"Another brought up the Crick article i emailed yesterday, the aspect that Crick and his friends thought in the '70s a wider social use of LSD may help people prepare for the coming day when oil would run out and we'd have to turn to a more self-sufficient way of living. Heinberg quipped "Worked for me", surprising the crowd, which had been laughing.
Beyond Oil II, Some Thoughts
Submitted by Jeff Strahl on Thu, 2005-06-16 04:08.General Discussion
Wanted to post some comments about Beyond Oil II.
These are a few things i've written about Post Carbon II, i have lots of notes, may take a while to get all my thoughts down. (several separately-written sections)
1. I generally liked Joanna Macy's presentation, though the fact she referred *twice* to Heinberg as "my guru" was weird. She posed the 3 dimensions of our reaction, one being activity to slow down the destruction wrought by growth society, the second being new ways of doing things, organs of gaian structure, and third being new values. Heinberg's presentation of the problem was strong, he brought up a report presented at the Lisbon Peak Oil conference a few weeks ago by a team from the US Dep't of Energy, whose job was to assess the effects of Peak, not predict when. It's pretty devastating, analyzed the effects if 20 years of preparation are made, vs 10 years, vs waiting till Peak hits, the last one is really jarring. The report is extremely hard to find, done by Robert Hirsch of SAIC, it's at
hilltoplancers.org
(yep, a *high school website*!)
He then went over available figures, esp those provided by Chris Skrebowski of Petroleum Review regarding projects for production facilities vs coming demand, and then said on the basis of these and other figures, he sees the likely date of Peak as 2007. He did the usual debunking of excuses, "alternatives" like tar sands,etc. His prescriptions basically hit me as Utopian, relying on coordination between industry, gov't and private parties to reduce consumption (including the use of advertising,price increases), global agreements for the industrial nations to lower usage and imports of oil and thus keep prices stable, etc, though what he said about increasing localization makes sense *in context*. A short conversation followed between him and Macy, and then questions.
Some of the questions betrayed immense cluelessness, one asserted we need high tech society to safeguard toxic wastes, esp nuclear, Macy asserted she thinks a low tech solution of simply minding the waste is actually better than simply burying and forgetting. Another brought up the question of how to educate children as to the coming crisis. Another brought up the Crick article i emailed yesterday, the aspect that Crick and his friends thought in the '70s a wider social use of LSD may help people prepare for the coming day when oil would run out and we'd have to turn to a more self-sufficient way of living. Heinberg quipped "Worked for me", surprising the crowd, which had been laughing. And a woman who identified herself as Iranian,the last questionner ( i didn't get to ask about 9/11 and Peak and the way many activists of all sorts are down on Peak Oil advocates, why, and what to do about it), did well, asserted the root of the problem is CAPITALISM. Heinberg surprisingly agreed, said the infinite growth required by capitalism is impossible to fit into a finite system such as the ecosphere.
At the end, the crowd (place was about 3/4 full, not bad, it's a large place), which already dwindelled down to less than half its original size, basically filed out, everyone headed out back to their separate lives, separate living spaces,...Macy's call for people to not deal with this stricly with what's between their ears, that this is the time to reach out, to build community, to act, seemed to...fall on deaf ears.
2. Joanna Macy tagged two crises that are developing way faster than anyone anticipated as the Climate Crisis and Peak Oil,as pointing to huge disruptions in society in the next few years. Heinberg added other ecological crises, including one in food production, as well as the economic crisis, which he blamed on the debt bubble (a problem with his analysis, he sees a *symptom* as the *cause*, instead of problems inherent in the very nature of the capitalist accumulation cycle which then force capital to use debt to postpone problems in the short term, only to exacerbate them in the long and increasingly not so long term), and a public health crisis (which again is a symptom of the economic crisis). He foresees a 20 year Great Depression and 50% unemployment, numbers which interestingly enough one audience member called "optimistic". He gave no reason why the world economic structure would pull out of this crisis,even after 20 years, i think that's related to his confusion, his lack of clarity, why he can talk about "industry" cooperating with gov't and private citizens in adopting policies to reduce consumption and localize.
3. Joanna Macy: people can react to a collective drama either by opening the senses, or by closing them. End of oil/Climate change twin crisis illustrates the suicide nature of industrial growth economy [i would have said "capitalism"]. We're on the verge of a third major revolution, first was the agricultural one, the second the industrial, this will be the sustainability or ecological revolution. Strength through solidarity and creativity and love for life.
Richard Heinberg: without a basic change, the media will still be talking about wars and shortages years after the Peak as if they are all unrelated problems.
The future's here, we are it, we're on our own-John Barlow and Bob Weir, 1982.
postcarbon.org |
