I still keep hearing, “If things get bad, I’ll move to ….” And then fill in the blank with your favorite fantasy or nightmare, including these and many more:

“my sister-in-law’s property in Kansas”

“Mexico”

“the wilderness”

“a central America country”

“southern Europe”

“the coast”

First, let’s consider how “bad” things have to get. The first significant warning shot came in the 1970s, when people in the industrialized world felt the impacts of the U.S. losing its status as the world’s swing producer of crude oil. We were visited by expensive gasoline and long lines at the pumps, simultaneous inflation and economic contraction, a president who encouraged conservation, and many other consequences of relying heavily on crude oil for economic growth. More recently, we’ve witnessed a housing crash, bank failures, oil priced at nearly $150/bbl, near-collapse of the industrial economy, sovereign debt crises throughout the industrialized world, and hundreds of other symptoms of passing the world oil peak.

If you keep your eyes closed, you’re going to run off the road. This society has already driven into a ditch, but you are not required to join the crash. Again, then: How many warning shots do you need?

We could spend a lot of time pointing out the lunacy of all the safe havens listed above. Moving in with the in-laws? Have you even asked? Isn’t there a reason you don’t live with them already? Have you discussed economic collapse with them, or do you continue to ignore the most important topic in the history of western civilization, opting instead for polite conversation?

How ’bout them Red Sox? Nice weather we’ve been having, doncha think?

Stop me if I’ve mentioned this one before: If you keep your eyes closed, you’re going to run off the road.

And Mexico? Do you speak Spanish? Fluently? Do you think you’ll be welcome there, gringo? Do you think continuing our history of occupation is a good idea, even at the personal level? Again, as before, why don’t you live there already, if it’s such a great place to be?

The wilderness? Really? Without a grocery store?

And so on, down the list of ludicrous options.

Here’s a thought: How about starting to prepare for a world without ready access to cheap fossil fuels? That would entail securing a personal supply of water and food for you and your family. For the rest of your life, and theirs. If that’s simply too daunting a task for your lizard-like brain, you can take the route pursued by about half the people to whom I speak: “I’ll save a bullet for myself.”

Really? Evolution suggests otherwise. I foresee a lot of my “friends” showing up at the mud hut, unprepared and unrepentant, but too consumed with personal survival to take the promised Hemingway out. A friend in need, ….

Better days lie ahead for those of us who desire to see the living planet make a comeback. But if you believe life is not worth living in the absence of empire — in the absence of our unrelenting intent and ability to destroy every non-industrial culture and non-human species — why wait? Why not take the Hemingway out now, while you still can get a decent imperial funeral?

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This essay is permalinked at Counter Currents, Information Clearing House, Hidden Mysteries, and Island Breath.

Let’s kick it up a notch. It’s not one of us with six months to live, it’s the industrial economy. Now whatcha gonna do?

Kunstler’s been wrong before, particularly with respect to timing. Me, too, for that matter. So we might be wrong again. But in this case Kunstler is synthesizing quite an impressive litany of thinkers with economic tendencies. And there is little doubt that the industrial age is nearing its end. If it’s not six months, it’s not much longer. So what if it’s five years? The same rules apply, as far as this game is concerned.

And even if the financial bandages applied by the world’s life-hating politicians manage to hold together the omnicidal industrial economy for a few more years, this is one of those cases in which it’s better safe than sorry. Getting on board a few minutes before the ship brings up the anchor is so much more comforting that striding onto the dock just in time to see the ship hit the open sea.

So, then, when do you call your children home? Or the ailing parents?

There is plenty to be done. For starters, nobody wants to be the last person into a community in disarray. Nobody wants to come skating in, unknown by the neighbors, when the food and water are running low. Nobody wants to be known at the new kid in town, regardless of her age. So there’s the central issue of building community in the community. As if that’s not difficult enough, in a culture anathema to community, there’s more.

It’s not just the human neighbors you’ll want to know. It’s the other, more indigenous, ones. Can you name ten edible plants native to your neighborhood? Can you grow them, or any others? What are the needs of the local animals? Where does the water come from? Does it require industrial treatment prior to human consumption? Is there an alternative source? Do you know how to treat the water so you, and other members of your community, can survive?

On the other hand, you can always take the Hemingway out. Many of the people I know, enamored with lives of comfort and unwilling to face the reality of the real world, claim to have selected this option. I suspect many of them will change their minds when the issue is forced upon them. Evolution — and its resulting absence of free will — is quirky that way.

One swing through the high price of oil took us directly to the Great Depression 2.0. What will the next swing bring? And when?

Time to start thinking. Time to start planning. The time to dig a well is not when you’re thirsty.

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This entry is permalinked at Energy Bulletin, Speaking Truth to Power, Island Breath, Energy News, and Running ‘Cause I Can’t Fly.

I’m reminded of this quote from Lily Tomlin: “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.” And lest you think cynicism is a bad thing, here’s a reminder from George Carlin that closely corresponds to my own view: “Scratch any cynic, and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”

Knowing how badly we’re destroying the living planet on which we depend is bad enough to make me a little cranky. But I’ve been there for years. Consider, for example, this line from a book I wrote in the autumn of 2003: “Americans often initiate military conflict in foreign lands with no apparent role except to secure natural resources or further political careers, and the United States government continues to sell these acts of aggression to a willing public that desperately wants to deny its own role in mass murder.” What’s really elevated my crankiness during the last couple years is the degree to which we are willing to stoke the planet’s fossil-fuel furnace, even to the point of destroying habitat for our own species. Add to that the astonishing number of people who just don’t give a damn what we’re doing to the planet, and ourselves, and who present no alternatives to bringing the industrial machine of death grinding to a halt, and I’m a little surprised I haven’t (1) gone postal or (2) been placed in confinement by the government. I don’t doubt, though, that every dissident will soon be considered a terrorist.

I thought we were too self-centered to destroy habitat for human beings on this most wondrous of rocks. But apparently the nature of our self-absorption is entirely too personal. We are perfectly willing to destroy our species, and every other one on Earth, if the few of us in the industrialized world can have the latest piece of technology.

I passed cranky a year ago. At this point I’m outraged, along with anybody who’s actually paying attention. If I could only believe in political solutions, I’d be back at cranky. If I could foolishly believe we have 300 years of long descent into a technologically poorer but biologically richer world, I’d be a happy man. But instead, I see what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. I see no chance of a decent uprising from the masses, hence no chance to prune the tree of liberty in my time (much less every generation, as Thomas Jefferson suggested). I see us stuck in our proverbial, planet-raping ruts, too content with the bread and circuses of the Technomessiah to bring about change through action.

The failure of leadership in light of peak oil and global climate change is comprehensive. At this late juncture, there is no politically viable solution for either phenomenon. Once, perhaps, there was. But we let the solutions slip away.

Actually, we didn’t so much let them slip away as we drove them away with the biggest whip we could muster. We banished Jimmy Carter from office, and from the political conversation, the moment he uttered a series of solutions to our fossil-fuel addiction. We never stood a chance with respect to runaway greenhouse: As soon as we committed ourselves to infinite growth on a finite planet by selecting fossil fuels instead of rational behavior, we destroyed any reasonable chance of dealing with our fossil-fuel addiction and therefore destined ourselves and the living planet to a leap from the political frying pan to the fires of hell.

We’re left with two politically unviable choices: economic meltdown or extinction of our species (and many others). To the maximum possible extent, we are choosing both heinous outcomes. But at some point, the ongoing economic meltdown reaches its inevitable completion at the hand of peak oil. Regardless of the specific timing, the Renaissance will need leaders, and those leaders are with us today. Among the relevant questions: Who are they, and how will they lead?

It’s 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 bastards who followed in his shoes, right up to the current Warmonger-in-Chief. We brought you abysmal leadership beyond the Oval Office as well, including Congress, state and local governments, entrepreneurs, heads of corporations and non-profit organizations, and pathetic, growth-addicted “educational” institutions. I’ve no doubt I missed many of the parties responsible for the crises we face, but there’s plenty of blame to go around, and the failure of leadership is overwhelmingly comprehensive and comprehensively pathetic.

As I’ve indicated previously, evolution clearly dealt us a bad hand. It pushes us to the “flight-or-fight” response of survival. The survivors are driven to procreate. Those who survive and procreate then are driven to accumulate material possessions. Is it any wonder the financial elite run the industrialized world? Or that they are leading us to disaster?

Where has this evolutionary play led us? And, equally importantly, where do we turn from here? Who will lead, and how?

During the last few years, I have interacted closely with about a hundred individuals between the ages of 18 and 34, including many students and a passel of nieces and nephews. These young people represent the pool from which post-carbon leaders must come. It is their future, and they are now reaching the age of leadership. Somehow, people must emerge from this pool to lead us to a brighter tomorrow, sans electricity.

Although I’m typically unremitting in my optimism about economic collapse and therefore dodging the bullet of human extinction, my optimism wanes when I think about leadership in the post-carbon era. Of those hundred or so individuals I’ve come to know reasonably well, fewer than a handful give me cause for hope. Fewer than a handful possess the necessary traits to survive economic collapse, much less assume a leadership role on the other side.

Survival alone requires the proper psychological outlook, physical stamina, and a decent dose of intelligence. The first criterion alone eliminates at least eight of ten potential candidates. Almost nobody under the age of thirty is willing to deal with a low-energy, poverty-infused personal reality if it means forgoing his cell phone. Despite plenty of opportunities to observe non-industrial cultures in the world — arguably, more opportunities than any people in the history of the planet — a vast majority of today’s youngsters cannot envision economic collapse even when it surrounds them. A life without electricity, cheap food at the grocery store, and water coming out the taps is as foreign as a day without i-Pods and online porn. The hyper-indulgence of the generations has ratcheted up nearly beyond belief, and certainly beyond the point of comfortably returning to a life where a walk in the woods is viewed as a privilege instead of a burden.

While the ability to deal with the real world was plummeting to its current near-zero nadir, the notion that physical stamina is meritorious has largely disappeared from American life. Somewhere along the way, bicycling came to require a spandex uniform, and walking was relegated to losers who could not afford a new car. Meanwhile, living close to the land became a quaint notion mutually exclusive from a culturally important position in life (cf. texting and playing video games). For the vanishingly small proportion of individuals who are physically fit and willing to deal with an unfamiliar set of circumstances in the years ahead, the ability to exert intelligent leadership represents a daunting challenge. The challenge appears far too great for most of the people I know, nearly all of whom are wondering how they can scam the current system instead of wondering how they can help build a new one. The idea that the new one should be based on service to Earth and impoverished humans hasn’t yet entered the collective consciousness of the new “me” generation.

Obviously, I don’t know who will fill the leadership gap, or how they will do it. But I’m pretty sure the answers won’t come from over-indulgent children who are unwilling to grow up. I’m pretty sure the answers won’t come from youngsters who think the placement of their tattoos is more important than the placement of their gardens. I’m pretty sure the answers won’t come from ill-mannered children who dress for dinner in clownish clothes, untied shoes, and sideways baseball caps. I’m pretty sure the answers won’t come from people who think cars of the future will save us, instead of further destroying the living planet and our chances of survival. I’m pretty sure the answers won’t come from thoughtless automatons who irrationally believe technology will solve all our problems, instead of recognizing that technology is self-defeating. I’m pretty sure the answers won’t come from people who believe cities to be the apex of life on Earth, and who believe rural living is for bumpkins.

It’s not that I blame these overgrown children for whom maturity is a mirage. They are products of culture, and culture has led them into the misguided belief that the fossil-fuel fiesta is just getting started.

Instead, the best party on Earth is about to begin. Personally, I couldn’t be happier about it. But I’m guessing the children won’t be pleased.

I’ll start with definitions, straight from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Resource: 1 a: a source of supply or support : an available means –usually used in plural b: a natural source of wealth or revenue –often used in plural :c: a natural feature or phenomenon that enhances the quality of human life d: computable wealth –usually used in plural e: a source of information or expertise.
All these definitions imply an anthropogenic basis for resources, and c is particularly transparent on this point. Digging a little further, the etymology of “resource” brings us directly to lifelong bedfellows anthropocentrism and Christianity. “Resource” is derived from the Old French “resourdre” (literally, to rise again), which has its roots in the Latin “resurgere” (to rise from the dead; also see “resurrection”).
From this etymology, it’s a simple step back in time to Aristotle’s “final cause” (which followed his material cause, efficient cause, and formal cause). Aristotle posited that, ultimately, events occurred to serve life, particularly the life of humans. This anthropocentric take on causality grew directly from the philosophy of Aristotle’s teacher Plato, who focused his philosophy on separating humans from nature while popularizing the feel-good notion that humans have immortal souls. The idea that humans have souls, which was subsequently discredited by the (western) science that grew from humble Grecian roots, became the basis for Christianity, one of three Abrahamic religions that developed in the Mediterranean a few centuries after Plato learned from Socrates and then taught Aristotle.
Considering the history of western thought, it’s no surprise we view every element on Earth as feedstock for industrialization. The only question is when we exploit Earth’s bounty, not if. The logical progression, then, is to exploitation of humans to further feed the industrial machine.
Within the last few years, personnel departments at major institutions became departments of human resources. Thus, whereas these departments formerly dealt with persons, they now deal with resources. There’s a reason you feel like a cog in a grand imperial scheme: Not only are you are viewed as a cog by the machine, and also by those who run the machine, but any non-cog-like behavior on your part leads to rejection of you and your actions. Seems you’re either a tool of empire or you’re a saboteur (i.e., terrorist).
It’s time to invest in wooden shoes.
As if fifteen people are even willing to poke a stick in the eye of the corporations that run and ruin our lives. Why is that? Probably because we think we depend upon them, when in fact they depend upon us. And, to a certain extent — to the extent we allow — we do depend upon industrial culture for our lives. But only in the short term, and only as self-absorbed, comfortable individuals unwilling to make changes in our lives (even ones that are necessary to our own survival). Taking the longer, broader view, it is evident industrial culture is killing the living planet, and our own species. The cultural problem we face is not that we’re fish out of water. Rather, it’s that we’re fish in a river. We don’t even know there’s an ocean, much less a landbase.
Aye, there’s the rub. Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.
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This post is permalined at Energy Bulletin, Counter Currents, mostly water, and Eco Friendly Mag.

The human role in extinction of species and degradation of ecosystems is well documented. Since European settlement in North America, and especially after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we have witnessed a substantial decline in biological diversity of native taxa and profound changes in assemblages of the remaining species. We have ripped minerals from the Earth, often bringing down mountains in the process; we have harvested nearly all the old-growth timber on the continent, replacing thousand-year-old trees with neatly ordered plantations of small trees; we have hunted species to the point of extinction; we have driven livestock across every almost acre of the continent, baring hillsides and facilitating massive erosion; we have plowed large landscapes, transforming fertile soil into sterile, lifeless dirt; we have burned ecosystems and, perhaps more importantly, we have extinguished naturally occurring fires; we have paved thousands of acres to facilitate our movement and, in the process, have disrupted the movements of thousands of species; we have spewed pollution and dumped garbage, thereby dirtying our air, fouling our water, and contributing greatly to the warming of the planet. We have, to the maximum possible extent allowed by our intellect and never-ending desire, consumed the planet. In the wake of these endless insults to our only home, perhaps the greatest surprise is that so many native species have persisted, thus allowing our continued enjoyment and exploitation.
Although insults by Homo sapiens since the Industrial Revolution are well documented and widely acknowledged, abundant archaeological evidence indicates similar actions in the more distant past have led to the rise and fall of 23 major civilizations. Humans clearly have impacted their environments since initially appearing on the evolutionary stage, and human impacts have grown profoundly since the development of agriculture and subsequent technologies (as reviewed by Charles Redman’s 1999 text, Human Impact on Ancient Environments and, in more accessible prose, by Jared Diamond’s 2005 book, Collapse). Concomitantly, the environment has influenced the development of humans and their societies. The interaction between humans and their environments and the relative roles of culture and resources on human societies have received considerable attention from archaeological scholars. (The word “resources” is problematic because it implies materials are placed on this planet for the use of humans. We see finite substances and the living planet as materials to be exploited for our comfort. For efficiency and familiarity, I reluctantly use the word throughout this essay. I’ll save the full rant for another post while pointing out that my perspective is less imperial, and less Christian, than the traditional view.) The expansive literatures on resources, culture, and human-environment interactions indicate the important role of resources in constraining the development of several societies in the North American Southwest (as described particularly well by Timothy A. Kohler and colleagues). Exploitation of ecosystems, even to the point of destroying fertility of soils, has constrained subsequent food production (as described most notably by J.A. Sandor and colleagues). Although I recognize the importance of these topics, I leave the continued study and discussion of culture, resources, and human-environment interactions in the distant past to scholars with more interest and expertise than me, and instead turn my attention to recent and ongoing assaults by humans on the living planet.
If we accept that humans played a pivotal role in loss of species and degradation of ecosystems — and both patterns seem impossible to deny at this point — we face a daunting moral question: How do we reverse these trends?
Maintenance of biological diversity is important to our own species because present and future generations of humans depend on a rich diversity of life to maintain survival of individuals and, ultimately, persistence of our species. In addition, as architects of the extinction crisis currently facing plant Earth, we have a responsibility to future Homo sapiens and to non-human species to retain the maximum possible biological diversity. We must embrace our capacity and capability to sustain and enhance the diversity and complexity of our landscapes. The substantial economic cost of maintaining high levels of biological diversity will pale in comparison to the costs of failing to do so, which potentially include the extinction of humans from Earth.
Reintroducing ecological processes with which species evolved, and eliminating processes detrimental to native species, underlie the ability to maintain and perhaps even restore species diversity. Specifically, the management of wildland ecosystems should be based on maintenance and restoration of ecological processes, rather than on structural components such as species composition or maintenance of habitat for high-profile rare species. In fact, a focus on the latter goals — a fine-filter approach — may clog the coarse filter necessary for landscape-scale management of many species and ecosystems.
Drivers of Change
The proximate drivers underlying changes in land cover during the first few decades after European contact were mineral extraction, agricultural expansion, timber removal, and introduction of nonnative species (most importantly, livestock). The quest for silver and gold drove the Conquistadors to dismember, rape, and murder native peoples throughout the New World. The effects of mining on natural ecosystems were no less dramatic. Even before fossil fuels were employed to ease the extraction of metals from the ground, waterways were diverted and steam-powered water cannons were used to blast soil from mountains. Every tree within several dozen miles of a mining operation was cut down or pulled from the ground to power steam-powered stamp mills. Trees that escaped the eye of mine operators rarely got away for long. The western expansion of the human population across North America drove great demand for construction lumber, railroad ties, paper products, and heat from the hearth. These changes and their consequences have been well documented in a wide variety of publications (see, for example, People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, One with Ninevah by Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, and The Diversity of Life by Edward O. Wilson).
Farmers and ranchers followed frontiersmen, trappers, and miners into western North America. Whereas frontiersmen left a relatively small ecological footprint and the operations of trappers and miners tended to be limited in spatial scale, agriculture dominated virtually every acre of the North American West. Row-crop agriculture covered areas with fertile soil that could be fed by irrigation systems, including nearly all rivers. The massive, arid expanses unable to sustain row crops supported the dominant form of agriculture: livestock. By the early twentieth century, cattle and sheep had trampled nearly every wildland acre in search of forage. Stockmen (and, rarely, stockwomen) led the charge to exterminate perceived predators and potential competitors for forage: wolves, bears, coyotes, eagles, and prairie dogs were among the species slaughtered in the pursuit of safe environs for livestock and those who grew them. Perhaps more important than direct mortality from shooting and trapping were pronounced changes in site conditions that resulted from the collective action of millions of mouths and hooves.
Livestock have had pronounced negative impacts throughout North America. Livestock still loom large, and other biological invasions have transformed western landscapes. Some, like livestock, are politically “untouchable” despite adverse impacts on native species and ecosystems (e.g., “sport” fishes and various species of turf grasses critical to the golf-course industry). Others are universally undesirable but seemingly intractable because of ecological, rather than political, reasons.
It is not surprising that we are largely unable to manage, much less eradicate, nonnative species. After all, there are more than 50,000 nonnative species in the United States alone, invading terrestrial ecosystems at the rate of 700,000 hectares each year at an annual cost of $120 billion; they threaten 400 species with extinction (these figures come from the excellent scholarship of David Pimentel and colleagues, most notably including their 2005 paper in the journal Ecological Economics titled, “Update on the environmental and economic costs associated with alien-invasive species in the United States”). To make matters even more challenging, every species on Earth is capable of invading other sites (as assured by biotic potential), and every site is subject to invasion by at least one, and potentially many, nonnative species. Because biological invasions depend exclusively on the “match” between characteristics of biological invaders and characteristics of sites, and because there are an infinite number of potential “matches” between species and sites, solutions to the problem of biological invasions are specific to species and sites.
Given the disinterest in environmental issues displayed by citizens and their elected representatives, I doubt we will seriously address the problem of biological invasions before we cause the extinction of own species. As such, this disinterest in environmental issues reflects ignorance or disdain for the living planet that sustains our own species. It represents, in other words, omnicide that will almost certainly prove fatal.
The transition to modernity brought infrastructure, notably cities and the ever-widening, increasingly well maintained roads between them. Thus, within the last few decades, early drivers of change such as mining and agricultural expansion have been supplanted in importance by alteration of fire regimes, urbanization, and global climate change. Herein, I focus on the relatively simple impacts of each of these factors in isolation. As with historical drivers of change, interactions between these factors are complex, under-studied, and undoubtedly critically important.
A large and growing body of knowledge and empirical evidence indicates that fire was historically prevalent in North America, except in the driest deserts and the coldest tundra. It is clear that native species on the continent have evolved adaptations to periodic fires. Historical prevalence of fire ensures that even those species that seem most intolerant of fire have evolved in the presence of recurrent fires, as described in abundant ecological literature. Adaptations to fire are many and diverse, and include escape (e.g., distributions limited to rocky areas where fire rarely occurred), tolerance (e.g., thick bark), and rapid recruitment in post-fire environments (e.g., widely dispersed seeds and ability to establish in open environments).
Recognition that virtually all native species in North America evolved in concert with periodic fires leads to two general conclusions: (1) Native species have developed adaptations to fires that occur at a particular frequency, season, and extent; and (2) maintenance or reintroduction of the fire regimes with which these species evolved should assume high priority for those interested in maintaining high levels of biological diversity. A corollary to the first conclusion is that classification of native species along a gradient of adaptation to fire is simplistic and potentially misleading. Native species are “adapted” to recurrent fires, and classifying some as more tolerant than others suggests that fire is “good” for some species and “bad” for others. A more appropriate view is that recurrent fires, at the appropriate frequency, season, and extent (i.e., components of the historical fire regime), are part and parcel of these ecosystems. A corollary of the second conclusion is that reintroduction of ecological processes should be a relatively efficient and comprehensive strategy for retaining native species in extant ecosystems. Indeed, the historical prevalence of fire in these ecosystems suggests that fire is a necessary component of any comprehensive strategy focused on retention of biological diversity. Because fire was — and is — a dominant process in these systems, restoration of fire regimes would seem to be an important first step toward maintenance of high levels of biological diversity.
Urbanization and the associated transportation infrastructure have divided formerly large, contiguous landscapes into fragmented pieces. Fires that formerly covered large areas are constrained by fragmentation, and animals that necessarily range over large areas, such as mountain lions, bison, and grizzly bears, have suffered expectedly. These changes have been particularly pronounced since Oil War II, largely as a result of government subsidies that have promoted growth of the human population and suburban development. These trends will be reversed within the next few years because the Oil Age is drawing to a close. Unfortunately, our near-term inability to burn fossil fuels on a large scale probably will come too late to save many of the planet’s species from the effects of runaway greenhouse.
Ultimately, the story of western civilization is the story of fossil fuels. Profound changes in land use and land cover have been enabled by access to inexpensive oil and its derivatives (e.g., coal, uranium, ethanol, photovoltaic solar panels, wind turbines). Dramatic fluctuations in the price of oil within the next few years, coupled with steadily declining global supplies of this finite substance, likely will cause a complete collapse of the world’s industrial economy, which might usher in a new era with respect to species assemblages and land cover. Given the dependence of humans on fossil fuels for power, water, and food (including production and delivery), it seems inevitable that many people will die and the industrialized world’s vaunted infrastructure will collapse, thereby giving other species a slim and dwindling chance to make a comeback. Although the pattern of dwindling access to resources and subsequent collapse of civilizations has been thoroughly described in the archaeological record, the ongoing collapse obviously exceeds previous others with respect to geographic scale, as well as the number of species and the number of humans impacted.
Peak Oil and the Collapse of Industrial Civilization
Oil discovery and extraction tend to follow bell-shaped curves, as described by M. King Hubbert more than 50 years ago. The easily reached, light oil is extracted first. Heavier oil, often characterized by high sulfur content, is found at greater depths on land and also offshore. This heavier oil requires more money and more energy to extract and to refine than light oil. Eventually, all fields and regions become unviable economically and energetically. When extracting a barrel of oil requires more energy than contained in the barrel of oil, extraction is pointless.
The top of the bell-shaped curve for oil extraction is called “Peak Oil” or “Hubbert’s Peak.” We passed Hubbert’s Peak for world oil supply in 2005 and began easing down the other side, with an annual decline rate of 0.5% between 2005 and 2008 leading to a record-setting price of $147.27/barrel in July 2008. The International Energy Agency, which had never previously acknowledged the existence of a peak in oil availability, predicted an annual decline rate in crude oil in excess of 9% after 2008. The current economic recession resulting from the high price of oil led to a collapse in demand for oil and numerous other finite commodities, hence leading to reduced prices and the rapid abandonment of energy-production projects. Many geologists and scientists predict a permanent economic depression will result from declining availability of oil and the associated dramatic swings in the price of oil. It seems clear the permanent depression is already here. The absence of a politically viable solution to energy decline explains, at least in part, the absence of a governmental response to the issue even though the United States government recognizes peak oil as a serious problem (along, no doubt, with many other governments of the world).
Without energy, societies collapse. In contemporary, industrialized societies, virtually all energy sources are derived from oil. Even “renewable” energy sources such as hydropower, wind turbines, and solar panels require an enormous amount of oil for construction, maintenance, and repair. Extraction and delivery of coal, natural gas, and uranium similarly are oil-intensive endeavors. Thus, the decline of inexpensive oil spells economic disaster for industrialized countries. Demand destruction caused by high energy prices is affecting the entire industrialized world.
Viewed from a broader perspective than energy, economic collapses result from an imbalance between demand and supply of one or more resources (as explained in considerable depth by Jared Diamond in Collapse). When supply of vital resources is outstripped by demand, governments often print currency, which leads to hyperinflation. In recent history, the price of oil and its refined products have been primary to rates of inflation and have played central roles in the maintenance of civilized societies.
Addressing the issue of peak oil while also controlling emissions of carbon dioxide, and therefore reducing the prospect of “runaway greenhouse” on planet Earth, represents a daunting and potentially overwhelming challenge. Peak oil and the effects of runaway greenhouse are the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced. Tackling either challenge, without the loss of a huge number of human lives, will require tremendous courage, compassion, and creativity.
There is little question that the decades ahead will differ markedly from the recent past. From this point forward, Homo sapiens will lack the supply of inexpensive energy necessary to create and maintain a large, durable civilization. The fate of western civilization is in serious question, given our inability to sustain high levels of energy extraction. The population of humans in industrialized countries probably will fall precipitously if oil extraction turns sharply downward, as predicted by the International Energy Agency. The benefit of a massive human die-off is the potential for other species, and even other cultures, to expand into the vacuum we leave in our wake.
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This post is extracted and modified from a forthcoming book chapter celebrating 20 years of archaeological research in the North American Southwest. To improve accessibility for this audience, I have removed references to the primary literature (if you’d like a copy of the academic version, please send me an email message). The book will be published by the Colorado University Press. Thanks to Carla Van West for inviting my participation in the Southwestern Symposium held in Tempe, Arizona, January 2008, and for soliciting my chapter for the book. Thoughtful comments on earlier drafts were provided by Dana Backer and Paul Taylor.
This essay is permalinked at Energy Bulletin, Speaking Truth to Power, Island Breath, mostly water, StumbleUpon, and (sans links) the website of the Western Watersheds Project.

Fortunately, the former path gives us one final chance to rescue humanity. And I’m not considering merely our own species. Consider, for example, these definitions from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:
1: the quality or state of being humane (i.e., marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals)
2a: the quality or state of being human b: plural: human attributes or qualities
3: plural: the branches of learning (as philosophy, arts, or languages) that investigate human constructs and concerns as opposed to natural processes (as in physics or chemistry) and social relations (as in anthropology or economics)
4: the human race: the totality of human beings
Sure, that fourth definition matters. We’re selfish creatures, after all, interested primarily in persistence. Unfortunately for our species, we’re really, truly interested in persistence of our own selfish selves, and not so much interested in our own species. Ergo, the self-induced, greed-inspired, utterly human, generally predictable (but specifically chaotic) predicaments in which we are currently marinating.
As a society, we will not willingly halt the industrial economy. We would much rather reduce the planet to a lifeless pile of rubble than diminish — much less halt — economic growth. But, soon enough, we’ll run out of options and the industrial economy will take its last breath, thereby giving us our final, slim hope for averting extinction within the next few decades.
But I’d like to consider the other three definitions, too. If we’re to bring down the industrial economy, and therefore save our own sorry asses from our own self-induced, greed-inspired, … well, you know … then we’re going to have to tap deeply and meaningfully into definitions one, two, and three. In so doing, we just might retain the attributes associated with definitions one, two, and three. But only if we get serious about throwing large buckets of sand into the economic gears of empire.
We could argue all day about the first definition (the others, too, for that matter). Are we capable of being humane? How deeply do you have to drill into your memory to come up with a time you saw a large group of people acting compassionately, sympathetically, considerately toward other humans or animals? On the other hand — and please excuse my eternally optimistic outlook as it bubbles to the surface yet again — it’s probably quite easy to recall the last time you saw an individual human being displaying those same characteristics. Probably it was you, earlier today.
There’s plenty of evolutionary theory to explain altruism among individuals in small groups, even if the individuals do not share grandparents. That same evolutionary theory becomes tenuous, verging on useless, when group size becomes sufficiently large. Throw in all the attributes of industrial culture, nearly all of which reward competition and individualism over cooperation and teamwork, and suddenly we’re trapped beneath an avalanche of self-generated hubris.
If we manage to retain the quality or state of being humane — that is, if we are to retain some semblance of compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals — we must jump off the imperial train before it crashes in a heap at the bottom of the precipitous fall. There is some question about whether the train has driven off the cliff, but there can be no doubt it left the station quite a while ago. There is no legitimate hope for saving the industrial economy or a large proportion of the 6.7 billion humans on Earth, but there is great hope for saving the “quality or state of being humane” for relatively small groups of humans.
Will you be part of one of those groups? Will you be among the people with access to water, food, shelter, and community?
On, then, to the second definition: the quality or state of being human. What makes us human? The question is, of course, easy to address on the surface and nearly impossible to address in depth. DNA tells us whether we’re human, that is, whether we’re of the genus Homo and the species Homo sapiens, as opposed to one of the myriad other organisms on the planet. We’ll leave the easy question to gene jockeys, and take up the more difficult and deeper question: What makes us human, beyond DNA?
I’m hardly the first person to ponder that question. My predecessors include a recent special issue of Nature (Great Britain’s preeminent scientific journal), Hollywood, British television, and dozens of authors, including a passel of philosophers dating at least to Plato and Lao Tzu. I defer, as I often do, to Nietzsche (particularly in Human, All Too Human). Nietzsche recognized humans as tragically flawed organisms that, like other animals, lack free will. Unlike Descartes, Nietzsche thought our flaws define us, and therefore cannot be overcome. We are far too human for that. Although we are thinking animals — what Nietzsche termed res cogitans — we are prey to muddled thoughts, that is, to ideas that lack clarity and distinctness. Nietzsche wasn’t so pessimistic or naive to believe all our thoughts are muddled, of course. Ultimately, though, incompetence defines the human experience.
It’s a short, easy step from Nietzsche’s conclusion — we are flawed organisms — to industrial culture as a product of our incompetence. But the same step can be taken for every technology, with industrial culture as the potentially fatal blow. In other words, progress means only that we accelerate the rapidity with which bad things happen to societies. American exceptionalism thus becomes one more victim of the imperial train wreck.
If this second definition of humanity contributed to the tragedy of industrial culture — and it’s difficult for me to believe it didn’t — is it, like definition number one, worth saving? Will completion of the ongoing industrial collapse retain our inherent, all-too-human flaw?
This question is analogous to John Stuart Mill’s famous line from Utilitarianism: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.” We simply don’t have a choice in the matter (and neither did Mill’s pig). We’re tragically flawed regardless of the industrial economy’s lifespan. In this case, bringing down civilization neither benefits nor harms our humanity.
The third definition of humanity: “the branches of learning (as philosophy, arts, or languages) that investigate human constructs and concerns as opposed to natural processes (as in physics or chemistry) and social relations (as in anthropology or economics).” The branches of learning are defined by the culture. In the present case, arbitrarily dividing knowledge into natural sciences and the humanities has contributed to the division we see at all levels of human interaction. Echoing C.P. Snow’s conclusion in his eponymous two cultures, Edward O. Wilson’s argued forcefully in Consilience that the separation of learning, hence knowledge, into two groups is a huge blow to meaningfully understanding the human experience. C.P. Snow was, of course, echoing Plato and Lao Tzu.
Shouldn’t we be trying to integrate knowledge, instead of compartmentalizing it? In an effort to serve the culture of death that is industrial society, we have taken the worst possible approach: We developed our entire educational system around the twin pillars of compartmentalization and ignorance. Throw in a huge, ongoing, forceful dose of opposition to integration and synthesis, and we’re left with a tsunami of incompetence. We probably stood no chance of overcoming the all-too-human incompetence described by Nietzsche, but we purposely designed an educational system to reinforce the incompetence on a massive scale. Is it any wonder we’re a nation of overfed clowns?
It’s easy to blame industrial culture for the sorry state of our educational system, and therefore for our lack of relevant humanity. But I think it’s an equally easy path toward improving education by bringing down industrial culture. A truly comprehensive approach to learning would focus on humans as part of the world, rather than apart from the world. It would strive for integration and synthesis. It would assume the learner is one part of an ecosystem, but not a superior part. It would be as unique to a specific location as climate, topography, and the durable culture that assumes its place in that place. One basis for such a system can be found here.
About that fourth and final definition, the one that absorbs our tender existential psyches: Nobody who ever gave the matter serious thought could honestly reach the conclusion that “the totality of human beings” was destined to last forever. But we would try to bring down industrial civilization if we had even a token amount of “compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals.” Our persistent, ridiculous, and all-too-human attempts to prop up the industrial economy not only reveal our stunning lack of humanity, they pose a grave threat to our species.
Humanity is at a crossroads. Let’s save it, shall we?
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This entry is discussed at The Teeming Brain, and a copy of this entry is posted at Energy Bulletin. Original version, with tiny url, is at http://tinyurl.com/p84se9

The typical approach at events such as this one, targeted at our best and brightest, is to inspire you to greatness by telling you that you are this country’s most valuable resource. I’m not going to do that, because I think it would scare the hell out of you. After all, have you seen what we do to precious resources in this country?
Daniel Quinn is a wonderful author, and Ishmael is his signature book. He has written many other books and articles, but Ishmael sets the general theme and tone for most of his writings. I interpret the overall themes as two-fold: First, civilization represents a grave threat to other species and cultures, and even to our own species, and second, we can do better.
I’ll say that again, just to make sure we’re on the same page: Civilization represents a grave threat to the existence of myriad cultures and species, including our own species. And we can do better.
We cannot do better by acting in our usual self-absorbed manner. In one of his many written works, Quinn relates a conversation he had with his spiritual advisor: “my problem is not that I thought highly of myself … not that I thought lowly of myself … but that I thought constantly of myself.” Quinn’s experience describes my life so far, and I suspect you can identify with it as well. We’ll have to start thinking about others, including the most distant of others, if we’re to deal effectively with the problem of civilization.
Obviously, we can’t do better simply by saying we can. Joining the Sierra Club isn’t going to save the polar bear, much less humankind. To use Quinn’s words, Mother Culture provides powerful disincentives for those who struggle against her. Doing better will require us to swim upstream against a cultural current so strong, so pervasive, and so embedded in our psyche that we don’t even recognize the current. We’re fish in a river, unaware that there’s an ocean, much less a landbase. If you intend to think your way out of this cultural mess, you’ll think of Nietzsche’s Overman. You’ll think of Orwell’s modest heroes. You’ll think of all the quirky, off-beat, out of touch, counter-culture contrarians you’ve ever met. You’ll think.
As Quinn assures you, that thinking will be painful. And if you think thinking will be painful, imagine acting on those thoughts. Now remember Nietzsche, and how disparaged he was throughout his life. Remember Orwell’s modest heroes, and how they were treated. Try to remember your initial reaction to those counter-culture contrarians.
Still want to save the world, or at least a few of the more than 200 species we drive to extinction every day? You can expect some resistance along the way.
As it turns out, the Renaissance has begun. The end of civilization is at hand, and you’re right in the middle of it. It’s beginning to look as if you won’t have to do a thing, that civilization is crashing down all by itself. Not that this knowledge should encourage you to postpone action. Action is the antidote of despair, and we need all hands on deck if we’re going to sink the ship of civilization before even more cultures, species, and humans are killed.
So, as the title of my presentation indicates, I have good news and bad news. I’ll start with the good news, and spend most of my time talking about it. The bad news is so bad it’s unthinkable, so we’ll have to think of something else.
Here’s the good news about sustainability: We’re almost there. The Great Awakening has begun, despite Mother Culture’s best efforts to ward it off.
We passed the world oil peak more than three years ago. From this point forward, oil becomes increasingly expensive and unavailable. Crude oil is the master resource, the one that allows us to use coal, uranium, solar panels, wind turbines, and personal cars. It’s the resource, in other words, that allows us, in Quinn’s words, to consume the planet.
Within a relatively short period of time, the high price and low availability of oil ensures no more happy motoring to Wal-Mart — indeed, no more Wal-Mart — with the end of civilization fast on the heels of the end of Wal-Mart. No more diesel-powered tankers to bring next year’s Ipod. No more diesel-powered trucks to bring food to the grocery store. No more electricity. No more water coming out the taps. Soon enough, we’ll be right back in the Stone Age, living sustainably on the land.
That’s the good news, part one.
Lacking cheap oil, and eventually lacking access to the distillates of oil, we can no longer consume the planet. Since extinction of species is strongly correlated with economic growth, the global rate of extinction is bound to fall precipitously.
If that isn’t good news, I don’t know what is. And it gets better.
Lacking cheap oil, and eventually lacking access to the distillates of oil, western civilization is precluded from destroying languages and entire cultures at an accelerating rate.
If you’re interested in humankind, I saved the best for last: Lacking cheap oil, and eventually lacking access to the distillates of oil, we cannot fry the planet beyond the point of human habitability. With ready access to cheap oil, we will almost certainly make the planet uninhabitable to humans by the end of this century. Some projections indicate a much more rapid transition, that we’ll run out of habitat for humans within three decades. The most dire projections indicate we cannot stop the frying of the planet, that inertia in the climate system precludes human habitat even if we cease burning all fossil fuels today.
That’s the bad news: It’s too late to save our sorry … uh, species … as if we were worth saving anyway.
But, in the spirit of Daniel Quinn and his favorite gorilla, I’m focusing on the good news: the collapse of civilization and the consequent Renaissance.
The good news doesn’t come without strings, of course. Fossil fuels have allowed us to greatly exceed the human carrying capacity of the planet, albeit only temporarily. Consider the tiny example of this event: Ready access to cheap oil allows us to enjoy this well-traveled food and 10,000-year-old water in a room with a “civilized” temperature. Extrapolate to every event, in every location, at all times. We’re long past due for a Malthusian-style correction that will reduce the human population from its current 6.7 billion to a much, much lower number. Informed estimates of human mortality run as high at 90%. It would be difficult to overestimate the magnitude of the human suffering likely to result from a rapid decline in access to crude oil.
When I talk about the good news, and put it in such stark terms, people often ask me how I retain hope. It’s a fair question: I’ve been described as tall, dark, and gloomy, especially by people in Mother Culture’s main stream.
So let’s talk about hope. I view hope as the left-brain product of love, analogous to democracy as the product of freedom, or liberty. Notably, Patrick Henry did not say, “Give me democracy or give me death.” Like the rest of the founding fathers, Henry knew that freedom was primary to democracy; without the guiding light of freedom, or liberty, democracy breaks up on the shoals. Love keeps our left brain in check — that’s the message of the world’s religions. But our right-brain love creates the foundation for hope: love for nature, love for our parents and for our children, love for each other. Without love to light the way, hope breaks up on the shoals.
Mind you, hope is not simply wishful thinking. And that’s a problem, considering we’re immersed in the ultimate “wishful thinking, something-for-nothing” culture. How else to explain books such as The Secret, which proclaims that happy thoughts will generate happy results, including personal wealth? How else to explain the prevalence of, and widespread acceptance of, casinos? And it’s not just acceptance: it’s adoration, if the boob tube and the local movie theater are to be believed. Not so long ago, gambling was frowned upon because, instead of adhering to a culture of an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, it reflects the expectation that a person can get something for nothing. No, hope is not wishful thinking.
And another thing: Hope is not a consumer product. You can’t walk into Wal-Mart and order up a carton of hope. Indeed, given the demise of cheap oil, there’s unlikely to be a Wal-Mart — or any other large institution, for that matter — to walk into at all within a few years. Even if Wal-Mart, the federal government, or the University of Arizona somehow find a way to survive, we’re going to have to generate our own hope, one person at a time. Just as an economic collapse happens one person at a time, so too must hope happen one person at a time.
When I’m not playing social critic, I’m a conservation biologist. I admit conservation biology is a value-laden enterprise, hampered by — and perhaps assisted by — bridges between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The greatest value of Earth is, always has been, and always will be, that it exists. Not that it is useful. But that it is. Perhaps that makes me an artist trapped in a scientific pursuit. But, at least for me, it allows hope to emerge from the tonic of wildness, thereby providing context for this most insignificant of lives. It allows hope to flicker. And if there is a flicker of hope, I believe we must treat it like a beacon. Hope, my friends, is everywhere.
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” said Emily Dickinson. Her other poems indicate that she was not restricting her thoughts to birds: Dickinson found hope throughout the glory and wonder of nature.
My friend and colleague, the planner Vern Swaback, is fond of saying he finds hope in “a person’s dedicated life.” I cannot improve upon Vern’s comment, but I can offer a few other personal examples.
I find hope in the poems of the teenaged girls at the juvenile detention facility where I help teach sustainability through poetry.
And I see hope flickering every day in the eyes — and therefore in the minds and in the hearts — of the students with whom I am fortunate to work on a daily basis.
Hope is our humility overcoming our hubris in the face of long odds. This will require an enormous amount of courage, compassion, and creativity. We must rise to Nietzschean heights in the style of the Overman.
Hope is self-proclaimed liberals and self-proclaimed conservatives in the same room, thinking about — and talking about — our common future.
With hope shining like a beacon, we struggle together against increasingly long odds … for the greatest of all possible goals.
We have in our hands the destiny of our planet, including our own species and so many others. In the end, for finite beings such as ourselves, the historical process is irrelevant; all we have is our legacy, but that legacy is lost to us (as individuals). Yet we are unique beings in that we are able to recognize the historical process as something larger than ourselves. We judge that process worthy or not worthy based on our own singular experience. For me, the universe is a worthy endeavor because the lens through which I view it is colored with the relationships I have experienced; those relationships include humans and nature.
Walking a path that honors the planet and ourselves is a responsibility we share, you and I — a responsibility rooted in hope and therefore in love — a responsibility completely unlike any other in human history. And it is not just a responsibility, but also something more: It is a joy, and a privilege.
Thank you.

This is the transcript of a talk I delivered 17 August 2007. It was the keynote address for a conference organized by, and for, students in the University of Arizona’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program. I sent the transcript to a few people, upon request, after I gave the talk. It’s been making its way through cyberspace and judging from the many unsolicited email messages I have received from people I don’t know, it’s been provoking some thought and perhaps even some action. My ego is going to miss the Internet.
This talk started as a 20-minute set of after-dinner comments at a conference on assigning economic value to ecosystem services (the conference was organized by The Research Ranch Foundation). It grew into this hour-long polemic after a few iterations and much commentary. (Thanks to the following for the commentary: Sheila Merrigan, Peter Russell, Court Merrigan, James B. McPherson, Carol Wallace, Carolyn Baker, Matt Skroch, and Mike Fugagli. Thanks to the following for inspiration from their own writings: James Howard Kunstler, Derrick Jensen, Carolyn Baker, Matt Savinar, and Sharman Russell). Due to time constraints, I cut about a quarter of it before I delivered it to the MPH crowd. You’re getting the unconstrained version here, which serves as a long-winded response to Robert W’s comment on my first blog entry: I welcome comments even from irrational people (many would argue I am one), and you’re right about them (me?) as a source of answers. When the inmates are running the asylum — and they seem to be, at least in this country — it doesn’t pay to scream, “You’re all crazy” at them.
As always, comments are welcome. Energy Bulletin has a link to this post.
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The invitation to speak today is quite an honor, and I appreciate the opportunity. It’s also quite a challenge, because I know so little about what you do. As I understand personal health, from my medical doctor, I should eat less and exercise more. I assume public health means everybody should eat less and exercise more. That’s about all I know about public health, and I assume it’s not quite the whole story.
The standard approach at commencement ceremonies, graduation events, and other such celebrations is to tell young people they are this country’s most precious resource. Frankly, I think that should scare the hell out of you. Have you seen what we do to precious resources in this country?
Since my knowledge of public health is, shall we say, incomplete, I can make few promises about content and none about quality. That said, I must warn you: I’m an equal-opportunity offender with a passion for stirring the societal stew. Edward Abbey, the iconoclastic author from Tucson, was fond of saying society is like a stew: if you don’t stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top. Clearly, we’ve needed a lot more stirring since we lost Cactus Ed’s voice in 1989.
Speaking of scum rising to the top, my dean keeps asking me to quit stirring the pot. Apparently by pointing out the absurdities of Americans and their self-indulgent lifestyles, university professors threaten to interrupt the money being siphoned away from big-business donors and toward our football team. So I keep reminding my dean, and anybody else who’ll listen, that one of my favorite quotes comes from George Orwell: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Not surprisingly, my dean doesn’t appreciate Orwell nearly as much as I do. Of course, he doesn’t appreciate me nearly as much as I do, either. Fortunately, if tenure means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In my case, that means trying to wake people up: specifically, the inordinate number of them who are sleeping on the railroad tracks.
It’s a wonderful afternoon and I love the idea and format of today’s program. I would much rather use this opportunity to discuss our common future with you than deliver a sermon to you. As a result, I tried to prepare these comments in light of three criteria – they should be brief, they should be funny, and they should be brief. Considering my lack of skill as a standup comic, I will focus on the first and third criteria.
My internal clock is set at the standard professorial 50 minutes. So in this case, “brief” means early an hour. I suspect it will not seem brief to you, though: I’ve been told that listening to me is about as much fun as gargling razor blades, so this might seem like a long time. This is my way of admitting I will fail to respect any of the three criteria.
I have been plagued lately with the central question underlying Schopenhauer’s philosophy: How to get through a life not worth living?
Socrates famously concluded that the unexamined is not worth living. I’m surprised it took two millennia for somebody — that somebody being Schopenhauer — to realize that the examined life is far, far worse.
I told you I wasn’t funny.
This is one of the many prices you pay for having a PBS mind in an MTV world: You realize that, although ignorance is bliss, bliss is overrated. Otherwise, we’d all be comfortably stoned, all the time. Especially you, since you have ready access to the appropriate pharmaceuticals. We can talk more about those pharmaceuticals later this afternoon … preferably in private.
So then: How to get through a life not worth living?
Schopenhauer gave the answer to his own question in three words: Will to live.
Schopenhauer’s successor Nietzsche extended this idea with his own three-word answer: Will to power. Nietzsche knew the lust for power often exceeds the will to live.
And shortly before his death in 2003, the great human-rights advocate and intellectual leftist Edward Said addressed the issue: “There is no point to intellectual and political work if one were a pessimist. Intellectual and political work require, nay demand, optimism.”
Said was suggesting that, without optimism, we may as well take the Hemingway out.
They say the truth will set you free. The truth does not set you free, it just pisses you off. At least, that’s my experience.
I admired Said for his courage, and I still admire his contrarian views. And, as a self-proclaimed intellectual who is often accused of inappropriately meddling in political work, I am naturally inclined toward optimism. There’s no reason to stir the pot if you think the human condition is hopeless.
But I suspect Said did not know about Peak Oil or runaway greenhouse. Surely his optimism would have been dampened, had he only known about these two profound consequences of our insatiable desires.
Oil supply — at the level of the field, county, state, country, or world — follows a bell-shaped curve; the top of the curve is called “Peak Oil,” or “Hubbert’s Peak.” We passed Hubbert’s Peak for world oil supply and began easing down the other side about two years ago. We’ll fall off the oil-supply cliff next year. Because this country mainlines cheap oil, it is easy to envision the complete collapse of the U.S. economy within a decade. The Great Depression will seem like the good old days when unemployment approaches 100% and inflation is running at 1000% per year. Obviously, this is a very good thing … for the world’s cultures and species, other than our own. After all, in the name of economic growth we have ripped minerals from the Earth, often bringing down mountains in the process; we have harvested nearly all the old-growth timber on the continent, replacing thousand-year-old giants with neatly ordered plantations of tiny trees; we have hunted species to the point of extinction; we have driven livestock across every almost acre of the continent, baring hillsides and engendering massive erosion; we have plowed large landscapes, transforming fertile soil into sterile, lifeless dirt; we have burned ecosystems and, perhaps more importantly, we have extinguished naturally occurring fires; we have spewed pollution and dumped garbage, thereby dirtying our air, fouling our water, and contributing greatly to the warming of the planet; we have paved thousands of acres to facilitate our movement and, in the process, have disrupted the movements of thousands of species. As I wrote in one of my recent books, the problem is not that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions — it’s that the road to Hell is paved. We have, to the maximum possible extent allowed by our intellect and never-ending desire, consumed the planet and therefore traded in tomorrow for today. And we keep making these choices, every day, choosing dams over salmon, oil over whales, cars over polar bears, death over life. And when I say we keep making these choices, I do not mean you and me — we have essentially nothing to do with it — I mean the politicians and CEOs who run this country. They are killing the planet and, when they notice the screams, they turn up the volume on Fox News. Meanwhile, most Americans took the blue pill without really thinking about the consequences. In the wake of these endless insults to our only home, perhaps the biggest surprise is that so many native species have persisted, thus allowing for our continued use and enjoyment.
When I tell people about Peak Oil, the immediate response is something like, “C’mon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is setting records; the economy looks great.”
Uh-huh. Never mind the asset bubble built by shaky investments. Never mind the manipulation of the money supply by the Federal Reserve Bank since the Fed’s monetary policy was removed from public view by Ben Bernanke. Never mind that the Dow, which is based on a whopping 30 companies, is in free-fall when measured against any metric except the U.S. dollar, which is falling even faster. Never mind that serious stock-market investors represent a slim minority of the world’s populace.
Ignore all that, and think about this: When you jump off a 100-story building, everything seems fine for a while. In fact, the view just keeps getting more clear as you get closer to the ground. What could possibly go wrong? Well, maybe one thing. It’s not the fall that kills you. It’s the sudden stop at the bottom.
The American pragmatist philosopher and pacifist William James struggled with the same question every single morning: Shall I get out of bed? I really don’t know how he did it … physically, that is: Personally, I’m emptying my bladder before I’m fully awake in the morning. So I struggle with the follow-up question: Shall I spend the day teaching and writing, or shall I do something useful? Shall I blow up a freeway, a building, a dam, or some other sign of destruction disguised as progress? So far, I’ve opted for the “civilized” option, the one that results in more people consuming more stuff and hurtling us ever closer to the sudden stop at the bottom of the fall. But tomorrow’s a new day; there’s hope for me yet. ‘Course, a career in academia has me ill-prepared for useful work, so I’ll have to learn a lot before I can take meaningful action against the machine of death known as “civilization.”
Passing Hubbert’s Peak may be good news for species and cultures, other than our own, but it obviates technological solutions to many of our most pressing problems, including runaway greenhouse. You could argue that technology has never solved a social problem, but only made them worse, so this point may be irrelevant. If you’re a fan of technology, you might conclude that burning the planetary endowment of oil precludes development of a sustainable civilization on this planet. Any intelligent species that evolves in the wake of our demise — our planetary successors — will lack the supply of inexpensive energy necessary to create a sustainable civilization. Following this line of thought, each planet gets a single shot at sustainability, and we blew ours when we let the neo-conservatives rip the solar panels off the White House and pursue economic growth as our only god. Again, you could argue — and I would agree — that civilization is inherently unsustainable, and that we can approach sustainability only by accelerating civilization’s ultimate collapse and forcing us back into the sustainable societies of the Stone Age.
As the Buddha said, “there is no torrent like greed.” Or, as Al Gore said in a recent speech about our national energy policy, this country needs a new dipstick. I did not get the impression he was volunteering. And that’s okay with me. I mean, here’s a guy who thinks the climate crisis can be solved by a bunch of professional narcissists strutting across the world’s stages stroking their Stratocasters. Sorry, folks, but even the world’s greatest consumers can’t spend our way out of this one.
Speaking of the climate crisis, what about runaway greenhouse? Runaway greenhouse simply means that positive feedbacks are overwhelming Earth’s climate system and we cannot stop the warming of planet Earth. Had we passed the oil peak a decade earlier, we would have been forced to reduce CO2 emissions and therefore prevent the frying of the planet.
But Peak Oil came too late to save us. It appears humanity will be restricted to a few thousand hardy scavengers living near the poles within a century or two. Shortly thereafter, Homo sapiens will join, in extinction, every other species to occupy the planet. Recent projections indicate that, by century’s end, there will be no planetary ice. That’s dinosaur days, and the end of the human experience. It’s very small consolation to me that, as the home team, Nature bats last.
We will persist about 10% as long as the typical species of mammal, giving credence to Schopenhauer’s view that the human experience is a mere blink of an eye bounded on either side by infinities of time. Despite our apparently brief stay on this most wondrous of planets, it has become clear we will take a large percentage of the planet’s biological diversity along with us into the abyss.
Alas, “there is no torrent like greed.”
Knowledge of Peak Oil and runaway greenhouse leads me, again, to the question of Schopenhauer: How to get through a life not worth living? I have struggled mightily with this question – much to the chagrin of my wife, I can assure you – and have turned to my intellectual predecessors and heroes for answers.
I start, as I often do, with Socrates. Socrates pursued a life of excellence by questioning those who would tolerate him and his many inquiries. He knew we were beings singularly tuned to quality. Within the next few minutes, I will mention each of the six primary questions of Socrates, the questions that represent the qualities he found so important to the human condition: What is good? What is piety? What is virtue? What is courage? What is justice? What is moderation? These questions are as vibrant and relevant today as they were more than two millennia ago. I encourage you to consider the questions of Socrates as you attempt to live a life of excellence, and as you move forward in your promising careers. I suspect many of you are thinking: “My career seemed promising … until he showed up.”
At about the same time Socrates was getting himself killed for asking too many questions, the son of a wealthy king on the other side of the planet was forsaking the family fortune and asking questions of his own. Unlike Socrates, the Buddha was willing to hazard a few answers, which have come to be known as his four noble truths. The first of those truths: “Life is suffering.”
It’s hard to believe Schopenhauer wasn’t a Buddhist, given the primary question underlying his philosophy.
Never mind runaway greenhouse: The Buddha didn’t even know about oil, much less Peak Oil. In the absence of such knowledge the Buddha, like Socrates, concluded that a life of moderation contributes to a life of excellence. I think it’s pretty impressive that Socrates and the Buddha reached the very same conclusion even without using the Internet to assist their obvious plagiarism. In the spirit of Socrates and the Buddha, we may want to consider some moderation ourselves, although it’s likely too late for moderation to solve the pressing problems associated with Peak Oil and runaway greenhouse.
So then, back to the question: How to get through a life not worth living? Schopenhauer was a very smart guy, but his response to his own question is wholly insufficient: Will to live is inadequate for most philosophers, as it is for me.
Nietzsche was perhaps the most brilliant person to occupy the planet so far, but his response similarly leaves me wanting: Will to power is meaningless if we abuse the power … and it seems that abuse of power is what the hairless monkey does best. Small wonder Nietzsche was impressed with Buddhism and the Buddha’s second noble truth: “Desire is the source of suffering.” As Americans, we expect our every desire to be fulfilled, planet Earth be damned. If our desires include Hummers and hang-gliders, Thai take-out and plasma-screen TVs, well, those are among the many rewards of Empire. As long as the costs of Empire remain obscured from view, we’re as happy as pigs in … well, you know.
So much for these two famous 19th-century German philosophers, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. But even Said’s unremitting optimism may seem unwarranted in light of knowledge that has emerged since his death.
But wait. I’m not ready to dismiss Said just yet. My response to the question of Schopenhauer is rooted in Said-style optimism that is perhaps unwarranted but nonetheless undeniable.
You’ve likely heard the old expression: An optimist believes this is the best of all possible worlds, and a pessimist fears this is true.
My optimistic response to the question of Schopenhauer has two primary components: friendship and hope.
I’ll talk a little more about hope shortly. But I’ll start with friendship.
I turn to Aristotle for my favorite definition of friendship: a relationship between people working together on a project for the common good. Without the common good, we might as well restrict friendship to drinking buddies. The distinction is as clear as that between being a citizen and being a consumer. Sadly, I suspect most Americans don’t know the difference. Public health is a paradigmatic example of the common good, making us friends in the Aristotelian sense.
In Aristotle’s definition of friendship we find traces of his teacher’s teacher, Socrates. After all, one of the six primary questions of Socrates was, “What is good?” For focusing on the common good, I suspect Socrates would have been pleased with Aristotle – and perhaps even with those of us in this room, although I will admit it may be asking too much to expect the blessing of a long-dead Greek Cynic.
And speaking of Greek Cynics, it’s pretty clear the prophet of America’s dominant religion was heavily influenced by Greeks and especially the Cynics. Yet a Time magazine poll conducted late last year found that 61% of Christians in this country believe God wants them to be financially prosperous. Never mind the biblical root of all evil. Never mind the gospels, especially the gospel of Mark. When three out of five self-proclaimed followers of a poor, homeless prophet who dedicated his life to working with the poor believe they are entitled to wealth, it’s no wonder you don’t hear much about the common good these days. This stunning statistic brings to mind another of Socrates’ questions: “What is piety?”
The Greatest Generation of Tom Brokaw, the generation that saved the world from fascism during World War II — or so the story goes — that’s the generation that begat the greatest generation of consumers in world history. It’s been a wild ride, but it’s time to turn out the lights: The party’s just about over. The baby-boom generation’s legacy, their “gift” to you, is a world depleted of resources, ruined by Empire, and ruled by fascism masquerading as Republic.
In One with Nineveh, the ecologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich describe the American social system as, “capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich.” Our socioeconomic system is designed to subsidize the wealthy and pulverize the downtrodden. And, of course, to pulverize our precious resources.
Contrary to society’s general disregard for the common good, I have to believe that the greatest measure of our humanity is found in what we do for those who cannot take care of themselves: the myriad species, cultures, and yes, even impoverished individuals in our own country, who never stood a chance in the face of American-style capitalism.
I have to believe, in other words, that our humanity is measured in our willingness to protect the common good. And, by pursuing and protecting the common good, we become friends in the Aristotelian sense.
I’m willing to call the pursuit of the common good an exercise in virtue, bringing to mind another Socratic question: “What is virtue?”
With today’s focus on public health, we are pursuing the common good. But I will be the first to admit that we have our differences. Indeed, the wonder of DNA ensures our uniqueness. The odds against any one of us being here are greater than the odds against being a particular grain of sand on all the world’s beaches — no, the odds are much greater than that: they exceed the odds of being a single atom plucked from the entire universe. To quote the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, “In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I that are privileged to be here, privileged with eyes to see where we are and brains to wonder why.” If a student in one of my classes wrote like that, I would reward the sentiment … but I would correct the grammar.
Enough about friendship for now. What about hope, the second component of my optimistic response to Schopenhauer’s question?
I view hope as the left-brain product of love, analogous to democracy as the product of freedom, or liberty. Notably, Patrick Henry did not say, “Give me democracy or give me death.” Like the rest of the founding fathers, Henry knew that freedom was primary to democracy; without the guiding light of freedom, or liberty, democracy breaks up on the shoals. Love keeps our left brain in check — that’s the message of the world’s religions. But our right-brain love creates the foundation for hope: love for nature, love for our children and grandchildren, love for each other. Without love to light the way, hope breaks up on the shoals.
Mind you, hope is not simply wishful thinking. And that’s a problem, considering we’re immersed in the ultimate “wishful thinking, something-for-nothing” culture. How else to explain books such as The Secret, which proclaims that happy thoughts will generate happy results, including personal wealth? How else to explain the prevalence of, and widespread acceptance of, casinos? And it’s not just acceptance: it’s adoration, if the boob tube and the local movie theater are to be believed. Not so long ago, gambling was frowned upon because, instead of adhering to a culture of an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, it reflects the expectation that a person can get something for nothing. No, hope is not wishful thinking.
And another thing: hope is not a consumer product. You can’t walk into Wal-Mart and order up a carton of hope. Indeed, given the demise of cheap oil, there’s unlikely to be a Wal-Mart — or any other large institution, for that matter — to walk into at all within a few years. Even if Wal-Mart, the federal government, or the University of Arizona somehow find a way to survive, we’re going to have to generate our own hope, one person at a time. Just as an economic collapse happens one person at a time, so too must hope happen one person at a time.
When I’m not playing social critic, I am a conservation biologist. I admit conservation biology is a value-laden enterprise, hampered by — and perhaps assisted by — bridges between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The greatest value of Earth is, always has been, and always will be, that it exists. Not that it is useful. But that it is. Perhaps that makes me an artist trapped in a scientific pursuit. But, at least for me, it allows hope to emerge from the tonic of wildness, thereby providing context for this most insignificant of lives. It allows hope to flicker. And if there is a flicker of hope, I believe we must treat it like a beacon. Hope, my friends, is everywhere.
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” said Emily Dickinson. Her other poems indicate that she was not restricting her thoughts to birds: Dickinson found hope throughout the glory and wonder of nature.
My friend and colleague, the planner Vern Swaback, is fond of saying he finds hope in “a person’s dedicated life.” I cannot improve upon Vern’s comment, but I can offer a few other personal examples.
I find hope in the poems of the teenaged girls at the juvenile detention facility where I help teach stewardship through poetry.
And I see hope flickering every day in the eyes — and therefore in the minds and in the hearts — of the students with whom I am fortunate to work on a daily basis.
Hope is our humility overcoming our hubris in the face of long odds. This will require an enormous amount of courage. We must rise to Nietzschean heights in the style of the Overman.
Hope is self-proclaimed liberals and self-proclaimed conservatives in the same room, discussing our common future.
Hope, then, rooted in friendship, is my response to Schopenhauer. Hope, in other words, rooted in friendship — let’s call it Platonic love — rooted in the right-brained friendship expressed by honoring each other and hugging trees.
Will to live is no solution: It’s a problem, as Schopenhauer himself admitted when he proclaimed, “to desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake.”
Our will to live — rooted in the evolutionary drive to survive — makes us shortsighted and self-motivated (or, in the case of many of us, self-absorbed).
We are inherently incapable of considering, much less empathizing with, our grandchildren’s grandchildren. That’s why we are willing to bake the planet beyond the point of habitability within a very few generations. This brings to mind another question of Socrates: “What is justice?” I do not know what justice is, but I know it is unjust to leave the world worse than we found it.
It seems evolution dealt us a bad hand — it gave us the big brains, but they’re not quite big enough.
Evolution drives us toward “flight or fight” — that is, to survival.
If we survive, evolution drives us to procreate: Nearly 4 billion years of evolution are screaming at us to breed. Evolution has some bad company on this one, in the form of the world’s largest religious group, and the world’s fastest-growing one.
If we clear the first two hurdles, evolution prods us to acquire material possessions.
And these three outcomes of evolution — the drives to live, procreate, and accumulate possessions — are disastrous to the common good.
If Schopenhauer’s “will to live” offers no viable solution, Nietzsche’s “will to power” is even worse, for it reveals our darkest nature. It’s small wonder Nietzsche abandoned the Overman late in his career. Or perhaps the Overman abandoned Nietzsche.
Maybe Said wasn’t so far off the mark:
Said said “optimism” … I say “hope.”
Said said “intellectual and political work” … I say “the common good.”
But we seem not so far apart, Said and I. Just like, on close inspection, those of us in this room: Our intellectual and political work require, nay demand, optimism. For without it, hope is lost for both kinds of humanity:
Without optimism, hope is lost for the individual, personal variety of humanity that is the measure of our character.
And without optimism, hope is lost for our entire species, and many others on this planet. That hope is lost, too, without big doses of courage, justice, moderation, and virtue.
Well, then: How do we get from here to there? How do we, in the words of the anthropologist and poet Loren Eiseley, “seek a minor sun” when faced with our final freezing battle with the void? How do we, as a species, use our hope and our friendship to address the urgent issue of Peak Oil while simultaneously solving the problem of runaway greenhouse? These are the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced. Tackling either of them, without the loss of a huge number of human lives, will require tremendous courage, compassion, and creativity. Many experts who write about simply one of these issues — Peak Oil — predict complete economic collapse within a decade, followed shortly thereafter by utter chaos and the subsequent death of more than 80% of the world’s population. After all, the exponential curve of human population growth matches perfectly the exponential growth of world energy supply, suggesting that the downturn of the energy curve will cause a large-scale die-off of human beings. And if you think chaos can’t overwhelm descend on this country, you weren’t paying attention to New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Horrible as that event was, nearly everybody involved knew it was a temporary inconvenience; I’m concerned how people might act when they recognize Peak Oil as a long emergency. One by one, starting in 2012, the world’s cities will experience permanent blackouts; and once we enter the Dark Age, the Stone Age won’t be too far behind. Bear in mind, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I know the current culture — the culture of make believe, or the culture of death, depending on how deeply you care to think about it — is the worst possible route for most of the planet’s species; as a conservation biologist, I realize the faster and more complete the collapse of Empire, the greater our biological legacy. On the other hand, the paralyzing hand of fear grips me every time I think about Peak Oil; a life in the ivory tower is damned poor preparation for Stone-Age living. Fortunately, I only think about it a few thousand times each day.
Can we get from here to there? We have the best excuse in the world to not act. The momentum of civilization is powerful. Resisting those in power will almost certainly lead to imprisonment, torture, perhaps even death. Those are pretty good excuses to forego action. So the question becomes, in the words of author and activist Derrick Jensen: “Would you rather have the best excuse in the world, or would you rather have a world?” To tackle Peak Oil and runaway greenhouse at the same time might require larger doses of courage, compassion, and creativity than we can find in ourselves.
But I hope not. And in that hope, we find the agenda ahead, laid out in ten huge steps by James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency. This is a not a 10-step plan in the usual sense; rather, we will have to start all of these steps simultaneously, and now. These steps are ginormous. That’s a new word, as of last month when Webster‘s declared it so. Interestingly, I read about it under a tiny headline. And I was quite disappointed that ginormous was chosen, but gihugic was not. In any event, here are the 10 steps:
Step 1: Expand our horizons beyond the question of how we will run the cars by means other than gasoline. The TechnoMessiah will not save us from ourselves, nor will she magically create a substitute for crude oil. The mainstream media would have you believe ethanol is the savior, when in fact the most likely outcome of the ethanol craze is that we’ll use our gas tanks to burn through the last six inches of topsoil in America’s breadbasket. Biodiesel represents the most viable of the alternative fuels, but it requires a choice: We can use our farmland to grow food, or we can use it to grow fuel for our cars. Given the choice between eating and driving, I suspect many Americans would choose driving. But cognitive dissonance runs so deep, they’ll choose to drive … to Burger King. This obsession with keeping the cars running threatens our lives and our species. Cars are not part of the solution, whether they run on fossil fuels, moonshine, peanut oil, or buffalo chips. Rather, they are very clearly part of the problem, and a large part at that. It’s time to abandon the car, time to make other arrangements for nearly all the common activities of daily life.
Step 2: We must produce food differently. Industrial agriculture is destined for disaster, and will leave in its wake sterile soils and an agricultural model at a grossly inappropriate scale. Within the next decade or so, small-scale farming will return to the center of American life. Think of the Victory Gardens of Oil War II as a small-scale, temporary experiment. Say goodbye to the 3,000-mile Caesar salad to which we’ve become accustomed; say hello to locally grown food, recognizing that you might have to grow your own. In the near term, this situation presents many business and vocational opportunities for creative, hard-working people. First, though, we will have to retrieve considerable knowledge from the dustbin of history. And in arid regions such as Tucson, Arizona, we’ll need to obtain our water differently, too. When oil becomes too expensive or too limited in supply, we won’t be using it to suck water from deep in the ground. In the absence of fossil fuels, the human carrying capacity of the Tucson basin is approximately zero.
Step 3: We must inhabit the terrain differently. The American suburbs and the interstate highway system are designed for a culture that has no future: the misguided car culture. The suburbs in particular represent perhaps the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. Our suburbs essentially require us to live far from our places of work and play, and also far from all consumer goods, from food to furniture. We will have to learn to inhabit differently, or not inhabit at all, most areas currently dominated by asphalt, concrete, and tall buildings. These include, for example, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Tucson. Our cities must contract. Our towns must be re-inhabited and the areas around them must be re-structured to accommodate small farms and the manufacture of goods to serve the towns. This entire process will require gihugic demographic shifts and is likely to be turbulent. When the trucks stop bringing food and the water stops flowing through the taps and the diesel-powered trains are no longer bringing coal to the power plant; when all this is happening and the thermometer reads 105 degrees and the calendar says summer’s not here yet; you’d better get along with your neighbors, especially the heavily armed ones who take a strict interpretation of the Second Amendment. If you’re looking for a job in the decades ahead, look no further than the brand-new fields of architecture, planning, and political leadership. The old versions of these enterprises are useless and must be abandoned. Consider our cities, as they currently stand: We have no sense of public space. Any small piece of beauty we might otherwise find between Wal-Mart and Target is obscured by the curvature of the earth. Our strip-malls are so ugly even winos won’t hang out there. There’s not enough Prozac in the world to make them seem nice. Are these places worth caring about? Are they worth defending? I’d guess there are at least 100,000 places not worth caring about in this country, and the number is growing. Actually, there might be 100,000 places not worth caring about in the Phoenix metropolitan area alone. When we have more places not worth caring about than places that are worth caring about, perhaps that day will come that we’ll run out of young people — people your age — willing to spill their blood in the Middle East to defend our hyper-indulgent, non-negotiable way of life. That’ll be a dreadful day for American Empire, but a wonderful day for the rest of the planet.
Step 4: We must move people and things differently. You’ve probably all seen the bumper sticker on about every fourth 18-wheeler on the interstate: “Without trucks, America stops.” That’s about right, at least with respect to economic growth. And the trucks are going to stop within the next half-decade or so. Shortly thereafter, the interstate highway system will simply collapse. Let’s not waste our time trying to prop up our hallucinatory economy with its fatal dependency on cars and trucks. Rather, we could restore public transit. We could start with our railroads –currently, we have a rail system the Bulgarians would be ashamed of — and we could electrify our railways so they can run on renewable energy. Then we could move to the waterways, starting by ripping out the condos and bike paths from the inner-city harbors and then restoring the piers and warehouses (not to mention the sleazy accommodations for sailors). Numerous career opportunities lie ahead for those hardy individuals willing to put away their iPods and Blackberries long enough to chart the course. Whoops, there I go, showing my age again … put away their iPhones, not their Blackberries.
Step 5: We need to transform retail trade. The demise of Wal-Mart is at hand. Personally, I think that’s a nice silver lining, albeit in a large bank of very dark clouds. The national chains have used inexpensive oil as the foundation for predatory economies of size, and therefore as the springboard for killing local economies. Cheap oil is fundamental to the 12,000-mile supply chain underlying the “warehouse on wheels” approach to the just-in-time delivery of cheap plastic crap. Don’t think for a minute that Internet shopping will replace small, locally owned shops in every town: After all, Internet shopping relies on cheap delivery, and delivery will no longer be cheap in the days ahead. In addition, Internet shopping depends on reliable electric-power systems. Electricity is a short-lived luxury because all sources of power are derivatives of oil; for example it takes a lot of oil to rip coal out of the ground, and then a lot more to deliver it to the power plant; it takes a lot of oil to construct a solar panel or a wind turbine, or even to maintain dams used to generate hydroelectric power. Again, there are plenty of career opportunities for energetic individuals interested in small, local businesses. In the locally owned shops of the future, even the much maligned “middle man” will be making a comeback (so, too, will the lesser-known “middle woman”).
Step 6: We have to start making things again. We will have far fewer choices when we go to the store, but we still will need clothes and household goods. We don’t know how we’re going to make things, or even what we’re going to make, in part because we haven’t made much of anything in this country for such a long time. But I’m counting on American ingenuity to light the way. If you’re looking for a job, there’s plenty that needs to be done because there’s plenty that needs to be manufactured.
Step 7: We need artists again. When the power goes out, we won’t get to decide between listening to Britney Spears and watching the latest rendition of American Idol. See, I’m full of good news! We’re going to need playhouses and live performance halls, albeit without high-tech light and sound systems. And we’ll need musicians and actors and playwrights and stagehands and theater managers. We’ll need storytellers, too, to keep history alive when the publishers stop printing books. Again, the Internet is unlikely to save on-demand canned entertainment if the power’s on the fritz. We’ll be able to look back on the Internet as a wonderful piece of technology, if only because it unmistakably disproved the old expression: “A million monkeys at a million typewriters could reproduce Shakespeare.”
Step 8: We must reorganize the educational system. Yellow fleets of school buses are on their way out. We have invested heavily in centralized systems of primary and secondary school — most recently and disastrously in the form of “No Child Left Behind” — and we will undoubtedly continue to invest in that centralization at the expense of true education. Such investment will slow the transition to a reasonable system of education that perhaps will grow, in fits and starts, from the home-schooling movement. More good news: It seems we will not be stuck with a public school system focused on churning out automata to serve industry. The current system was described by Jules Henry in his 1963 classic, Culture Against Man: “School is indeed training for later life not because it teaches the 3 Rs (more or less), but because it instills the essential cultural nightmare fear of failure, envy of success, and absurdity.” Henry’s scathing critique correctly pointed out that public schools eviscerate individuality and creativity, and therefore serve corporate America at the expense of Americans. The demise of corporate America will solve that problem. I suspect higher education is doomed to fail for myriad reasons, including terminal indifference of the academy to societal needs. But if you can write a coherent paragraph and do long division, you can already out-perform most college graduates. If you can teach youngsters to do these things, I suspect you have a bright future as a teacher in a post-carbon world.
Step 9: Our medical system must be completely reorganized, and I’ll expand on this topic shortly. Without power-hungry high-tech tools, we’ll need real doctors again: people who understand how the body actually functions. In the coming barter economy, they’ll likely make house calls to work for a meal or a place to sleep. On the other hand, we’ll all be eating less and exercising more, so my doctor will be happy about that. All in all, there will be less concern about blood pressure, cholesterol, and various pulmonary conditions. And, for people like you, there will be plenty of career opportunities in the near future.
Step 10: Our entire socio-economic and political system will become much more local. Every large system will fail. If you can find a way to do something practical and useful on a smaller scale than it is currently being done, you are likely to be well fed and even revered in your local community. Local politics will assume increasing importance as first the federal government, then the state government, simply fade from relevance. Neo-conservatism clings tenuously to life but, much to the dismay of Business Party I and Business Party II, will soon be dead. The collapse of American Empire will bring many opportunities for local heroes. I can imagine one possible exception, one large system that may not collapse: the Church. Because religions deal in the transport of ideology, rather than Wheaties and widgets, I fear they might assume the same power they did during the last Dark Age. I fear the rise of the Church not because I am opposed to other peoples’ spirituality, but because I believe the problems we face can be solved only with secular approaches, not with wishful thinking. That said, the worst possible outcome would be a battle to the death in a game of Last Man Standing. Our focus on the common good precludes a mentality of Us vs. Them; with the common good, there is no “Them.”
There you have it: a thumbnail sketch of the agenda. I’m sure I’ve left out many important items, but take heart: any number can play, and there is so much to be done. We’re sleepwalking into the future — headed for a cliff of our own making — and it’s time to wake up.
This, then, is the bottom line: This is not the time for wishful thinking. It’s the time for doing. The way to feel hopeful about the future is to get off your butt and demonstrate to yourself, and perhaps to others, that you are a capable, competent individual determinedly able to face new circumstances.
In the arena of public health, that means dealing with the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
During the time of Christ, in the Mediterranean region, the population of humans was viewed through the same lens as other populations. As such, human deaths often occurred in large numbers, as a result of war, conquest, famine, and pestilence – these are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as described in the gospel of John. The Four Horsemen of the New Testament are reminiscent of much of the Old Testament. Among the many exemplary passages in the Old Testament is this one from Deuteronomy: “The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning.”
Yikes. A quick review of the Old Testament suggests the Lord was partial to quite a bit of smiting. Strange and often fatal diseases were attributed to Divine Retribution. They still are, by some people. Not so long ago, President Ronald Reagan declared AIDS to be “God’s revenge” on homosexuals. That was after he ripped the solar panels off the White House, but before he oversaw the military conquest of Grenada, a tiny island-country in the Caribbean most of you haven’t heard of, until now.
Until very recently, large-scale die-offs were viewed as “normal,” in much the same way we view as “normal” our K-12 system of education, or weekly shopping trips to Safeway, or using a cellular telephone. The description and management of human populations back in the days of the Greek Cynics was oriented along population lines, with relatively little societal regard for individuals. Contrast that perspective with our laser-like focus on individuals. Let’s take a quick look at the Four Horsemen, one at a time. Famine’s as good a place to start as any, considering that my limited understanding of public health tends toward eating … or, eating less.
The years ahead will see a dramatic rise in deaths from starvation, as we become unable to transport vegetables from the Central Valley of California to the American Southwest, or any place else in the country. The inability to retrieve high-fructose corn syrup in the form of cheese doodles and soda pop from the vending machine down the hall won’t hurt us a bit, individually or collectively, but it’s symptomatic of far greater problems. At the population level, starvation is called famine. And famine looms large, right here in the richest country in the history of humanity.
We’ll also see pestilence — what we call disease, when it happens one person at a time — making a big comeback. Cheap oil allows us to sanitize our water, lethally cook harmful organisms, sterilize the surfaces on which we prepare and eat food, and manage many potentially catastrophic diseases. Contemporary American healthcare is completely dependent on ready supplies of cheap oil, for grid-based electrical power, backup generators, and thousands of pieces of equipment we all take for granted, from IVs and syringes to disposable gloves and plastic containers for tossing out contaminated needles and other sharp objects. When the trucks stop running, we won’t even be able to deliver antibiotics, unless ginormous numbers of non-apocalyptic horsemen suddenly appear. I hope society will retain some understanding of germ theory, so you are able to live at least half as long as your grandparents.
Famine and pestilence are two of the Four Horsemen; war and conquest are the other two. Already, resource wars have begun, and they are likely to ratchet up in the near future. The so-called bipartisan Iraqi study group concluded that Operation Iraqi Freedom was conducted in pursuit of black gold. In fact, just to make the acronym transparent, the invasion should have been called Operation Iraqi Liberty.
Regardless of the name of the invasion, it truly was “mission accomplished” for George W. Bush: We ensured ourselves a spot at the OPEC table, while also piratizing … er, I guess I’m supposed to call that privatizing … the oil fields of Iraq for American companies. Although the Oilman in the Oval Office correctly pointed out, in his 2006 State of the Union Address, “America is addicted to oil,” his solution is absurd. Rather than stressing conservation, as a conservative might do, his goal is to find more oil by any means necessary. ‘Cause that’s the way to deal with addiction: find more substance for the addict.
I fear Oil War III is just getting started.
And conquest? That’s just another name for war, albeit without a fight from the vanquished. We’ve done that throughout our history, as have many other nations. I’ve no doubt we’ll continue.
The Four Horsemen are lurking in the background, obscured by the never-ending, irrelevant chatter of the corporate media. Here’s my impression of Fox News: blah blah blah Britney Spears blah blah blah Threat Level Orange blah blah blah Paris Hilton blah blah blah … Fox News: the only national news source without a liberal bias. The corporate media’s weapons of mass distraction notwithstanding, soon enough the Four Horsemen will be riding tall enough for everyone to see. Population-scale rules from two millennia ago will re-assert themselves.
Socrates understood the importance of maintaining societal norms in the name of the law, even when justice failed at the level of the individual. And public-health practitioners back in Socrates’ day undoubtedly understood that the good of the one, or of the few, sometimes must be sacrificed for the good of the many. These practitioners understood this fundamental concept even before Mr. Spock pointed it out on the starship Enterprise. (One of the problems I encounter in speaking with people your age is that my cultural references pre-date you by a couple generations; sorry about that.)
A lot has changed in the two thousand years that have transpired since Socrates drank from that fatal cup.
As an aside, I once asked a roomful of students, “What was Socrates’ most famous quote?” I thought someone would answer with the one about the unexamined life being not worth living. Instead, somebody immediately yelled out, “I drank what?”
Many, and perhaps most, of the changes that have transpired during the last two millennia have occurred during the last century. We can trace many of those changes to American exceptionalism and our focus on the individual. In this country, we too infrequently take a population approach to public health. We decree every life worth saving, including the one-pound baby born 12 weeks premature, the 95-year-old with cancer in all the major organs, and everybody between. To a great extent, we have traded in a perspective on the population for an obsession with the individual.
Never mind human dignity. Our doctors are the best. They — meaning we — can save anybody. The costs, which are enormous, have been ignored in the name of vanity. These costs include economic, environmental, political, social … and moral.
Some countries have looked back to move forward. Ireland uses medical generalists in their communities to advance the public health. They preserve the good of the many at the occasional expense of the one, or of the few. Yet babies and old people die at the about the same annual rate in Ireland as in the United States. No, Ireland’s public-health practitioners don’t get to write articles about saving the lives of babies with no statistical chance of living. They don’t get to bask in the reflected glory — or maybe it’s the hubris — of their seven-figure salaries while their peers enviously wonder when they’ll have a chance to break the new record. But perhaps, in focusing on communities and therefore letting go of some individual lives, Ireland has preserved something we’ve lost: something economic, environmental, political, social … or moral.
I’ll finish where I started, which was the common good as the basis for friendship and hope. And, of course, with the ancients.
Without the common good, and the struggle on its behalf, there can be no Aristotelian friendship. There can be no justice. And there can be no virtue.
Therefore, I am forced to conclude that: 5,000 generations into the human experience, with the end of humanity in clear view, our shared goal must be … the common good.
And I further conclude that: As friends, we reveal our differences, we appreciate our differences, and then we set them aside … for the common good.
With hope shining like a beacon, we struggle together … for the common good.
We have in our hands the destiny of our planet, including our own species and so many others. In the end, for finite beings such as ourselves, the historical process is irrelevant; all we have is our legacy, but that legacy is lost to us (as individuals). Yet we are unique beings in that we are able to recognize the historical process as something larger than ourselves. We judge that process worthy or not worthy based on our own singular experience (we judge the universe; fortunately, it doesn’t judge us back). For me, the universe is a worthy endeavor because the lens through which I view it is colored with the relationships I have experienced; those relationships include humans and nature.
All the Socratic ideals are born again in the love we feel … for each other, for our families and tribes, and for the natural world. Walking a path that honors the planet and ourselves is a responsibility we share, you and I — a responsibility unlike any other in human history. And it is not just a responsibility, but also something more: It is a joy, and a privilege.
Thank you.