Comments on: Abandoning a dream

By: Leadership in the post-carbon era – Guy McPherson's blog

Leadership in the post-carbon era – Guy McPherson's blog — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 18:09:06 +0000

[...] too late for leadership from my generation, which failed miserably. We created the twin disasters now unfolding. We brought you Ronald Reagan and all the selfish [...]

By: Grace is Gone « The Spiral Staircase

Grace is Gone « The Spiral Staircase — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:25:48 +0000

[...] can repair. Sure, the future is uncertain in its details, but if you deny or don’t get the broad outline, you’re just an ostrich with your head in the sand. I can’t spend too much time or [...]

By: magdy halim

magdy halim — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:09:35 +0000

after 17 years of studying the subject of the end of civilization,I made a blog about it:
magdyhalim.blogspot.com
please have a look.
thanks.

By: Stan Moore

Stan Moore — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:53:52 +0000

new capitalism collapse essay –
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/story/print?guid=47729BA0-933E-4299-92CC-EB41EEE671D2
Folks –
I drive down the road and try to listen to KCBS news or National Public Radio and it is almost impossible to bear the deafness, dumbness and blindness of the financial and market analysts and money news shows. Ostriches would be ashamed.
On the other hand, I trapped a 1535 gram adult redtailed hawk today and two adult red-shoulders. The big hen was in the upper 5% of body mass of many hundreds of redtails I have banded and a splendid bird. I think she’ll do fine even in the “down” economy. And her husband remains a candidate for future entry into the Federal bird banding program. He saw her get captured, but his time will come, and I will be happy to meet him up close and personal.
Stan Moore

By: Stan Moore

Stan Moore — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:54:27 +0000

Jh Kunstler comes up with his version of my "Obama as Bomb Juggler" see: http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/10/self-jiving-nation.html#more

By: matt

matt — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:28:39 +0000

A friend of mine who is peak oil aware and a big Kunstler fan recently returned from Cuba. I asked him whether he had seen any of the urban agriculture touted/documented in the film ‘The Power of Community’. He said its all bullshit, he travelled all around Havana and he did not see any of it, all he saw was a lot of hungry people.

By: Stan Moore

Stan Moore — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:46:59 +0000

reference link = http://www.warsocialism.com/ContinuouslyLessandLess.pdf
Here is a new 50+page analysis of America’s natural resources predicament, which supports Richard Heinberg’s theory of “Peak Everything”.
In other words, from the peak, the slope is down, down down…

By: Michael Irving

Michael Irving — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:45:02 +0000

Wendy,
Water is a problem. We irrigate out of a springbox, however we still use electricity to pump it up 25 feet to the garden. Figuring out a way to do that without electricity is not too daunting. As far a drinking water we are using a well 500+ feet deep. I have no idea how to do that without electricity. Even off the grid it would require a gas generator to make electricity or solar panels and a DC pump that would be manufactured using high inputs of fossil fuels. Of course we could go back to drinking out of the creek but then we would need to filter it and who knows how to make a 19th century water filter (charcoal I guess???). All of that begs the question, what do people without access to clean surface water do?
Yes, I agree, water is a problem, and all the more so when supplies start to dry up from climate change.
Michael Irving

By: Wendy

Wendy — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:19:11 +0000

Ironically, even the Amish don’t think like the Amish any more. They’ve got generators and telephones in their barns (just not in the house), and sell their merchandise online. And their economy relies on the rest of us to buy their nifty stuff.
As I see it, water is the biggest problem. A certain amount of energy can be generated by wind or solar power (using technology created by the empire) but I cannot see being able to generate enough to provide all the water I’ll need to keep my garden and orchard producing.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:09:02 +0000

Guy,
Don’t be too hard on yourself and your generation. Woodstock and The summer of love were epiphenomena that were enabled by the nature of American society at that time. Imagine an alternative scenario of 500,000 anti-establishment revelers that gathered together in the name of peace and love only to be butchered – every man woman and child – when the music started to play.
I think too often we anti-empire, anti-capitalism, anti-industrialism types ignore the many motivations for empire beyond the easy label of greed. And when we acknowledge the motivation of power, we often think of it generically instead of trying to fathom what kind of power it is that the empire is trying to project.
I would argue that the most empires form, expand, and eventually pass away, whatever their ideological or religious base, in an attempt to create a homogeneous culture large enough to sustain itself through time. Violence is primarily use to remove diversity within an empire’s borders, to expand those borders, and to repel invasions from without. Ironically, it is the brutality of empire that generally enables peace to break out within. That is the motivation.
Civilization is adored primarily because of civility. The proponents of globalization adore the concept because of their pipedream of global civility. The politics of scarcity, limits to growth, etc.. cannot be acknowledged by the proponents of globalization because it throws humanity right back into the bloodbath of its past.
It gets even worse with overshoot. Imagine the border disputes to come. The Roman Empire was horrifically bloody, without the benefit of fossil fuels. The end of empire will be no baby-boomer’s dream. For humanity, it will be hell on earth. Monbiot is right in that regard. That is why he and Heinberg and Greer, and their ilk are so conflicted. They want to kill the empire and save civilization. Not going to happen. It’s a classic case of “out of the frying pan, into the fire”, or as J.R.R. Tolkien so nicely put it: “Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves”.
Indeed, Nature is the only winner here.
That’s good enough for me.