Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:47 pm Post subject: The Big Picture
In today's information intensive, accelerating and shrinking world, we need to be able to see, feel, and experience the bigger picture. It is the Big Picture that connects us to the whole, enables us to see across borders and barriers, turns data to knowledge, and knowledge into understanding. In my six months as a member and poster of peakoil.com, I have seen many a solution proffered and many a consequence over-looked. These issues are complex and they are not easily thought-through, but I see a genuine lack of effort on the part of many to even broach some of the more obvious drawbacks to their myopic thinking.
As a society, we seem to be focused on the ground in front of us, rather than the path before us. We need to look up once in a while, shake off the fuzziness, and open our eyes and ears to the sights and sounds that are making so much noise all around us. We are not a stable population, neither in numbers nor political mindset. The last time we were this divided we were at war with each other. And I am not just talking about just the Civil War; I mean the World War.
We have the "fundies" ready to embrace the "rapture" and the Second Coming of Christ, while global-warming, peak oil, and genocide run rampant across the globe. We have a President who encourages consumption. We are in double-dip debt. We have no savings. Our wealth is an illusion. We are growing exponentially. We are at war. And we have no plan, not for a "powerdown" society that seeks sustainability, nor for a "nano-tech," space-based power system to further the status quo. Nothing is changing in a world where the only constant is change.
Doesn't anyone think it a bit odd that in 150 years we have gone through half of the greatest treasure ever found? And to think it was squandered on a short-term indulgence that has given us neither peace nor equality, much less, equity? Here's a graphic example of just how fast we have failed to consider our actions and their impact on the future. This is a reconstruction of the growth of Baltimore, Maryland, over the last 200 years. The U.S. Geological Survey used historical records as well as Landsat satellite data to create this sequence.
Over the weekend, I listened to the 4th hour of the Financial Sense News hour. If you are not visiting this site daily, you are out of the Big Picture Loop.
The Big Picture
Bubble Troubles
Double Debtor
A Wild Ride for Energy
Peak oil will not have easy solutions. Let us try to think our proposals and solutions through, if for no other reason than to avoid the inevitable "holding of our feet to the fire." We all post here to be heard, but do your homework first, and for sure, do the math. Coal to gasoline will not solve the problem. More nuclear power will not solve the problem. This isn't a problem that must be solved with technology. This is a consequence that must be coped with and adapted to. Mankind will eventually, either willingly or unwillingly, evolve a steady-state economy which fits within the planet's ecological limits. If we develop it willingly, it could become more efficient, more rewarding, and more enjoyable than the infinite growth monster system we have now. If we fight the transition, we will experience nature at her best, finding once again, balance, where there was none.
"The only sustainable level of technology is the stone age." --George Draffan _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Last edited by MonteQuest on Sat Aug 13, 2005 11:49 pm; edited 3 times in total
Joined: Nov 11, 2004 Posts: 978 Location: Heart of Canada's Oil Country
Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 11:53 am Post subject:
Monte, there are so many factors which make your (very noble and ultimately necessary) endeavor almost futile. I think most of them can be distilled into:
1. Our species has a terrible bad habit of waiting until the last minute, or worse, until after something really bad has happened, before making changes. This is what makes the grand-daddy issues like global warming and PO so astringent - waiting until after something bad has happened could be too late.
2. We also are amazingly stupid; very few of the population have the desire to be rational and logical. Even fewer have the cognitive ability to do so. I assume this is part of the reason why there is still such a huge percentage of people who belong to organized religions.
3. The amount of influence that corporations have over government is rampant.
So, as you stated, the picture is pretty ugly – we have a disinterested, stupid public, manipulated by a select few, unwilling to make any changes unless they are directly threatened, and even then, well hey! It’s Judgement Day!
That’s not to say that those of us who recognize the problem shouldn’t be thinking through proposals and solutions. In fact, I think that if you “get it” you really have a duty to help make things better, however you can. But here’s the kicker. Even for someone like myself, I’m willing to admit that a) I get it and b) it’s taking me longer than it should to make wholesale changes. But I recognize just how big a piece of meat I’ve bitten off. It’s taking a while to chew it and digest it. I’ll eventually swallow it, but others are just going to spit it out and ignore the situation.
I really think that it is late enough in the game that there really is only one solution. But it is radical and fraught with its own problems and dilemmas. To really make a change, you have to put factors #1 and #2 above to work for you. #3 is very tough to fight, you have to hope that by fighting #1 and #2 you can make a big enough impact.
If we really truly want to make an impact, we need to stop bailing water and patch the hole in the boat. Radical problems require radical solutions. I’ll leave it at that. _________________ Do not underestimate the difficulties of surviving the transition of peak oil, nor the dangers of global warming. We must embrace nuclear energy and renewables.
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 12497 Location: zombie horde wonderland
Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 12:03 pm Post subject:
Quote:
Our species has a terrible bad habit of waiting until the last minute, or worse, until after something really bad has happened, before making changes.
If this were true then the flexible and incredibly adaptive tribal cultures would not have succeeded for 100,000 years as they have done. It is not our species , it is our culture which is maladaptive.
The problem now is we have forced our culture onto nearly everyone on the planet (minus a few million semi-free tribal peoples) and so we're going to take everyone down with us.
Joined: May 22, 2004 Posts: 1424 Location: Ottawa, Ontario
Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 12:14 pm Post subject:
In terms of the big picture, I think we have to recognize that for humanity to affect it's own destiny it must be able to organize itself and focus its effort on a common goal. Peak oil is going to happen and humanity will muddle through it somehow. No doubt new technologies will come along and stave off catastrophe for a while, no doubt therre will be some serendipitous events that will determine the path we take. We may go back to a new stone age we may not. Who knows, but in my opinion we are not masters of our own destiny.
To be able to control our actions and therefore our destiny we need to have an intelligence that can percieve its environment and respond effectively. Right now I'd rate our collective intelligence at about that of a rat's. In the past couple of hundred years we have made great strides, mass communication has improved enormously. our power to effect change has increased exponentially but we go around always taking the path of least resistance. We are not self aware, our planning skills are very poor, our memory is deficient and our reasoning is primitive. The most effective way to get us to do something is to offer a bit of cheese. The most effective way to get us to stop doing something is to apply an electric shock.
Is that big picture enough for you? What do other's think. Do you think humanity is self aware and smart enough to act to save itself? Or are we just a lemming that's going to run off the cliff into the sea because that's what our programming tells us to do.
Quote:
"The only sustainable level of technology is the stone age."— George Draffan
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 12497 Location: zombie horde wonderland
Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 12:25 pm Post subject:
Yes, I believe humanity is plenty intelligent and adaptable enough to change. Our culture, which includes our cultural assumptions that we are simultaneously the Lords of Creation and sinful destructive devils (see endless examples of both these cultural assumptions on this messageboard), may not be. Time to step away from the culture, and try something else.
A connect-the-dots essay that sees our oil problem as only part of the big picture. Yes, it's a liberal POV, but it's interesting. And kind of depressing, because it suggests that TPTB don't have a real interest in a solution.
And it also had a link to this site, which I hadn't seen before. "Winning the Oil Endgame":
Joined: May 22, 2004 Posts: 1424 Location: Ottawa, Ontario
Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 12:43 pm Post subject:
Ludi, I was meaning to include our current collective culture in the term "humanity". What you are saying is that our culture can change and therefore the level of humanity's intelligence can change. I don't dispute that. But to consciously change our culture would require greater self awareness and intelligence than humanity currently possesses. So you and I agree that "humanity" (using my definition that includes our current culture) isn't currently intelligent enough to consciously save ourselves?
Perhaps I should have used the term "society" but that doesn't imply the global extent that I think is required. As individual countries I do think we have a small measure of self awareness and we do plan and make decisions, at least the governments think they do. (Often they are like people and simply justify or rationalize the actions we take without actually being aware of what the real motivations were.)
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 12497 Location: zombie horde wonderland
Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 12:53 pm Post subject:
Quote:
So you and I agree that "humanity" (using my definition that includes our current culture) isn't currently intelligent enough to consciously save ourselves?
I'm not sure we're agreeing, Nero. I think large portions of our society might be capable of changing if they can be convinced change is necessary and why. But as we've seen on this board, shifting people away from their cultural assumptions (Growth is Good, We Know What's Right for the Planet, There's One Right Way to Live - Ours, etc) is very, very difficult. And it's exhausting for those who are trying to do it on even a tiny scale (such as on this messageboard)
Agreeing that humanity isn't capable of change means, to me, that I'm agreeing that humanity is doomed, and I absolutely don't agree with that. It is not one of my assumptions. Based on evidence, we can see humans have adapted to many different circumstances. I think they still can. Maybe not all of them, but some.
Joined: Jun 02, 2004 Posts: 1078 Location: Bristol, UK
Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 12:54 pm Post subject: Re: The Big Picture
MonteQuest wrote:
This isn't a problem that must be solved with technology.
Good post Monte, more people need to realise that we can't keep patching the system up with yet more fundamentally unsustainable technology. The longer we manage the continue the current regime the worst our eventual position will be. _________________ "Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen." The Emperor (Return of the Jedi)
The Oil Drum: Europe
Twice I have had to split this thread as the discussion took a right turn in relation to the point of this thread, which is the failure of many posters to think through their solutions and proposals. A failure to embrace the Big Picture. A myopic worldview, one that does not consider the long-term ramifications and short-term limits of which we face.
We are quick to post our thoughts and slow to realize we must consider more than our narrow view of things. We are all guilty of it. Try to post quality rather than quanity. Provide empirical data for your solutions. Don't criticize without backing your refute with well thought-out and substantiated facts. Try to raise the quality of discussion here. _________________ A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
Live in Arizona? Check out: http://sustainablearizona.org and read my blog.
Joined: May 19, 2004 Posts: 892 Location: San Francisco, California
Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 3:16 pm Post subject: Re: The Big Picture
MonteQuest wrote:
Peak oil will not have easy solutions. Let us try to think our proposals and solutions through, if for no other reason than to avoid the inevitable "holding of our feet to the fire." We all post here to be heard, but do your homework first, and for sure, do the math. Coal to gasoline will not solve the problem. More nuclear power will not solve the problem. This isn't a problem that must be solved with technology. This is a consequence that must be coped with and adapted to. Mankind will eventually, either willingly or unwillingly, evolve a steady-state economy which fits within the planet’s ecological limits. If we develop it willingly, it could become more efficient, more rewarding, and more enjoyable than the infinite growth monster system we have now. If we fight the transition, we will experience nature at her best, finding once again, balance, where there was none.
So in your view, what would be the major steps required to develop this system willingly? What are the defining characteristics of this steady state economy you forsee?
Joined: Oct 04, 2004 Posts: 5429 Location: Oklahoma
Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 3:37 pm Post subject: Re: The Big Picture
MonteQuest wrote:
Peak oil will not have easy solutions. Let us try to think our proposals and solutions through, if for no other reason than to avoid the inevitable "holding of our feet to the fire." We all post here to be heard, but do your homework first, and for sure, do the math. Coal to gasoline will not solve the problem. More nuclear power will not solve the problem. This isn't a problem that must be solved with technology. This is a consequence that must be coped with and adapted to. Mankind will eventually, either willingly or unwillingly, evolve a steady-state economy which fits within the planet’s ecological limits. If we develop it willingly, it could become more efficient, more rewarding, and more enjoyable than the infinite growth monster system we have now. If we fight the transition, we will experience nature at her best, finding once again, balance, where there was none.
Based on the math already done by WWF, I believe we lost our chance to willingly evolve to a steady-state economy within ecological limits around 1986. We have been in overshoot since then, and it is too late to make a choice about how the transition to some sort of equilibrium will occur. Bartlett's lecture (much discussed elsewhere in these forums; see search feature) on exponential growth contains a list of the various ways in which humanity's population might be reduced. None of them are pleasant and none will be undertaken willingly in large enough numbers to have a significant impact. The big picture is that there is no solution, at least not as most human beings would define that word. Habitat destruction, pollution, and our significant alteration of the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere have damaged the global ecosystem. Whether we are in a positive feedback system which will result in extinction of all life on earth remains to be seen, but at the very least the biosphere will be quite different once equilibrium (as measured on human timescales) is again reached.
My solution is to attempt to maximize quality of life for my own family, and to do so in a way that minimizes our negative impact on the planet. I am still formulating the equation describing how best to do that, and expect it to remain a work in progress for whatever remains of my life.
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