of PO?

It means the problems are worth taking very seriously, though that one possible outcome might be the result of doing nothing, or of doing the wrong things, or simply something that happens whatever we do...I guess really, in spite of having studied the issues for a long time, I can't avoid some amount of fear and loathing at how things might be. What we have to lose is everything we have gained in the past few centuries, and its hard to overestimate what that means.

I read a similar piece awhile back about pre-Roman Ireland. To some extent, and on average, it was a steady state economy. But there was a general picture of continual conflict and fluidity, the constant backdrop of petty wars, rolling famines and epidemics, virtually a whole new population every 20 years or so, a roiling tableau of constant activity, going nowhere...its a difficult transition to make from the flying cars and so forth we were promised, to a possible "normal human condition" of short life-spans, compensated for by high birth-rates, mediated by hard labor, hunger, war, disease and ignorance.

It means a good course could be rather important...

Got it. We're in much the same place.

I wouldn't be willing to bet that we will be able to choose and follow an appropriate course to a soft landing, but I have vestiges of that irrational hope that used to be adaptive for our species.

I've just accepted that I'm probably hardwired to die trying.

My simplest responses to Nate's questions:

1. Is there a reason why this kind of letter shouldn't be sent to real people who want our vote?

I can't think of any compelling reason not to ask the questions.

2a. Would a candidate addressing these issues/questions stand any chance of winning?

A candidate for US Senate or Congress? Probably not, at least not yet.

A candidate for local office in Berkeley or Arcata, California or Ithaca, New York? Not hard to imagine.

How about a candidate for office in Detroit? Well... BAU hasn't been kind to Detroit, lately, so... maybe.

In all these cases, a carefully-crafted, skillfully-managed, media-savvy campaign would be necessary, of course.

2b. If not, might such a candidate, even in a losing effort, influence the election issues and as a result positively impact transition efforts away from growth based economy?

Sure—assuming, again, a competent and adequately-funded campaign. We have to start somewhere and we have nothing to fear that is even close to the likely consequences of not trying (or of trying but failing, of course).

“Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged.”

~Thomas Alva Edison

Let me just slip in a comment about acknowledging no growth. For many, it's a lot like acknowledging no progress, and therefore no optimism about the future. I realize that growth does not equal progress, and one must also distinguish progress from development, as in taking a perfectly nice pasture and converting it into an additional parking lot or condo tower, etc. I think most politicians equate growth with progress and development with progress. These are the infinite Earth resource believers, aka most economists.

Peak Oil is a paradigm changer. It's an acknowledgement of limits, including limits to human ambitions about what can truly be done. It hurts the ego to recognize that the discovery and use of oil, not pure human ingenuity, got us this far, and we have to do without it in the future. There are some associated hurts that I won't go into here, in the multiple "what ifs" department. Anyone honestly addressing the point of limits acknowledgment will be a messenger "with a problem", to be ignored, shunned, or worse.

I think it's unfortunate that widespread recognition of a set of new challenges, like to human survival, even macrofaunal survival on a damaged and small world has not occurred. The challenges are certainly there, including how best to articulate them to a population educated or perhaps indoctrinated into thinking otherwise about limits. Normally, one starts with educating the kids and then letting them displace their less-enlightened elders over time. That's an effective generational solution, but I doubt we have allowed ourselves that much time.

"Anyone honestly addressing the point of limits acknowledgment will be a messenger 'with a problem', to be ignored, shunned, or worse."

Well. Not quite right. It depends upon context and—in terms that some of us of a certain age and subcultural history will recognize—on set, setting and expectation. Austerity, when presented as government austerity, can be very popular indeed. But, honesty, in the way I think you mean it, is not how political campaigns are conducted.

If I were designing the campaign for a candidate wanting to advance policies appropriate to a no-growth reality, the word "growth" would never pass her lips or appear in a position paper. We would talk about opportunity and choice and new possibilities and exciting new forms of development and ways to enrich the community. We'd make doing more with less the coolest thing since moon landings and social networking.

The details would vary, depending upon the circumstances of an individual campaign, and it would likely only be workable in selected places, this year. But make no mistake: those places do exist and trends always start somewhere.

Take a look at the history of the Christian Right in recent decades, paying special attention to the strategy of focusing early efforts on school boards, planning commissions, city councils, etc.

Oh kalliergo, I like that. It reminds me of a problem a German professor colleague once related to me during a visit there, concerning Swiss cheese. It seems the culture that produced the gas that made the holes in Swiss cheese had evolved or been replaced with ones that were making smaller holes/less gas. They were really afraid of the impact of the smaller holes on worldwide sales of the cheese. I thought about it for a moment, and realized that it was simply a marketing problem. I told him they should advertise the new Swiss cheese with smaller holes as a bargain for consumers, as they were getting more cheese per slice or volume--mit smaller holes! He liked my idea, but of course they sell the stuff by weight.

"I told him they should advertise the new Swiss cheese with smaller holes as a bargain for consumers, as they were getting more cheese per slice or volume--mit smaller holes!"

You're hired! In campaigns, weight and volume are freely interchangeable.

Tim Jackson has written on issues of a no growth economy.
He recently gave a talk at the Deakin Lectures in Australia.
His talk which can be viewed at this link

In Australia our current political discussion is currently about a small trickle of Asylum Seekers coming to this country by boat, rather than the important issues discussed on this site!

Sometimes I despair of the rationality of humanity.

Sometimes I despair of the rationality of humanity.

I wish I were in the same place as you. Always I despair at the horrible fortune of being born on a planet dominated by a Non-intelligent species.

"1. Is there a reason why this kind of letter shouldn't be sent to real people who want our vote?"

Nate, I'm not sure your questions really reflect the reality of world politics. If global warming has taught me anything, it is that there is no authority that can act (or is willing to act) beyond a national scale. Look at the UN, or any international body for that matter. The US, France, the UK, China and Russia can't agree on a single thing. (I'll argue that humans simply have competition built into our instincts, and meaningful cooperation is hard to impossible. But that is another topic.)

"But my real concern is about the absence of anyone making any plans for either possibility."

I think you would be very sorry if politicians took your worries seriously. I would imagine their response would be to throw vast sums of taxpayer money in the direction of oil exploration or non-economic make work. Again, that is how politics works. Special interests would take this as another "crisis" to exploit the rest of us.

I would prefer that we muddle along and let change take it's course. Any intentional acts to manage would hurt the average man much worse.

there is no authority that can act (or is willing to act) beyond a national scale.

If, as someone mentioned upthread, our predicament in the US reflects the failure of representative government, you might consider whether the opposite was possible. If you knew resources were declining globally, you could position yourself financially to retain the greatest flexibility and leverage toward future supplies, and lock in long-term contracts wherever possible. You'd probably want to stay out of the sort of military muscle-flexing that costs fortunes and makes even your allies nervous. You would probably also invest heavily in infrastructure while resources were available, and build heavily toward transitional and renewable energy. Arrange to limit your losses when your rich-but-stupid trading partners implode, and then wait patiently. Sounds like China to me.

Sounds like China to me too.

"Nate, I'm not sure your questions really reflect the reality of world politics."

World politics, national politics, state politics... all probably beyond our reach at the moment.

But, that may not be a deal-breaker.

"Growth" in this context is an absurd and even an obscene political and economic idea. We talk of Growth as if it is some natural right of mankind, that every generation must expect and be entitled to higher and higher standards of living, more and more consumer goods, more and more fat idle Westerners sitting around their TV sets while the third world continues to starve and die of water-borne diseases. Truth is, we in the West are living on the blip on the top of a bell curve, and we are tipping over to the downward slope, way back down to where millions in the slums of Lagos and Mumbai have spent their lifetimes.

Back in the 14th century, the people of Florence had neither oil nor electricity nor gas nor TV nor iPhones nor refrigerators. But they created a Renaissance in human art and ideas and philosophy which was second only to the brilliance of ancient Rome and Greece. Phidias and the two Plinys and Cicero and Seneca and Plutarch and Vasari and Leonardo and Raphael and Brunelleschi achieved things we can only dream about, and they did it in a time when people wrote with feathers dipped in ink by candlelight. They wrote tracts of philosophy which our professors of philosophy spend their lifetimes tryng to unravel, and they built buildings of such splendour and magnificence that we marvel at their ingenuity and wonder how they did it in a time when men chipped away at stones by hand, and lifted blocks of stone using pulleys and ropes using the labour of their bodies.

We have to think beyond our cellophane-wrapped burgers and our Toyotas and our DVD collections, and get back to an understanding of what it means to be human. We can learn a lot from Wordsworth - I would like to write an exegesis of this poem, but I will leave it up to you to think about it and meditate upon it because I have heard various comments here on TOD that the namby-pambys are increasing the noise-to-signal ration with poetry, something that was valued and admired before the Internet and iPod arrived on the scene. Actually, to deflect criticism, I'll just quote the first three lines:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours...

It's my opinion that the man who can build a comfortable home for his family out of a dozen felled oak trees is worth a hundred times more than the technician on an oil rig who can drill a relief well using a dozen sensors linked to a couple of computers.

I take it you want to be the royalty while the rest of us are the slaves? Ah, the romance of the rich at that time while most starved as beasts of burden.
Think your lucky enough to be one of the few that lives well? There are 7 billion of us now. Romance so much fun ha!

Outstanding comment. We do not need the capitalist's absurd version of growth. In fact, I agree there is much to be gained by turning it back. Peak oil and peak debt may be a blessing in disguise.

Peak oil and peak debt may be a blessing in disguise.

But not for everyone -thats a big part of the problem...

Growth is a big problem for many. Why do you assume post peak will be worse?

Let me take a stab at that: If our current patterns of inequitable distribution of resources are exacerbated by by less energy and fewer resources... it is very likely that more will suffer, or suffer more.

Yes, and follow that one move step... That is the only way we will stop growing population exponentially. From the suffering comes a better world. Every change has suffering, but this one halts what is unsustainable anyway.

There are all sorts of (possible) ways of halting, and reversing, unsustainable growth. The most "natural" way, overshoot and dieoff, may result in a better world for many survivors, but that is not likely to be true for any remaining humans.

My god, do you read what you write?

That is the only way we will stop growing population exponentially.

From the suffering comes a better world.

My reading of history supports neither of these statements, although they are great aerogel building blocks of a castle in the sky.

Does poverty limit population? Well, no.

Do those who suffer refrain from causing suffering? Israel.

"they built buildings of such splendour and magnificence that we marvel at their ingenuity and wonder how they did it in a time when men chipped away at stones by hand, and lifted blocks of stone using pulleys and ropes using the labour of their bodies."

How did they do it? Slave labor.

Heinberg's 50 million new farmers? Serfs at best, slaves at worst.

Most of the wondrous organic super farming systems involve lots of manual labor that must also be very cheap. (Hand picking squash bugs off the pumpkins? Oh wonder of wonders.) Again we are looking at slaves, or back to 6 to 8 kids per household, and we can't do that anymore unless most of them die off before age 16.

Yes, you should worry. Slavery/serfdom/peonage didn't end until the industrial revolution. This is not a coincidence.

Bravo! Bravo! Exactly right, I think if Carter's words had been heeded when spoken we would have had time to create that less energy standard of living that is equitable for most (all never is). When Reagan pulled the solar off the White House first day that really did signal the end for me. People just don't get what happens when millions that don't have dirt to plant seeds are hungry. Now I don't see how this doesn't turn violent?

Starving people make lousy soldiers. In the doomsday scenarios, most people will die in place and do so meekly.

But I'm not a doomer.

"How did they do it? Slave labor."

Not totally accurate. Many of the greatest accomplishments were the result of the guild system. Nate posted this great essay by Greer on my birthday last year:

http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/5986

The suggestion that the industrial revolution is responsible for the end of slavery cannot be left unchallenged. If slavery might be defined as an absence of freedom, I'd suggest there are more slaves on Earth now than ever before.

The suggestion that the industrial revolution is responsible for the end of slavery cannot be left unchallenged.

The ancient Persian empire did NOT practice or condone slavery. That particular piece of progress has little to do with technology, and a lot to do with prevailing philosophy. (Although having cheap energy slaves made it relatively easy for today's somewhat philosophically challenged elites to go along with the notion.)

Thanks for that, PT. You had me a little worried yesterday.

For some reason you've taken me back to a time I've mentioned briefly here. I call them my Hobo Years. I was coming off of a summer of travel and study in Europe, mostly in the Soviet block countries, 1974, still a virgin in many ways, and returning to school. By mid fall I knew I no longer fit in to the superficial social/educational culture that I had left in the Spring. My overbearing stepdad was trying to force my mind back to where it had been before, so I packed my pack and headed out, "go west young man"!

It was a time of insecurity but never fear, charity given and charity recieved, the purity of totally new relationships, danger accepted as essential to living a life, and day-at-a-time freedom. Hitchhiking and hopping freights became a game of mobility. Listening to each new benefactor became my education. I can still remember the faces and places like it was last week.

The feeling of crawling out of a highway culvert, alone on a cold dawn near Albuquerque to witness giant balloons rising up out of the desert will surely be one of the last things I recall. Struggling out of my little tent on the snow covered South Rim, feverish and sick on my 17th birthday, motivated to pee but overwhelmed by the sun rising over the Grandest of Canyons was the first time I had ever wept from humility and joy. I lost my religion at that moment. Everything came together and everything changed. This was my "mitzvah", my "walkabout", my serendipitous coming of age. 2000 miles from home I now understood the need for poetry.

As I write this the cicadas are at full volume after last night's much needed rain (those who've never heard the "night bugs" in the Southeast after a rain can't know how loud it can be). The coyote pack is down in the hollow raising hell and our dogs are responding in kind. The "lightning bugs" (fireflys) are putting the stars to shame, and my wife has to be at work at six and doesn't appreciate the poetry in all of this.

Ok, what does any of this self-indulgent bullshit have to do with the topic? Our society has lost its mojo, its mythology, its poetry. As Joseph Cambell (and a few contributors here) have tried to tell us, the old religions, the old myths don't serve our needs. There are no useful rites of passage to instill humility and place in our children, no sense of responsibility to the society, to the future, even to family and tribe. All of the letters to all of the candidates won't change this.

Humanity will,,, needs to fall hard before our species can get it's mojo back. Humankind needs to be humbled to the point where we need each other again.

I agree and I really appreciated your story.

The falling hard portends much pain, suffering, and lost dreams. We need the wake up and the earth needs us to change or die, but....

I will have a grandchild this coming spring. There is much to do to prepare a soft landing....and I hope it is enough.

Teach your (grand)children well......

Our society has lost its mojo, its mythology, its poetry.

Certainly true, and well said. I am just old enough to remember that there was one time when all things came together here and a new myth to live by was being forged, back in the mid 60's, but that was all derailed and put firmly to rest long ago. I can still feel what it was like then, however, and its a surprisingly powerful thing even in faded memory...

We're a long way from anything useful now, as far as I can see.

"I can still feel what it was like then, however, and its a surprisingly powerful thing even in faded memory..."

Yes. We told ourselves a story worth believing. That's what human brains are best at—perhaps what they are for. Time for a sequel, perhaps?

Ghung:
Nice post.

I suspect it's too late for the United States as a political/sociological/cultural entity.

Once it breaks up, and the people reorganize themselves around competing independent states, the renewal process will begin, as these smaller states are able to meet the physical and psychological needs of the people, and the type of things you talk about...mythology, stories, cultural verve, will return.

Just like the fall of Rome and the beginning of the "Dark Ages" in Europe.

Of course religion is a different matter, who knows what direction it's going to take. Although I think the secular humanists are wrong if they think we'll give up God.

Part of me doesn't want to think about any of this, particularly because the world is such a full place, and so wedded to fossil fuels. Before we can begin any process of renewal, the last barrel of oil or ton of coal or cubic meter of natural gas must be burnt, and there must be a die off. Anything less than that is dishonesty.

I agree. All the way down, the elites (whoever they are, they will certainly change or "circulate" as Pareto says) will still be promising growth. It may come with different plans of action or different philosophies. But elites, whoever they are, must try to promise and deliver success to their people, whoever thse people are.

A small group, a large nation, it doesn`t matter----elites must offer promises of success. "You will be able to reproduce and feed your kids" is the underlying translation of the growth message. It is a powerful and desirable elixir for a small weak and nearly hairless human being. This message can`t be supplanted by another one for the basic reason of "The Prisoner`s Dilemma" (if I don`t do it, someone else will). We are suckers for hope! We want to see our own kids thrive and grow and reproduce. That is also the Prisoner`s Dilemma....(if I don`t have a kid, someone else will take that chance, use those available resources....) It is basically evolution being worked out. You can`t avoid it or change it.

But when currencies fail, or electricity supplies, or supermarkets, water systems, etc. can`t be maintained and the system cracks up, then new elites (on a smaller scale) will take the place of the old huger one. The new ones will still promise growth (or at least stability for a while before they assume resuming growth...) They must. They won`t be in charge otherwise. I know many people who have four kids (they are mostly in their 40s and 50s---the parents, I mean). Many people in their 30s and 20s would also love to have 4 kids, but just can`t afford it. They aren`t happy about this at all. They are too busy working away to afford expenses for the 2 or 3 kids they have. That is why they have limited themselves to 2 or 3 kids, not because they care about the planet. I think most people are like this. They reach a natural limit of what they can earn, and for some it isn`t enough to provide for a kid. So they just don`t have one, and some mind and some don`t. But not for "green" reasons; for personal reasons, like they like kids or they are bored by kids.

Many people would like to have more kids than they can afford (not me, I wouldn`t have more than 2, replacement number). Perhaps over generations, the type of person who wanted to have more kids became a numerous, dominant genetic type simply because they had so many and passed this on to their numerous children. Don`t we all know stories of our great grandparents` era when siblings numbered 7, 8, 9?

So I think you will never be able to get a no-growth message across politically. Look at that young man, age 24, unemployed, living in his parent`s house (a NYT feature last week). He is thinking of moving abroad----where, guess what?----there is still "growth" so he can get the ritzy corporate job he craves, then marry someone of his educated class, then father as many children as he can afford. What could be more natural? The bad economy has slowed him down but it has NOT changed his basic plan. He is NOT planning to live on a commune and become a monk, he is NOT planning to grow his own food, he is NOT planning to drop out of the economy and sell drugs. There is no plan "B". There is no "no growth" message out there. When he has tried all alternatives (he hasn`t yet, there is India, China, Brazil, Germany, etc.) and failed then when he is truly starving he might look for a farm....but that is quite far in the future. By then the political structure will be smaller and more local and he himself may be one of the new elite, calling for new strategies for success in life....

On a positive note, the growth message may include far more consideration of environmental processes we now just take for granted, such as the hydrological cycle. "We need the hydrological cycle for growth and stability because we can`t live without water! So let`s stop driving! "OK! I understand!" "We need to stop generating garbage because we can`t process it, it`s too expensive and there isn`t enough oil for the garbage trucks!" "OK! I understand! Well, I`m going to be more busy getting my own food locally so I can`t have another kid (too time consuming since I`m growing my own food), but the same is true for everyone else I know so OK!" We don`t want to be put at a disadvantage relative to others but if everyone has the same restriction, and it`s clear why, then people accept it. Then, finally, the Prisoner`s Dilemma has been surrmounted. That`s why PO is such a cataclysmic event. The destructive oil Prisoner`s Dilemma (I build the WalMart of someone else will) slowly dissolves and becomes the constructive sun Prisoner`s Dilemma (I have a green field and have purer cheaper water filtration).

So the question becomes one of how many humans can humanity support spiritually? We have discussed how many humans the planet can support in the physical sense, post peak resources, the question of physical sustainability. I think the answer is dependent upon the answer to this question: How many humans can collectively share compatible and meaningful myths and stories? At what point does the "stew pot" become the "melting pot", rendering spiritual and cultural uniqueness into a superficial, tasteless soup that sustains no-one for long? What level of cultural and physical isolation is required for the stories to be rewritten. How much time must pass, and how much must a collective group suffer before the stories have meaning? Once these stories have been recorded, written, locked in time, how long will they be useful?

These questions are as important as "how long will the oil last" and the questions that Nate suggested. We need to redefine growth. The tree must be pruned and given sustenance before it can bear fruit again.

I am wondering what are examples of 'meaningful myths and stories'?

For example, I found the Christian Bible to be so full of contradictions and OBE(Overcome-by-Events)/meaningless words/notions that is seems to be able to support many many divergent philosophies and political views...almost as if it was written over centuries by a large number of men...

And the many stories we were told in our history books, our American history books and World history books written by Americans...some of these stories were exaggerated, vastly-over-simplified, sugar-coated, or wrong due to errors of commission or even more likely, errors of omission.

When textbooks attempted to bring a more balance, nuanced, complete view of events, we have received backlashes from people with fossilized mindsets who now call the salve trade the 'Atlantic Triangle Trade'.

I prefer presentations of facts and sound hypothesis over myths and children's stories.

"I prefer presentations of facts and sound hypothesis over myths and children's stories."

As do I, though I have come to the frustrating conclusion that collectively, societies need their stories, their myths, their "religions" to provide context and meaning to their lives. The need for codifying behavior clearly predates modern history.

Were early cave drawings merely pictures, art, a record? Methinks it goes much deeper than that; deification of the things that sustained the society, recognition of their essential worth,,, reverence. Perhaps this was an act of humility, admissions of equality, even subordination and utter reliance upon the beasts that these people killed and consumed. Context and balance, just as they witnessed in nature.

This is what we've lost. When our myths and stories began to tell us that we had dominion over all things worldly we overstepped evolution, became extra-evolutionary. Limits ceased to matter as true limitations. As long as we could manufacture (the) God's consent anything could be justified.

I recommend highly Joseph Campbell's "The Power of Myth", especially for those of us who are "rooted in reality". In book form and as a series of interviews with Bill Moyers (I recommend both). The interviews are particularly poigniant, as Campbell was dieing of cancer, which becomes more apparent as the interviews continue over a period of months. Though he struggles for breath at times, he provides context and meaning to the stories that make the printed version even more remarkable. It wasn't until years after I first read and watched the series that I realized how analogous this was to his disscussion of how myths (and their role in our societies) changed when they evolved from the spoken and sung (storytelling), into written form.

Witness the Old and New Testament. The Old Testament originated from the spoken word, passed down for generations by the storytellers, undoubtably adapted over time to provide better context to the tribes as they also adapted. Hence its more poetic form. The New Testament was born largely in written form, for the most part locked in time.

Campbell discusses compellingly how writing down our stories changed forever their role in our societies.

"For example, I found the Christian Bible to be so full of contradictions and OBE(Overcome-by-Events)/meaningless words/notions that is seems to be able to support many many divergent philosophies and political views...almost as if it was written over centuries by a large number of men..."

The wisdom of the ages, open to interpretation, this is the genius of the "Holy Christian Bible".

I appreciate your well-considered points.

I too have been awestruck, thrilled, and felt connected with nature at the rim of the Grand Canyon, in Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Great Smokey Mountains, and man other such places.

I will add your book recommendation to my list.

I long ago read the Bible several times, and then moved on. I consider it to be one of many significant works of sociological fiction, but do not consider it a road map for my life, not think the U.S. should base its governance on any kind of theocratic order. It has some good stories and observations on the human condition, and some very good rules to live by...although to be fair, these rules, observations, and even the kernels of many of the stories come from earlier times.

I am wondering what are examples of 'meaningful myths and stories'

The first popular myth about the America's was written by Amerigo Vespucci on his return and distributed throughout Europe: America was an "open land of wealth and opportunity". It really wasn't, until a hundred years of European diseases had removed much of the population, but it is remarkable how that one myth, which quickly caught hold in Europe, has persisted to this day. You can still here the echoes of it from the "government won't let us drill, or log, or mine, or build new dams", or whatever, crowd. They believe in a god-given bounty for all as much as the first settlers did (bearing upon the ability now for political leaders to contradict long tradition). There was a book on it that I just can't recall the name of...

The "freedom" thing is certainly a powerful myth as well. We have about the same freedoms as most people, perhaps a little more or less, but certainly nothing exceptional. For the most part we trade our freedoms for security and comfy chairs quicker than most.

There are more...growing up in the US it is something like "the air that we breath", so you get all this stuff without ever thinking about it. Patriotism is another - indoctrinated here much more than most countries. I read once that we are more nationalistic than most places, and it is somewhat deliberate. Following WWI there was some concern over how many draftees failed to kill for their country on command, and various means to enforce patriotism and national identity were built into the educational system...

Funny, I find the MSM full of:
"full of contradictions and OBE(Overcome-by-Events)/meaningless words/notions that is seems to be able to support many many divergent philosophies and political views...almost as if it was written over centuries by a large number of men..."

And I find the bible to be or rather meaningful and valuable 'myths and stories' , ones that to this day resonate deep within.

Do we not exist on both the objective and the subjective planes?
Are we not made of both flesh and spirit?
Is there not the material world and the spiritual world?
Or as put..the flesh and the spirit.

The flesh keeps me alive.
The spirit gives me a reason to be alive.

It's my opinion that the man who can build a comfortable home for his family out of a dozen felled oak trees is worth a hundred times more than the technician on an oil rig who can drill a relief well using a dozen sensors linked to a couple of computers.

I built a comfortable log cabin using not much more than an axe at 18, and have directionally drilled in more than a few wells, although no relief wells. Value is a relative concept, but I know which one put more coin in the bank account.

Fortunately, the characterization of "technician using a dozen sensors linked to a couple of computers" tends to downplay the part of actually using the bottom hole assembly which gives the old directional drillers a hand up on the newbies. And doesn't have much of anything to do with computers. We can drill these things with whipstocks and single shots, they just aren't as efficient as the new ways.

1. Is there a reason why this kind of letter shouldn't be sent to real people who want our vote?

No, not really. I would prefer it to be asked in a public forum, debate, interview or such where it would be more difficult to ignore. But even something in an op-ed type setting, or an independent letter drive, might generate sufficient publicity to require some kind of response.

2a. Would a candidate addressing these issues/questions stand any chance of winning?

Oddly enough, I think they would. Granted, not if they answered with a full shot of honest truth. That would never do. The American body politic would rise up in horror and brush them away like we brush away a fly, but with less thought. No, they would need to answer in the form of:

"Look, if we follow my policies, I fully believe that growth can and will be restored. That is my plan and that is what I fully intend to see done. That said, only a fool ignores risk. Look at what ignoring risk has done to us already. A wise man pursues good outcomes with a vengeance, but makes sure he plans for both the good and the bad. However, in the event that we fail to implement my solutions or that an unforeseen black swan brings us down, we cannot afford to be totally unprepared. That is why I would propose that we prepare for this contingency, however remote, by doing...." to be followed by the suggestion of the very least painful of all the possible implications, etc, and the promise that, if elected, he/she would never let that happen anyway.

Managed by the right person, in the right way, I think it could be pulled off.

However, speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth would be political suicide. People can handle the idea of planning for hard times. They cannot, as of yet, handle the idea of actually having hard times. Or, perhaps more accurately, they cannot handle the possibility that good times are not coming back forever. Any suggestion that the good times are likely to end or that hard times are likely to arrive any time soon (and here I am talking about during the listener's lifetime) is as unwelcome as the tax man.

2b. If not, might such a candidate, even in a losing effort, influence the election issues and as a result positively impact transition efforts away from growth based economy?

Here, I'm not so sure. I'm trying to imagine the kind of candidate who could fight the good fight, lose, and actually influence the debate. Is that somebody will killer charisma? Tons of money? Big-time name recognition? Probably all three. To paraphrase Patton, Americans love a winner and can't stand a loser. For a loser to change the debate, they have to have some kind of credibility and cachet that simply losing the election cannot take from them. They would have to lose, taking the high road, and have people both notice and respect them for it. Otherwise, they will simply be dismissed.

Practically, what would they face? If they open up even the idea of a future without growth, without framing it as above (and probably even so framed), their opponent would likely open up a huge can of whoop-ass negative advertising against them. Anybody without tons of cred, respect, money and charisma would have no choice but go negative in return, and would find themselves defending the idea a no-growth future. That probably doesn't work regardless of what you have going for you. So, you have to be able to run a high-ground campaign, take the abuse, keep hammering on the substance, an hope that the body politic is sick enough of liars, fools and thieves that enough of them will follow an "honest man".

I think that finding such a person would be very hard. I can't think of anybody who remotely has the combination of attributes to pull it off, or even the guts to try it. So, in the end, given the politicians we actually have running for things, I don't think anybody would be able to touch this hot rail and survive long enough to move the debate.

But, boy, would I like to be wrong.

Brian

After a decade of essentially no growth in the developed countries it should be obvious that growth has ended in these economies. All efforts to prolong growth will only add to the problem. Preserving steady state should be the new focus, but eventually that will transform to offsetting depletion.

Five decades into the slowdown and one decade of no growth. When will those in power and the financial media admit its over? Probably not until they’ve created enough distortions to take down the current system.

I am wondering what kind of society will replace the current one? Perhaps walled cities like medieval times. Maybe we will all carry biometric ID’s to be able to travel out of our city-state.

I ask that question all the time. We have a monthly political discussion and I asked what will replace our current system? The shock that it could not be one party or another was to much to bare for most ha!
Most likely we will suffer resource wars removing at minimum half to two thirds of us allowing us to rebuild yet again the unsustainable ha!

Funny that you should ask. I DID at our town meeting ask what to do about the impossibility of unlimited growth on a finite planet, and the mayor did answer, surprise, surprise.

He said:
"Capitalism assumes unlimited growth, which is impossible.
We have grown beyond our sustainable income by a long way, and are bound to have serious problems with that.
But that's where we are at, and the only thing we can do is to be as careful and frugal as we can be, and try to plan ahead."

So, at least in this tiny sliver of the body politic, there is a little light, even if not much hope.

Actually, I think you people are too pessimistic. I give a parallel experience. I occasionally attend the local quaker meeting, since my wife is one, and I openly commented that I had never felt any need for the God idea. Afterwards, an amazingly large number of that ostensibly somewhat god-liking clan came to me in private and stated their same opinion- just not in public.

That is, maybe a whole lot of people know already that capitalism is dead, growth isn't even good, not to mention impossible, and there are a lot of things better and more worth working for than STUFF.

eg, David Korten.

Besides, you TOD types seem to know all that, and aren't you leading the world to the bright new future???

I am glad to hear about your mayor who not only 'gets it' but was able to speak his mind.

As far as your experience with the Quaker meeting private revelations, many friends of mine have said in private that their church involvement is a vehicle to socialize...get out of the house, mingle, and for some, to make and strengthen business-political connections...not so much about buying into the theology. One of my buds told me that his Catholic church was a 'meat market'. The sexual tension of exchanging furtive glances and entertaining fantasies in the pews was great for dating. He soon married a nice young pediatrician lady.

Too bad these social houses come with baggage such as prohibitions against any kind of birth control, etc. based on extremely well-crafted and effective 'carrot and stick' propaganda.

Thanks, Prof. for the good reply. And BTW, I really like your uncertainty principle, which in my opinion, should be a guide to life, taught in kindergarten.

Right about churches, or whatever. When I was a kid, I attended the catholic church, and spent ALL of my time as you say- fantasizing on the beautiful young things therein contained. I soon quit confessing to the sin of lust, since it seemed obvious that god had designed me that way, so, who was I, a mere mortal and a kid to boot, to object?

"And where were you when I lay the foundations of the heavens and the earth?" God, to Job.

As for the "well crafted" propaganda. Indeed, good for the masses, but I liked Bernard Cohen's (?) essay on the beauty and power of the Jewish tradition, and how much he appreciated it, without any belief whatsoever in the god part of it, except as a metaphor for "that to which we aspire".

Bernard Cohen's (?) essay on the beauty and power of the Jewish tradition,

A title, a link ?

Google was not helpful.

Alan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._Bernard_Cohen
A great guy. Highly recommended.

"But my real concern is about the absence of anyone making any plans for either possibility."

I would also like the re-frame the argument that peak oil and debt are something to fear and fight against. I would like to live in a world where nature can survive along side of mankind. I would like to live in a world where 7 billion humans aren't added in the next 40 years. PO and PD may be the only thing that can save the planet from ourselves, and our instincts to fight over resources and personal wealth/prosperity.

Yes, there will be pain. No change (including growth) comes without pain. But I see resource and debt limits as the only thing that stops humans from completely consuming and fouling a closed system.

Slightly off topic, but I noticed that China had much higher grain reserves than other nations. Some commentators think these reserves are much higher than necessary, although with China's poorly developed infrastructure they may be judging by the wrong standard.

Then I remembered reading about Chi Haotian's war speech:
http://www.rense.com/general85/China%27sPlanToConquer.htm

This speech is unconfirmed and believed to be a hoax; however, there are some who think otherwise:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/16627298/China-Defense-minister-speech-on-USA-...

In the long term, we'll probably have to find a new economic model, particularly if cheap energy continues. The following article from an engineering magazine takes a very long view:

Robots, jobs and war.

I am not sure I know what your talking about "In the long term, we'll probably have to find a new economic model, particularly if cheap energy continues." The problem as I see it cheap energy is gone and that is one of the reasons we are having zero growth now. Borrowed money for stimulus isn't productive growth if it's given to Wall Street to cover bad debt. Stimulus to create a sustainable economy.

Compared to the 18th century, the 20th and 21st century has enjoyed fabulously cheap energy. Try powering your plasma TV using a horse, or using the animal (or wind or PV for that matter) to make aluminum from bauxite.

If the developed world backs away from this cheap energy, we'll suffer massive social collapse. Before that happens, the political leadership would cover the countryside with nuclear power plants.

We'll have robots mining coal; the Pentagon is investing heavily in battlefield robotics. Right now, China offers cheap labor, but that can't go on forever. I suspect that they'll be first to deploy robotics on a massive scale in manufacturing. The problem with using human labor is that the waste is terrible--people make mistakes. If Foxconn (who employs 800,000) didn't have to hire another warm body, I think they'd be ecstatic at what that would do for their $62B/year revenues (that's more than Apple or Microsoft).

Back in the late 1960s, I worked in a steel mill and was invited to visit the new plant that had just been put into test production. It made use of some of the earliest computer process control. What struck me was the lack of people to be seen. In the 1970s, I was in the computer manufacturing business. Circuit boards were laid out by mostly Asian guys, using mylar sheet, tape and india ink. Technical drawings were made by draftsmen at their tables. Those jobs pretty much no longer exist--and they were skilled technical jobs.

When robotics (and machine intelligence) makes it into the mainstream, the number of warm bodies needed to produce one unit of product will keep on dropping. What will we do with those bodies to keep them buying more stuff and supporting the system?

On the same subject, see Andy Grove's article on job-centric economics in Businessweek.

Tidal electricity could power bauxite transformation into aluminium... I lived for years near the Aloca plant at Aransas Pass. IMO they could construct tidal channels that would create electricity sufficient to power the plant. Even with the very minor tides in South Texas.

Craig

A year ago as the domestic automakers were shutting down plants here I read about the amount of money being poured into India, particularly by Ford, building new plants they expect will outpace (and perhaps replace) the plants here soon. I read of an old autoworker who had gone in to help train and set up one plant, and he said it almost brought tears to his eyes to think about it - not just that it was outsourced, but that what was build in India was what he recalled from the 50's and 60's as a real manufacturing plant: people bustling everywhere making things, few robots, hundreds of people training on the line, a whole giant factory full of people working, like doesn't even exist in this country anymore.

Perhaps it will go the other way in India too, but the balancing point in any case is whether labor or technology (embedded energy) is more cost effective. The trend is toward labor, whether that's a good thing or not.

I wish you knew more, without cheap energy you don't feed 7 billion people! You don't feed 3 billion!
Take a lesson from history.

The elites have a plan for that. It's called World War 3.

Although I share your disdain for elites, it's a mistake to assume they are in control of anything.

It was clear in 2008 that the elites had genuine fear in their eyes, and weren't in control of the situation. You could tell when watching Bernanke and the banksters on television.

It's clear now that the elites have no control over the Gulf spill.

We don't want to admit this, because we are pattern seeking creatures, and belief in conspiracies or planned events satisfies our deep need to believe that the universe has structure.

Elites are, to be blunt, apes who shit and die, just like the rest of us.

They may not have all the control, thankfully..........but there is a power structure in the world that does have a bigger picture in mind. Central bankers, the Pope, the aristocratic monarchy families....

These are the groups who select the candidates, air the propaganda and set the general direction for society.

They may have no control over the oil spill but they have control over the price, the pace of exploration, and the choice of whether we (as the feudal serfs) will ever have access to Tesla technology and other decentralized tech.

The elites learned their lesson in the 1960s....dumb down the education system. They learned from Vietnam....ban the media from covering wars. They've learned from the internet....make sure you have good tight controls in place.

They keep adapting from their mistakes. Unlike the general population, who it seems have forgotten how to apply what little leverage they have, ESPECIALLY in the US.

What will people do when growth is over? As long as the propaganda around it is effective, most people (at the very least the half with <100 IQ), will do and think whatever they are told to do and think.

Maybe central bankers, but definitely not the Pope or aristocratic families...the latter two haven't had any real power for some time.

The key is that central bankers control fiat currencies, and that is a level of control which is just going to have to go at some point. My vote is on the decline of the dollar and the return of gold as the sole reserve currency. It's just a guess though. In an ideal world humans would be capable of sound fiat money, but we don't live in an ideal world.

Seven billion humans. How much gold?

What was the crop yield of the United States when a John Deere was the thing a mule pulled. I think you'll find it was quite spectacular.

Robots can and will be developed to do more and more tasks. Some of the most interesting applications are robots that now make electronics like car radios. They typically cost between a quarter million and a million dollars and work at high production rates.

However, robots have to compete with $2 a day labor in developing countries. Compare those wages to what it cost for robotics engineers and maintenance people in developed countries.

Machines already eliminated almost all of the labor from manufacturing and farming. The remaining few percent to be gained (net) from replacing people with robots is very slight compared to what has already been done.

No growth is a possibliity, when You do everything possible to prevent growth rather than promote growth.

We just can't seem to admit that it was politicians we elected and re-elected that caused all of our crisis's, and every problem this Country has. They drove our economy into the dumps, and yet we look to them to fix all these problems. Their track record is they have not fixed one problem yet, and in trying they always make things worse.

The candidate politician one might send a letter like the above to, hasn't a clue as to what to do, and will lie to Your face as to what they think should be done, and they would do.

The Leadership we need in this Country and most of the world isn't there, and the outlook for any to come along is quite grim. Except for a few Countries like China most of the world does like we do and elects Leaders. It's alot like the lottery with millions to one chances of electing a great leader, because the candidates seldom come from a pool where great leaders are bred. So the best talker, best looking, or best funded usually wins, and none of these things makes a great leader.

This Country needs to break the trend of electing people the two parties select to run and support, and find a way to elect good honest people. A task not so easily done, when the big money and party politics hogs the whole show.

Putting all that aside what we need is to get back to being a Country that does things, we used to be the worlds manufacturers, inventive leaders, and built the best and the biggest in everything. Today we do little to nothing and depend on the world to do it for us, and supply everything for us. Countries all over the world build things better, build things bigger, and have taken over everything we used to be good at. We fell for the bull of not wanting to be protectionists, and that using cheap labor overseas was good for everybody, and that making our money off of other peoples money without providing goods and services was the way to go.

We need a leader that will call on the Government to start seed programs, and inlist everyone from the biggest Corporations down to the average people to work together to make big things happen. We need to get away from foreign oil, and not ten or twenty years down the road, but in the next couple years. It could be done if we were really working on it. We need to switch to renewables for all our energy needs, and get away from burning coal, and again not years down the road but as soon as possible. Our infrastructure is a disgrace, and not only are we not fixing what we have, but are doing little to nothing to build for the future.

We don't have, and aren't building the biggest dams in the world, we no longer have the highest sky scrapers, we can't build big ships other than for the Government, all our transportation is ancient, and the things we are proud of like computers and phones are made overseas. Even our childrens toys, and most of our consummer goods are made elsewhere.

We keep shootiong ourselves in the foot and wondering why it hurt, and then to confirm why it hurt we shoot ourselves in the other foot. We keep watching our Congress, and the people in it, do everything they can to distroy the Country, and yet we keep supporting that by electing people from the same two parties to do it to us somemore. The whole Country looks up to people like the ones on Wall Street, People with titles like Economists, Professors, and Masters Degree'ers like people from think tanks, and never asks with all these smart people why do we have all the problems we have, and can't seem to find ways to fix any of them?

America if things continue will distroy itself before an enemy or Terrorists ever could, simply beause we put our faith and trust in people who don't deserve it, and prove it daily by talking and never solving anything.

This kind of argument I usually avoid, being usually made by those with mouths but not ears...but the simplest thing to say is:

Resources (energy, raw materials, etc) are required to maintain the "size" of an economic system

Growth requires more resources

Resources are finite, therefore a point is reached where there is enough to maintain what you have, but not enough to grow.

At that point, the harder you try to grow, the more damage you do to your ability to maintain what you have. To say "No growth is a possibliity, when You do everything possible to prevent growth rather than promote growth." is just to blame government, or dishonest people, or some ideology, or Wall Street, or whoever at all, without really grasping that resources are finite and growth may not be possible (and regardless of what some jackasses in suits running for election might have promised you).

it was politicians we elected and re-elected that caused all of our crisis's, and every problem this Country has. They drove our economy into the dumps, and yet we look to them to fix all these problems. Their track record is they have not fixed one problem yet, and in trying they always make things worse.

Why does everyone seem to think that the politicians are to blame, or that they can or should fix the problem? The real problem is what we do, enmasse, every day. Purchasing junk, throwing junk away. Production of junk = growth. Disposal of junk = growth. Replacing junk with more junk = growth.

We turn our a/c down to 72 deg. F. We drive SUVs, Huge trucks and Hummers; travel by airplane; clothe ourselves in materials made from oil; use pvc pipes in our houses; pave our highways with oil products; eat food grown using fertilizers made from natural gas; transport our food, goods and ourselves by burning fossil fuels created from plants the grew a hundred million or more years ago.

We run our computers, made from oil, on electricity generated from coal and gas; we use far more than we create, and we borrow money, and energy to pay for it.

How, exactly, did the government do this to us? It seems to me we did it to ourselves! What part of taking responsibility for your own acts do you not understand?

We are not entitled to growth. We are not entitled to wealth. We are not even entitled to survival. It takes work. And, the best our politicians can do is to urge us, educate us, and rally us to do what is difficult. Ask them to pass a law making it illegal to be greedy? No way! No more kids? Nope. They are not going to do that. But, with our insistance, they might just begin to acknowledge that we need to change; they can make the debt burden less onerous by passing meaningful laws on usury. They might even begin to tax us sufficiently high as to pay for what we have demanded. Yes, demanded.

So, take responsibility for your part in this evolving debacle. We put our faith in ourselves, and as you said, we didn't deserve it. And we are the ones who are talking and talking and never solving anything. Look in the mirror, baby. I have seen the enemy, and it is me.

Craig

I respectfully disagree. Assuming you meant growth to refer to an increase a nation's GDP over time (as inferred from your graphs), our nations GDP will continue to rise because there will be more people to create economic activity.

GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports).

Notwithstanding great wars, disease, or unexpected death, it is practically certain that there will be more people inhabiting the earth in the future. When there is more people, there will have to be more private consumption (at a minimum people will need to eat), more gross investment (companies that make money from selling food will desire to make investments to increase there profits), and more government spending (just keep printing). Just look at China and India for example.

China's GDP: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=count...

India's GDP: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=count...

Now I understand your argument, which I summarize as follows: One of three present set of circumstances, either Global Warming, Limited Resources or Financial Systems will cause 'Growth' to stop. Ill take each of them separately.

Global Warming
Your argument with respect to Global Warming is flawed. GDP will continue to rise so long as there are more people. If you are arguing that Global Warming (or more generally our environmental impacts) will cause a reduction or possible extinction of the human species, I agree. We need to figure that one out, but so long as there are more people, economies will continue to grow.

Limited Resources
I think this might be our greatest concern, but nevertheless it will not affect GDP so long as there are more people to consume products. You might argue that there will be no more products left to consume because there will be no more resources to make these products. However, this argument is flawed, because mater does not disappear, it merely converts into energy or other forms of matter that can be reused. Call me optimistic, but i think we'll figure this one out.

Financial System
I don't get your argument with respect to a Financial crisis. Unless the Financial System could cause people to die, there will be more people to consume, and thus more people to cause the GDP to go up.

In sum, my argument is that future candidates do not nor need not consider the possibility of complete economic decline or even prolonged periods of slowed growth. What they should be concerned about is population control (but good luck). Economic growth will continue so long as there are more people on the earth. Additionally, i am not arguing that the standard of living will increase. Nor am I arguing that the negative externalities will cease (in fact they will likely go up). Unless we as a society were willing to control the population, endless growth of populations and GDP are in sight.

Hmmm. I suspect that, for the sake of the discussion, Nate might be willing to use "per capita GDP" as the growth measure.

How would that change your response?

Here, Nate is concerned about the big picture; the sum total of everyone's consumption, not individual growth. Therefore, per capita GDP would not reflect this type of growth.

But, as I mentioned above, the standard of living will likely decrease as the wealth distribution increases. So, yes, it is not likely that we would see growth if we were using the per capita GDP.

"Economic growth will continue so long as there are more people on the earth."

Population growth doesn't necessarily translate to economic growth. There are certainly recent examples (Sudan, Somalia, USA).

I believe the theory is that demand creates supply, which I think I have heard somewhere or other before...

Or does supply create demand (ala Jevons)? It's a chicken/egg argument. Perhaps greed (not need) is the true mother of growth. It goes to what we want vs what we need. As long as we define our selfworth and success by the amount of stuff we accumulate and the number of children we produce, then growth will be our goal, our imperative. So until we redefine ourselves, growth will continue until it can't.

As Stoneleigh says; demand isn't what you need, demand is what you can afford.

Like it or not, we are there.

So humans don't need resources?
could we have 10 billion, 20 billion, 100 billion??

start here
and
here

theres really quite alot...

If you postulate no great population decline, you can still have less GWP by postulating an average standard of living as low as the present lowest standard of living.

Population growth doesn't necessarily imply increased GWP.

Math. Simple math. Gruesome math. No pretty stories from moi.

GWP is, of course, Gross World Product. I don't understand why we keep talking about the USA only. Or the West. It's one world. Or else.

Ormondotvos, i think your math is wrong. Gross world product (GWP) is the total gross national product of all the countries in the world. This also equals the total gross domestic product. If the world population continue to increase and even if everyone was to consume the bear minimum, the GWP would continue to grow.

For instance, if we have population at 100 and production at $1(the lowest), than the GWP is at $100. Just add more people (at the lowest production we have present) and guess what... the GWP continues to grow.

J. Bradford DeLong of the Department of Economics, U.C. Berkeley has estimated Total World GDP for the period one million BC to 2000 AD, as reproduced below

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/1998_Draft/World_GDP/Estimating_World_G...

If this doesn't illustrate my point....

Year GDP (billions of dollars)
1,000,000 BC 0.01
300,000 BC 0.09
25,000 BC 0.31
10,000 BC 0.37
8,000 BC 0.43
5,000 BC 0.51
4,000 BC 0.77
3,000 BC 1.59
2,000 BC 3.02
1,600 BC 4.36
1,000 BC 6.35
800 BC 9.72
500 BC 13.72
400 BC 16.02
200 BC 17.00
1 AD 18.50
200 AD 18.54
350 AD 17.93
400 AD 18.44
500 AD 19.92
600 AD 20.86
700 AD 23.44
800 AD 25.23
900 AD 31.68
1000 AD 35.31
1100 AD 39.60
1200 AD 37.44
1250 AD 35.58
1300 AD 32.09
1340 AD 40.50
1400 AD 44.92
1500 AD 58.67
1600 AD 77.01
1650 AD 81.74
1700 AD 99.80
1750 AD 128.51
1800 AD 175.24
1850 AD 359.90
1875 AD 568.08
1900 AD 1102.96
1920 AD 1733.67
1925 AD 2102.88
1930 AD 2253.81
1940 AD 3001.36
1950 AD 4081.81
1955 AD 5430.44
1960 AD 6855.25
1965 AD 9126.98
1970 AD 12137.94
1975 AD 15149.42
1980 AD 18818.46
1985 AD 22481.11
1990 AD 27539.57
1995 AD 33644.33
2000 AD 41016.69

Quote:
If the world population continue to increase and even if everyone was to consume the bear minimum

Are you so naive as to believe that (a) world population can only increase and not decrease and (b) everyone is guaranteed the "bare minimum" to survive (lots of people do not have this, even today)?

Your concerns about over population are valid, but is 'asking some questions to those people who want our vote' your solution?

The de-growther's hypocrisy is really disgusting. Instead of working towards sustainable development and population control, you would rather wait til Congress passed laws mandating the choices you make.

Lead by example. No one is forcing you to live in your apartment with running water, electricity, gas and internet connection. Go live in the forest and live off the bear minimum if you are really troubled by all this.

Your concerns about over population are valid, but is 'asking some questions to those people who want our vote' your solution?

The de-growther's hypocrisy is really disgusting. Instead of working towards sustainable development and population control, you would rather wait til Congress passed laws mandating the choices you make.

Lead by example. No one is forcing you to live in your apartment with running water, electricity, gas and internet connection. Go live in the forest and live off the bear minimum if you are really troubled by all this.

Your concerns about over population are valid, but is 'asking some questions to those people who want our vote' your solution?

The de-growther's hypocrisy is really disgusting. Instead of working towards sustainable development and population control, you would rather wait til Congress passed laws mandating the choices you make.

Lead by example. No one is forcing you to live in your apartment with running water, electricity, gas and internet connection. Go live in the forest and live off the bear minimum if you are really troubled by all this.

Not quite that easy to live sustainably, have you ever done your ecological footprint?
I can't get anywhere near it. Localisation will only work to a certain exent. Real degrowth needs co-ordinated effort to keep larger infrastucture in place long enough for localisation.

What about all those resources one would use if needs must.

American Mania- an interesting take on why humans over exploit the world.
http://www.amazon.com/American-Mania-When-More-Enough/dp/039332849X/ref=...
ps the image is genuine!

The de-growther's hypocrisy is really disgusting

...of course, this being the internet, I could be lounging in the jacuzzi in my air-conditioned mansion, enjoying the view of the sprinkler system keeping the extensive grounds green as the sun glints of my newest SUV, dictating to my secretary another anti-growth gem to post on TOD...

But I think you'll find that the majority of those here who've taken the trouble to digest the issue are serious enough about "walking the walk". For my own part, I actually live with my family well below the poverty line, my lawn is dead (though the veggie garden is quite healthy), I bicycle or walk everywhere except once a week getting groceries, hang my clothes out to dry, don't drink or smoke or eat out, and I do pay attention to how far my food has traveled, I spend a lot of time thinking about how I could do things better, and so on...

Daxr, if more people were like you, the world would be in a far better place. However, I think too many people do not see how their actions, like the ones described above, will affect our future and even if they do recognize it, they are too lazy to change the lifestyle that they have grown accustom to.

Population control is the only real solution to controlling growth and its affects on a global level. Consumption/waste levels matter, but only to a certain degree.

I think that the world should mimic China's policy and only allow one kid per family. Any more than one, and the family should be heavily taxed to off-set the harm to society.

What do you think?

I agree. I think China's One Child policy served it very well and has been a part of its rapid economic evolution. In the US we should end credits per child, which encourages larger families, in favor of a "family" credit for households with dependents (perhaps to include the elderly or infirm, encouraging larger households).

Along with that, the Carbon Tax scheme is basically an a tax upon growth, which makes a great deal of sense if you look at the real cost of growth...hard to say how that will go.

Essentially though I don't have much hope for political solutions. Blaming the guys in charge is the rule when all is not rich and rosy in DC, and I think we will have another changing of the guard or two here before anyone gets the idea what is really going on. In the meantime, putting one's own things in order is not so hard and has many benefits, short and long term.

on edit - now that I think of it, on occasion I have assured my kids what a better place the world would be if everyone were just more like me; they know me pretty well and are quite skeptical.

I think your equation of population=GDP is flawed -or at least dependent upon the metric of economic activity. If we define economic value in terms of man-days of work, then your equation holds (as long as hours worked is constant). But, if we take a physically based material measure of value, then decay is probable, as scarce materials get dissipated into waste streams too defuse to recycle.

I see the problem with my equation, but let me see if I can make sense of the issue at hand. As scarce materials become waste and too defuse to recycle, it seems that the price's of the products derived from those scarce materials will rise. When the price of these products become too high, consumers will be forced to make purchases that fit within their budget. These products that consumers are now forced to buy, will likely have to be derived from resources that are either abundant (short term) and reusable (long-term). If these new set products are being derived from abundant or reusable resources, it seems that my equation would hold because the more people buying the more economic value accumulated.

What do you think?

Nate: What forecast data (WAG or optimist POV) was used to determine that the IIER scenarios 2 & 3 would level off in the 2015-6 timeframe? With a GDP of 13 trillion start given as BAU, is 10.5 and 8 trillion multi-year level future realistic? Two thirds present BAU would be a piece of cake by just cutting out waste, some gardening, and transitioning. At what point does anyone (politician or philosopher) consider over population, peak fresh water, AGW, peak oil, peak growth, peak NPK, etc. as ‘the’ aggregate problem to be solved or not solved? If the aggregate problem cannot be solved, then what actions must be taken to minimize the effects of the non-solution? What are the effects of a non-solution? Is it true that non-oil producing planet can support anywhere from a few million to several million people like 1 to 10% of present population? If true, why are we even the least bit concerned with growth when 90% die off is how it ends up? Is everyone here in denial?

The sun inputs energy. Oil is the result of many years of collection. So what? The sun is still shining. We can collect enough of it as thermal and electric, from the weather, from the tides, to IGNORE the stored sunpower.

The numbers are there. The will and understanding are not.

I don't have answers to any of your questions but the last one - I think the die-off scenarios, while possible (because we can't know all inputs/outcomes) are less likely than most (including me) once believed. While we don't have nearly the cheap resource inputs to maintain our current system of wealth - we have more than enough energy for a lower standard of living for alot of people for a long time to come - perhaps a generation or more - the toughest part will be when the realization hits -the perception will be worse than the reality (once paper wealth goes away if the initial instability calms down I would bet mass cooperation will trump mad max cet par.) Ergo 90% dieoff I would put at <5% in coming decade or 2. And I would put a 10% increase in population at higher odds than 5%...Time will tell

If you would ride your bicycle out to the east/west Interstates that traverses this nation and observed the totally mind blowing sea of never ending 18 wheelers and then imagined what would be the result when the oil to form the diesel is suddenly gone or slowly goes away(either one) ..............then you would be examining total absolute catastrophic failure of our JIT lifestlye.

Looking to the west I saw them, one passing by each 5 or 6 seconds. A vast huge number of them down the interstate stacked up with scant feet between each one. Looking east I saw the same. One could not even get a chance to cross the interstate they were coming at such a rapid and unending pace.

As the drugs no longer flow many die rapidly. As the food stops flowing many starve almost immediately. As needed parts for our infrastructure dry up all utilities and services will cease to function.

Those trucks out there are the only thing that keeps this insane nation going.

I rode my Harley along I-44 to Tulsa. I stopped along the roadway shoulder and was almost blown away by the winds of their passage and the understanding that this is where the End Times will actually start!!!!

This was 5 years ago. Now its far, far worse. The heavy volume is now running on many of the local two lane state roads as well.

We live because everything is JIT and inside big containers, running like huge insects over the plains and mountains NONSTOP and Never Ending.

You will not see this in your normal life unless you put yourself in a position to see it. Living in a cocoon as many do they have no comphrension.

When the trucks stop. We will stop. Its appears it can be no other way. Its madness.

Trains? Won't work unless you suddenly overnight re-engineer ALL the systems.
Horses? Yeah. Table Top fusion? Yeah. Can one do JIT with rail? I doubt it.

Its all about 'transport'. Transport takes fuel. We are running out. We will die when it does. Barges, trains and trucks. I don't think this is a very good plan but everything seems to now come from over the ocean and must be hauled everywhere from those ports.

Yet one can amazing find highways that are almost deserted. The mainline routes must have changed. Its dangerous to travel in this crowded manner. The wind buffeting for a cyclist is very dangerous. I had to run at 80+ just to keep from being bowled over and becoming litter along the shoulder.

I never do this anymore. Going up to a large city with the interstate being repaired one could spend an hour or two easily in a massive backup. The interstates must be maintained and I guess at some level that is recognized or else Obama's stimulus package is paying for it.

If I go to a big city and I rarely do then I go the old backroads and two lane roads if possible. Live moves slower there.

passingby

Your post painted a fascinating vignette, of real life as it is right now in the US, and the UK as we wait like a cargo cult, for the next shipment of cheap goodies from the east.
Thank you

I work for an East Coast state DOT, as a highway design engineer. You're right; we are spending more and more of our scarce construction and maintenance money on keeping the interstate routes safe and functional, while the lesser used roads get less attention every year. My state has 8000 bridges that are in need of replacement in the next 20 years, but we've only got enough funding to replace 100 each year, and that only if we keep the costs down to a minimum.

I've asked our planners and traffic forecasters why are they predicting greater and greater traffic volumes 35 years from now, and they just shrug and say "because we're supposed to". Even when I ask if they believe traffic in the future will be as we see it now, and they say 'probably not', no one will admit that things will change, and in our lifetime.

While driving down a multilane interstate one day with a vehicle full of other engineers, I pointed out that one or two 12' lanes will support a lot of bicycles, motorcycles and small alternative fueled vehicles, leaving the other 3 lanes in our direction to do what? Their responses were interesting, and disappointed me in their lack of imagination.

The City of New Orleans Public Works engineer that put in the first bike sharrows a decade ago, and got the merchant buy-in to rebuild Oak Street as a bike & ped friendly place, is now in charge of design for all major rebuild work.

He also helped talk the State Highway Department to add bike lanes to a major truck street.

There is Some Hope :-)

Alan

An aside about bicycles.

The road in front of my farm is a part of a national type bike trail. Yet there is no shoulder at all. There are bumps pressed into the edges which would make it hard for bike tires to drive over.

The roads now are filled with huge farm machinery going from fields to fields and they fill the whole roadway.

I see very very few bikers using the blacktop. Perhaps its because it was so very badly executed when built or retopped.

If you are in a bad place , crest of a hill or blind spot around a curve then a pickup or car driving the 55mph speed limit will roll right over you and you will become part of the asphalt.

I have two bikes but very very leery of putting them on the blacktop roads for those reasons. Without a good shoulder it appears to be crazy to me to put your life is such jeopardy.

I have seen this same scenario in many other areas and other states. Some are good and most appear to be bad.

You have to learn how to deal with rural two lanes , even when walking. I nearly took out a preacher and his wife and dog some time back as they were stopped the other side of a blind curve and in my side of the road. They needed to be on the other side of the road but just didn't understand the danger of walking on two lane blacktops in hilly and curvy areas.

You have to always be going from one side of the road to the other as curves and hills dictate so you can always see oncoming vehicles and they can see you.

Pushing the envelope by hubris and taking dares to force the issue of right of way while biking will get you killed or end up in the maw of a huge combine.

Another American who believes that high-speed motorized machinery owns the roads.

I thought it was pretty much law that those types of vehicles are not allowed on Interstates.

The wind front of a fast semi can be daunting to a small vehicle like a bike.
Its hard enough for me on a heavy motorcycle.

Debris is always being thrown around in the back wash. Tires blowing out and recaps being shredded. Also some drivers will throw objects at a bike rider.

I would love to be able to ride my ten speed to town but its just not worth the risk to life and limb. That way in most areas of many states is my observation for the rural areas I drive through.

8 years ago I was watching evening traffic flowing on a large local road (not a highway). Two lanes in either direction. I wondered: what is that keeps these cars and trucks moving? It is something special, unique, never seen before and never again. 3 years after that I found out about PO.

But there is less traffic on that road now than there was back then. Yes, we are already headed down....

Young people aren`t buying cars, starting families...
Others have lost their jobs...
Some don`t have money to spend....

What forecast data (WAG or optimist POV) was used to determine that the IIER scenarios 2 & 3 would level off in the 2015-6 timeframe?

Lynford, I can try to shed some light on the forecasting used for the models presented. These are the most benign scenarios (there are far worse, which we don't like to discuss publicly as they usually stop the discussion right there) using the following assumptions:

- Best case: a constant "bumping against resource limits" path, followed by recessions (2007/8 style), which create relief on reseource prices (like in 2009), no major negative events in financial markets (complete destabilization), just the usual problems we already know about now. This requires that China (and others) still can grow their debt levels. More debt is the predominant driver behind the fact that these economies still look somewhat ok-ish.

- Scenario 2: A controlled debt elimination program by most governments, followed by a long phase of "no credit" due to very limited capital availability. Lower consumption, investment and resource prices. Most resource limits irrelevant for a while because of massively reduced consumption. This would create a new "normal" for a while, and give time to fix the fundamentals.

- Secnario 3: A half-way well contained collapse of financial markets, e.g something that doesn't spiral completely out of control (people still always have food, shelter, heat/cold, access to utility and information), rest same as scenario 3

- Scenario 4-7: Oh well...

Does that help?

Hannes

Is it true that non-oil producing planet can support anywhere from a few million to several million people like 1 to 10% of present population?

Lynn, as PO becomes obvious, there will be a need to ration. I call it oil triage. My first question is always, how is that to be done? If by the "unseen hand," then the rich will be the only ones who have access to anything oil realted. Pharmaceuticals, plastics, ferrtilizer, food. When the poor beging to see what is happening, what is going to keep them in check?

As transportation and factory farming resources more dear, and later as commercial fertilizer becomes more and more expensive, there will be some hungry people on the planet. Pundits say population will continue to grow... and yet the soil is depleted, and the resources needed for the 'green revolution' that has fed so many for the past 100 years wind down, what is going to support those numbers?

I hear numbers varying from 1.25 to 1.5 Billion as a high, and to 500 to 750 Million as a low range for sustainable population. The sites I see these figures in seldom discuss that soil depletion, surface water degredation, and lack of knowledge of farming techniques by most of us would imply that even the low numbers may prove unsupportable. And, no one talks about - or even wants to think about - what the rest of those alive during the fall will be doing, other than dying. I don't see them going quietly, shuffling off quietly in the night.

As far as the planet being able to support only a few million, well there were more than 10 Million Amerinds living in N. America when the Europeans got here. So, I guess a few hundred million, even with only basic farming and hunter/gatherer societies, is supportable. With good knowledge of better techniques in agronomy, intensive organic farming and limited electric power from solar, wind, hydro and geothermal sources, my opinion is that we can have a decent civilization with a world population near a Billion. Maybe more, but better with less. The only thing is that there are already 6 or 7 times that numbers hanging on, and again that is the problem. Can anyone survive the passage?

I don't know the answer.

Best hopes for a sustainable planet.

Craig

In our area when the white guys showed up there were estimated 3500 indians living in the area from Tahoe to the Pine Nut Mountains to the east according the Nevada history. Now there are well over a half million in the same area. Lets estimate 700 thousand now so there has been a 99.5% increase from sustainability to present. Note: The high desert is not very friendly; depending where you are, YMMV.

We are really stupid to stay here but family and such is our anchor. Our well, some solar power, large garden, accumulation of tools and other sustainable stuff, we can live here for a while. At 77 years old and in good shape, we will probably die in bed of natural causes in 10 to 15 years but the other 696,500 around here will have to leave or die or come up with a 'Plan B' which not many want to even think about.

All the people getting together to solve a problem reminds me of Watts, but no one was hungry there so it may end up somewhat differently.

How about

"Dear candidate,
In Celtic times the ruler was showered with privileges when times were good.

When times went bad the druids used their intestines to auger the future.
I trust you get my drift etc..."

That would be "augur" but... upon reflection... leave it as "auger"... ;^)

In my view the most basic problem with sustainable economy is the interest-baring debt. So the obvious answer is to remove the interest. The nice thing is that it has already happened up to a point in Japan. The central bank drops interest rates close to zero and starts buying government debt directly (with zero interest). That way government can recycle debt without having to worry about paying large interest or people not willing to buy it (cause of dropping GDP).
As for consumer debt it seems rather obvious that banks will end up being bought by government/Fed and give out close to zero interest loans. Never the less, these loans will be very hard to get (since most of them might end up defaulting). Bankers will not inherit the earth after all and the banking/financial sector will contract enormously, with many people going back to basic labor jobs.
The big problems are inflation and the trade deficit. In a resource depletion scenario (such as peak oil) inflation might hit even a contracting economy (basically the economy will be contracting *because* of expensive oil), which might be further pushed by money printing. The trade deficit (along with zero interest debt) would mean that the countries which receive your currency (in exchange for goods) will have almost no way of investing it back to your economy (in the form of buying debt) apart maybe from buying actual property (houses, land, companies etc). That will mean that you will end up devaluing your currency (since more of it will be in total circulation) and maybe run the risk of it not being accepted in the future (due to it's low value).

A steady state economy would probably mean zero interest debt, birth control, energy production based on domestic resources (local oil/NG, nuclear, renewables) and huge efforts in recycling (in order to avoid having to buy basic metals and product parts from abroad).

What future?

If you are not with the "in crowd" there is going to be "no future".

The "average Joes" I've befriended think cell phones, plasma TVs and the interstate highway system represent Humanity's Great Leap Forward.

That tells me they have no IDEA of what's coming in terms of war, pestilence, famine and disease. And it is coming because the elites want it ALL.

Continued economic deterioation + the upcoming World War 3 = Depopulation down to "manageable" levels and Eternal Global Feudalism.

Heck, if the GOM blows up a Mt Everest's worth of methane then maybe they can skip the war.

Fun, eh?

We need more Campfires like this and articles also....

I recently told my boss about Peak Oil and his response to me was, what are you doing about it? Telling other people was as far as I had gotten. I have recently started saying that by 2015 gas in the USA will be at least 5 bucks a gallon.

Even with $150 for a barrel of oil a real memory most people i know just kind of 'zone out'. They can't really talk about something they consider on the par with Jesus returning.

In the real world I suspect any candidate who got that kind of letter, took it to heart and *actually* tried to live their lives in a world of no economic growth (even though it would stop population growth also) would simply drop out of the race.

Who wants a relatively low paying job where impossible choices are going to have to be made with no hope of a brighter day ahead to get re-elected to do it all over again?

People like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln are long gone from the political scene, and even they could see a light at the end of their tunnels. It seems to me their is a real possiblability that as times get harder, leadership will vanish.

It seems to me the majority of the USA can't really imagine 'The Long Emergency of Mr. Kunstler' Bill Clinton called it a 'dark book' right? Why would a millionaire (yes all federal elected officals are at least millionaires these days) bother with the 'little people' who need leaders when there is no hope of making them happy?

You can't send them a letter you have to ask them this on camera, if you could find a TV station that would let you.

It appears to me as if one thing is likely: humanity cannot keeping doing much longer is the very same things we are so adamantly and foolishly doing now as the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us recklessly choose to speed up the ever expanding, seemingly endless growth of the global economy as well as to deceptively manipulate the human family into going along with an agenda based upon conspicuous per-capita overconsumption, outrageous individual hoarding and unbridled overpopulation.

If we keep doing what we are doing now and the human community keeps getting what it is getting now, I fear that sooner rather than later everything we are led to believe humankind is protecting and preserving will be ruined. In the not-too-distant future a distinct probability could exist that one of two colossal calamities will occur. The wanton dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of its frangible environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort unless, of course, the world’s artificially designed, manmade global political economy (the modern “economic colossus”) continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic ‘Wall’ called “unsustainability” at which point humanity’s runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
http://www.panearth.org/
http://www.countercurrents.org/salmony030510.htm

Sadly, humans prefer a reassuring lie to an inconvenient truth

http://magisteria.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/an_inconvenient_truth_vs_a...

Oil Drum reader for numerous years, first time commenting.
I'm surprised nobody has commented on the effect this could have on the stock markets.
In my opinion we may reach a day when the masses that put money in stock markets may come to the realization that they will never see a return on their investments. Simply addressing this topic openly to our governments would be destructive. But I guess the masses aren't really paying attention anyways.

Rolly

Beware the herd when the stampede comes. It'll give new meaning to "Bull Market".

The stock market has three fundamental sources of growth in prices, in order: 1) Inflation 2) expansion or contraction of PE multiples and 3) economic growth. The inflation adjusted broad market averages barley change over very long periods of time except for the expansion and contraction of PE multiples.

http://nowandfutures.com/inflation_long_term.html

Money printing forces investment into stocks because they at least keep up with inflation, and German stocks rocketed in the 1920’s hyperinflation.

That natural resource stocks, energy and metals have out performed the broader market in recent years is the collective vote of the markets that we have enetred a new age of scarcity.

Nate,

I think you are correct about a decline vrs dieoff...but just in the wealthy countries.

When the stockies were buying food futures and caused untold misery in poor countries, they gave the world a taste (excuse the tasteless pun) of what happens with a slow decline. It could still mean mass starvation around the globe.

However, my question is about internal migration. I always look at the pictures most carefully on Automatic Earth. Do you see an exodus of sort that mimics the dust bowl days? Do you see Hoovervilles? On a crass note, will Anderson Cooper be standing on the outskirts of a Hooverville with torn jeans reporting to those with tv?

I think families will contract with people moving in with those who have a house paid for or maybe have some land. Hopefully, there will be some venues to 'pitch in'.

When I stop writing and let my mind wander to the pictures I have of big cities, and I have been to hardly any, I cannot imagine what will happen if the safety nets tear? Isn't the denying of unemployment extensions a first rip?

Paul

I'm reading Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave (1980) a bit late in the day but still super-relevant. As far as I've got through the book, he's made clear that whatever the political colour in office, any time, any place, the end is the same: maintain the power and money elite, keep the system going. This is his second wave - industrialisation - and subsumes the political process. Espousing economic growth is just part what is needed for the elite to prolong BAU.

As such I think the basis of asking the question on this thread is rather futile - there is no political 'solution' to the various crises we all acknowledge mankind now faces, at least not in the conventional sense.

But I think there is hope, and I believe that economic stagnation and resource depletion lead to localisation of economic and political functions as well as food, energy and the rest of it. To suggest that it is sub-human to spend hours hand-picking bugs off the crops pours scorn on peasants who did so for millenia. Yes, it does bust the myth of progress and it sure ain't my ideal way of spending a hot afternoon but in the company of a couple of co-workers with whom to share the work I can also think of worse things to do. I think the paradigm shift to negative growth which is implied by PO/PD and the coincidental impact it will have on the biggest of all elephants (AGW) can be embraced so long as there are sufficient resources (both natural and social) within any given community to enable a sustainable economy to operate.

Jared Diamond in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" also points out that the powers that be have generally been unable to recognize or act on inflection points in the resources supporting their societies. Instead the leaders of societies generally redouble their efforts to use the same strategies that worked in the past.

This is rational behavior, since elites can keep their station in life for a while longer by temporary if ultimately unsuccessful strategies, while advocating major changes in direction risks their position in the society without any certainty of ultimate success.

njwatts

I read Toffler’s Third Wave some 20 years ago. It was an excellent polemic about our move beyond agricultural, industrial worlds into the information age.
I advise you to finish the book, it tells us a lot about our society. I was very influenced by this book and others of the time.
But then I hadn’t factored in the cheap energy predicament, and neither had Toffler.

Many of the writers of this time were surfing on the crest of no limits. And I too bought into it.
Now, unfortunately, I can see it differently.
We do have a future, but not the one they sold us back then.

I haven't read it, but I'd guess the biggest hitch in the plans came when our cars and trucks refused to run on "information", and then it proved to have no nutritional value either.

To suggest that it is sub-human to spend hours hand-picking bugs off the crops pours scorn on peasants who did so for millenia.

Yeah, especially when we could be eating them... very yummy and nutritious too!

.

I cannot see any path where a government would actually prepare, only react.

I'll echo what many have pointed out: this stuff is absolute kryptonite for any politician and they will not touch it until something bad actually goes down. This is in the UFOs and sasquatches realm to the masses.

Instead, I would argue for the community-level.

I think some community-level preparation is the best we can hope for. Get the like minded together setting up public gardens, helping insulate each others attics, teaching bicycle repair etc..

It's a rare chance to publicly demonstrate your grave concern about the energy/growth problem on a local and more personal level. The ultimate would be to build some local momentum, enough perhaps to convert some neighbors to the cause and possibly even force some local government action?

The biggest advantage of community-level is that you can start today. I'd say you can write letters to politicians until the cows come home.

I got involved in the local 'transition town' movement, so I'm going to push in that direction for a while and see what happens. Sure, it's utopian and goofy, and maybe I'm fooling myself, but it does get some people moving towards positive goals rather than just worrying.

We could start by getting this graph out there more. It might help with some perspective.

Stages of Technic Societies

As long as no one questions the location of the "We Are Here" arrow anyway. It could just as easily be argued that our slow transition into a more solar flux and nuclear future is really the starting point for the yellow rectangle labeled "Abundance Industrialism" than its current position.

It could just as easily be argued that our slow transition into a more solar flux and nuclear future is really the starting point for the yellow rectangle labeled "Abundance Industrialism" than its current position.

That would be interesting and this is the take of the Transition Initiative. However, I think they are now "maturing" (bad word but you should get my point) and seeing, with the help of Stoneleigh, that a post peak world will not be all apple blossoms and pot lucks.

But go ahead and make the argument and let's see where it goes.

But go ahead and make the argument and let's see where it goes.

The argument is quite simple, and goes like this, fossil fuels are just easy, and therefore used first for all the obvious reasons. They aren't any type of long term energy solution exactly because of their finite nature, but they are a wonderful stopgap for more than a few centuries while what many might consider "the real long term solutions" come online. I don't limit this comment to just a liquid fossil fuels like crude, which I consider to be a ridiculous distinction brought into serious conversations of resource depletion by the "mostly only oil matters" contingent as a distraction, or even with an ulterior motive.

Hubbert(1956) presented his reasonable solution, and its attendant resource estimates of fuel, in the same paper which originated the peak oil idea itself. Have you ever noticed how certain advocates take the timescale and short, sharp spike of the hydrocarbon age, without ever referencing the multi thousand year scale of his solution? Gotta love the objectivity. The second part of any reasonable solution is solar, or solar derived. Photo voltaic is nice, but any of the basic derivatives will do.

It seems to me that large chunks of the debate are nearly entirely dedicated to showing how obvious solutions can't happen, won't happen, no one can afford for them to happen, no one wants them to happen, while ignoring the obvious transition already underway. Graphs, like the one you presented, are simple propoganda. They are designed to drive those who can't, or won't, think for themselves in some designed direction where the pitch is made, the pitch being, "do things the way I TELL YOU", the cornerstone for closing a sale. Doesn't even matter what the sale is.

That wasn't an argument, really, at least not about how "our slow transition into a more solar flux and nuclear future is really the starting point for the yellow rectangle labeled 'Abundance Industrialism'", referencing Greer's graph.

Oh its an argument alright. At more of a macro scale than what is usually attempted at the "forest for the tree's" level so enthusiastically detailed in conversations at internet blogs.

The energy of fossil fuels, when compared to the energy available through radioactive decay and solar flux, are for all intents and purposes insignificant. If you want abundance, fossil fuels ain't it. And by extension, the graph is ridiculous on its face, if the author is seriously talking about energy available to society, versus just his/her favorites.

The Orinoco and the changing definitions for what is or is not oil is just another example of the same game. You rig the direction of the debate through some form of artificial selectivity.

Reduce the world to an argument about 2 tree's, instead of the forest, and the battle is half won. Well, as long as you stick to noobs anyway.

Well, cool, so we have more than enough energy for whatever we want for a long time to come, in fact we're at the beginning of a whole new age of abundance...good to know, because I've been a little worried about things.

We've always had this abundance around us, even if humans didn't know it or have the technical capabilities to exploit it. Those limitations were resolved within the past 2 centuries.

Hey, you don't have to convince me twice - I'm going to go give my bike to the neighborhood kids, quit my job, buy a Hummer and a McMansion, and live off the fat 'o the land. No worries!

Obviously you don't understand what Greer is saying.

I've read a number of your posts and the main point you appear to be making, repeatedly, is that you are always right and well, most everyone here is wrong.

Ok, so we are dumb. Explain to us the heavy, multi-thousand year use of hydrocarbons and oil that everyone here just didn't notice.

Obviously you don't understand what Greer is saying.

A possibility every scientist must consider. The graph was pretty basic however. Are you sure the confusion doesn't lie elsewhere?

Ok, so we are dumb. Explain to us the heavy, multi-thousand year use of hydrocarbons and oil that everyone here just didn't notice.

Dumb is not the correct word. I have been seriously impressed in just the last month by some of the knowledge related to nukes and their fuels, sizes and quantities, electrical generation basics for amateurs such as myself, basically the foundation for every reason why peak oil just really doesn't matter. Dumb ain't the right word.

And my words hopefully weren't confused with hydrocarbons lasting multiple thousands of years, that was reference to Hubberts solutions in his 1956 paper, and a particular graphic he provided showing such a thing. You aren't seriously suggesting that anyone around here isn't familiar with the actual seminal work which put this entire mess into motion are you? The solutions he proposed in the same paper? The actual title? I apologize if not, my assumption was that no one would dare venture into such a place as this without familiarizing themselves with the real science which started it all.

Copies can be found here.

http://energybulletin.net/node/13630

Figure 30 is the one I was referring to.

every reason why peak oil just really doesn't matter

Hmm....I think you're missing a lot in your assessment, including the interaction of the money supply and energy, the correlation between oil use and the economy and the time it takes to transition to new energy sources, to name just a few items.

We don't have the nuclear plants built or the machines in significant quantities that currently run on oil to use the electricity even if the plants were built. Assuming that both will be built in vast quantities as oil declines is, I believe, a major error in many people's thinking. The rate of technology penetration will decrease, not increase, as oil contracts. So, in my view, we largely missed the window to get off oil before major contraction became unavoidable.

If you look at Figure 30 in Hubbert's paper you will see that nuclear energy is well on its way to taking over from oil far before the peak. My guess is that Hubbert too could see that if we waited until the peak to begin moving off oil it would be too late.

The fastest energy transition we have yet experienced is the ~7% (average) oil transition that has lasted almost a century and that was on the upslope of production. We won't transition to nuclear at anywhere near that rate. My guess is that nuclear will actually shrink in absolute terms, though it may increase in relative terms as fossil fuels decline.

I'm banking on the economy contracting at roughly a 1:1 ratio as oil declines, per Hirsch's paper and my post here:
http://postpeakliving.com/blog/aangel/estimating-economic-impacts-peak-oil

As Hirsch pointed out in his 2005 paper, it's a real mess when you wait until the peak of oil to transition in earnest. It's simply too late now. We should be mostly complete by now, not just starting.

Hmm....I think you're missing a lot in your assessment, including the interaction of the money supply and energy, the correlation between oil use and the economy and the time it takes to transition to new energy sources, to name just a few items.

I did no assessment. And I certainly didn't confuse money with energy, as so many do, transition time which is dependent on need in a particular situation (thereby negating the "past defines what the future looks like" problem), and many of the other things which are deliberately thrown into the pot to confuse the issue.

As far as the value of Hirschs report, you don't get to pick and choose only the parts you like. Hirsch was just another talking head who ignored the role of unconventional gas production in the US, only he did it AS IT WAS HAPPENING so you'll forgive me for being more than a little tentative about his magic triangles in any other arena. He does well in his general explanation of some of the issues, being one of the few who correctly attributes the old 2037 peak oil date so often incorrectly assigned to the USGS rather than its true originator, but his report is primarily explanation, combined with speculative fluff to generate the same answer he wanted in 1988 but never got. You are aware of his earlier work on the topic, aren't you? And his predictions of an energy crisis for all the same reasons in the early 90's, right?

As far as your TOD article related to economics, prior to me investing time, could you please refresh my memory on your economic credentials? Nothing personal, but if Sailorman writes something on economics, I will read it carefully, the same with Web on exotic trend fitting equations, your foray into the geosciences via your videos does not instill the same level of auto-acceptance.

could you please refresh my memory on your economic credentials?

lol. I won't take it personally but thanks for the laugh. No offense to Don but people with formal economic training have demonstrated to me repeatedly that they have no idea of the fundamental trends we discuss here regularly. I trust my thinking far more than I trust theirs, especially since I believe most of them are using a grossly incorrect model of how the economy works:

No One Saw This Coming: Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15892/

I hear everyone out but right now formal economists have little credibility with me, especially after practically their entire profession missed the recent events (like the popping of the housing bubble and the world's most significant oil shock that caused the global economy to contract). I have no earthly idea why you grant them so much respect.

So I am happy to report to you that I have no formal economic training other than the one or two courses I took at university. :-)

No offense to Don but people with formal economic training have demonstrated to me repeatedly that they have no idea of the fundamental trends we discuss here regularly. I trust my thinking far more than I trust theirs, especially since I believe most of them are using a grossly incorrect model of how the economy works:

A fair response. But formal economic training assures at least a minimum of something Don has mentioned before(and I see all the time), to whit, that terms and definitions (in his case supply/demand, and in mine, what is, or is not, oil) are not used arbitrarily, rearranged at the convenience of the author, or ignored in favor of a custom version. It becomes difficult to have a conversation when definitions aren't. 2+2=4, once someone decides it isn't, all you have now are 2 people talking past each other with no common ground.

Its perfectly okay to not like something a group of economists say, preferring another group, but the level of selective choices within this debate usually makes the random assembly of "favorites" which follows less than useful.

I hear everyone out but right now formal economists have little credibility with me, especially after practically their entire profession missed the recent events (like the popping of the housing bubble and the world's most significant oil shock that caused the global economy to contract). I have no earthly idea why you grant them so much respect.

Nouriel Roubini did not miss the housing market crash, and I don't know about your local effects but the 2008 oil price spike certainly didn't generate the severity of shortage and rationing effects here in the US we saw during the 70's energy crunches. Makes it difficult to call it "the worlds most significant", seems to me. And to be honest, has the worlds economy contracted...at all....since it happened? Has world GDP actually moved negative since 2008? A fraction of a percent? A percent? For what length of time? A month? A quarter? Seems like the "worlds most significant" should at least be followed by something alot more dramatic than lower rates of growth, don't you think? You see where I'm going here?

As for granting them respect, well, I think I've explained it already. I work with these guys, they have rules, they aren't stupid, some are darn good at math(which I like) and they are limited in their future prediction just like everyone else. You think they do poorly? You should take a gander at peaker predictions sometime, predicting stuff, especially the future, can be tricky.

Economics is tricky business, even worse than engineering I think, because you are always operating on shifting ground, whereas engineering has a solid foundation agreed upon in advance from which to work from. Having seen what happens when the noobs get involved in my business, I can just imagine how off the rails they must get when dabbling in economics.

Here's the problem in a nutshell, with neoclassical economic theory. No matter how much lipstick and makeup you put on it, it's still a piglet doing astrology!

From the April 2008 Scientific American Magazine | 76 comments
The Economist Has No Clothes
Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems

By Robert Nadeau

...The strategy the economists used was as simple as it was absurd—they substituted economic variables for physical ones. Utility (a measure of economic well-being) took the place of energy; the sum of utility and expenditure replaced potential and kinetic energy. A number of well-known mathematicians and physicists told the economists that there was absolutely no basis for making these substitutions. But the economists ignored such criticisms and proceeded to claim that they had transformed their field of study into a rigorously mathematical scientific discipline.

Strangely enough, the origins of neoclassical economics in mid-19th century physics were forgotten. Subsequent generations of mainstream economists accepted the claim that this theory is scientific. These curious developments explain why the mathematical theories used by mainstream economists are predicated on the following unscientific assumptions:

* The market system is a closed circular flow between production and consumption, with no inlets or outlets.
* Natural resources exist in a domain that is separate and distinct from a closed market system, and the economic value of these resources can be determined only by the dynamics that operate within this system.
* The costs of damage to the external natural environment by economic activities must be treated as costs that lie outside the closed market system or as costs that cannot be included in the pricing mechanisms that operate within the system.
* The external resources of nature are largely inexhaustible, and those that are not can be replaced by other resources or by technologies that minimize the use of the exhaustible resources or that rely on other resources.
* There are no biophysical limits to the growth of market systems.

We are dealing here with a profoundly flawed model of the real world and it is what underlies the financial and environmental crisis in which the entire world now finds itself.

Perhaps we should try a new shade of lipstick! Maybe it will make the bacon taste better.

Here's the problem in a nutshell, with neoclassical economic theory. No matter how much lipstick and makeup you put on it, it's still a piglet doing astrology!

I don't think anyone disagree's that economics is a relatively dirty science, but people randomly picking through and collecting the parts they like, and discarding the parts they don't, based on their feelings on the topic, well, this type of subjective fabrication hardly qualifies as a reasonable alternative.

Example: I like the way Santa Claus delivers lots of presents. I dislike how he does it once a year. I therefore decide that the RIGHT way it should be done is that Santa Claus should deliver his load of presents when I lose a tooth, rather than the $5 my parents might normally give me.

Presto! I have a result I like, with no basis other than a desire for it to be so. Near perfect peak oil example at the places which refuse to allow anyone to challenge the standard groupthink I might add.

I don't think anyone disagree's that economics is a relatively dirty science,

The point is, it is not a science at all. Though it certainly can be useful under certain limited or restricted circumstances.

http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/resource/onlinetext/Definitions/economicsNOTsc...

Economics is NOT Natural Science!
(It is technology of Social Science.)
Science is a process of formulating models that predict outcomes in a natural system under certain conditions, and then testing them to see if the future predictions agree. However, the goal is to find how the model is inadequately representing the natural system. When the model is refuted, it is adjusted to form a new model from what is learned about the system. Since there is an underlying system that is being approximated by the models, there is an "objective reality" (exists independently of human conceptualization) to be described by conceptual models. The models evolve representations of the relationships and features that are defined by the system. Models are useful to humans. Models are respected when they better reflect the nature of the system.

Except for say biophysical economics, what is generally taught today in most universities is no longer an sufficiently accurate model of reality. It no longer has useful predictive big picture value. We need better and more complete models. For economics to become a true science it must integrate itself with the scientific knowledge base that spans the spectrum from basic physics to cognitive neuroscience. It must be able to advance new and testable hypothesis, right now it doesn't do that.

The point is, it is not a science at all. Though it certainly can be useful under certain limited or restricted circumstances.

And what are Dicks qualifications to write an accepted science out of existence?

"Economics is the social science studying production and consumption through measurable variables. It involves analysing the production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services."

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Economics

Seems like a reasonable definition to me, whereas Dick is trying to split hairs to make it a "technology".

So its a social science, a "dirty" science, and I'm betting its applicability goes much farther than "certain limited or restricted circumstances". You would prefer the head of the federal reserve to be just another ambulance chaser?

For economics to become a true science it must integrate itself with the scientific knowledge base that spans the spectrum from basic physics to cognitive neuroscience. It must be able to advance new and testable hypothesis, right now it doesn't do that.

As far as its "trueness", certainly a social science doesn't have to be just a branch of physics, since when does physics dictate anything to do with why someone buys one car because its cheaper than another? Now cost, THAT certainly might dictate the choice, and that isn't wrapped up in the physics of a car. And sure economic theory can be tested, I'm betting people are writing economic models all the time trying to backcast, predict, test their hypothesis. I've seen it in Natural Resources Research as a matter of fact, whatever would lead you to say such things aren't happening? Would you like me to look up a few, or a hundred, at the library? I have quite a good one available to me.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/rushkoff09/rushkoff09_index.html

We must stop perpetuating the fiction that existence itself is dictated by the immutable laws of economics. These so-called laws are, in actuality, the economic mechanisms of 13th Century monarchs. Some of us analyzing digital culture and its impact on business must reveal economics as the artificial construction it really is. Although it may be subjected to the scientific method and mathematical scrutiny, it is not a natural science; it is game theory, with a set of underlying assumptions that have little to do with anything resembling genetics, neurology, evolution, or natural systems.

The scientific tradition exposed the unpopular astronomical fact that the earth was not at the center of the universe. This stance challenged the social order, and its proponents were met with less than a welcoming reception. Today, science has a similar opportunity: to expose the fallacies underlying our economic model instead of producing short-term strategies for mitigating the effects of inventions and discoveries that threaten this inherited market hallucination.

The economic model has broken, for good. It's time to stop pretending it describes our world.

So you want to use a media analyst to try and explain why economics isn't a science? Can we even be sure a media analyst knows what science IS, let alone how to determine what is, or is not, one?

Certainly right off the bat this guy seems to confuse economics as having immutable laws, when economics strikes me as extremely wishy washy in that regard, particularly if someone mistaken confuses its "social" aspects with other sciences involving something like the Law of Motion or Thermodynamics. I stand ready to be corrected by a real economist like Don if my understanding in this area is poor of course.

And again, your quote using the qualifier "natural" science, when the definitions for economics don't appear to confuse it with that, but declare it a social science.

Are you setting up an elaborate strawman for any particular reason? I'm a big boy, you don't need to play games with me, if you have something to say you don't have to pussy foot around. So you don't think economics is a "science", and all your references set up a strawman pretending economics is a "natural" science and use that language to beat it back to "social", when its "social" nature appears to be commonly accepted.

Big deal. You don't like it as a science, pretend it isn't. Go change the Wiki on it, if peakers can make it up as they gp, no reason you can't. Let us know how it goes.

Ok, listen to a scientist who understands and has actually studied Finance, someone posted this link here on TOD the other day, BTW she was also a TOD editor. This is the consequence of what you call a science. It obviously doesn't work! Time to toss the whole pile of garbage.

http://sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/media/2010/06//453357.mp3

Also watch this maybe you'll get it maybe you won't. Smile or Die.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo&feature=player_embedded

Economic theory is based on delusional thinking.

If you want to say economics is science, that's your prerogative. As far as I'm concerned It doesn't fulfill the basic definition of a falsifiable science and it is a poor model of reality IMHO. Right now it is also causing enormous harm.

Ok, listen to a scientist who understands and has actually studied Finance, someone posted this link here on TOD the other day, BTW she was also a TOD editor.

I gave her the same amount of time I gave Andre. She studied finance a long time, good, and I spent TEN MINUTES listening to peak oil propaganda. She doesn't know a thing about oil production, she just collected the same nonsense that Andre put in his video's, peaker mythology on top of peaker mythology, presented it as fact, and it was utterly ridiculous. And then she topped it off with EROEI about the time I gave up. Consider my investment in any future propaganda links you provide to be zero.

Economic theory is based on delusional thinking.

If you want to say economics is science, that's your prerogative.

I'm not the one providing oilfield propaganda videos as proof that the WORLD is wrong by considering economics a science. I'll stick with traditional definitions of what economics is until someone can show otherwise, using something other than a ridiculous claim of net energy or EROEI or how poor oilfields are watering out the world over, thank you very much.

Can't believe you suckered me into listening to that garbage. If I had listened another 10 seconds what would she have said next, that well production follows a bell shaped curve probably.....?

I'll stick with traditional definitions of what economics is until someone can show otherwise, using something other than a ridiculous claim of net energy or EROEI or how poor oilfields are watering out the world over, thank you very much.

Alright so we are not experiencing limits to growth and everything that TOD has ever posted on this site which references "Peak Oil" is bunk. We will forever and ever be able to find oil fields to supply our needs. The human population will expand into the two digit billions and there will be economic growth and technological progress for all the poor people of the world.
There will be another greener revolution and all will be fed etc.. etc.. etc..

Forgive me if I see, instead of that utopian vision, trouble up ahead and the economic theories that you want to pass off as science are the root cause of that trouble.

I'm not trying to sucker you or anyone else into anything, though I am a bit curious as to what it is you are getting out of TOD if you truly believe that Stonleigh's talk is "Peak Oil" propaganda. Are you saying that whole concept of "Peak Oil" is just pure doomer porn?
Do you not see the link between resource depletion and global finances. Do you dispute that the global economy is in serious trouble?

Have you not looked at any of the vast resources and data available on this site?
http://www.theoildrum.com/tag/overview
Or have I just somehow totally missed your point?

Alright so we are not experiencing limits to growth and everything that TOD has ever posted on this site which references "Peak Oil" is bunk.

I didn't say that.

We will forever and ever be able to find oil fields to supply our needs.

I certainly didn't say that.

The human population will expand into the two digit billions and there will be economic growth and technological progress for all the poor people of the world.
There will be another greener revolution and all will be fed etc.. etc.. etc..

Or any of this either.

You appear to overly enjoy rhetorical statements.

I'm not trying to sucker you or anyone else into anything, though I am a bit curious as to what it is you are getting out of TOD if you truly believe that Stonleigh's talk is "Peak Oil" propaganda. Are you saying that whole concept of "Peak Oil" is just pure doomer porn?

Peak oil as a technical definition isn't disputed by anyone except the abiotic crowd, peak oil as hallucinated by websites which delight in telling tales of alien takeover, nuke war consequences and massive conspiracies is absolute nonsense. TOD does not appear to tolerate the fruitcake crowd, and this is good. What is not good is the utter confusion which results when people make up their own definitions and versions of peak oil as they go along, and become distressed when confronted by those who actually nibble around the edges of the resource depletion questions professionally. Endlessly repeating mythology doesn't make it true, and her recital of the standard peak oil mythology, which heavily resemble Andre's video's, are propaganda. Myths. Distortions based on cherry picking this piece of information, or that one. Throwing out red herrings by the bushel. And repetition, always repetition.

Vast resources? Are you kidding? Do you know what a LIBRARY is? How about a world class one, specializing in the geo-sciences? When science is actually referenced around here, THAT is the information which matters, not another recital of mythology.

On TOD, Scientific American is panned unless it satisfies confirmation bias. Why on earth would you believe that Nadeau has offered the final word on the subject? He parrots Mirowski's theory on the development of economic thought and then makes a series of claims that are unsupported. What, precisely, are Nadeau's credentials that make him such a credible critic?

On TOD, Scientific American is panned unless it satisfies confirmation bias.

Of course. Its a standard game within peak oil, I've even gotten mods at other websites to admit it. Find someone who agree's with you, whoever that might be, and cheer-lead them over all others regardless of qualifications, concept or actual expertise.

That's fine that the economists can dot their i's and cross their t's but if they are working with a faulty model of how the world works why exactly does that matter? Besides, though you may have had a different experience, in the conversations I've had with economists or MBAs it has never come down to whether we each are using "inflation" the correct way. It always comes down to their worldview being, in my opinion, mostly inaccurate.

As the article linked to by FMagyar points out, they:

  • don't account explicitly for energy in any of their models, probably their biggest oversight
  • apply rules formed during the growth phase of our economy that break down when environmental limits begin to press
  • as a whole, will not, under any circumstances, consider that there may be an economic contraction phase to this recent human experiment (though the ecological economists are beginning the slow work of changing this)
  • and much more, some elements of which show up in nearly every conversation, including those with Don

The economic profession is operating with several giant blind spots and until they start to see what we see here on TOD I will continue to trust my own thinking far more than I trust theirs. I will listen to Roubini and Keen and even Mish more than most formally trained economists, sorry. I do not see a wholesale "waking up" of that profession occurring right now but I'm open to being shown that to be incorrect.

Take a look at the link I provided above. The author of the paper could find only a dozen formal economists out of a pool of thousands who verifiably called the decline before the crisis. The author shows that they tended to using accounting (flow-of-fund) models instead of equilibrium models.

As for your other point about contraction, I'm referring to the whole mess we've been living through the past 3 years, sorry for not being more clear on that. I have no interest in defending any particular point about what's occurred.

That's fine that the economists can dot their i's and cross their t's but if they are working with a faulty model of how the world works why exactly does that matter? It always comes down to their worldview being, in my opinion, mostly inaccurate.

Many economists have many models, what are your qualifications to judge the validity of any of them, other than deciding that you think they aren't right because they don't buy into your favorite oil paradigm? Thats really your main beef with their worldview isn't it, that they don't buy wholesale into the sacred and holy bell shaped profile?

The economic profession is operating with several giant blind spots and until they start to see what we see here on TOD I will continue to trust my own thinking far more than I trust theirs.

Good for you. Everyone should think for themselves....but really....are you really prepared to offer a second opinion to your oncologist when he comes back with an xray and diagnosis you aren't happy with?

Lets bet that your answer might be different when the results of a booboo are so personal, versus hobby scenario gaming which involves a much more nebulous, always in the future and never arriving type consequence. Look, I've got no beef with people wanting to live a lower impact lifestyle and all, but it certainly doesn't require them to suddenly pretend they are oilmen, or bash economics just because they refuse to buy into some "oil as most important commodity" scheme.

As far as how smart everyone here at TOD is versus those stupid other people who aren't classy enough to join us....I must ask...if everyone is debating the obvious truth of 2+2=5, is there any real difference?

don't account explicitly for energy in any of their models, probably their biggest oversight

Really? Maybe you should page through the journal "Energy Economics." You're shockingly ignorant.

edited - inappropriate

...could you please refresh my memory on your economic credentials?

I understood by the age of nineteen (19) that we don't live in a world without limits. A little late, I know, but compared to economists...?

Economists are the whipping boy of the peak oil world. Always having strawmen assigned to them, like the infinite growth thing. My opinion is they know more than they are given credit for, and much of it is directly applicable to what happens when oil prices climb and people change their behavior to compensate for it. In that regard, they have the entire zombieland contingent beat, hands down.

These darn good economists - are you talking here of a) academics, b) government employees c) investment analysts...? I think lay-criticism arises because of the obvious fact that the global economy has been mismanaged. Debt has been spiralling out of control for more than a decade don't you agree? I guess that group a) are rather powerless to influence policy, b) yes-men and c) out to make money at any cost and ignorant of the social costs or long-term view. Simplistic and possibly wrong but from where we are now I simply cannot see how non-specialists can view economists with anything but disdain. I can see a case for astonished admiration at how the economy has hung on without huge catastrophe as long as it has, despite the dreadful "fundamentals". But maybe the credit there is not be due to economists?

These darn good economists - are you talking here of a) academics, b) government employees c) investment analysts...?

One government, two academics.

Debt has been spiralling out of control for more than a decade don't you agree?

Quite a bit longer than a decade. The last decade has certainly defined BUNCHES of course, but when Ronny was borrowing as fast as he could, we all bitched just as loudly then as peakers do now about it.

Figure 30 is the one I was referring to.

In 1956 people still had high hopes of nuclear power.

It's interesting to compare Figure 30 of the 1956 paper to Figure 10 of the 1976 paper.
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/wwf1976/print.htm
The graph no longer contains a reference to nuclear power. Instead three different power consumption scenarios are presented; not all of them cheerful.

High hopes for fusion power, specifically; scientists around the world were confident they would have the last couple of problems ironed out soon and "unlimited power" would be our future, they had after all been on a long winning streak at that point. Of course, as it turned out, fusion was a giant money pit that led nowhere, and the effort drained the global R&D coffers dry of funds that could have gone to solar or other more useful things.

There's a fascinating book on it all called "Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking". Quite relevant here.

(Nate) Would it be reasonable to try and get a balanced opinion from contributors to this site of whether/when fusion will be productive? The topic seems to draw conflicting opinions from supposedly informed people on both sides and I personally would be glad to get some sort of balanced information.

I don't know of any "balanced information" on fusion power. There have been many many links to various sites posted on TOD over the past four years that have information on fusion generation of electricity; search the archives.

The people in the know--physicists in general and high-energy physicists in particular--seem to fall into one of two camps:
1. There is no theoretical reason why fusion power won't work; we just need to engineer the problem some more.
2. No existing approach to fusion power is promising. Even if electricity from fusion can be produced, it would be so expensive (high operating cost, very high capital cost) that nobody would want it.

My own position is that we don't need fusion energy because fission plants work well and are a known quantity. One thing we don't have to worry about is running out of radioactive fuel for fission plants; if necessary we could mine granite for uranium, and there is abundant thorium rather easy to get at.

Now don't start us on fission purleeeeze.
(thanks for the pointer on fusion)

My own position is that we don't need fusion energy because fission plants work well and are a known quantity. One thing we don't have to worry about is running out of radioactive fuel for fission plants; if necessary we could mine granite for uranium, and there is abundant thorium rather easy to get at.

If I recall my "Hubbert" correctly, his estimates of the Gassaway Member of the Chattanooga Shale energy value ran about 1 square mile of uranium content yielding the energy equivalent of 1 full year of crude energy, 30 billion barrels or so.

The areal extent of that shale is measured in multiple thousands of square miles, and that is only 1 shale. Ignore the obvious implications (particularly the economic) of the resource pyramid at your own peril.

Barring a breakthrough in something unexpected like the polywell approach which could be dropped into the existing infrastructure (probability in the coming 50 years probably circa 1-2% at the most optimistic), fusion will not be a significant contributor this century. The ITER-type approach is too big and too slow and has deep fundamental problems with ever being deployed, even if it succeeds wildly well on budget and on it's planned schedule. It will be a casualty of receding horizons, not a pony to bet on.

It's strongly believed in by many with primarily-reductionist mindsets, and recognized as an extreme longshot by systems thinkers who have understood the ramifications of 'peak everything.'

I regard fusion research as a big science project that at least gather knowledge about plasma physics, extreme materials and solving hard technical problems. It is a worthwile knowledge gathering project we can cooperate on on a global scale while we have a large surplus of resources but it should never be counted on to succeed technically or economically and it should only use a minor part of the global RnD budgets.

Barring a breakthrough in something unexpected like the polywell approach which could be dropped into the existing infrastructure (probability in the coming 50 years probably circa 1-2% at the most optimistic), fusion will not be a significant contributor this century. The ITER-type approach is too big and too slow and has deep fundamental problems with ever being deployed, even if it succeeds wildly well on budget and on it's planned schedule. It will be a casualty of receding horizons, not a pony to bet on.

It's strongly believed in by many with primarily-reductionist mindsets, and recognized as an extreme longshot by systems thinkers who have understood the ramifications of 'peak everything.

Excellent reference. And of course not all scenarios are cheerful. I might have had less overall crankiness with peakers at other sites if any of them recognized the possibility that their favorite zombie scenario might be just another low probability, high impact event like, say, the Deepwater Horizon spill, with the rest of the spectrum consisting of various low/medium/high BAU scenario's, and maybe even an energy breakthrough at the upper end making the entire point moot.

Nate,

I think an equally productive route for a letter like that is to give it to your friends. Ask them for the favor of a considerate answer. Think carefully about the responses.

I think we need to know what our (non-internet) neighbors think. Because how they see the issues may be more useful to know.

A little dose of unfortunate reality, courtesy of YouTube marketing:

http://www.youtube.com/lasvegas

Or, if you open YouTube now, and wait for a minute, the whole Vega$ ad campaign starts at the top of the screen with the absurd and sad 'Lake DoWhatYa-Wanna' video ad.

These marketing campaigns demonstrate that we have our work cut out for us wrt starting an open, large conversation about sustainability.

You won't see Harry Reid lambasting this stuff, because dissing the Veg2$ tourist machine would be political suicide. No guts for that.

Don't expect anything better from Sharon Angle either...she will espouse 'roll, baby, roll' for Casinoland and drill, baby, drill for the FFs.

I think Vega$ is an abomination...not from any religious standpoint, but from a common-sense environmentalist POV. what a waste of resources, including time.

Wasting resources is not unusual -- it's what we humans do. Humans are different from the other great apes primarily in the elaborateness of our nesting habits.

Las Vegas is a product of the distortion of the market by government spending. It would not exist except for a) the government building Hoover Dam to provide water and power in an otherwise uninhabitable location, and b) laws against gambling in states other than Nevada.

Gambling, from an economic viewpoint, is a wasteful activity. People spend a lot of money to travel to Las Vegas, stay in Las Vegas, be entertained in Las Vegas, and lose money in the casinos. None of this is essential.

Of course, other states have observed that if they relax their gambling laws, then free market distortion b) above no longer applies. They are more and more taking the libertarian approach that if people want to waste money gambling, let them. And it is better to let a New Yorker gamble in Yonkers than go to Las Vegas (or Foxwoods or Atlantic City).

Without a monopoly on gambling, Las Vegas has little reason to exist. If the power and water subsidies were removed it would go dark and dry up.

Of course, Las Vegas is nothing new. Governments and populations have indulged in wasteful spending for a long time. Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Egypt, the great cathedrals of Europe, the Winter Palace in St Petersburg ... the list could go on and on.

Being able to waste resources is probably a good thing. If we need to cut back to just essentials, we can cut a lot.

"A man without vices is like a ship without cargo,
there's nothing to throw overboard in case of a storm."

Nellis AFB, and the other various DoD bases outside of Vegas, and the training air and ground-space ranges, including the Nevada Test Site, have injected a certain amount of benefit into the NV economy. This pales in comparison to gambling, but it is nevertheless a factor in Las Vegas's economy.

Your last bit of philosophy is a little lost on me...the opportunity costs over the decades are staggering.

I would rather us have had spent this moolah on efficiency and renewables and nuclear power. These things not only are physical plant, but they provide essential energy services to the rest of our activities, and their manufacture and upkeep would have supported good blue-collar jobs.

Military expenditures, and even more the costs of war, are one of the biggest categories of waste. Consider the destruction of human and physical capital between 1914 and 1946. The world would be a much better place had not WW I and WW II happened.

Much of the discussion here focuses on the merits of this or that alternative in terms of very utilitarian economics. This is the type of analysis used in "engineering economics" to evaluate the merits of alternative projects to the firm.

I don't think that either governments or individual consumers think of expenditures in those terms. Governments often think in terms like JFK's challenge to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. This is an almost perfectly useless goal from an economic point of view. Any economic benefits derived as spin offs of the moon shot project could have been achieved through direct funding of the scientific and engineering projects. However, direct funding for utilitarian R&D projects could not have been mustered without the Cold War goal of competition with the USSR.

Similarly, if you window shop for watches in Geneva, you will find watches from maybe 5 francs to 500,000 francs. From a utilitarian perspective, the cheap ones probably tell time as well as the most expensive -- perhaps better, since the cheap ones use better technology.

So I don't think that government policy regarding energy will be determined by utilitarian analyses. Nor do I expect that political support for those policies can be gained by utilitarian arguments.

On the other hand, a society that wastes as much as ours can do a considerable amount of belt tightening to muddle through a transition from oil to other energy sources.

If World War II had not taken place, the most likely outcome would be a world of three empires: The German Speaking Empire (GSE) would include the U.S., Canada, and Mexico; the Japanese Speaking Empire including Australia and New Zealand plus all of the "Greater Co-prosperity Sphere, e.g. China, Indonesia, and the Russian Empire including all of the former U.S.S.R. plus some border states such as Afghanistan.

To say that World War II was a waste is fatuous. Some wars are necessary. War is nasty, but it is sometimes preferable to the alternatives. Take for example the U.S. Civil War--immensely costly in terms of casualties and won by the total war of Sherman's march through Georgia--suppose there had been no Civil War. What would have happened? Most likely Negro slavery, "the peculiar institution" would still exist as part of states rights. Like it or not, some wars are necessary and are far better outcomes than surrender to an unjust peace.

Often the alternative to war is the spreading of regimes headed by people such as Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini, Jefferson Davis, and Saddam Hussein. Good heavens, suppose Britain had made a deal with Hitler in 1940, what would have happened then? In all probability Hitler would then have been able to seize Middle Eastern oil and hence had the capability to rule the oceans, the air, and the Western European landmass plus big hunks of Africa. Come to think of it, if Hitler had not been at war with Britain, then the German invasion of Russia would probably have been successful.

It does not take two parties to make war. One aggressor is sufficient. The victims can either fight or submit to conquest. History suggests that outcomes for victims are better if they fight than if they submit.

People like Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini, Jefferson Davis, and Saddam Hussein have BACKING from the true architects of the world.

The visible boogeyman ALWAYS reports higher up. How do you think they get the money and power to advance???

btw, I love your post. It's science fiction alternative history. Americans speaking German and Australians speaking Japanese. Love it!

World Wars I and II are essentially two phases of one conflict. It begins in August 1914 and lasts until the end of the Chinese Revolution in 1949, and encompasses WW I, the wars between the White's and Red's in Russia, the wars between the Reds and Poles and other reactionary armies in Eastern Europe, the purges in Russia, the Spanish Civil War, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and China, World War II, and the Chinese Revolution. To the butcher's bill of war and revolution must be added the Flu of 1918 and the famines caused by revolution, especially in the Ukraine.

Contrast that with the outcome of the Franco Prussian war of 1870. France declared war on Prussia July 19, 1870 and Paris fell on January 28, 1871. Nothing much bad happened as a result. France lost some territory, Germany was united under Prussia, and the European system continued pretty much intact.

Had General von Kluck not detached units to screen non-existant British forces on his right flank, and had not the General Staff prematurely transfered divisions to face the Russians in East Prussia, it is likely that von Kluck would have had sufficient manpower to swing west of Paris while keeping contact with von Bulow on his left. Paris would have fallen in 1918, the parties would have sued for peace in the west, and futher territorial battles would have proceeded in the east to realign borders in the Balkans and between Russia, Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

Western Civilization would not have been largely destroyed by 35 years of war.

I've always found alternative histories fascinating, but one current running consistently through most industrialized and industrializing countries throughout the 20th century was the race to get biggest and richest fastest. Everyone knows who won, but its hard to say that other scenarios would have played out with less carnage; as Sun Tzu said, the most dangerous fight is between opponents equally matched, and there were too many near equivalent competitors around.

Alternatively, the Haber–Bosch process could have been invented two years later.

The Kaiser and A-H Emperor, informed of the dwindling ammunition supplies and no replacement possible, and facing stalemated fronts, would have sued for a negotiated peace sometime in 1915, before all the warring societies were fundamentally traumatized.

Give back to France what they took in 1870, some reparations, etc.

Alan

These US economic scenarios don't make much sense.
Best case is 0% growth.
Case#2 is -4% growth to 2015.
Case#3 is -8% growth to 2015.
Between 2000 and 2007 growth was 2% due to deficit sprending by Bush.
The 2007-2009 crash was about -6% growth followed by
2% growth from deficit spending by Bush and Obama.

Between 1945 and 1970, there was a 90% top tax rate and the WW2 fell with a result of 1% GDP average growth. Between 1970 and 2000 the top tax rate fell to 35% and the deficit grew steadily except under Carter and Clinton and GDP rose between 2-4% per year.
Tax cuts cause greater income inequality.

It's clear that increasing the deficit either by tax cuts or government stimulus expands GDP by ~2%.
If the government tries to pay off the deficit you are looking at 0-1% growth.

GDP is a reflection of the growth in the money supply
and not based on resource depletion.

Bogus Austrian economists say that a high ratio of government debt to GDP leads to hyperinflation but the US debt to GDP isn't very high.

If the government keeps handing out tax cuts or benefits without paying for them with more taxes then
hyperinflation may strike(though it hasn't in Japan, the US gov't debt is about the same as Germany).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Public_debt_percent_g...

Bottom line GDP isn't highly correlated to resource depletion.

I expect that GDP will rise though the US standard of living will continue to fall.

The rich will simply get richer and the poor poorer.

There is no reason for the plunging US GDP IIER predicts.

Keynesian stimulus can result in the debt being too big, at some point the numbers can indeed become impossible to pay back and a default of some sort or inflation must occur. The temptation to monetize the debt is simply too great. When about 50% of the population does not pay income taxes, you can not have voting because the majority are unproductive. The system will eventually fail and the nonproductive will not like the outcome.

Point of order: Anyone who works 'above board' has to pay the flat-rate social security tax. along with one's employer. The fact that SS tax is not referred to as an income tax does not mean that it doesn't come from one's income.

The U.S. needs to cut spending in addition to sun-setting the Bush tax cuts and implementing carbon consumption taxes.

Let us start with a 5% total budget cut in 2012...the military must be included. We can work our way to a 25% total budget cut (in real dollars) by 2020. Within that over-arching goal, the U.S. military budget would be reduced by 50% in real dollar terms.

Where do you get that 50% of the population is unproductive? People can legitimately earn income in low-wage jobs, and because their incomes are so low they aren't required to pay taxes. Do you consider these people "unproductive"?

And the number who pay no income tax is actually closer to 38%. They do pay other taxes besides income tax.

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/do_40_percent_of_americans_pay_no....

40% of those employed are employed in low wage, service sector jobs. Selling cell phone plans for the most part is unproductive.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-110556732...
Yahoo finance is far more reliable than Annenberg foundation funded factcheck. In 2007, about 38 percent of households paid no federal income tax, a figure that jumped to 49 percent in 2008, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center.

Look at the citation on Factcheck, it is out dated and the information is from 2007.

I am very interested in your point here about '40% of people working in low wage, service sector jobs'.

What courses of action do you propose to move these folks into higher-paying jobs?

And then, who do you propose to work these jobs which are apparently beneath your contempt?

Can I suppose that you do not ever shop at Wal-Mart, Target, Lowes, Home Depot, Kohls, Circle-K, any restaurant? Do you look right through these people when you pay for your goods?

Are these people to be replced by robots?

Should these people be unionized and make a higher wage and therefore you can help us provide them a living wage by paying more for our always low, low priced products and services?

Should these low-lifes go to college and learn to be productive lawyers and financiers?

Your statement shows that you judge people's worth by how much income they make. Ha! DO you know how many government workers (and military officers) make income sufficient to be in your esteemed upper 50%...by being extremely unproductive...by conducting endless PowerPoint studies?

Don't forget those highly paid marketing gurus who conceive those grand advertising campaigns to sell us drugs and other products we don't need.

Oh, and those sports and music stars...they are obviously all the top-bracket productive people in your estimate, simply due to the fact that they make top-tier incomes.

Back to the point: Start seriously cutting the government budget, including the military. Sunset the Bush tax cuts. Implement carbon taxes.

"Selling cell phone plans for the most part is unproductive."

Well, yes. Of course, if we start there... how many productive occupations will we end up with after the weeding-out?

80% of "jobs" could be eliminated, as they just push information around.
Not saying people don't work hard, but in the long run, accomplish little, other that to keep a delusionary economic model legitimate.

Also, everyone who plays in the legal economy has to pay sales taxes on whatever they buy...sales taxes are flat. I do realize that some states exempt certain types of purchases, such as food or clothing. The are not income taxes, yet they are paid (especially by lower income people) out of....income.

My Grandmother used to pay a nickel for a loaf of bread. This is irrelevant.

If a loaf of bread ends up costing one million dollars, and I have 50 million in my back pocket, I'm good to go.

No offense, Nate, but why in the world is Jimmy Carter's picture here? Putting it up merely promotes the false notion that he was serious about this issue. He absolutely was not:

http://www.deathbycar.info/2010/07/solar-gesture/

Meanwhile, even to get this question on anybody's agenda will require some serious change in the election-by-TV-and-money arrangement. Barring that, it'll never happen. It's a forbidden question.

What we need is a serious, in-the-streets social movement for progressive human survival.

"Meanwhile, even to get this question on anybody's agenda will require some serious change in the election-by-TV-and-money arrangement."

Most of you seem simply to refuse to think about the work that might be done at the local level, where "election-by-TV-and-money" simply hasn't penetrated, except in the largest communities.

I was alive and aware during the Carter presidency, and though I was disappointed at how some things worked out and at some of the compromises that had to be made, there was never any doubt where Carter's heart was. He wasn't a politician like we usually see - who he was in private and in public was the same, he said what he meant, and it hurt him to not be able to do what he said he would, and to be unable to make people see what was right.

He had good intentions, he was ahead of the curve, he was honest about it, and he has my respect. That link you posted is the kind of half thought through trash-talk that's popular nowadays; if it at least quoted the man or detailed its claims it would be less offensive.

The USA has experienced several recessions in the last 40 years with each recovery peaking at a lower level than when the recession started. During the recessions businesses found ways to make workers more productive meaning the demand for workers has been going down. The low unemployment levels of the late 90s came several years after the growth period started. The rising tide did no good for those anchored to the bottom. Since the 80s the jobs created have mostly paid less than those lost. In effect for a large percentage of Americans the economy has not grown for the last several decades.

There has been a theory that economic growth is the result of technological innovation. In the 20s it was things like autos, radio, and refrigerators. In the 30s and 40s it was aviation and other war related technologies including nuke weapons. In the 50s it was jet engines, television, and automatic transmissions and other improvements in autos. In the 60s it was transistors and the space race. In the 80s it was the PC and the birth of computer games. In the 90s it was the internet and cell phones. Since 2000 it has been illusionary financial shenanigans. Energy efficiency improvements like hybrid cars and renewable energy could be the next big thing in the teens with next generation nuke power reactors soon afterward. What growth that does happen will be short lived with the benefits going to fewer and fewer people each time around.

It seems that some people's answer will be to tax these have-nots into non-existence.

This whole discussion is interesting but it kinda runs in circles at times.

What amazes me about stuff like GDP is that everyone operates like any of these figures are worth much.

GDP is like gasoline prices or official USD inflation numbers. IMHO they're virtually a form of govt propaganda these days. The US pop could be living like Soviet-era Russian peasants and the official numbers will probably still look decent.

This is the one alternative GDP chart that I know of, but I don't know if there is any truly objective "reality check" one could do for a more informed opinion:

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/gross-domestic-product-charts

2b. If not, might such a candidate, even in a losing effort, influence the election issues and as a result positively impact transition efforts away from growth based economy?

Sure,
he/she could go on to win in the future for a start. Even a loser could influence others in their own party and help spread the word. Europeans are all facing up to austerity measures. The people dont like it but the politicians have got the balls to do it. The solution must be top down.

Europeans are all facing up to austerity measures.

But, aren't these the wrong austerity measures? We need austerity measures that reduce our usage of physical resources, while keeping people usefully employed. To just cut government spendingisn't a way to stimulate "green" growth. Instead we are getting a contraction of government, in the false hope that this will reduce government red ink. But, rather than reducing deficits, it simply reduces economic "demand", further contracting the economy and with it government revenues.

At a time when the private economy is letting us down, having government follow suit just means that there is no engine left to end the decline. We all know, we gotta get serious about the new clean-energy and high energy efficiency transition. But, who is going to organize all these un/underemployed people to do the necessary work?

"But, aren't these the wrong austerity measures? We need austerity measures that reduce our usage of physical resources, while keeping people usefully employed."

Yes, they are likely quite wrong, and the recent capture of the G-20 summit by the deficit hawks was disturbing and wrongheaded, IMHO. We need, instead, a Truly New Deal.

But, please let's not talk about "green growth" anymore. Let's use terms that are attractive and resonate with the public, while reflecting the reality that growth as we have known it is neither possible nor desirable.

But, please let's not talk about "green growth" anymore.

Maybe it is getting a bit tired. But, we need growth in the "green" sector to replace shrinkage elsewhere.

OK. I'll accept that. With gritted teeth... ;^(

See my concept for a reduction in consumption coupled with a rise in investment (mainly long lived energy efficient & energy producing infrastructure).

Reduced income coupled with increased wealth (because we build long lived assets instead of just consuming resources).

Even as GDP shrinks, it is possible to have the hallmarks of a "good economy" with this strategy. Reasonable unemployment (say 5%-6% range), a balanced budget, fewer homeless, etc.

A significant shift in employment for sure, and a lot of voluntary (or involuntary) simplicity in lifestyles and consumption habits.

One perspective is that "we" reduce consumption faster than we are going to have to anyway (live today like it is 2016) and invest, in a variety of productive ways, the reduced consumption.

Best Hopes for Making the Best Transition Possible,

Alan

We are working with the same concepts but I have stalled for a few months after completing my little book "När resurser sinar", I ought to translate it to english and refine the best ideas in it.

Yes, please !

Pretty good minds may also think alike.

Alan

Alan: I'm pleased when your message moves away from what sometimes seems like unwarranted optimism. I agree that meaningful life can be lived in an energy- and resource-constrained present-future. The meaning, of course, will have to come from quite different pursuits than are common today in the over-developed West.

Do we also agree on the critical role of local choices in making a good transition possible? And on the enormous influence of the built environment?

I think a broad front is best. Local, state, national and even international. All have important and even critical roles.

Example: Without the support for renewables by the State of California and resulting "Wind Rush" in the 1970s, wind energy would not be the viable, economic alternative that it is today.

The culture I live in, in New Orleans, is steadily evolving towards a more sustainable alternative. Pursuit of good food, music and times :-) Biological consumption of ethanol has a long tradition here. Cultural events of many types create a pace to live by.

I have long advocated a significant change in our built environment. Kunstler is right about our post-WW II investment in Suburbia.

I have never seen the utility of despair, so I try to avoid it.

Best Hopes :-)

Alan

Nate, sorry about all the senseless comments spoiling an excellent post worthy of hours of debate.
Should the site shut-down until a month after the leak is stopped? I miss the old oil drum :(

But landrew,,,,, it's the Campfire!

I think that the letter above is a little too vague to have an impact on candidates in our political system. Candidates don't actually read these letters themselves. They are read by staff people. The staff people note the 'issue', and whether the letter is 'for' or 'against'. At most they will look for a 'talking point' or two. They will tally your letter as one that was 'for x', 'against x', or 'said x', or some such, and at some point brief the candidate as to how many letters on such and such issue the staff is fielding. Also, if they can pigeonhole your letter as belonging to an 'issue' on which the candidate has written a statement, you'll get a response with that statement as a form letter. I don't think this is one of those issues, and so the letters will go uncategorized and perhaps even untallied.

Now I suppose that if a massive letter writing campaign were organized with many people writing this type of letter, some candidates (staff) might actually notice and say "what is going on here? What issue is this?". But I doubt that the staff will have any luck convincing the candidate to pay attention to this 'issue' among the many more immediate 'issues' that require his or her attention. At best, some younger staff people who will be the next generation of politicians may gain some awareness of the 'growth' issue.

In summary, at this point in time I think it is better to simply send candidates a letter that says 'what are you doing about peak oil?'

"Candidates don't actually read these letters themselves. They are read by staff people."

You're thinking of candidates for "higher" offices. Many of the issues that most directly impact and effect the energy and resource consumption of our communities are dealt with at the local level. Candidates for local office pay very close attention to communications from prospective voters.

Global population study launched by Royal Society, from BBC online:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10578484.stm

We shall see what their report says when it is published in 2012.

Perhaps political leaders will get more traction if they effectively address this unfolding context: http://www.ecobuddhism.org/index.php/science/featured_articles1/getting_...

Nate's question goes to the heart of the problem: growth is ending. Except for maybe China and India for a bit longer, the developed world is facing huge downward decline. No politician will touch this with a 10ft pole, because the implications are earth shaking and nothing but horrific bad news. Every budget made by the gov, public entities, and the financial system in general, assumes exponential growth. When that ends, it means certain financial collapse. No one is prepared for GDP dropping every year, but that is exactly what is coming.

An even more basic question is the financial implications of the Babyboom itself. The babyboom is like a rolling tidal wave of population density which has been moving up in age. During the last few decades, this huge group of people were all working, at peak earning age, pouring money into savings, retirement, and generating great income to pay taxes. As they now move into retirement age, that all comes to an end. Most people talk about how this will affect social security and medicare expenses, but that is not even half the problem. The more serious problem is the decline of income, and therefore the ability to pay those expenses. We have begun to see the start of that already.

Ask yourself 2 simple questions:

- Who spends more, someone age 30-50, or someone age 50-70?
- Who earns more, someone age 30-50, or someone age 50-70?

The answer to both those questions is obvious, and the implications are profound. With an economy based on 70% consumer spending, you can see what will happen. The drop in income will destroy the financial system as we know it, and virtually all business will suffer year after year decline. Tax revenue will continue to fall. We are entering into an era of "Negative Exponential Growth" and that is lethal to a system expecting positive exponential growth.

Another serious aspect is investments. Consider the following:

- When people are working, they pour money INTO investments for retirement, and prices go UP.
- When people retire, they pull money OUT of those investments, and prices go DOWN.

In 2008 we saw what happens when there are only sellers and no buyers: prices fall off a cliff. The same is coming to the entire financial system. People will be pulling money out at increasing rates, and the amount going in will be in permanent decline. Prices will seriously fall. The same goes for real estate. In another 10 years there will be 3 houses for sale for every 1 buyer. It is simple mathematics and it cannot be changed. There is no "bailout" possible.

We have lived in an economic system based on "Exponential Growth". We will transition to a new economic system based on "Zero Growth". It was inevitable. The transition will be cataclysmic. This transition will likely go on for years or decades, and there will be many people who refuse to except it, and will try to fight it and deny it. Many politicians will try to promise perpetual exponential growth, but reality is not optional.

Consumption-based growth is not real growth. The USA just has an epic credit card debt to China. Increasing it every year is not a sign of positive economic progress.

The baby boomers have not been creating more wealth than other generations, so much as they've just been hogging it all. They were born into a nation with fresh extra wealth and tons of extra infratstructure ready to work far into the future. They're leaving it with a wasted infrastructure, loads of foreign debt, and a whole civilization built on unsustainabe oversize products & houses. They have basically ripped through 3 generations of wealth in a single generation.

Show your math.

We've had two boomer Presidents: Clinton and W. Ben Bernanke is the first boomer to be Fed Chairman.

The Greatest Generation has run this country until just recently. They were organized, disciplined, and very politically active, and they ruled America with an iron fist.

I don't think math is needed. Bill Clinton and GWB didn't spend three generations worth of wealth, the population did over the last 40 years or so.

The USA's economic situation stopped truly improving around 1970, speaking very roughly. It began to fall from there. We have been on a borrowing binge ever since, because the public would rather put off the problems for the next generations than deal with them and lose lifestyle.

The politicians are just the enablers. It took the bulk of the population's approval for this stuff go to on. I don't think the BB generation represents some kind of uniquely bad group of people, but they were morally challenged as a group and they failed. They elected to steal from their descendants rather than compromise their lifestyle.

I don't think most other generations would have done so much better than they did, but I do think we need to see this situation for exactly what it is. If we don't then what happens when the national discussion turns to laying the blame for the mess we're headed towards? Just like most other populations might do in their place, I suspect most of the boomers will readily go for blaming alternate fall guys. Illegals, the current youth, the current liberals/conservatives, the current politicians, the current "moral decline of America", etc.

Exactly correct. The next poster wanted math? Hows this. Let's take the numbers from a couple months ago in February. They were very simple:

- Taxes taken in by US gov in Feb = $100B
- Federal Gov Spending in Feb = $300B

So let's balance the budget. We have 2 choices: cut spending, or increase taxes.

Door #1: Increase Taxes
Tax rates would have to TRIPLE - 300% increase. So if the marginal rate now is 35%, it would have to go to 105%. That's right folks, the gov would get your entire paycheck and you would have to take aloan out (hey just like the gov) to pay the rest.

You don't like my numbers, how about the CBO. It says taxes would have to go up by 240%, and that was a conservative estimate. So my number of 300% is right in line.

Obviously there would be no economy, and the truth is this problem cannot be fixed by taxes - impossible.

Door #2: Cut Spending
So we are left with only 1 choice, and that is the truth: spending has to be cut by 65%. That means fire 2/3's of all gov workers, defense, and cut medicare/SS by 65%.

That is reality. Spending is completely out of control, and most people have no clue how bad it is. There is NO pain free solution.

How do you give people more benefits without having to make them pay for it? Borrow money. That's what our gov has been doing massively for 30 years now. We have not been living in the real world, we have been living on borrowed money.

Why do you think OMB budget director Orzag quit two weeks ago? Why is congress not showing the budget this summer as they are required to by law, instead they are delaying until AFTER the Nov election. The answer to both is the deficits are WORSE than predicted - much worse. The numbers are so horrible they are trying to hide them.

It came to an end last month for Europe. We will be up to bat soon, and we will strike out as well. The US has no plans to ever have a balanced budget again - ever. How do you pay off debt? You can't. It is only a matter of time now until the bond market refuses to loan us anymore money, and then it's game over.

Your choice of February was misleading enough to be called a lie.

No quarterly tax payments, no "April 15th" payments, just "other taxes" (cigarettes, whiskey, import duties, people finally settling up, estate taxes and more).

Alan

No it is not a lie. As I said, the CBO gave estimates of 240%. Does that sound like a lie to you? Other detailed estimates have shown that a 100% tax rate will no longer balance the budget. Check your facts. Furthermore, you need to realize that the Federal gov books are cooked. They are taking one thing after another "off the books". SS has been raided for decades, it is off the books, the war costs are off the books, bailouts are off the books, etc. What that means is the TOTAL amount of money the gov has to spend is much larger than what you know about. When they say the deficit is $1.5T, they are not including all the money they are spending "off the books". Add that in, and you are over $2T per year now.

Then you have to add in all the expiring bonds (debt) they have to roll-over every year. The gov is selling $50B-$100B of bonds nearly every week now! 5 years ago the US only sold $80B of bonds the entire year! This is debt into oblivion. Do you have any friends that max out their credit cards, and then take out more credit cards to pay the others? Well, we are there. It's called bankruptcy.

Russia and China have been holding meetings talking about the post USD world. The Oil producers have been concerned as well with the decline of USD. They held a meeting last month of 64 oil producing countries in Cancoon, and the big topic was oil pricing. Press was not allowed. Watch what happens when the USD starts dropping again. Russia/China is preparing to roll out the "Gold Ruble" or some other composite currency backed by Gold, and the Middle East oil producers may go along saying: "We are now pegging Oil prices to Gold". You will then see the end of the USD virtually overnight. The world will change forever.

100 years ago the British pound sterling was the world's reserve currency. That ended, and the USD took its place. China has 1/4 of the world's population and virtually no debt. Time for another change.

"China has 1/4 of the world's population and virtually no debt."

Really?

March 3 (Bloomberg) -- China’s hidden borrowing may push government debt to 96 percent of gross domestic product next year, increasing the risk of a financial crisis in the world’s third-biggest economy

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aN94MF7BDx_A

It seems they want to be like Americans in many ways.

There are so many people in denial. The US right now is borrowing 2X as much money as the rest of the entire world combined. What do you think happens when you have more debt than you can ever pay off? Default, bankruptcy. Europe learned that first hand last month the hard way, and it scared the Hell out of them. All of the people in Europe lost 25% of their wealth almost overnight, because they printed the money to buy their own bonds. The EURO fell from $1.60 to $1.20. All of the Gold in Germany was sold out in 4 days. Everyone else in the world knows what's coming and where the USD is headed.

Here's the news just out today:

"It was announced that for the first time ever, a major credit ratings agency has given China a higher credit rating than the U.S. The credit rating of the U.S. was dropped from AAA to AA."

Thinking about the thinking of a poet......

The Purse-seine, by Robinson Jeffers, 1937

……I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible,
then, when the crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall
to the other of their closing destiny the
phosphorescent
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body
sheeted with flame, like a live rocket
A comet’s tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside
the narrowing
Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up
to watch, sighing in the dark; the vast walls
of night
Stand erect to the stars.

Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top
On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light:
how could I help but recall the seine-net
Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how
beautiful the city appeared, and a little terrible.
I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together
into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now
There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable
of free survival, insulated
From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all
dependent. The circle is closed, and the net
Is being hauled in……

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001

A "tip of the hat" to Debbie Cook for thinking about thinking...and perceiving.

Dear Debbie Cook,

I suppose at least one of the challenges before us is to deploy human thinking and perceiving to gaining an adequate understanding of the population dynamics of the human species.

As Professor Emeritus Gary L. Peters has indicated so clearly recently on TOD, the "Stop Population Growth Now" thread, extant scientific evidence of human population dynamics from David Pimentel and Russell Hopfenberg needs to be rigorously examined.

Some references to their work follow:

Hopfenberg R. 2009. Genetic Feedback and Human Population Regulation. Human Ecology, 37(5).

Hopfenberg R. 2003. Human Carrying Capacity Is Determined by Food Availability. Population & Environment, 25(2).

Hopfenberg R and Pimentel D. 2001. Human Population Numbers as a Function of Food Supply. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 3, pp. 1-15.

Thank you.

The lack of effort to communicate a coherent, comprehensive analysis of the unsustainability of the global economy, something vital about the complex world we inhabit, appears similar to the silence with which scientific evidence of human population dynamics has been met during the last "lost" decade of denial.

The growth of the human species worldwide could be the proverbial mother of all human-induced global challenges. If that is so, then failing to courageously acknowledge and humanely address this predominant challenge could render efforts of humanity to overcome other human-driven, increasingly complex challenges to human wellbeing and environmental health ultimately irrelevant, I suppose.

Please consider that both those who believe human population numbers are exploding and those who believe human numbers are collapsing are correct. Globally, human numbers are undoubtedly increasing, but in some places on the surface of Earth human numbers can easily be seen decreasing. It depends upon your scope of observation. I am perceiving and thinking globally when I report human numbers are skyrocketing. In a similar manner, I can certainly recognize that human numbers in many places (eg, Algeria, Iran or Italy) have been declining. But in order to make that report it is necessary for me to change my scope of observation.

Imagine that a change in one's scope of observation is like the difference between looking at the forest and the trees. Looking at the forest is like looking at absolute global human population numbers; whereas, looking at the trees is like looking at the population numbers in a place like Italy. Global human numbers can be increasing, while the human population numbers in Italy are decreasing.

Or imagine that we are looking at a wave, watching it move toward the shore where it crashes at our feet. As the wave we are observing moves toward us, there are many molecules in the wave that are moving in the opposite direction.......against the tide. Population numbers in Italy and many other places are moving against rapidly rising tide of absolute global human population numbers. Population numbers are simultaneously rising globally and falling locally.

So much of life and nature is indeed complex. Even so, we must not allow the acknowledged complexity of some things like the global economy to mystify, mesmerize or blind us to something comparatively simple and as evident as human population dynamics. If implications of the skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population numbers were not so profoundly and potentially threatening to the future of life as we know it and the integrity of Earth, there would be no reason for scientists with appropriate expertise to assume their responsibilities and perform their duties by rigorously scrutinizing the peer-reviewed and published research of human population dynamics and the human overpopulation of Earth. A fidelity to science and humanity, I suppose, demands that the scientific evidence be examined carefully and reported objectively.

Perhaps we can speak openly with regard to the complexity in the global economy of the humankind and to the relative simplicity of the population dynamics of the human species.

Not long before this conversation is closed, and hopefully you don't mind if I go wildly off-topic with maybe time for someone to add a reply to help me: Having arrived in the PO community under 2 years ago I've been catching up with authors who clearly understood many of the predicaments discussed here - Warren Johnson, Alvin Toffler, E F Schumaker, Hermann Daly, John Seymour &c all writing in the 1970-1980s. I find it disconcerting to realise that so much was seen by so many, so early. So to what extent is "the boy who cried wolf" being played out on the pages of TOD? Is the data so incontrovertible that this time, in the first decade of the 21st century, there is no chance that in 10 years or 20 years from now someone else will come across todays writers and think "hang on, that is just the same message repeated over"?

Dear njwatts,

Thanks for your astute observation. While I agree with you generally, please note that there is something relatively new and apparently unforeseen that has remained unacknowledged. I invite you and TOD editors to find one expert with appropriate knowledge who will straightforwardly and openly critique the heretofore ignored scientific evidence only recently presented in these threads by Professor Emeritus Gary L. Peters regarding the unchallenged research of human population dynamics by Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but prior to the presentation by Professor Peters I do not believe you will find in the work of top rank conservation and population biologists, ecologists, human demographers or economists adequate scientific evidence that sensibly examines, much less contradicts, the hypotheses that human population numbers can be seen as a function of food supply; that human carrying is determined by food availability; and that human population dynamics is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of non-human species that have evolved on Earth alongside Homo sapiens.

Sincerely,

Steve

Steve,

No doubt food abundance … relative or absolute … is a limiting factor common to all life on this planet, including humans.

In the case of say, wolves and caribou, it is easy to see what happens when food supplies dwindle and populations are constrained geographically: the distribution and abundance of both, in terms of population densities, show a cyclical response. But, in the case of humans, there is a vast difference in absolute impact on the food availability of the future that makes possible/probable outcomes dramatically different.

Because we can manipulate and “plan” ahead, we have “successfully” occupied every corner of the planet. And given all of the conflict over resources, it appears that we are reaching the limits set by geographic boundaries, unless we move to another planet … which many believe isn’t likely at this time. We are now in the process of depleting or rendering unusable many of our life-sustaining resources.

We have yet to witness a cyclical fluctuation in our population numbers that is so well documented in other species.

When the crash happens it will be severe and long. We are making sure ‘renewables’ will face a long and difficult recovery time.

I appreciate the intent of the letter, but believe it reinforces old-school thinking that "growth=good" and that welfare only increases from increased material consumption. We are intellectual beings, can't we have better welfare on less? A reframed question would force the politician to consider how our lives can be better despite shrinkage in total energy consumption. In the US, our worst addiction is the petrol-drinking personal auto. Personal vehicles (cars + SUVs) consume 16% of the total 100 Quads of energy used in US each year. No other single activity comes anywhere close to this amount. Buses, for example, use about 0.2%.

I think a politician that can reframe the issue to one of quality of living, stands a better chance of winning than one who went to his constituents singing a No Growth Tune. Of course, a politician and the media need sound bites and vignettes to communicate, so that should be a goal of TOD commentators...what is the "slogan" for a no-growth, peak oil believing politician? Simple and true may make it through all the noise... here are a few I thought up

New Prosperity at the End of Oil
Non-monied Wealth
Wealth Re-defined, count what is important in your life
Gross Domestic Product does not measure your welfare. Leisure time, quality-time with your family and friends, health, knowledge, safe neighborhoods, these are attributes we should strive to have.

Nothing catchy, but hopefully the point is there.

Gross Domestic Product does not measure your welfare. Leisure time, quality-time with your family and friends, health, knowledge, safe neighborhoods, these are attributes we should strive to have.

This would make a good campfire. Creative new measures for national welfare since Bhutan has got happiness locked up. Go pronoiac. Slow food, slow commutes, less work, workshifting, fitter bodies, more endorphins, less diabetes and other illnesses, tighter communities, healthier, less entitled kids, better friendships, mental wholeness, back to extended families, and new forms of entertainment. It is my primary ambition in life for my coop to be on Anchorage's Bike Tour de Cluck :-b

http://www.thetinylife.com/

It is probably a bit late to post to this. Still, I will do it.

stevenearlsalmony had an excellent comment on food production; this set me to thinking about ground_swell's statement about GDP continuing to grown "if everyone was to consume the bare minimum." And, of course JoeOBloggs' response following that.

Putting this together, with the concept of farming being the basics of our civilization, and slavery and mechanization being the means that the sgrong have used to exploit the week, and more than that the hoard food (the basics for greed), it seems to me that what we will be seeing as energy sources wind down is that more and more of GDP will be in the form of consuming food, and less and less in consuming junk (cars, tv's toys, central air, movies, books, computers... in other words just about anything other than food - and maybe clothing). Since the lack of fuel will limit the amount of food, the numbers of people will come down because there is not a sufficient supply of that 'bare minimum.' And, they will continue to drop until we reach sustainability. At some point, we could predict, based on past histories, the 'strong' will again exploit the 'weak,' and slavery will again be the source of energy used by the greedy to hoard stuff.

I seriously doubt that our knowledge and technology will survive for much more than a few hundred years. The only real question is whether enough will survive to enable anyone to transition to our steady state.

For someone who grew up reading Asimov and Heinlein, and looking to the stars, my present view is a sad commentary on where we are, where we are heading (absent a major and unlikely paradigm shift), and where we could be (through such a shift). Right now... today... there is probably a way to educate people, over the internet, by direct communications. Sort of like those chain mail schemes we used to get in the mail (and still do on the web), everyone shares their knowledge and conviction with two or three others, who share with two or three more, etc. Even if the maximum human networking size is 146, or 150 people, those groups overlap.

Or is everyone afraid of that others will think they are crazy? As in, "What if we are wrong... what if oil is abiotic, global warming is a fraud, and all of the laws of physics are repealed. My friends won't like me any more."

My question is, what if we are correct? And, what if doing something this crazy would actually enable the changes we believe are necessary? We all seem to agree that these changes must be made by everyone (or by most); that they must be voluntary (asking lawmakers to create statutes dictating family size, limiting choices, etc., may sound good, but do not work. Look around you), and that worldwide awareness is the only way to achieve what must be done.

Maybe some future (not to far) Campfire discussion should focus on how to word our chain letter.

Best hopes for a paradigm changing pyramid scheme.

Craig

Best hopes for a paradigm changing pyramid scheme.

That sounds like something right up my alley...

.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIlwFpz9s_I

Pathological monsters! cried the terrified mathematician
Every one of them is a splinter in my eye
I hate the Peano Space and the Koch Curve
I fear the Cantor Ternary Set And the Sierpinski Gasket makes me want to cry
And a million miles away a butterfly flapped its wings
On a cold November day a man named Benoit Mandelbrot was born

His disdain for pure mathematics and his unique geometrical insights
Left him well equipped to face those demons down
He saw that infinite complexity could be described by simple rules
He used his giant brain to turn the game around
And he looked below the storm and saw a vision in his head
A bulbous pointy form
He picked his pencil up and he wrote his secret down

Take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on
If the series of Z's should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set

Mandelbrot Set you're a Rorschach Test on fire
You're a day-glo pterodactyl
You're a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You're one badass f@cking fractal
And you're just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way

Jonathan Coulton Mandelbrot set

Dear Fred,

Thinking in terms of a colossal shift from one paradigm to another, am I to understand that switching from one pyramid scheme to an alternate may not be the thing we want to do? Like jumping from the frying pan into the fire?

It seems to me we need to exchange the patently unsustainable pyramid scheme, whatever its sort, for something that is sustainable.

Always,

Steve

It has been reported that Britain's foremost scientific organisation has begun a two-year study into global population growth. A growing body of scientists believe the time has come for politicians and economists to become more reality-oriented by confronting extant scientific evidence thought to explain the recent emergence of global challenges posed by the unregulated increase in absolute global human population numbers.

The eminent Royal Society of England has established a working group of leading experts to assemble recommendations on responding ably to the unbridled growth of the human population on Earth, recommendations that could set the international agenda for tackling the looming threats to environmental degradation and human wellbeing that could result from billions of extra people on an already overpopulated planet.

Nobelist Sir John Sulston will lead the study. A failure to be open about the problems caused by the global population explosion would set back human development, he warned.

People who live on islands are much more prone to be sensible about such things.

It would be most refreshing to hear some truth from a candidate. But all we get is- America can do anything...America is omnipotent...God bless America...and on and on with the BS. But you seldom hear any un spun truth.

And in the short term, we do have some room to expand. We are still not at 100% of our goods sold in our stores being foreign made.

On a trip to Target I checked out about 20 aisles of general merchandise. Lamps, tables, furniture, household items, kitchen etc.. 99.9% from China .01% from Germany, 0% made in the USA.

Went over to cameras, electronics, TV, videos...Same thing, 100% oriental made, 0% US made.

Clothes dept? 0% from the US.

Sad state of affairs.

In short, the US is China's bitch.

When I was discussing this with someone last month he pointed out everything I had on from head to foot and even in my pockets and arms and face came from China. (Well, he wasn't exactly right, my underwear came from Honduras.)

Much of our life depends on China selling us cheap items. If products had to be made it in the US instead of China, inflation would really skyrocket. And some items we can't even make, as we lost the technology to make it.

But no matter how you slice it...

This...

http://i685.photobucket.com/albums/vv219/keepitlow456/popchart.gif

Is hard to fix without this:

http://dieoff.org/

Sad state of affairs when promoting savings and fiscal responsibility has to be defended. And the only patriotic thing to do is to run oneself into bankruptcy by compulsive spending and taking out liar loans.

Ever notice how the money flowed to the big wigs of finance so easily with TARP. Yet when it comes to manufacturing like the auto companies they have to beg for a few bucks?

The fat cats on Wall Street and high finance are not hurting for money. When their corps go bankrupt they make out with millions. Yet it is all put on the poor guys to rescue America by going into debt.

We talk of living in a sustainable world, yet our actions betray our true feelings. All we have to do is to look at the stock market to see what happens when growth declines even a little.

Even if a company yields stable earning, but does not grow its earnings it is looked down upon. Stability and balance is part of a sustainable footprint, yet we shun such balance.

With one breath we talk about cutting global warming and how we have to cut our dependence of fossil fuel.

Then with the next breath we demand no cut backs in our standard of living, we must spend and consume above all else...build more, build faster, build bigger.

The GDP must only go up, up and away...all the while this consumption just increases global warming and keeps depleting the fossil fuels faster and faster.

Sick...sick..sick mentality, buy more cars, build more houses and monstrosities of architecture, spend more but 'cut back' to save our dear fossil fuels. For all practical purpose we will be out of crude oil and natural gas in 2 or 3 decades and possible much sooner.

Consumption is ingrained in us and we know no other way. And even if we wished to amend our ways, how could all our retirement funds take the hit?

Our world population has grown to levels where it has passed the point of no return for supporting a sustainable human population as we know it today when it comes to their energy demands.

And what does all that consumerism lead to?

It leads to the mess we are in now and the bigger mess the world will be in once India and China pick up momentum to copycat the envious lifestyle that they have held in high esteem as the 'American Dream'

The problem is not with the earth having enough land for all its people - the problem is with earth providing ad infinitum for all the needs the people crave.

The more people born, the more heat is produced from their life and all their cravings, As such, the warmer and more polluted the earth gets and the more energy they all use and the earths resources are depleted.

Fueling the problem of consumption is the games the Federal and World banks play with interest rates. They manage the economies in ways to fuel consumption and mask the real trend.

Witness the recent cries for Federal bankers to lower interest rates...so the stock market can go up...fueled by spending of the consumer.

It is drug habit that Greenspan got us hooked on and we just can't get away from.

Our economy is not based on sustainable health - it is based low interest credit to encourage compulsive spending, debt and living a life of constant consumption with a 'disposable mentality' when it comes to durable goods.

All this consumption to artificially fuel our economy to make our retirement funds only go up contributes to more and more global warming and the depletion of our natural resources.

Then the governments juggle the numbers to make the inflation figures seem artificially low, so everyone's retirement portfolio will make them happy so they will continue to buy and consume more...and on it goes....IT IS ALL WE KNOW and the bill is coming due soon!

We can see we have created a time bomb. Even the highest level brainiac economists can't fix what ails us. Our whole system is based on an unsustainable model that will eventually collapse no matter how much money that is printed up by the Fed. (...they don't even need to print money nowadays, all that needs to be done to create billions is to magnetize a silicon chip!)

Now maybe if our energy supply was stable and affordable and global warming was not an issue, things would be different and we could keep on consuming and expanding as infinitum

Sad thing is...IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE TO DO A 180...Without compulsive spending and conspicuous consumption funded by unaffordable debt, we would fail as a country.

You ever hear the saying...'I got the tiger by the tail and can't let go?' That is how it has developed in the US of A.

Lets say everyone becomes voluntary simplicity and frugal squirrel devotees. We recycle, reuse, repair and just say no to buying more crap. If we stop buying all the stuff that America imports from China - who keeps the billion plus people in China from starving, so they do not go back to old ways of trying to take over the world?

China and Russia tried to support its people though a sustainable, self sufficient manner when they ere totally RED. Now that they are PINK, they are much more successful at support, So the world exchanged the dread of communist domination for that of the problem of more capitalism and consumption.

But as Taoists tell us...fleas come with the dog. America now wishes China and India had stayed backwards. But as long as the crude holds out, they can't go backwards once they got a taste of the American dream.

Maybe if China was a a balanced self sufficient economy with less mouths to feed and things would not be so bad. Same as the US...self sufficient. But everyone is globally connected nowadays.

And on a more local level, if the consumer stops consuming even US goods, the US companies go bust, everyone loses their jobs and his or her retirement funds will collapse.

What about growing a garden...nothing wrong with that? Lets say everyone starts growing 'victory gardens' in the backyard as food has become unaffordable. So some of the few farmers left in the US go bust cause their food just rots on the shelves unsold. Now there is less food being produced and at even a higher cost to those that can afford it the least.

What about more taxes? Tax the little guy so DC can pay for their compulsive spending disease. More taxes = less for us to compulsively spend 'trying' to buy happiness = lower earnings for the greedy corporations = raise hell with the DOW = less cap gains tax income for the gov to squander = everyone's retirement funds sink lower and lower = even less compulsive spending since everyone is poorer..."A debt-based society cannot prosper and is doomed to fail..." ~ Ron Paul

Back in the day, (prairie and turn of the century) citizens were more of a self sufficient nature. Most of us have lost that skill of self sufficiency and we have shifted gears to be dependent on gov and a few other such as farmers or oil producers or China to take care of the whole pop of the US. The problem is, it is very hard to go back without causing a lot of pain. (Actually a lot of deaths)

Hell, the impotent people of modern day and age can't even make pancakes or peanut butter sandwiches and have to buy them ready made in the store...it's really scary.

Day-um, Allen, nice rant!

I'm making chili with beef from about 6 miles away, all veggies/peppers from my garden. Beans from ?, USA.

Loin cloth from old gunny sack made in Memphis about thirty years ago.

Dear Zaphrod42 and allenwrench,

Your comments are helpful. Thanks.

The lack of effort to communicate a coherent, comprehensive analysis of the unsustainability of the global economy, something vital about the complex world we inhabit, appears similar to the silence with which scientific evidence of human population dynamics has been met during the last "lost" decade of denial.

The growth of the human species worldwide could be the proverbial mother of all human-induced global challenges. If that is so, then failing to courageously acknowledge and humanely address this predominant challenge could render efforts of humanity to overcome other human-driven, increasingly complex challenges to human wellbeing and environmental health ultimately irrelevant, I suppose.

Please consider that both those who believe human population numbers are exploding and those who believe human numbers are collapsing are correct. Globally, human numbers are undoubtedly increasing, but in some places on the surface of Earth human numbers can easily be seen decreasing. It depends upon your scope of observation. I am perceiving and thinking globally when I report human numbers are skyrocketing. In a similar manner, I can certainly recognize that human numbers in many places (eg, Algeria, Iran or Italy) have been declining. But in order to make that report it is necessary for me to change my scope of observation.

Imagine that a change in one's scope of observation is like the difference between looking at the forest and the trees. Looking at the forest is like looking at absolute global human population numbers; whereas, looking at the trees is like looking at the population numbers in a place like Italy. Global human numbers can be increasing, while the human population numbers in Italy are decreasing.

Or imagine that we are looking at a wave, watching it move toward the shore where it crashes at our feet. As the wave we are observing moves toward us, there are many molecules in the wave that are moving in the opposite direction.......against the tide. Population numbers in Italy and many other places are moving against rapidly rising tide of absolute global human population numbers. Population numbers are simultaneously rising globally and falling locally.

So much of life and nature is indeed complex. Even so, we must not allow the acknowledged complexity of some things like the global economy to mystify, mesmerize or blind us to something comparatively simple and as evident as human population dynamics. If implications of the skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population numbers were not so profoundly and potentially threatening to the future of life as we know it and the integrity of Earth, there would be no reason for scientists with appropriate expertise to assume their responsibilities and perform their duties by rigorously scrutinizing the peer-reviewed and published research of human population dynamics and the human overpopulation of Earth. A fidelity to science and humanity, I suppose, demands that the scientific evidence be examined carefully and reported objectively.

Perhaps we can speak openly with regard to the complexity in the "economic colossus" of humankind and to the relative simplicity in the population dynamics of the human species.

Sincerely yours,

Steve

The current gigantic scale and growth rate of the ever expanding global "economic colossus"; conspicuous per-capita overconsumption and outrageous individual hoarding of finite resources; and unbridled human overpopulation are occurring synergistically on the surface of the Earth and threatening to precipitate the extirpation of biodiversity, the wanton dissipation of limited resources; the irreversible degradation of the environment; and the endangerment of a good enough future for children everywhere.

Time for new leadership, new vision, new direction...soon...hopefully.

According to the preferences of the Masters of the Universe among us, human beings with feet of clay are expected to embrace these Masters’ brand of courage: ‘the courage’ to do nothing but what we are doing now…… conspicuously consuming, hoarding, travelling the world and partying hardy until the global political economy crashes or else it collapses Earth’s ecology. The family of humanity is invited to ravenously consume and excessively hoard resources, just like the Masters of the Universe do now. Climb any mountain, cross any stream, travel to foreign lands so you, too, can worship your very own “sacred cow”. Perhaps own a fleet of autos, a private jet, a mega-yacht, a Madoff-like beach house in the Hamptons, a ski chalet in Davos, a club membership at Augusta National or day to day living in a gated community of your choosing. This is the “greed run amuck” way of life that has been legitimized, institutionalized, legalized and presented as virtuous. This “greed is good” lifestyle in which everyone is encouraged to participate is of all things, so we are told, the one and only good way to live. But this way of living in the finite and frangible world we inhabit is as reckless and unsustainable as it is obscene.

So here we are, in the first year of a new decade after having endured a decade of moral decay, denial and darkness. Wealthy people buy politicians and the same old unsustainable business-as-usual activities continue, just as the Masters of the Universe have agreed. Corporations have their PR firms promote whatever it is they want to keep doing. Large-scale business enterprises that are “too big to fail” and too big to succeed as viable operations because they cannot much longer be sustained on a planet with biophysical limitations of Earth grow larger.

Nonetheless, the laser-like focus of the Masters of the Universe remains riveted upon convenient and attractive activities associated with endless growth of the global economy, per-capita overconsuming and hoarding, and overpopulation rather than upon identifying these global human “overgrowth” activities as actual threats to human wellbeing and environmental health. By so doing, these leaders willfully and duplicitously directing the children down a “primrose path” to face some sort of human-driven wreckage that a single, selfish generation is largely responsible for precipitating.

Perhaps it is somehow right and timely, finally, to speak out loudly, clearly, openly and often of such things even though the Masters of the Universe appear so unwilling to change their ‘virtuous’ lifestyles. I would submit that it is not human beings with feet of clay who are unready and unable to make necessary changes; to endure some hardship; and to begin addressing and overcoming global challenges. No way. The Masters of the Universe who continue choosing to disregard the wellbeing of humankind, the health of the environment, and the integrity of Earth for the ‘virtuous’ purpose of maintaining their greed-mongering way of life have unmet responsibilities to assume and duties to perform.

I instinctively mistrust attempts to boil the situation down to those kinds of terms. IMHO it does not help to paint the whole civization's current mess as a simple narrative of evil predatory He-men controlling a proletariat full of virtuous once-and-future greenies.

Buying a Hybrid car and recycling a few more bottles than the next guy does not buy anyone the right to preach about lifestyles IMHO. I can show you a zillion poor 3rd-worlders that still consume less than any of us.

If you're human then you are part of the problem. If you're advanced enough to use a computer then you are a serious part of it. You have made another selfish choice to hurt the planet for your own benefit every day you continue breathing. It's only a question of degree, and in the big picture there is not really a huge difference between choosing to drive an SUV and riding a bike to work.

Go ahead and try to conserve if it makes you feel better, but please spare me the high-horse preaching.

Dear spectator,

While I do not get the feeling that your reference to my shared point of view as "high-horse preaching" was meant as a compliment, in one sense it is appropriate. When I began the AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population in 2001 it expected that people generally and top rank scientists in particular would readily understand my concerns and begin responding ably to them. That did not occur. The AWAREness Campaign as well as the science on human population dynamics and human overpopulation were everywhere ignored. Of all things the scientific research was neither examined nor findings reported by scientists, as one might expect. These circumstances were at first unbelievable. As the years passed, and a deafening silence cloaked the science, it seemed that my efforts could be more aptly thought of as quixotic, which reminded me of a man of horseback named Don Quixote. That image has stayed with until now. And it fits me well. As you see more clearly than most, over the past decade I have been jousting with windmills.

Thanks for your revealing comment.

Sincerely,

Steve

Believe it or not, I totally agree about the population bomb. The fact that it has gone virtually ignored as a public issue for so long is ludicrous. Even people in power whose ethos is to "save the planet" are often just focusing on what rewards them in other ways. Some earthy causes are trendier than others even in the minds of those who profess to be the good guys on the matter.

I believe that conservation efforts do not really help the problem. If we learn to conserve then we just continue to consume more because of it. IMHO we need to render the energy & raw materials themselves more expensive for the consumers, not try to mandate wringing more economy out of our given habits right now. IMHO that will do a better job at reducing the species' total consumption than any amount of preaching reduced individual consumption.

But this view is not trendy in greenie circles. This means stop preaching to recycle, stop preaching against SUVs, stop selling earth-friendly products . . . and start supporting higher prices on everything from gasoline to plastics to metals to land usage. It's not a popular outlook at all. The Rush Limbaugh listeners don't like it. The Greenies don't hate it but IMHO they don't like it either.

I can understand that gut reaction of the Green community. My view offers no social reward like the current anti-consumption outlook. No daily lifestyle actions to assuage guilt. No conspicuous displays of Green-friendly products. No justification to . . . get on a high horse and preach at the SUV-driving pagans.

Dear spectator,

Well done. Thanks for your perspective. It is one with which I can generally agree.

Why not keep presenting your point of view and I will do the same?

In any case, you can count me to keep speaking out loudly, as clearly as I am able, and often.

Since you do agree about the threat posed by the unbridled growth of absolute global human population numbers in our time, please consider joining me in calling for a moderated forum, sponsored by the TOD Campfire, of population scientists including Professor Emeritus
Gary Peters, to discuss the evidence of human population dynamics and human overpopulation?

Sincerely,

Steve

Dear spectator,

You have made it abundantly clear that you do not like my preaching. Let me add that I do not like your anonymity.

If I may deploy Debbie Cook's good idea, why not become a real participant here rather than remain an anonymous spectator? The change could be refreshing.

Always,

Steve

Why we will never run out of oil, or any other natural resource.

I know, I'm new. But as a modern society, we're getting really good at not running out of things.

Sir Thomas Malthus was wrong and admitted it before his death. Is Lester Brown still alive?

Your grandchildrens' grandchildren will still have plenty of oil. And coal. And natural gas. And any other natural resource you can think of.

Julian Simon is still my hero.

The realy irritating thing is when people both has this view and assume that some mythical force will fix it like "the market", "the governmnet" or "god" withouth them or hardly anybody else making an effort.

The real deal is that it requires massive ammounts of work and lots of changes to make it work out well.

Dear Magnus Redin,

You are so right. And everyone except the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe are acknowledging the human-induced global predicament facing humanity. These so-called leaders know the situation, too, but they willfully refuse to openly speak of that which they have knowledge. As I see it, we have a group of leaders who possess stupendous wealth as well as the extraordinary power only great wealth can purchase, but they are not providing leadership. "The real deal", as you put it, is that the avarice, arrogance and extreme foolhardiness of a tiny minority are dominant traits of those among us who are leading humankind down a "primrose path".

Perhaps, evidence of necessary change, from what can be expected fairly soon to become unsustainable to what is sustainable, will become visible ubiquitously in the offing. Of course, you are correct in noting that the great change from living unsustainably to adopting sustainable lifestyles "requires massive amounts of work".

Sincerely,

Steve

Yes GCT, you are new and will gradually pick up information here that you will not see many other places.

In terms of the link you provided, there are several key statements that do not support (or outright negate) you statement that there will be plenty of oil in the distant future;

While oil is a finite resource, the truth is we really don't know how much we have left.

So how can you state there will be plenty of oil for our grandchildren's grandchildren? What do you mean by that statement; plenty of cheap oil? Or plenty of expensive oil no one can afford to extract?

As the price of oil increases over time, alternative energy sources become more feasible economically

A few points here;

A. Robert Hirsch et al determined in a DoE study that we will need to start 20 years before peak oil to realize a transition with moderate economic impact from oil to alternatives. Or 10 years if government, industry, and the public at large all joined together in a big push "Apollo Project" type effort. None of these is really going on today, and most energy analysts see peak oil within less than 10 years.
http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf

B. As oil prices rise much above where they are now, the economy will slow again, inhibiting or outright preventing the capital investment in alternative energy technologies and systems. With the debt we have now, we can't just continue to swipe the plastic anymore.

the estimated rate of production is again based on a set of technologies and assumptions that won't apply a few years hence

What new extraction technologies are in the pipeline, no pun intended? Sure, 3D seismology and directional drilling helped with extraction rates; what's to follow behind them to enable significant extraction percentage increases? Having an economist simply wave a hand to make a point does not mean that speculative increases will magically occur.

So how can you state there will be plenty of oil for our grandchildren's grandchildren? What do you mean by that statement; plenty of cheap oil? Or plenty of expensive oil no one can afford to extract?

The statement is very clear. Oil is a finite resource, but even given today's technology we really don't know how much we have left. The same is true of coal, natural gas and other natural resources. "Cheap" and "expensive" are terms that are only relative to one another. Something is cheap if its substitutes are scarce, and vice versa. By plenty, I mean we will have plenty of oil that is feasibly accessible for a very, very long time to come.

None of these is really going on today, and most energy analysts see peak oil within less than 10 years.
...
As oil prices rise much above where they are now, the economy will slow again, inhibiting or outright preventing the capital investment in alternative energy technologies and systems. With the debt we have now, we can't just continue to swipe the plastic anymore.

If most energy analysts really did see peak oil within less than 10 years, the price of oil would be on a steady, if not parabolic price trend. One thing about Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Natural Resources is that they have people who are really good at forecasting future market environments and taking whatever steps are feasible to avoid going out of business.

Credit will always be extended if the expected return on investment is deemed worthwhile by investors. If there's a profit to be had by investing in alternative energy sources, then somebody somewhere will make the investment.

What new extraction technologies are in the pipeline, no pun intended? Sure, 3D seismology and directional drilling helped with extraction rates; what's to follow behind them to enable significant extraction percentage increases? Having an economist simply wave a hand to make a point does not mean that speculative increases will magically occur.

Today, I have as good an idea about what technologies are in the pipeline as Capt. Lucas did in 1901. Just because we haven't thought of them yet doesn't mean they won't be developed, and if the history of technology's role in economic activity teaches us anything, it's that they always will.

The first time I heard the warning bells of peak oil was in 1995. IIRC, we were supposed to have already gone past it by now. I the believe peak oil theory to be a classic example of a Malthusian Catastrophe. Malthus' theories were so elegant and so logically sensible that they simply had to be correct. But they turned out to be wrong. This has happened repeatedly through history since the Reverend Malthus penned his famous essays, but no one seems to be willing to consider his lesson.

I also believe that the peak oil debate would be served well if everyone participating in it at least audited a few lectures from Dr. Julian Simon's intellectual offspring.

There is an abundance of historical examples of a depressed economic activity increasing social conflicts
the flemish cities in the late middle age ,Germany during the reformation , Europe of the late 19th century during the regular depressions etc..etc..
when the wealth pie shrink , the lower classes see their standard of living crushed
usually by having a larger part of their income to spend on food , their discretionary spending simply evaporate .
In an election driven system one can predict the rise of populism if not rabble rousing
It turn naturally to angry resentment toward the administrative machine see as having failed
since , no matter how incompetent , the ruling Elites cannot really do much about itMost interesting and informative post I have ever seen so I bookmared the post my browser for future visit.
[ road bike shoes ] [ diadora cycling shoes ]

Dear walter hanson,

Your comments here are greatly appreciated. Please stay involved.

The only point I would like to make with regard to your sagacious comments is that "ruling Elites" choose every day to engage in a wide array of colossal, unsustainable human activities when it is in their selfish interests to do so. At least to me, as soon as the ruling elites who are organizing and managing the seemingly endless growth of gargantuan business enterprises and gigantic instrumentalities of governance now overspreading the surface of Earth; as soon as these so-called leaders choose to see it in their interests to move toward the construction of sustainable human enterprises, then necessary changes toward human-scale structures and lifestyles will occur ubiquitously.

The "ruling Elites" could choose to give up their arrogant and foolish ideas of themselves as Masters of the Universe, I suppose, and become, once again, what all of us are and have been: human beings with feet of clay. As things go now, this leadership is choosing to proceed down a primrose path that could fairly soon precipitate the destruction of what it claims to be protecting and preserving.

Sincerely yours,

Steve

Nate,

While I applaud any effort, you of all people already know that any response from elected officials is usually proportional to the perceived financial backing of a given (giving) constituency. The concept of individual letters garnering attention is simply childish and of little use.

I'm still trying to get a handle on if and when any influence at all can be brought (by the people) to bear on our federal system of government. The checks and balances designed into our system are impotent.

As long as corporate media saturate the discussions of the day with self-serving tripe, no broad national public outcry will be recognized nor acted upon.

The only countries starting to prepare for no-growth are succeeding because of the nature of their political subdivision(s). Our federal system, as it is, never will.

“We stand now where two roads diverge..... The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road-the one “less traveled by”-offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”
-Rachel Carson

Even though I am one who has come late in life, unprepared and poorly equipped, to that fateful crossroads where two roads to the future diverge, perhaps it is not yet too late to make a difference that makes a difference by choosing the path to sustainability now.
-Steve Salmony

"The choice is with us still, but the civilization now in jeopardy is all humanity. As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure of this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage — propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders — all of which puts our survival in some doubt..."
-Carl Sagan

I already answered some of these questions via private emails when in mid 2007 I put my hand in the US presidental Election, At the time it was a sort of tongue in cheek thought process of what would happen if Jesus Christ were to come back to earth and then try to get elected to public office?

Great zot, that's wonderful all our answers answered in one fell swoop and of the world's problems fixed and everyone can go on really living and no more wars, no more pains, no more suffering, no more empty lives, no more anything bad. BUT what if no one wants to have a Christ like gov't?

Alex Janoes preaches that there is a subtle behind the scenes New World Order, of some mystery shadow people, with lots of money.

Rush, and many other radio talking heads in the world wide stage of late night radio do the same thing be they space invaders, to some hidden group controling things.

How are you going to rought the chnages you want in the world if you have to fight people like this left and right, along both sides of hte issues of hte day.

Sorry the dyslexia, I am not going to go back and fix the transposed words I just saw fly by.

My legs are the heat sinks, and filters that your kidneys are, I filter almost every toxin through my lower calves, at least that is what me and my doctor think. My legs ar about twice the size of my normal ones, because i have been awake and vertical a lot long than in recent months.

I am slowly setting up my network of people helping others, based on my BioWebScape design system, first with the plants, then with the living in the houses you have, or the ones you want to build.

Lots of houses out there can harness the natural lay of hte land, or slice and dice here and there, and put in better plantings and using buckets, bins, and containers feed them at least some of the food intake that the local stores would have to truck in from miles around.

I have found a rare species of vine, the called the guadalupe cucumber it is native to some US states but a bit of endangered because people think it is a week and have been killing it left and right. The bees that pollenate it also do my watermelons and I think my cucumbers, but I am only growing one kind of Cucumber and it is not a regular species of that family.

The vines look lik delicate things, the drupe is http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=Melothria+pendula.&aq=f&a...

Melothria pendula. According to the information and my own eating of it, it is better when just pulp and still green the seeds are not tough and the mild cucumber taste is a nice change, I'd be careful not to eat a lot of them. I was trying to save the seeds, when I was wandering to a section of the yard I rarely go, only to fine the fence row covered in them.

I just picked about 5 and the size on mine are about 1 cm long, the seeds just starting to get tough. Not bad, seeing as the vines are fruiting and have been since about early june when I first found them.

All that being said. I'd want to have a politician to be more like what I want to have happen. Thinking about how each locale can get things done so they can get along and get things done.

Yeah I'd support a letter campaign to the people running for office, I can't think that they'd pay us any attention.

I'd run for public office if I thought it'd do any good.

I technically will run again on the same platform that I did last time, But people making the money would want to vote against me.

Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world, one slow step at a time.

PS, I just melted a regular ice cube in about 30 seconds on both my legs and it was a "Thank You God!" am going to try a bigger peice next time.

Hi Folks,

Forgive me if this has already been covered, but the 'growth' in volume of comments is getting too great for temporally restricted resources to absorb.

As Robert Ayres and Benjamin Warr amongst others have pointed out, it is not energy per-se that has led to economic growth, but the useable work that has increased GDP, the primary measure of so called Economic Growth. (An interesting point to note is that the current disaster in the GOM will probably add to this spurious measure of growth.) That is to say, this is the amount of energy that has been used in the physical sense of work done measured in Jules, put towards practical purposes, though not necessarily productive ones. This has actually increased due to increasing efficiencies despite a per-capita drop in the share of energy. While some of the lower hanging fruit of efficiency gains have already been had, there is still much more available.

However as has been mentioned before, the ‘economy’ is more than just about energy. It is primarily about fiscal growth, due to various historical quirks that have led to the dominance of money as the main valorising factor in our modern developed ‘civilisation’. While trying to change this value system would be like expecting someone trained all their life on the violin to expertly play the piano, there are ways to start the movement towards this process, and to engage the fiddling politicians into taking piano lessons.

Such efforts are seen in the paradigm shift to new valorising models as seen in the case of Bhutan , and the questioning of the material route to happiness in such tomes as “The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better” by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, and Oliver James’s Affluenza, which this website explains succinctly. Also, moves by government policy makers to include a measure of ‘wellbeing’ such as the UK Defra’s sustainable development indicator number 68 indicate that a paradigm shift is occurring.

Along with such organisations such as CASSE (the Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy), who recently organised the Steady State Economy Conference in Leeds, UK which many influential policy groups attended and discussed how to move away from the growth paradigm, and more importantly took key points from the discussions to be incorporated into future policy making decisions. While some would argue that this process is just a talking shop, one should not dismiss the keen interest shown by the politicians and the impact of the realisations of sustainability research of the last few decades on the political process. And it is not just political circles that are changing their tack, big business is waking up too, as seen in the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy which includes some of the UK biggest industrial concerns.

If one takes it upon oneself to lobby ones political representatives with the right information and in an open and coherent way, they might just see that there is actually political advantage to be gained by an early adoption of the inevitable. Who knows, the fiddlers yet may learn to play the piano!

L,
Sid.