I’ve embedded one of the thirteen presentations I delivered over a span of eight days. It’s my final presentation, excluding Q&A (which might come later), which partially explains my on-and-off incoherence (the remainder is inexplicable, as usual).

The presentation includes a half-hearted pitch of my final book. The book is available, a couple months earlier than anticipated, and can be found at this link as well as the usual online outlets. If all goes according to plan, I’ll receive a few copies later today. The book has already been reviewed by Sandy Krolick, the kulturCritic and Cameron Conaway, the poet. Krolick’s review was picked up by Transition Voice, and Conaway’s review was run by Examiner.

I’m trying to produce video from my presentation at a Harvest Gathering Festival with a barn as venue. I may post it at a later date, if all goes according to plan. It includes no slides, and the material differs considerably from the one above.

Reaction was mixed, as usual. Some people, such as this college student, found my messages unbelievable. Others quibbled with the timing of the sources I presented (I carefully avoided pushing my own predictions). Standing ovations were rare — even though I begged for them — but in the end several people understood the importance of collapse if we are to extend our run as a species.

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Huge thanks to Shelley Youngman, who facilitated, organized, chauffeured, and hosted. A kindred spirit, Shelley was kind enough to make many of the arrangements and also to spend large blocks of time with me. Voluntarily, no less.

Thanks, too, to my many new friends and hosts (in the order I met them): Mike Draney and Vicki Medland (University of Wisconsin-Green Bay), Steve DeGoosh and Brooke Isham (Northern Michigan University), Sarah Redmond and Dan Redmond (Alger Community Transition), Shelley Youngman and Frank Youngman (Transition Cadillac), and Kimberly Sager and Aaron Wissner (Local Future).

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This post is permalinked at Plan B Economics and Survival Acres.

I was shooting video of this presentation, but my camera failed 15 minutes in. So we’re stuck with multiple audio files and the slides in the usual awkward format. And whereas the audio files are adequate during the presentation, the only microphone in the room was near me, so the question part of the Q & A is poor.

You get the original slides this time, along with the audio file. Plagiarize to your heart’s content. Share widely. Spread the news. But please keep your complaints about the quality of these materials to yourself, unless you have suggestions for improvement.

I was speaking in the capital of the state built, economically at least, by oil. As I was speaking, I could see the Capitol, which convened the following day to deal with the state’s $27 billion deficit. Gee, I’d have never seen that coming.

My presentation was greeted with the usual mix of profound denial and fatalistic acceptance. The very few anarchists in attendance could hardly compete with the majority, who could see absolutely nothing amiss with the industrial economy, western civilization, or American Empire.

Powerpoint

Introduction from Gayle Borst, Design~Build~Live

Presentation part 1

Presentation part 2

Presentation part 3

Presentation part 4

Presentation part 5

Presentation part 6

Presentation part 7

Q & A part 1

Q & A part 2

Q & A part 3

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Special thanks to Ken McKenzie-Grant from Shades of Green Radio for the considerable effort behind the audio files and to Gayle Borst for hosting (and all the associated work).

When I present, I divide into bite-sized pieces the slides with considerable text. For example, the first slide below labeled “Climate chaos” is presented in six parts, with a bit of text added to each new slide; herein, I include only the final slide in the series.

I rarely use written notes, much less a transcript, so what you see is what I saw when I was delivering the presentation. I was interrupted by several ovations (some standing, but only because I begged) and abundant laughter. When I’m nervous, I go straight to spontaneous stand-up. Later, I can’t remember a single humorous line, so every presentation is unique. At this point, I couldn’t tell you what I said, but apparently some of it was funny. I’m pretty sure they were laughing with me instead of at me, but one can never be certain.

I visited with several people after the presentation. They liked it, of course, or they wouldn’t have stayed to visit. Reaction generally (very generally) varied with age. However, all age groups failed to recognize we’re already in the midst of economic collapse, that we’ve been here for at least a decade, or that the collapse would be complete soon. Similarly, all age groups failed to appreciate the moral imperative with how we live our lives. Many youngsters from the Aldo Leopold High School were present, and they invariably went to the bargaining phase: I can still have my cell phone, right? People older than me typically went to denial: I’m glad I’m old, so none of this will impact my life. People between those groups expressed appreciation for the human community in this area and disdain for politicians, local through national, for failing to deal with either side of the fossil-fuel coin.

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A pdf version of the Powerpoint file is archived here, courtesy of Keith Farnish. Thanks, Keith!

I’ve written all this before, but I have not recently provided a concise summary. This essay provides a brief overview of the dire nature of our predicaments with respect to fossil fuels. The primary consequences of our fossil-fuel addiction stem from two primary phenomena: peak oil and global climate change. The former spells the end of western civilization, which might come in time to prevent the extinction of our species at the hand of the latter.

Global climate change threatens our species with extinction by mid-century is we do not terminate the industrial economy soon. Increasingly dire forecasts from extremely conservative sources keep stacking up. Governments refuse to act because they know growth of the industrial economy depends (almost solely) on consumption of fossil fuels. Global climate change and energy decline are similar in this respect: neither is characterized by a politically viable solution.

There simply is no comprehensive substitute for crude oil. It is the overwhelming fuel of choice for transportation, and there is no way out of the crude trap at this late juncture in the industrial era. We passed the world oil peak in 2005, which led to near-collapse of the world’s industrial economy several times between September 2008 and May 2010. And we’re certainly not out of the economic woods yet.

Crude oil is the master material on which all other depend. Without abundant supplies of inexpensive crude oil, we cannot produce uranium (which peaked in 1980), coal (which peaks within a decade or so), solar panels, wind turbines, wave power, ethanol, biodiesel, or hydroelectric power. Without abundant supplies of inexpensive crude oil, we cannot maintain the electric grid. Without abundant supplies of inexpensive crude oil, we cannot maintain the industrial economy for an extended period of time. Simply put, abundant supplies of inexpensive crude oil are fundamental to growth of the industrial economy and therefore to western civilization. Civilizations grow or die. Western civilization is done growing.

Not only is there no comprehensive substitute for crude oil, but partial substitutes simply do not scale. Solar panels on every roof? It’s too late for that. Electric cars in every garage? It’s too late for that. We simply do not have the cheap energy requisite to propping up an empire in precipitous decline. Energy efficiency and conservation will not save us, either, as demonstrated by the updated version of Jevons’ paradox, the Khazzoom-Brookes postulate.

Unchecked, western civilization drives us to one of two outcomes, and perhaps both: (1) Destruction of the living planet on which we depend for our survival, and/or (2) Runaway greenhouse and therefore the near-term extinction of our species. Why would we want to sustain such a system? It is immoral and omnicidal. The industrial economy enslaves us, drives us insane, and kills us in myriad ways. We need a living planet. Everything else is less important than the living planet on which we depend for our very lives. We act as if non-industrial cultures do not matter. We act as if non-human species do not matter. But they do matter, on many levels, including the level of human survival on Earth. And, of course, there’s the matter of ecological overshoot, which is where we’re spending all our time since at least 1980. Every day in overshoot brings us 205,000 people to deal with later. In this case, “deal with” means murder.

Shall we reduce Earth to a lifeless pile of rubble within a generation? Or shall we heat the planet beyond human habitability within two generations? Or shall we keep procreating as if there are no consequences for an already crowded planet? Pick your poison, but recognize it’s poison. We’re dead either way.

Don’t slit those wrists just yet. This essay bears good news.

Western civilization has been in decline at least since 1979, when world per-capita oil supply peaked coincident with the Carter Doctrine regarding oil in the Middle East. In my mind, and perhaps only there, these two events marked the apex of American Empire, which began about the time Thomas Jefferson — arguably the most enlightened of the Founding Fathers — said, with respect to native Americans: “In war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them.” It wasn’t long after 1979 that the U.S. manufacturing base was shipped overseas and we began serious engagement with Wall Street-based casino culture as the basis for our industrial economy. By most economic measures, we’ve experienced a lost decade, so it’s too late for a fast crash of the industrial economy. We’re in the midst of the same slow train wreck we’ve been experiencing for more than a decade, but the train is teetering on the edge of a cliff. Meanwhile, all we want to discuss, at every level in this country, is the quality of service in the dining car.

When the price of crude oil exhibits a price spike, an economic recession soon follows. Every recession since 1972 has been preceded by a spike in the price of oil, and direr spikes translate to deeper recessions. Economic dominoes began to fall at a rapid and accelerating rate when the price of crude spiked to $147.27/bbl in July 2008. They haven’t stopped falling, notwithstanding economic cheerleaders from government and corporations (as if the two are different at this point in American fascism). The reliance of our economy on derivatives trading cannot last much longer, considering the value of the derivatives — like the U.S. debt — greatly exceeds the value of all the currency in the world combined with all the gold mined in the history of the world.

Although it’s all coming down, as it has been for quite a while, it’s relatively clear imperial decline is accelerating. We’re obviously headed for full-scale collapse of the industrial economy, as indicated by these 40 statistics. Even Fortune and CNN agree economic collapse will be complete soon, though they don’t express any understanding of how we arrived at this point or the hopelessness of extracting ourselves from the morass.

We know what economic collapse looks like, because we’re in the midst of it. What does completion of the collapse look? I strongly suspect the economic endgame is capitulation of the stock markets. Shortly after we hit Dow 4,000, within a few days or maybe a couple weeks, the industrial economy seizes up as the lubricant is overcome with sand in the crankcase. Why would anybody work when the company for which they work is, literally, worthless? Even if they show up for a few days to punch the time-clock, the bank will not issue a check, and the banks won’t be open to cash it. It won’t be long before publicly traded utility companies don’t have enough employees to keep the lights on. It won’t be long before gas (nee service) stations shutter the doors. It won’t be long before the grocery stores are empty. It won’t be long before the water stops flowing through the municipal taps.

There are those who question my credibility, particularly when I make predictions. We’re in the midst of a war to save our humanity and the living planet, and some readers are worried about my credibility, as determined by the power of the main stream. My responses are two-fold: (1) I’m hardly sticking my neck out, unlike when I made my “new Dark Age” prediction in 2007 (at which point the price of oil had yet to exceed $80/bbl, the industrial economy appeared headed for perennial nirvana, and everybody who read or heard me thought I was insane); of the fifty or so energy-literate scholars I read, about half indicate the new Dark Age starts within a year, and a large majority of the other half give us less than two years; (2) Get over it. This war has two sides, finally. This revolution needs to be powerful and fun, and we cannot afford to lose. We cannot even afford to worry about seeking credibility from those who would have us are having us murder every remaining aspect of the living planet on which we depend for our survival.

Credibility? Respectability? It’s time to stop playing by the rules of the destroyers. We need witnesses and warriors, and we need them now. It’s time to terminate western civilization before it terminates us.

Lesson over. The exam comes within a couple years. And pop quizzes come up every day in this unfair system.

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This essay is permalinked at Counter Currents, Revelations, Islam Times, New Age Op-Ed, Island Breath, creative informationalist, Before It’s News, Mammon or Messiah research, Hot Kashmir, remedios’s posterous, and Running ‘Cause I Can’t Fly.

Update: So far, the comments at Counter Currents are absurd to the point of being humorous. But they cannot compare to the ludicrous nonsense landing in my hate-filled email in-box. Fear of the future must be driving this insanity. Similar stupidity fills the right-wing blogosphere. Google “Guy R. McPherson” for a taste.

Update 2: This essay is mentioned in the Melbourne, Australia Herald Sun, which adds one of my interviews from 2008. As usual, the comments are particularly insightful with respect to denial of both sides of the fossil-fuel coin.

As adults know, hope is for little kids and tooth fairies.

Today’s panic-infused stock-market crash was an ode to days economists thought long gone. But those economists continue to be stunned at every substantive event, as if passing the world oil peak couldn’t be expected to generate any economic consequences.

“High prices will cause the market to generate substitutes,” they cry. I guess we can expect a comprehensive substitute for crude oil to show up any day now. Or perhaps these long-predicted swings in the price of oil will continue to destroy capital and therefore lead to one canceled alt-energy project after another.

I suspect we’re back on the stock-market rollercoaster with a general trend down. Probably way down, by year’s end. But the crash that completes the collapse of American Empire could come any day, and today was a near miss after a six-month series of near misses came to a halt last March. The Dow lost about a thousand ticks today in a 15-minute span before the plunge protection team (PPT) took quick action to save the imperial day.

Oh, wait, there’s no PPT. It wouldn’t be completely legal for the federal government to buy stocks in the beloved free market, would it? And certainly not when the mantra is hope change transparency. I guess those traders just came to their senses and regained confidence in the markets. Lucky thing, too, from the imperial perspective: Another hour without intervention from the PPT and we’d be looking out over the smoldering ashes of the industrial economy this time next week.

If all goes well, the U.S. will be forced into hyperinflation or default even before the next oil-price shock brings down the industrial economy. If we’re really in the midst of the empire’s last dance, soon enough we won’t be forced to choke down lines such as these:

“There’s more war in America’s future — a great deal more, judging by the Obama Administration’s reports, pronouncements and actions in recent months”

“U.S. exempted BP rig from environmental study”

“The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter”

“Scientists and environmentalists from around the world assessed the state of global biodiversity and found that it has been in steady decline”

“An American Chernobyl”

And so it goes, headline after headline, until the process of killing the planet to transfer money from the poor to the rich finally succeeds in killing us, too. Until, if the corporatocracy running the industrial show has its way, the last human on the planet accumulates all the material wealth and celebrates gleefully with his last breath.

This story could end another way, if only we’d let it. If only we’d trade in hope wishful thinking for action, the culture of make believe for the reality of the real world, insanity for reason, the horrors of extirpation and extinction for the living planet, a dead-end road in a hellish future for the heavenly wonders of life itself.

How does one know what to believe, and who to trust? We’re surrounded by lies. During our finest moments, we don’t believe the media, the politicians we elect (from the very small slate of candidates selected for us), or the CEOs and NGOs to whom we give our money. Awash in misinformation yet surrounded by culture’s unrepentant, never-ending message, we vacillate between cynicism and swimming in the powerful current of culture.

Although the happy-talk Obama administration — and its proxy and partner in crime, the mainstream media — would have you believe the industrial economy has recovered, many signs indicate the impacts of the last oil price spike haven’t been fully worked out. The U.S. national debt rises every day, and it already exceeds the value of all currency ever produced and all gold ever mined. It cannot be paid off. Ever. If the notion of a Soviet-style default doesn’t give you pause, consider still-rising foreclosure rates, still-falling home prices, massive unemployment, financial bankruptcy at all levels of government, ballooning entitlement programs, and collapsing pension programs. This is merely the short list of economic issues we face. Needless to say, every single one of them is a profound surprise to the vast majority of neoclassical economists, few of whom saw this economic recession coming (as if passing the world oil peak didn’t provide sufficient warning, well in advance).

Knowing culture will lead us astray, we nonetheless invite scorn when we seek the truth beneath the cultural current of the main stream. Culture does not have answers to meaningful questions. But skepticism for the sake of skepticism is no virtue, either.

Applying reason as a path to knowledge (as I’ve suggested here and here, for example) is easy enough in theory. But in practice, it’s difficult to extract the facts and then synthesize them into a coherent message that guides the way. Much less the Way. And yet, we muddle along, individually and societally, relying on some inexplicable combination of faith and rational thought. For me, the guides include data (recognizing they are undoubtedly massaged before general release), historical anecdotes (ditto), my own dubious moral compass (shaped, necessarily, by culture), and an informed set of predictions from a variety of scholars. As with any gestalt, mine is formed from parts that don’t quite add up to the whole.

So how do we go from this list of economic issues to the notion of economic collapse? I’ve moved from imperialist city educator to economic doomer rural sharecropper in one (damned difficult) step. This move was driven by many factors, including the profound (and profoundly late) realization that we live immorally, buying and selling nature’s bounty at an imperialist whim. Another contributing factor was my strongly held suspicion that we’re headed for a collapse of the industrial economy by the end of 2012. If the industrial age does not end soon, we’re headed for the complete absence of habitat for humans on Earth. Obviously, there is plenty of disagreement with me on both points, and I’ve been asked to make my case. What tea leaves do I read?

I restrict this essay to economic collapse, thus leaving the issue of environmental collapse to previous posts (and perhaps future ones). The data on collapse are clearer than the rest of my guides, so I’ll start with them.

The data interact with other elements: History indicates 10 of 11 recessions since World War II and all 6 recessions since 1972 were preceded by a spike in the price of oil. The lifeblood of civilization, and its price, dictates the direction of the industrial economy. At some point, the price of oil becomes too great to maintain the industrial economy. In fact, a per-barrel price of $147.27 nearly brought the industrial economy grinding to a halt. Only massive, and massively illegal, intervention by the executive branch of the U.S. government kept the lights on in your grid-tied house, the trucks coming to the grocery store, and water coming out the taps. These actions have been written about widely. A quick search on “plunge protection team” is a nice starting point, although the issue is far broader than even omniscient Google reveals.

For information about oil supplies, I rely on Hubbert’s model and data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA). Hubbert’s model indicates we passed the world peak for crude oil in December 2005. Data from the EIA indicate peak month was May 2005. Because the industrial economy is barely limping along today, in far direr condition than when the price of oil exceeded $140, I doubt it will take a second round of $140 oil to bring the industrial age to its overdue close. Several forecasters suggest we’re headed beyond that mark with a year or so.

A little more from history: Empires fall. All of ‘em, so far. Some fall slowly, others rapidly. Some fall with a modicum of grace, others with extreme violence. American Empire is so complex, so dependent on finite materials, and intricately connected with the entire global economy that it’s difficult for me to foresee a long, peaceful decline.

The industrial economy relies heavily on crude oil, and particularly inexpensive oil. We’re perfectly willing to spend $400/gallon for gasoline to support our imperial ambitions in Afghanistan if that’s what it takes to keep the price of oil at a reasonable level for us exceptional Americans. (How exceptional? Check the charts in this essay.) But when the price of gasoline exceeds $4/gallon in the heartland, there’s trouble brewing for our all-important economic growth.

In addition to the near-term price of oil, our empire is threatened by the ever-tightening grip of globalization, which ensures that economic collapse in any of the world’s large economies will lead, domino-like, to economic collapse throughout the industrialized world. This grip was allowed and facilitated by cheap oil, and it’s no coincidence that the end of the cheap-oil era resulted in financial crises throughout the civilized world. Today, Greece is the word. But Portugal, Spain, and Japan hover on the brink (Japan is the world’s second-largest economy). So does the U.S. and the remainder of the industrialized world, though you’d never know it based on mainstream media reports from this country. We have the advantages of the world’s reserve currency and the largest killing force in the history of the world (and the willingness to use it, everywhere, all the time). But when China stops buying U.S. Treasury notes, a process already under way, the de facto rate of interest will rise, taking us inexorably and likely quickly into the land of hyper-inflation. At this late juncture in the industrial era, the only questions of great significance are whether our bubble will pop before China’s, and which of myriad potential events will serve as the proximate cause to the end of American Empire. The price of oil was a trigger event, and it might be again. But it might not, too.

As far as my moral compass is concerned, I’ve written plenty about that. There’s no need to pummel the deceased equine yet again. Check the archives, if you’re interested. Or, for a different take on the situation, read this.

So much for the models, data, history, and my sense of morality. What about those voices I hear words I read?

When I open my browser to start the day, several tabs reveal themselves. Some of these websites give the facts, as accurately as they can be determined: Bloomberg energy prices, American stock markets, and the U.S. national debt clock. Others are information clearing houses with occasional original essays, notably including the sites of Matt Savinar, Mike Ruppert, Rice Farmer, and Chris Martenson, along with Energy Bulletin, Counter Currents, and The Oil Drum. Others provide synthesis and analysis: Business Insider, Baseline Scenario, Dmitry Orlov’s blog, Speak Truth to Power, Economic Collapse Blog, The Automatic Earth, and Zero Hedge. Finally, one tells me what people are thinking out there in the culture of make believe: MSNBC. Needless to say, that’s the scary one.

I’m not foolish enough to read every article, much less read every article linked from these pages. But there is plenty of fodder here, much of it informed by biophysical economics. Biophysical economists, unlike neoclassical economists, know about finite materials. As a result, the former know starvation can kill people. Any self-respecting neoclassical economist assumes the rumbling of his stomach will cause food to appear.

Now let’s pause for a quick story about neoclassical economists.

Four shipwrecked economists wash ashore on a deserted tropical island. The first Asian economist says, “I’ll gather wood and start a fire to keep us warm and cook our food.” The second Asian economists says, “I’ll find water.” The third Asian economist says, “I’ll find food.” The American economist sits down, smiles, and says, “When you’ve got that all taken care of, I’ll consume whatever you produce. You’re darned lucky I’m here: Without me, the entire system falls apart in a hurry.”

Note that confidence among U.S. consumers fell in April. Unexpectedly, of course.

We now return to our regularly scheduled essay.

Among the places these links lead are the following. This summer’s hurricane season likely will contribute to high oil prices. And we might not need the hurricanes: According to the International Energy Agency, world oil demand will set an all-time record this year, exceeding the amount actually being sucked out of the ground by 2.4 million barrels per day. The global financial system is primed and ready to implode. The Fed admits to breaking the law in the name of transferring wealth (and not to me or you). And the Fed, like the U.S., is bankrupt. That alone will cause hyperinflation. “Real estate built America, and it’s going to take it down. Foreclosures will be the wrecking ball for the American economy.” The economic crisis in Greece is just getting started. Recent reports of economic growth are mere mirages from the smoke-and-mirrors cabal behind the curtain (duh). More than half your tax dollars support the military (yeah, that’s sustainable; even an increasing percentage of military personnel is questioning whether they will accomplish their amorphous mission in Afghanistan). Warren Buffett bought the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, calling it an “all-in bet” on the U.S. economy, as if he’d been reading the work of James Howard Kunstler. Buffett’s partner Charles Munger wrote a parable transparently about the U.S. economy titled, “Basically, it’s over.” A large European bank warned its clients about completion of the ongoing collapse by the end of 2011. The U.S. dollar will collapse, causing world economic collapse, by 2012. Catherine Austin Fitts moved from New York City to rural Tennessee to build a doomstead. As should be obvious, “from now on the risk of entering a collapse must be considered significant and rising” (pdf file). And so on. The evidence mounts daily, and it all points in the same direction.

My interpretation and synthesis of these many essays and the data on which they rely suggests the industrial age is near its terminus. How near? Recognizing the difficulty of predictions, and the animus they elicit, I’ll go out on the often-wrong limb of forecast and give us a 99% chance of “lights out in the empire” by 21 December 2012. And I didn’t even look at my Mayan calendar.

Reinhart and Rogoff’s 2009 book, This Time is Different, describes financial crises in 66 nations dating to the 13th century. For a change, I agree with the rallying cry of people subject to previous collapses: This time is different. This time it’s not one of 66 nations. It’s every country in the entire industrial world. Indeed, this time is different.

In short, civilization is only a few days removed from chaos or, if you’re an optimist like me, from anarchy. This has always been the case, for every failed civilization as well as the one left standing. With every passing day, we move further into ecological overshoot and also closer to the end of western civilization and its apex, the industrial economy. For most individual industrial humans, the end will not be welcome. But for the living planet on which we depend, and therefore our very species, the end of industry will bring a welcome relief from decades of oppression. It might even give us back our humanity while granting our species a few more decades of planetary existence.
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This essay was inspired by a comment from Marguerite Daisy. It is permalinked at Counter Currents, Bluegrass reVisions, and Island Breath.

Obviously, there are an infinite number of possibilities regarding our future, particularly in the short- and medium-term. In the long term, the industrial economy ends. We simply will not be using $400 oil to suck water from 600 feet below ground, even if we do maintain governmental structures that could facilitate such a heinous activity. In the longer term, our species blinks out because, well, that’s what happens to yeast and other organisms. Just as individuals and empires die, so, too, must our own empire and our own species fall into the abyss.
I’ve no doubt we’ll be squarely in the midst of the post-industrial stone age within a decade or two as we fritter away the planetary endowment of fossil fuels. Similarly, I’ve no doubt we’ll be extinct within a century or two. However, both narratives are well-accepted by the community at large, in part because they are so far beyond the attention span of industrial humans. Rather than beat the pummeled equine yet again, I’ll focus this post on what happens as we proceed down the bumpy trajectory of Hubbert’s back side.
Just as there are an infinite number of potential futures, there are an infinite number of doors that are closed to us. We are not bringing back long-term growth of the industrial economy, for example. We closed that door when we burned up the cheap and easy oil and didn’t develop anything resembling a comprehensive substitute. Just as we’ve seen the last blast of long-term economic growth, we’ve also seen the end of the party for the suburban housing market and a handful of no-interest credit cards for every schlub who graduated in the top half of his junior-high class. More importantly, but of considerably less interest to most people, we’ve seen the last individuals of the many hundreds of species we drive to extinction each week.
Oil priced at $600 per barrel accounts for the entire GDP of the industrial world. The consequences of oil at only one-quarter that price nearly brought down the industrial economy, destroying pension programs, wiping out banks, jacking up unemployment, and causing the federal government to socialize the banking sector and the country’s large automobile manufacturer (to an even greater extent, that is, than they were already subsidized). Just as appearances of the first peak-oil recession give way to the “good news” of green shoots on the nightly news, let’s project what the next shock wave looks like, and the one after that, bearing in mind that, at this point, collapse could be completed by any number of factors seemingly unrelated to the spot price of oil (e.g., ARM resets, unemployment benefits drying up, food shortages, water shortages, shareholders actually paying attention to what companies are doing, corporations paying attention to state and federal laws, the Securities and Exchange Commission enforcing the law, any of a long list of natural disasters).
As an example of the type of dumbassery that could bring down the industrial economy, check out Well Fargo’s latest trick to avoid telling their shareholders the number of mortgages in default, bearing in mind that Wells Fargo is using the same stupid tricks in the commercial sector that killed Washington Mutual last year. Thus, Wells Fargo is lying to their shareholders about home loans even as their commercial portfolio is a ticking time bomb.
As I’ve indicated previously, I think our next trip to triple-digit pricing in the oil market brings dire news to a badly battered American consumer (cf. citizen), and perhaps even another ride on the oil roller coaster will not be needed to bring it all down. Regardless of the triggering event(s), the ongoing collapse likely will continue to occur at different rates in different locations, with California leading the way and places like Detroit, Philadelphia, and the epicenters of the housing boom trailing close behind. Goodbye Nevada, Arizona, and Florida. Hello states and countries with conservative banking institutions, at least in the short term.
But, enough dithering. Caveats aside, where are we headed within the next few years? I present the barest of sketches here because (1) Every prediction about the mid-term prospects of civility is certain to be wrong, and (2) We get to create our own future, and I’d rather not disrupt the creative process of the dozen or so readers who might want to help their communities prosper during the post-carbon era.
There is little question that saving the industrial economy represents item one for every government in the world. These governments are run, after all, by the most civilized of humans. So we expect them to pursue economic growth by any means possible, including continued destruction of the living planet. If they have to “socialize” (for the rich) every single large entity, they will.
Where does it end? With consummate obedience at home. With ultimate oppression abroad. With a lifeless pile of rubble formerly called Earth. And with the people, if they still warrant such a noble label, quaking in fear that they might be next to draw the attention of the government.
So, what does that mean if you’re living in a city? Or a town? Or in the boonies?
In general, cities suck. That is, they suck life from the planet. They represent all that is wrong with imperialism. They extract precious clean air, water, and food from adjacent wildlands (i.e., the landbase) while returning foul air, filthy water, and garbage. Cities are incapable of supporting human life without massive subsidies from nature. These subsidies formerly came from nearby, but the advent of cheap fossil fuels allowed nature’s abundance to come from further and further away, to the point that we now use our stunningly powerful military to extract materials from every corner of the globe (I know, I know … globes don’t have corners). The inaccessibility of fossil fuels as we slide, bump, slip, and fall down Hubbert’s curve suggests increasingly frequent disruptions in sanitation services, power, water, and food. I strongly suspect disruptions in these services in cities, where they are most badly needed, will lead to increasingly brutal disruptions in civility. At some point in the not-so-distant future, every city becomes uninhabitable for ninety percent or so of the occupants. The scavengers who stay will be surrounded by all the shiny furniture and shoes they could possible want, but also by a shocking absence of culture, food, sanitary water, and aesthetic beauty.
Rural areas, which currently are economically wounded almost beyond belief, lie at the other end of the post-carbon spectrum from cities. Rural areas are home to clean air and, in a few remaining places, clean water and food. These areas are economically disadvantaged (that’s what empire does) and they are continually contaminated by city dwellers — after all, we have to put our garbage somewhere! The ability of rural areas to shrug off the long-term impacts of serving as the nation’s garbage dumps is by no means guaranteed. But the people in these areas know each other in ways city-dwellers do not. Once you’ve seen your neighbor cut the rug at the latest dance party, it’s difficult to put a bullet in his brain just because he’s stealing food from your garden. The city folk I know don’t have gardens, but most of them would plant a few carrots if it gave him an excuse to fire a round at one of the neighbors.
Because cities and rural areas lie at the extremes of population density and therefore imperialism, the real issue is what happens between those extremes. What about towns with a few thousand people? Will Willits, California muddle through? Will it thrive? This town of five thousand people, with an additional five thousand in the zip code, has been transitioning to a post-carbon future before Transition Towns appeared in the rose-colored glasses of civilized folks. But can Willits maintain its industrial water supply when the power goes out? Can the citizens grow enough food for residents when the trucks stop coming? Assuming they can support five or ten thousand people, what about the additional five million or so likely to show up from the heavily populated surrounding area?
Willits might be fine. They’ve had leadership in the community for years, and many people in the area are aware and ready to contribute. I’m not terribly optimistic about many other places though, including the many towns and small cities filled with ignorant or ambivalent politicians. And I’m quite concerned about the post-Boomer generations who’ve never known physical labor but who will nonetheless be asked to put their shoulders to the collective wheel in the name of creating a livable community for themselves and their children. I don’t doubt they are capable of hard work, physically and intellectually. But will a sense of community suddenly overcome the sense of entitlement currently afflicting these generations?
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This post was inspired by a comment from Stan Moore, and informed by his many cogent comments and the links he uses to support his views.

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.

If you’re paying attention, though, you’re nervous when the CEO of General Motors starts pushing peak oil as a reason to buy electric cars, as he did at the massive Detroit auto show earlier this month. (Talk about irony: Didn’t GM kill the electric car, not so long ago?) Not to mention George W. Bush’s admission, from Saudi Arabia last week, that we’ve passed the world oil peak:
“I would like for them to realize that high energy prices affect the economies of consuming nations. And that if these economies weaken, those economies will eventually be buying fewer barrels of oil. And having said that, there is not a lot of excess capacity in the marketplace. What’s happened is, is that demand for energy has outstripped new supply. And that’s why there’s high price.”
BushCo has a backup plan, though. The military is preparing for the end of the electrical grid, as well as gearing up for the occupation in Iran. And Dubya can declare martial law at any time, for any reason he invents.
As if these tidbits aren’t enough to strike fear into the hearts of reasonable people, how about this one: Dubya wants to give you money. Seems Hank Paulson and the Boyz at the Federal Reserve Bank (Benny and the Inkjets) have convinced the CEO-in-chief we need to pump more “liquidity” into the system. The market has failed. That’s quite an admission from the cabal that promotes the so-called “Free Market.” So Dubya and his neo-conservative lackies in Congress are willing to risk another Weimer Republic to keep the Dow Jones Industrial Average riding high for another day. Actually, we’ll be lucky to have hyper-inflation, instead of government-induced chaos, within Dubya’s term.
Except for all the terrible news, which I’ve come to expect even though I can hardly stand it, I had a great weekend. I gave an invited address to 250 archaeologists, helped facilitate a talk titled God: The Failed Hypothesis, and was asked to help develop a screenplay about the collapse of civilization.
My talk to archaeologists focused on peak oil and the associated collapse of civilization. Turns out archaeologists love to study the collapse of civilization, with a minor exception: They aren’t particularly keen on hearing about the collapse of their own civilization.
The talk by Victor Stenger was sponsored by the Center for Inquiry. We reserved a venue large enough to accommodate twice our maximum audience to date, and it was about half the size we needed. Fortunately, Stenger repeated the talk, so about three-fourths of the initial audience got to hear it, although a third of them didn’t hear it until a couple hours after they’d planned.
Finally, a New York Times bestselling novelist discovered my earlier entry about the collapse of civilization and extinction of Homo sapiens, and he’d like to write a screenplay about the former. He describes the proposed film like this, in an email message:
“One that scares the shit out of people. A BLAIR WITCH like movie that begins in 2012 when the first city suffers the first blackout. Everything first person, shot from a family’s perspective. The blackouts become more frequent, and still no response from the herd. The Government makes up their pet excuses, then the gas lines begin. Then one day everyone makes a run to the grocery store … and the looting begins. And the lights go out.”
“Chaos.”
“Okay, you know where I am going, since you and I have already lived it in our heads a thousand times. So let’s SHOW IT in theaters. Let’s give Americans and the rest of the rats in the race a preview of what’s down the road.”
Pretty exciting stuff, I’d say. I can hardly wait.
For the screenplay. Not the chaos.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with believers lately. Their ability to suspend disbelief, to rely on faith instead of evidence, is damned impressive. And it extends well beyond the supernatural. Once you take Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith,” it’s a small step to believe in the Empire. Surely gawd won’t stop taking care of the chosen people of the United States.
Or will she?
Reason arose in Greece about 25 centuries ago, and is perhaps best known from Plato’s Socratic Dialogues. Plato (ca. 428-348 BC) uses the conversations of Socrates to pose and explore questions in considerable detail. Although many of the issues and associated conversations seem unsophisticated to contemporary readers, these initial attempts to employ logic to study the natural world and the role of humans in the world are remarkable precisely because they were the unprecedented. The contributions of ancient Greece to the material world view that characterizes modernity cannot be overstated; that so many of the contributions came from Athens, a city that never exceeded 250,000 residents, is simply astonishing.
Although the ancient Greeks laid the foundation for modernity, few bricks were added to the structure for nearly two millennia. During the early seventeenth century, the empiricist Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and the deconstructionist René Descartes (1596-1650) ushered in the Enlightenment, thereby triggering a flurry of construction to the edifice of knowledge. Almost overnight it became clear that the world was a material one that could be observed and quantified by all who dared think and observe. Nature obeyed rules and humans were big-brained animals capable of discovering and describing those rules.
Thus, the Enlightenment eroded the role of authority as a source of knowledge. In the wake of Giordano Bruno’s heinous execution by the Catholic Church, Bacon recanted earlier statements in which he denied the Ptolemaic view that Earth was the center of the universe. But the erosion of authority that began as a trickle quickly became a flood, and the Church was increasingly marginalized as a source of knowledge.
David Hume (1711-1776), in his initial written piece of philosophy, presented a compelling case against miracles, hence against religion: “Of Miracles” was published in 1748 as an essay in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understandings. (Hume became particularly well known for the idea that what “is” does not indicate what “ought” to be.) Shortly before Charles Darwin formalized the theory of evolution by natural selection in the Origin of Species (1859), Schopenhauer (1788-1860) used Plato-like dialogue to question the basis of religion (“Religion: A Dialogue”) and Max Stirner declared the death of God in his 1845 book, The Ego and Its Own. Notably influenced by Schopenhauer and writing shortly after publication of Darwin’s dangerous idea, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) vociferously spread the word about God’s death (probably without awareness of Stirner’s work) while predicting that Reason would overwhelm world views based on mysticism (while proclaiming science to be a lie; like all other humans, Hume and Nietzsche contained many contradictions). Nietzsche expressed his views on Christianity early and often in his writings, most popularly with Thus Spoke Zarathustra; I prefer The Antichrist because it represents Nietzsche’s views on God particularly clearly and vehemently. This work was intended to be shockingly blasphemous, and it has significant errors. Nonetheless, The Antichrist cogently makes many important points and articulates them vividly.
With respect to the rise of Reason, Nietzsche was an optimist. As S. Jonathan Singer concludes in his 2001 book, The Splendid Feast of Reason, it appears unlikely that more than ten percent of people are capable of employing reason as a basis for how they live. Singer likely did not know he was echoing Schopenhauer, although Schopenhauer’s use of dialog to in his essay clearly indicates he knew he was echoing Plato in reaching the same conclusion.
Reason is the basis for understanding the material world. Mysticism has proven an insufficient foundation for dealing with peak oil and runaway greenhouse. As such, I suspect it will prove inadequate for saving humanity. Whether or not we’re worth saving is a separate issue.
The pursuit of truth is not always fun, of course. Popular culture and its cousin, organized religion, constantly impede the quest of knowledge and search for wisdom. I am reminded of the Catholic Church’s treatment of my long-time hero, Giordano Bruno, which gave Galileo reason to recant in the face of astronomical truth. Trapped and captured by the Inquisition, Bruno was periodically interrogated during eight years of torture-laden imprisonment. Refusing to abandon the Copernican view that Earth orbits the sun instead of the converse Aristotelean (and, more importantly at the time, Catholic) view, Bruno was tongue-tied (literally) and burned alive in February of 1600. Legend, which is seldom true but which nicely embellishes a good story, has him spending his last words assailing the Church because its fear of the truth exceeded his fear of death. Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo were right, of course, as the Church admitted a scant 392 years after murdering Bruno. In a remarkable demonstration of how quickly the Church is capable of admitting its errors and catching up to scientific facts, it concluded Charles Darwin was right about evolution only a couple years later. Perhaps in another few years they will admit the Jesus-as-prophet craze was just a joke that got out of hand, or, more outrageously, they will begin asking their practitioners to follow Jesus’ teachings.
Unfortunately, the Church does not reward those who speak the truth today nearly as publicly as it once persecuted them, and it does not preach scientific truth nearly as vociferously as it preaches mindless mysticism. Periodic condemnation of Darwin by priests and bishops suggests that the Church is slow to educate its own leaders and that it tolerates some facts more willingly than others. But enough, for now, about the Catholic Church, which is too easy a target for those who purposely invoke reason. Furthermore, the Church’s fundamentalist Protestant descendants are making even the Catholic Church seem sensible of late.
I don’t mind the precepts of religion, even though religions are founded on an idea for which there is no evidence. What I mind is religious adherents living contrary to their prophets. If Christians lived as Jesus did, or as he instructed them to live, I would be a big fan of Christianity. As Nietzsche pointed out in The Antichrist, there was one Christian. And he died on the cross.
Our challenge may be far greater than I once imagined. I would not be the first to suggest that, just as a minority of people is incapable of distinguishing colors that are obvious to the majority, a majority is unable to differentiate between reasonable arguments and specious ones. Jonathan Singer makes perhaps the strongest argument for this case in The Splendid Feast of Reason. The evidence he reviews shows rational people have not comprised a majority of any society, suggesting that rational thought lies beyond the realm of most humans. He further concludes that such “rationalists,” as he calls them, comprise fewer than ten percent of American society. Mind you, this is not about intelligence: Plenty of people who are very intelligent (by any measure) are unable to allow logic and reason to overcome irrationality. Thus, contrary to the belief and expectation of Bacon and Descartes, it would appear that efforts to unlock nature’s secrets and then pass along this knowledge have become a lost cause. Indeed, “lost” may be the wrong term for it: Perhaps most people simply cannot receive and interpret the language of reason. If this is the case, as increasing evidence purports, it should be no surprise that history has treated badly the few rational people bold enough to take a firm stand in the face of an irrational majority.
The rational minority often is treated as irrational, making me wonder if assuming a rational stance is, in fact, as irrational as it is abnormal. This appears to be classic case of the inmates running the asylum, and proclaiming one’s sanity is a one-way ticket to solitary confinement (from which, to begin with, rationalists are only one step removed). The impressive swiftness with which the majority has persecuted vocal proponents of reason provides plenty of cause for reflection and even retraction, which was the path taken by Galileo when faced with Bruno’s fate. The title of Singer’s book is well chosen, for it glorifies reason while acknowledging the rarity of its application.
A fundamental question thus becomes: Is the inability of most people to employ reason sufficient justification to cast aside the quest for truth? What about to deny the truth? Why should we try to teach the irrational majority? Why not continue the quest for truth, enjoy the company of the rational ten percent, and leave the masses to their apparently inherent ignorance? Contrast the choices of Galileo and Bruno. Some causes are worth dying for, even though the number of Martin Luthers pales in comparison to the virtual unknowns such as Giordano Bruno.
Singer proposes science as the solution. I’d like to believe science would succeed where reason has failed, but it is difficult to maintain optimism. After all, science gave us evolution by natural selection, and overwhelming evidence has subsequently reinforced Charles Darwin’s dangerous idea. Yet the American public cannot grasp the notion, with denial of the rudimentary science-based facts consistently running at seventy-five percent (among industrialized nations on this topic, none come close to American ignorance and denial of the facts).
But it appears we have no viable choice. If reason is not the answer, then Renaissance and Enlightenment were temporary diversions along the path of absurdity and Giordano Bruno died in vain. I cannot accept mysticism as a legitimate alternative to rational thought any more than a philosopher can accept superficial thinking or a musician can tolerate improper pitch. I cannot surrender to the dual forces of ignorance and denial, though I recognize their great power.
Some of these ideas first appeared in my 2006 book, Letters to a Young Academic: Seeking Teachable Moments