alt.brains

June 26, 2006
     The energy debate around the US has taken a definite turn this spring, since oil prices stepped back up to the $70 zone, but the thinking around these issues has only gotten worse. That's because there is only one idea dominating the public discussion: how to keep our cars running by other means, at all costs.

      We're certainly hearing more about energy from government and business. President Bush made the "addicted to oil" confession in January. Chevron and British Petroleum (or Beyond Petroleum, as BP wishfully styles itself) have both run ad campaigns acknowledging the oil-and-gas crunch, and the mainstream media has joined the campaign to pimp for bio-fuels. But all the talk is driven by the assumption that we will keep running WalMart, Disney World, and the interstate highway system just like we do now, only with other "alternative" liquid fuels.

     The more naive members of the environmental sector have been suckered into this line of thinking, too -- especially the college kids, who imagine we can just divert x-amount of acreage from Cheez Doodle production and re-direct it to crops devoted to making liquid fuels for Honda Elements. They need to get some alt.brains.

     Nobody is talking about the much more likely prospect that we'll have to reduce motoring drastically, and make other arrangements for virtually every aspect of daily life, from how we get food, to how we do business, to how we inhabit the landscape. The more we resist thinking about the larger agenda for comprehensively changing daily life, beyond our obsession with cars, the more likely we will veer into hardship, political trouble, and violence.

     The reason for this collective failure of imagination seems pretty obvious: the older generations are hopelessly vested and invested in the hard "assets" of suburbia, which they feel they cannot walk away from; and the younger generation is too demoralized by the fear that they will never be vested in any assets (while many seek refuge from thinking at all in the electronic sensory distractions of video games and Ipods, or else in irony and other forms of manufactured alienation).

      If I was a kid now, I'd find a lot more to rebel against than what we faced in the 1960s: the draft and the insipid program of Levittown. I'd rebel against a generation of adults selling the future for obscene pay packages. I'd rebel against everything from the mendacious nonsense of Rem Koolhaas to the profligate stupidity of Nascar. I'd want to eat Donald Trump for lunch (and set free the wolverine that lives on his head.) I'd utterly reject the false commoditized reality and set out to discover the world. I'd get busy building a society with a plausible future (and be real excited about it).

     Sometimes I wonder if we just enjoy lying to ourselves. Sometimes I think: if this nation could somehow harness the energy in all the smoke it blows up its own ass, we'd all be able to drive to heaven in Cadillac Escalades.

Comments

[Walker]

About Seaside, Fla. -- Several hurricanes have already blown through, like Ivan, Dennis and others. But Seaside has sturdily-constructed homes and a tight-knit town layout, so there was almost no hurricane damage at all. Government officials say Seaside is one of the safest places on the Gulf of Mexico.
Link: http://www.seasidefl.com/newsStory.asp?releaseId=1031

[montysano]

Cyndiluwho,

I suspect that JHK, like anyone who makes predictions, would like to be proved correct; he's made some dire predictions, so he's looking for dire outcomes. I also agree that there is sometimes a wish for retribution in what he writes.

But don't let that mask the fact that we are, IMHO, in a dire predicament, and that being "shoved, kicking and screaming, back into the 1930s" could be one of the more pleasant possible futures.

[Cyndiluwho]

Peakoilmom, Thanks, those links were interesting. Human ingenuity at it's best.

[Peter]

"There are people and organizations attempting to develop solutions, to actually do something here."

I include myself here, good buddy.

Last summer, I was approached by two startups for financing help to get their new new ringtone businesses off the ground. Both companies were run by smart people. Yet with the world hurtling along to hell in a handbasket, their contribution consisted of websites which enabled you to d/l fart and hiphop ringtones.

That's when it hit me: we're in trouble. Big trouble.

[Cyndiluwho]

Montysano, I don't disagree but as Peakoilmom's links show people can be very inventive.

Here in the northeast rail is making a comeback. My husband is involved in industrial park development and tracks that had been paved over are being dug out with more and more being installed. Prospective tenants are increasingly demanding rail access. It's a very positive sign IMO, even if the only reason they're doing so is the bottom line.

[Peter]

We're approaching the Perfect Storm of Collapse. Peak Oil is just one of the possible triggers. Last night I watched a one hour C-Span interview with author Chalmers Johnson on The Last Days of the American Empire. He wrote the bestselling The Sorrows of Empire in 2003.

He predicts a quick Soviet Union type collapse for the USA because of these four sorrows: endless war, loss of liberty, habitual official lying, and financial ruin.

You can view the interview here. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13602.htm

[montysano]

Cyndiluwho,

I'm glad that rail travel is coming back in your neighborhood. Here in the Southeast, it's declining.

I saw Al Gore on Countdown last week, and he is optimistic. His point: that while government usually moves at a snail's pace, it can, when necessary, move at lightning speed (a la WWII). That's true, and if so, the time has come to get moving. It can be done, and solving our energy problems could be the next great public works program.

Unfortunately, we have giant corporations with a huge stake in Things Continuing As They Are. They are the ball and chain around all our ankles, and in the current age of deregulation, there's very little to be done about it.

[Peter]

Chalmers Johnson adds a point about our hollowed economy that JHK has missed. JHK claims that what is left of our economy now is the part that's devoted to furnishing and sustaining suburbia.

Johnson points out that there's one other part left. The defense/weapons industry. We spend more on stuff that kills people than all the other nations on earth combined, and we make it all ourselves.

[nostalgia]

To Weaseldog -
to a certain extent, I agree with what you write, but you did misunderstand one point - I meant the fall of American suburbia is something that will be seen in my life from Germany. I left in 1992.

I also think peak is here now, and that the game is afoot, so to speak - I think the last 20 years years were the 20 years America had to prepare with a massive crash program to handle the problems of declining liquid fossil fuel production.

You are welcome to judge how well those preparations were handled. How is that GM rescue plan, the one where they focus on high profit large SUVs, going, by the way?

[Peter]

Almost everyone today believes that we are headed for disaster globally and some apocalyptic change. There are few people left without at least some vague sense of impending doom.

There's Peak Oil crowd.

Then there's the Global Warming group.

There are also the fundies who still await the Second Coming, despite the fact that it's been cancelled 21 centuries in a row now.

Even New Agers predict a massive change by the end of 2012, based on the completion of the Mayan Calender's long cycle.

Finally, add in historians and students of empire, such as Chalmers Johnson, who see a US version of the fall of the Roman Empire just around the corner.

When so many have this uneasy feeling about the SHTF shortly, something is bound to happen.

[Cyndiluwho]

Montysano, if things are as dire as many think big business may not be able to afford to keep things as they are.

The companies my husband deals with are quite large. They are seeing the writing on the wall. Investing in rail may be the difference between success and failure as long haul trucking becomes no longer viable.

Interesting point about rail possibly being the next big public works project, it may be what saves our economy. Unemployed people don't buy stuff.

[Weaseldog]

Interesting interview with Michael Ruppert.

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/interviews/720

[Peter]

I read somewhere a few months ago that Bill Gates has over 5 billion in personal assets invested in the Candian rail system.

If true, that tells you something. Bill is a very smart man with a long view.

[peakoilmom]

I agree with Cyndiluwho that "investing in rail" may make the difference between success and failure...

Does anybody have any links about businesses that are already making the transition, or at least planning for the transition, from truck to rail?

[Gary]

Let's see - If I were president I would abolish the Feds, the corporations and advertising agencies. What else should go????
Gary

[Peter]

The flickering lobotomy box needs to go as well.

[JungleWoods]

Weaseldog writes: "Actually, I think the problem is that there are no solutions."

Ain't that the truth? There are no solutions to keep us running at our current rate/lifestyle. Tar sands, oil shales, biofuels, all with low EROEI numbers. The hard to face truth is that US citizens are going to have to make do with much, much less energy in the future.

Maybe, as Cindylu writes "what JHK really wants is to see us all shoved, kicking and screaming back into the 1930s.”

What'd I like to see, and what we're working on personally, is to gracefully transition ourselves back to a pre-industrial low consumption lifestyle.

Easier said than done, especially when it seems we're working against the tide.

[Cyndiluwho]

Peakoilmom, the NYC Dept of Sanitation is one. Scroll to *Positive Declaration*.

http://www.dec.state.ny.us/website/enb2004/20040512/not2.html

[differentJim]

JungleWoods,
I'm with you there "...transition ourselves back to a pre-industrial low consumption lifestyle." That is going to be difficult, and causes me great angst. Our family is poised to "GO-LO", but what if our neighbors are not. As Jerry was pointing out last night, we have to find away to make sure everyone knows we're trashed as a nation/world UNLESS we pull ourselves together and solve the problems at hand. The real difficulty is how to get everyone on board, and that just may not be possible. Some people will hold on the the current way til the end, in complete denial. Those that are setup GO-LO, are bound to be looted for their preparedness.

[msjanket]

Each week, about 450 people make comments on this website to Jim's forays into depression. 450...that's not too many people making comments, but somehow we are supposed to think these 450 people have the answers to all these questions?Half of these people are severely depressed, thereby emulating their hero, Jimbo. Half of the remaining people think only a-holes drive Escalades. Obviously, these critics are less than levelheaded. The remainder, 25% of the total weekly group to write in, are cowed and intimidated by the certainty and pomposity of the naysayers in other 3/4 of the group. We blame the news media for warping facts but somehow we only get the truth about the oil situation from them? People are making a lot of money selling 80 mpg carburetors, all sorts of vortex inducers for better mileage, etc. The interstate Rt. 84 through Connecticut was chock full of drivers on Saturday despite heavy rain.
Are they oblivious to the alleged realities presented on this blog, are they a-holes driving Escalades? I think Americans will change their ways when it is necessary. People know the jig is up. I, for one, am laying in a supply of whale oil to light my lamp this coming winter as I read Charles Dickens' novels. I am getting prepared.
The end may be near but I'm not pushing the panic button just yet.

Are you?

Mike

[Dan]

It's more a case of hard core 20 regulars pumping out 400 to 500 comments per week. We don't get much new blood here. Hence the sense of deja vu week after week. The first 50 comments or so are usually good then it all deteriortaes into endless recycling of the same old opinions and prognostications.

[george]

Walker, dream on. Neither Ivan nor Dennis came close to Seaside. Having lived in Ft. Walton Beach during several hurricanes and flew several hurricane evacuation missions I know a little about the place. There is no way that Seaside, the precious New Urbanist community built on sand at the water's edge, will survive a direct hit by a hurricane. The architects and developers have done their clients a gross disservice by building there.

[differentJim]

msjanket,

The question is how fast will the end come? What goes first? Obviously prices will continue to rise. House bubble will burst. Only overexteded types take the first hit. Second wave follows as prices continue. How soon before 1/4 of population is out of work? How soon before armed gangs start looting? When do you push the panic button? Do you wait until half of the population is unemployed?

[Gary]

As Jim has said, it will take the bitch slap up longside the head for most to get the picture. If we could get the picture across sooner it may lessen the fall. I think we need a John Stewart type to ge the news acros nationaly and fast.
Afterall he did get crossfire off the air. (well I am sure he hepled a lot)
Gary

[JungleWoods]

Concerning the panic button, I'd rather be proactive than reactive.