Quotes, opinions and links
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We are living in an historical time in human history. The peak of modern civilization is now past. The energy intensive lives, power hungry technological marvels, shipping and airline travel, and food distribution, will be declining. (Don't worry TOO much, it's not doomsday, it's probably a hundred year decline but, unfortunately... starting about now.) We need to completely relearn how to live, right now! The human race will almost certainly never be able to produce and use as much energy [per day] as we have recently, ever again (unless someone comes up with a techno-fix like cold fusion, which is not looking very likely). |
Overshoot: The Ecological Basis for Revolutionary Change |
"Growth is dead. Let’s make the most of it.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."
- Richard Heinberg
Energy and Resource Depletion...
running out of energy in America.”
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From an Amazon review for "Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change"... "Catton uses the term 'Age of Exuberance' to represent the time since 1492 when first a newly discovered hemisphere and then the invention of fossil-fuel-driven machines allowed Old-World humans to escape the constraints imposed by a population roughly at earth's carrying capacity, and instead to grow (and philosophize and emote) expansively. He then reminds us that we are soon to be squeezed by the twin jaws of excessive population and exhausted resources, as our current population is utterly dependent on the mining and burning of fossil energy and its use to exploit earth's resources in general." ==================== Peak Oil, most likely, was just locked in by the financial
crisis / collapse of 2008 (new drilling projects are being delayed and
cancelled). We will never be able to fully recover from this
decline with oil energy. Every time we get near 85 million barrels a day
(world liquid fossil fuel usage) we'll hit a ceiling of energy supply. And that 85 million
number will go down over the coming years. |
inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows:
the Iraq war is largely about oil ”
The Economy...
The original Jefferson quote I had here cannot be traced back to him.I have replaced it with similar, attributable quotes...
"I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous
than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be
paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity
on a large scale."
--Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816
"Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now
coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It
is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy
of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any
they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make
it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their
swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs."
--Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814
....
The Automatic Earth
So now they're spending hundreds of billions of dollars of new debt
to keep the debt machine running?
The Climate...
The Arctic's ice is melting much faster than scientists predicted.The CO2 in the atmosphere and acidity in the ocean is
increasing much faster than the models predicted.
The amount of methane being released from the northern
permafrost is increasing in a feedback loop.
The Soil...
Industrial fertilizers have stripped much of the soil of it's natural nutrientsand organic life. - Corporate abuse of farmers has destroyed many
countries' agricultural sectors. With volatile fertilizer prices and supply,
and the financial meltdown drying up credit for farmers, food shortages
are starting to become more of a concern.
note: A lot of Fossil Fuel energy is used to
grow, harvest, and transport food.
The Problems?
| -- Lots of cheap, easy energy for 100+ years (light sweet crude oil 20ft underground). -- Population overshoot. -- Short term thought. -- Expectations based on very recent human history. (Past performance does not guarantee future results!) -- Things change! (the weather, finding mostly Heavy Sour Crude oil 3 miles under the Gulf) |
Silly humans.
The world can't continue to use so much
energy, per day, of fossil fuels.
"Gail the actuary" (from The Oil Drum):
"For many years, depletion was not really an issue. Resources were so
vast, and the leverage provided by energy from fossil fuels was so great,
that we could extract as much of almost anything we wanted (oil, natural
gas, coal, uranium, copper, phosphorous, gold, platinum, indium, gallium,
fresh water, and many other things) very cheaply, in the quantities needed
for whatever use was desired.
"What has happened in the last few years is that we have started reaching
the point where extraction of many of these resources is becoming much
more difficult..."
Richard Heinberg:
"No one (within the economics profession) stopped to think that limits to Earth's supplies of fossil fuels, topsoil, water, and other resources might impose ultimate limits on economic activity."
Yes, there are still a lot of energy sources.
Oil in Alaska, Brazil, and offshore, maybe the arctic,
there's the wind, or "The sunlight that hits the Earth
each day could power us all for a year!" etc...
But the amount that we can get to us users as
energy each day, through the wires or as fuel, is limited.
It's the acquisition and delivery speed and cost that are the problem.
"It's not the size of the tank, it's the size of the spout."
Solutions?
"There is no silver bullet, just some silver BBs."A major (multi?)trillion dollar "Manhattan project" focused on:
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-- geo-thermal, -- wind, -- solar PV and solar thermal, -- wave/tidal energy, -- an electrical grid update, -- and lots of electric rail... (have the failing auto companies build rail cars and engines! and maybe wind mills?) and -- super-insulated homes and offices (passive house), -- tele-commuting, -- local manufacturing, -- local farming, -- home gardens, -- organic-NPK (fertilizer) recycling, ELP: economize, localize, produce and very likely -- the end of traditional growth economy (which Wall Street will fight tooth and nail) |
Please support extreme conservation and drastic changes to energy policy
so we can avoid running into a resource wall. - Hopefully with a new president, a little luck, and whatever we (the people) can get done, we can do enough good to help avoid the worst case scenarios.
Generation WEThe WE Declaration:...We believe that our birthright has been violated, and we are inheriting a damaged future. Enough is enough. We have been left worse off than prior generations for the first time in our Nation’s history.... -- Visit Generation WE -- |
 The Green Collar Economy
"Green For All founder, Van Jones
proposes elegant solutions for our economic and environmental crises." |
"To love. To be loved.
To never forget your own insignificance.
To never get used to the unspeakable violence and
the vulgar disparity of life around you.
To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair.
To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple.
To respect strength, never power.
Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away.
And never, never, to forget."
"The First Amendment rests on the
assumption that the widest possible
dissemination of information from diverse
and antagonistic sources is essential
to the welfare of the public, that a free
press is a condition of a free society."
- Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb's top ten life tips
1 - Skepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be skeptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
2 - Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
3 - It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
4 - Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behavior. You will always have the last word.
5 - Don’t disturb complicated [natural] systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.
6 - Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximize trial and error — by mastering the error part.
7 - Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).
8 - Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.
9 - Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.
10 - Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.
More what?
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In a nation whose defining document begins, "We the People," I find
that it is we the people who constitute the greatest threat to the
future of America. It is not through the force of our actions, but rather
the vacuum created by our inaction and apathy, a vacuum all too readily
filled by those who would have us exchange our hard-fought freedoms for
a gilded cage of market-driven consumerism.
-- Scott Ritter
Great Transitions
An interesting departure from the world of new age mysticism...
an article by Karla McLaren (a bit of a guru writer in the new age world)
written for the Skeptical Inquirer when she originally decided to leave the
community of woo.
Skeptical Inquirer article
And even better, a great letter from Karla about her time since then...
Where's Karla?
Quick Quotes....
Civilization is the limitless
multiplication
of unnecessary necessities.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted
to a profoundly sick society.
- J. Krishnamurti
Be who you are and say what you feel,
because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind.
- Dr Seuss
Culture is not truth. Culture is other people's trash,
you know, the detritus of thousands of years of mistakes,
that's what culture is...
- Terrance McKenna
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries
of life disappear and life stands explained.
- Mark Twain, Notebook
Work like you don't need the money,
love like you've never been hurt,
and dance like no one is watching.
--- Satchel Paige
Life's journey is not to
arrive at the grave safely
in a well preserved body,
but rather to skid in sideways,
totally worn out,
shouting "...holy shit ...what a ride!"
- George Carlin