At Peak

Other Kunstler writings available at
www.kunstler.com

January 9, 2006
       I helped burn a few thousand gallons of aviation fuel flying out to San Francisco over the weekend to attend a meeting of people concerned about the injustices of globalism -- not exactly my bag, as we liked to say so many years ago, but a worthy crew of thoughtful folks to consort with. My job, as I understood it, was to introduce the idea that this baneful globalism is not a permanent condition but a set of transient relations made possible by the fabulous inputs of cheap energy we continue to get.

      I had the local news on the boob tube up in my hotel room before the kickoff cocktail schmooze. There was some kind of grotesque traffic accident on the Nimitz Freeway across the bay and the TV station had aerial shots from their helicopter showing a vast ribbon of frozen headlights snaking clear down from Alameda to Fremont in the violet crepuscular rush hour gloaming. The news clones were treating this like an everyday event, ho-hum, and I had to suppose it was. But it was easy to imagine the despair of someone stuck down there in a Toyota Highlander with a bladder near bursting and not a hope in the world of being able to do anything about it. How many people pee all over their car seats every night, I wondered. Must be a few at least.

     These, I was moved to reflect, are some of manifestations of being at peak. Peak Oil, that is. The all-time worldwide production zenith.

     Now, I was also moved to wonder: why do the good people of the Bay Area willingly endure this insanity? They built a subway about thirty years ago called Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), but it barely goes anywhere except back and forth under the bay. It would cost less to put in surface light rail lines down both sides of the bay than to fix two freeway overpasses -- but they'd rather pee on their car seats because at least they'd be able to choose their own tunes while doing so.

     Many of my readers, I sense, wonder why things aren't falling apart across America right now, given the hallucinatory nature of our economy. The answer is that Peak Oil is not the end of anything, it's the peak of everything. We're getting more oil now than ever before or ever again, and it is making us crazy. It makes it possible for me to succumb to the invitation to fly across North America for a one-day meeting. It keeps feeding the spreading tumors of suburbia. It supports the illusion that burning liquid hydrocarbons results in the creation of wealth.

      When the TV news cut away to a commercial break, it was an advertisement for some kind of snazzy new mortgage deal featuring 30-second approvals. Getting a mortgage now is easier than stepping off a curb (except, who walks anymore?). This is exactly what is making it possible for people to buy houses so far away from anything that they end up peeing on their car seats to get there in the evening. It also unleashes magical streams of liquidity for the playas in the the financial markets to convert into personal fortunes. Unfortunately, they have to pee on their car seats, too, because the stupidity of our culture is absolutely democratic and the playas get stuck on the freeway just like everybody else, only they pee on real leather seats.

      Peak is making us insane and passing peak will make us more insane. There may be no moment of clarity, only new kinds of delusion and disorder. We'll keep behaving the way we do until we can't, and then we won't.

Comments

[asoka]

Another satisfying and enjoyable read.

"We'll keep behaving the way we do until we can't, and then we won't."

I like the fatalistic sound of this... we suffer the illusion of free will.

[george]

GM did not lay off upteen thousand workers because people are lined up around the block to buy their Hummers, Tahoes, and Escalades. The sales of the big Mercedes and BMWs have also dropped. In short people are moving to small cars, are buying smaller, more close in housing (where affordable and safe from crime), are carpooling, and are working at home more. The average citizen is not a moron, Jim. A lot of people commute from the 'burbs to keep their kids out of the hideous urban schools. Incompetent black "administrators" and incompetent black teachers are awarded plum jobs in the Washington DC school administration, for instance, and are above critism because they are "black". The DC school district spends more per capita than any other public school district in the nation and performs the worst of any school district in the country. Easier to move to the 'burbs than fight the system and be called a racist.

[Dave]

Dear JHK

As usual you have made the prospects of my Monday Morning slog a little bit brighter having started it with a good chuckle about the peeing in the car seat. Personally I'm jumping over the side of the road regularly but that is the advantage of being male.
The madness is apparent everywhere and I have resolved to stop telling others about the shitstorm that is about to begin in earnest in the next 18 months to two years. People literally yell at me and tell me that I'm nuts or too much of a downer. Your right when you speak about how we will continue as we are doing till we can't any more.
Gotta go ! I make my living being a salesman and have to drive four to five hundred this week ! At least I'll do it knowing that I'm mad as a hatter and I'll think of your post when I'm standing and tryin to hide my peeing by the side of the road !

[sgage]

The juggernaut seems unstoppable.

Best juxtaposition of sentences in a blog ever:

"... they end up peeing on their car seats to get there in the evening. It also unleashes magical streams of liquidity..."

Magical streams of liquidity, indeed!

- sgage

[AK]

George,

#1: You're a goof, this blog is no place for meaningless essentialist comments about black people.
#2: Perform a thought experiment: what happens if everyone had their SUV replaced with a brand new toyota hybrid. Would our energy woes be over? What happens to the people living in the exurbs and far-flung suburbs? Do people buying new houses that are "smaller and more close in housing (?)" somehow fix the decades of misallocation we've already undertaken?

In short, be more thoughful, please.

[geiorge]

AK, What is a "meaningless essentialist comment"? You have just made my point. Discussing WHY people move from the cities, if it because of high-crime and poor schools, is not open for discussion. Here in DC the blacks who can afford it are also fleeing the high-crime and poor schools for the 'burbs. Does that make them racists, too, or merely "goofs"? As to your second point, YES it would help a hell of a lot if people traded in their Tahoes for hybrids and car-pooled. Or am I not allowed to have an opinion there either?

[Mel]

I don't know what an essentialist,
but it sounds the most pretentialist.

[captain kid]

george says:
"The average citizen is not a moron, Jim."

hey george--- ok--- so the average citizen is not a moron... i guess that means there are not many average citizens anymore...

there are way more morons today than there are non-morons..........

[Weaseldog]

Well it would help, but it won't make a difference.

The first order problem is that there are just way too many people to feed without plentiful and cheap energy on the scale that fossil fuels provide.

If we could consume all of the carbon produced by the Earth's biosphere to sustain us (essentially eat the entire planet), then it would take 400 years for the planet to produce enough carbon to last us for one year.

Conservation can't help. It can't possibly make a dent. Nature has an answer for us. Nature will fix the problem for us. Nature has always had a talent for solving overpopulation problems.

[Mike]

Mel-

That's a good one.

George/AK & others-

Here's the definition of "essentialism": http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/essentialist

I can't see how it connects to George's post at all.

Finally, AK, let's look closely at your post: "You're a goof, this blog is no place for meaningless essentialist comments about black people"

1. You called George a "goof" because you didn't like what he said. Maybe George's words were a bit less PC than you're used to seeing. Maybe George is "wrong." But you didn't even try to refute what he said. You just declared the topic unsuitable, hurled an insult, and moved on. Hmmm.

2. You declared that you, and you alone, know what types of comments do & don't belong on this blog.

Thanks for taking on such a tough job. We all salute your selflessness.

3. "Meaningless" To you.

4. "Essentialist" See above.

5. Regarding George's "comments about black people": It's a fact that "white flight" has gone on for 40 years or more. Whether it's good or bad is pretty much beside the point in terms of looking at what it means today. You attempt to paint George as a racist (in addition to being a "goof").

Since the label of racist is so powerful, it strikes me as reckless and wrong to throw it at someone else just because you don't like his POV.

[Richard]

I agree with Dave - I have decided not to even bother telling anyone about Peak Oil any more, save scheduling showings of The End of Suburbia.

I lent my copy of the Long Emergency to a neighbor last week. After reading it,he returned it to me yesterday, along with several books and lots of articles and web links - all by reputable authors about Y2K. Remember that, everyone?

He told me that while he agreed that industrial civilization cannot go on as it is for much longer, and that major changes will have to be made in the U.S., he was also quite convinced that Peak Oil was no more real than, say, all the computers in the world crashing on Jan 1, 2000, a 9/11 conspiracy, or the world coming to an end in a nuclear war.

"Remember that other oil shortage in the 70's?" he asked. That was the end of cheap oil, too" - and showed me a couple of newspaper articles he had collected.

"Doomsday predictions sell a lot of books, and some of the things they predict actually happen.Some things, but not many. Peak Oil is just another doomsday scenario.

Hurricane Katrina and Rita, the war in Iraq,terrorism, the outsourcing of U.S. jobs..those are real problems, and we should focus on those. Not the things in this book."

My friend is a well-educated man, genuinely concerned about the problems he sees around him. He buys organic food and grows a lot of his own vegetables and fruit at home. He and his family recycle religiously, are active in their community, and consciously try to minimize their 'ecological footprint' on the earth. For them, it's a matter of principle.

And like the overwhelming majority of Americans, when the effects of global oil peak finally manifest themselves for all to see, my friend will be genuinely shocked and surprised.

I've often wondered if its all "madness" as Kunstler tries to describe the current situation, or the simple inability of the overwhelming majority of people to see the underlying causes that link the worlds current crises together. Whatever, I no longer think it worth the effort to tell anyone about Peak Oil.

What I am doing is to follow the recommendations of John Michael Greer as outlined in several outstanding articles on living through the coming decades:

The Long Road Down: Decline and the Deindustrial Future
http://www.oilcrisis.com/whatToDo/decline.htm

Facing the New Dark Age: A Grassroots Approach
http://www.survivingpeakoil.com/preview/php?id=facing_dark_age

The Coming of Deindustrial Society: A Practical Response
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/whatToDo/DeindustrialAge.htm

Druidry and the Future: An Open Letter to the Druid Community
http://www.aoda.org/articles/Druidry.htm

They include

1. Learn to proficiency an effective, sustainable permaculture and be ready to teach it to others.

2. Learn, practice and teach at least one system of natural healing (one not dependent upon current technology.).

3. Learn at least one low tech skill that has trade value, or that is useful to a future lower-tech society

4. Learn the essentials of environmental science and natural history, focusing particularly on restoring and maintaining natural ecosystems.

None of this will in any guarantee anything like easy passage through the years to come, but it does seem like a far better use of my time.

[Weaseldog]

Good thoughts there Richard.

[jorge]

JHK said:

"Peak is making us insane and passing peak will make us more insane. There may be no moment of clarity, only new kinds of delusion and disorder. We'll keep behaving the way we do until we can't, and then we won't."

How wonderfully expressed. Jim is back to form now that he's staying away from politico-legal stuff. His bona fides in his area of expertise is beyond contestation. Well said.

I will have to disagree with Weasel on a point. Conservation could make a difference big enough to tide us over into the post-carbon era with tolerable dislocation. Europe has a population similar to that of the U.S. and uses anything between one third to one half of the energy used here in the States. Just imagine the aggregate effect of pushing for conservation to that degree through a bevy of measures, including:

Reform the stupid EPA milleage standards, which are as unreal of the mortgage-based US economy and allow auto makers to get away with murder

Make ultraefficiency mandatory for all vehicles, without wiggle room or exceptions

Promote carbon composite replacement for auto parts reducing weight and further improving energy efficiency

Impose a gas tax now! If anything will keep autos off the road, promote ultraefficiency and other conversation methods will be a gradual but irreversible increase in gas taxes.

Review zoning and urban planning and promote livable and walkable cities and communities.

Will any of these avoid PO? Hell no. Oil will peak and run out, that's a geological inevitability.

But buying a couple decades of breathing space which would allow the use of the "mixed bag" of alternatives could mean the difference between a rough landing and a disastrous crash.

Cheers,

ps. What are the chances of our national and state leadership doing all this? Very slim, given the pervading unbridled greed and shortsightedness of our political and business leaders. In an earlier post I said that the most dangerous animal on Earth was a young angry human male. That's wrong: the young angry human male comes in second.

The most dangerous animal on Earth is an old greedy human male.

[Mike]

Jorge-

I have to go with your original theory that the young, angry, human male is the most dangerous animal on earth.

The old, greedy, human male is merely the the most possessive & rapacious.

The scariest animal? The angry, married, human female. But I digress.

[Weaseldog]

Conservation will allow us to maintain our civilization long enough to consume every last resource on the planet.

If we can maintain our population at unsustainable levels for as long as possible, then no resource will be safe from complete depletion.

What will be left is a world that has been almost stripped of life with species that are the hardiest survivors, left to carry on the evolutionary path. And of course, life on Earth will survive this event. It has survived massive extinction events before. So we can be optimistic on this point.

The only chance that the current biodiversity of our planet has is for us to really screw up and lose a huge percentage of our population. that would be bead for us, but good for the planet. I don't think this will happen.

I think what we'll do is learn to consume alternative energy sources and resoruces until there's nothing left to sustain us. That's the path that conservation and alternatives put us on.

It's the path of diminishing returns.

[Weaseldog]

New Law that Bush signed:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.03402:
"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

As I write posts that are intended to annoy some people, I am hereby required to by law to disclose my identity. My name is Jack Dean Dingler, jr.

I believe that both 'One Eye Open' and 'Dangerbird' purposely post to annoy people. They are required by Law and by President George Bush to disclose their identities.

unless they want to give George Bush the finger, that is. If they hate bush, they can continue to troll anonymously.

[Peter]

Richard, I had an email exchange over the weekend with a long-time friend. I stated that it was my belief that we had officially hit the top of Hubbert's Peak last fall. He's up in Vancouver and responded with, "No need to take it seriously here in Canada - we have the oilsands, so Canada is set regarding energy."

Then he switched the topic to his new camera.

[Mike]

Ahhhhh, but Weas, there's a catch in there!

Only those who *oppose* the President are required to obey the law. It's become very clear lately, that the President & those who support him don't have to obey the law. In fact, they can come right out and say, "I'm not going to obey the law" and they'll get applauded for their honesty.

[Peter]

Speaking of Richard's advice to pick up some practical skills, my above mentioned friend met these fellow Canucks on his XMAS vacation in Mexico. They travel around Mexico, building cob houses, in a truck fueled by canola oil. It looks like they are enjoying life.http://www.cobworks.com/mexico2005.htm Enjoy the pictures.

[ross]

I still discuss Peak Oil with folks, but I pick my spots when slipping it
into conversation, since as we know, it is a bleak message. As for some of George's claims,

1.) GM did not lay off upteen thousand workers because people are lined up around the block to buy their Hummers, Tahoes, and Escalades. The sales of the big Mercedes and BMWs have also dropped. In short people are moving to small cars, are buying smaller, more close in housing (where affordable and safe from crime), are carpooling, and are working at home more. The average citizen is not a moron, Jim.

-This is certainly debatable in a country where a large (though not a majority) of the electorate voted for a moron.

A lot of people commute from the 'burbs to keep their kids out of the hideous urban schools. Incompetent black "administrators" and incompetent black teachers are awarded plum jobs in the Washington DC schooladministration, for instance, and are above critism because they are "black".

-Perhaps, but do we have anything like proof that plum jobs are going exclusively (or even in abundance) to incompetent black professionals?

The DC school district spends more per capita than any other public school district in the nation and performs the worst of any school district in the country. Easier to move to the 'burbs than fight the system and be called a racist.

Would someone care to provide some proof of the above spending claim. And of the percentage of folks moving to the burbs for the follwing reasons,

1.) affordability,
2.) Jobs
3.) White Flight/school system

which represents the largest concentration of burb exurb inhabitants?

[Sarah]

Weas,

"The first order problem is that there are just way too many people to feed without plentiful and cheap energy on the scale that fossil fuels provide."

And I would venture to say that even if cheap and abundant energy were not in depletion, we would still become, very shortly, unable to feed these 6-billion-and-counting... the Earth only has so much arable land.

Mike,

"The scariest animal? The angry, married, human female."

Cheap laughs, but perhaps you could enlighten us as to what indeed you find so much more frightening about an angry woman than an angry man?

[confederate]

Wow> !
The last paragraph is poetry in prose.
Thanks JHK. Great read.

[Mike]

Sarah asks-

"what indeed [I] find so much more frightening about an angry woman than an angry man?"

The answer? Nothing! It's a joke, Sarah. A bad one, to be sure, but just a joke (although one I suspect all married men "get").

As you often tell folks when they don't "get" your jocular tone, Sarah: Lighten Up.

[DDauzat]

Living in Baton Rouge I don't think most regular folks thought a commuter rail system from New Orleans 60 miles away was a bad idea. The potential for tourism, commuting, community, etc. is a definite boon. Only now, after this terrible disaster has the idea gained some credibility in political forums in it's potential to simply save lives. Or it could have. One of the barriers that has always permeated this area against public transportation, is first the perception that public transit is only for the poor and second how accessible will an upper crust community become to the undesirables if they are only a cheap train ride away. Down here it looks like progressive solutions need a painful kick in the rear by God himself to even begin to outweigh those obstacles. With the FEMA money about to run out and the very palpable sense of doom for our state, at least folks are starting to talk. Maybe LA will finally be first in something positive. Too bad it takes a whole lot more than simple awareness of Peak Oil to change anything.

[ConservativeGreen]

"Peak is making us insane and passing peak will make us more insane..."

I have come to the same sad conclusions, that people are not interested in hearing bad news. Alternative reality clouds follow most people everywhere they go, but I suspect most of the people who contribute to this discussion (re)learned this a long time ago. People will keep doing what they are doing, until they can't.

Its too bad the power will be out when want to bring up our blogs to say I told you so!

Richard,

The best practical advise I have seen in a long time. Personally I have started gardening and collecting useful non-electric handtools (and learning how to use them!!). I have some ideas about being a blacksmith, but where would you get decent coal post-PO? Never mind Iron. I think it might be better to learn how to handle a horse. It gets pretty chilly up past the 45th parrallel and hauling firewood can be a task.

Cheers!