The Paradox of our Age

We have bigger houses but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees, but less sense
more knowledge, but less judgment;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines, but less healthiness;
We’ve been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street to meet
the new neighbor.

We built more computers to hold more
information to produce more copies than ever,
but have less communication;
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods
but slow digestion;
Tall man but short character;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It’s a time when there is much in the window,
but nothing in the room.

The Dalai Lama

The problem with economic growth...

by Richard Douthwaite

If any aspect of green economics makes the average person deeply unhappy, it is its claim that we have to halt economic growth. This is understandable. After all, who doesn't find the idea of a higher income attractive? Moreover, most of us believe that economic growth is responsible for the comfortable lives the majority of people in industrialised countries enjoy today and, for the minority who aren't so fortunate, we find it heartening to be able to tell ourselves that the extra resources generated by the next few years' expansion should bring them up to a reasonable level too, provided the gains are properly allocated. This means that there's no need for us to give anything up to make the poor better off, a wonderful notion as it stops us feeling guilty about our affluent life-style. And as for the Third World, surely it's obvious that growth is necessary to raise living conditions there too?
The easiest way of handling these appealing pro-growth arguments is not to try to untangle the strands of truth, falsehood and self-interest they contain. Rather it is to tell ourselves and anyone else who will listen, that while growth seems desirable, not all growth is good. Just as the wrong form of uncontrolled human growth, cancer, can be damaging and even fatal, so can the wrong sort of economic growth. Unfortunately, the wrong sort of economic growth is the type we've largely been getting for at least twenty years. Why? Simply because if a largely unregulated market is left to decide which sectors of the economy are to expand and how they will do so, it's impossible to ensure that good growth comes about.

http://www.feasta.org/growth.htm

Oil and People

ASPO Newsletter 55 (July 2005); article no. 573

The population of the World expanded six-fold in parallel with oil production during the First Half of the Age of Oil. William Stanton, author of The Rapid Growth of Human Population 1750-2000, contributes the following analysis of how population will have to return to pre-Oil Age levels. Let us hope that it does not come to this, but the options explained do have a certain chilling logic.

http://www.peakoil.ie/newsletters/588

Oil Collapse

The fall of the U.S. may be the swiftest empire collapse in world history. It is obvious that the U.S. population and the nation's infrastructure is heavily petroleum dependent. The U.S. peaked in oil production (extraction) in 1971. The world may be peaking now, as some evidence indicates, or in a few short years. As a severe energy shortage is on tap as soon as the gap between supply and demand is felt by the market, and the Earth gives noticeably less oil than just recently, there will be a cascade of impacts on the economy and people's lives.

So it will not matter how much oil is still in the ground, or if other ways of obtaining and using energy are more renewable and greener: A massive shut down of petroleum supply brought about by market panic and economic collapse will terminate corporate globalism and the political landscape as well. [As discussed in this essay and in links at the end, production of other forms of energy cannot substitute for petroleum and will not be maximized for readiness anyway.] Many aspects of modern society are at a breaking point already, whether one looks at the housing market bubble, U.S. debt and deficits, or the prospects of damaging weather from the fast distorting of the planet's climate.

Not only will the sudden oil shortage ahead mean the Final Energy Crisis, the present economy only works on growth, so even a plateau of global petroleum extraction -- what seems to be happening now, although it is being called "insufficient refining capacity for poor quality crude oil" -- would mean the house of economic cards collapses on its own. Recovery from such an event, even if not from oil shortage, would appear impossible because supplies of oil would be among the commodities suddenly scarce, and this would have a terminal effect on much economic activity and people's lives.

http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6&Itemid=2
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=2


Further reading:

The Nature Revolution, short story by Jan Lundberg: http://www.culturechange.org/e-letter-6cont.html

Energy production ratio (or net energy, or return on energy invested:
http://www.eclipsenow.org/Facts/alternateenergy.html
http://www.abelard.org/briefings/energy-economics.asp#eroei

Ted Trainer's writings, including The Simpler Way:
http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/
and Ted Trainer's Thoughts on the Transition to a Sustainable Society
http://socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D75.ThoughtsonTrans.html

Stuart Rodman's "Last Days of America?" on this website:
http://www.culturechange.org/issue20/Last%20days%20of%20America.htm
http://dieoff.org/

The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005, New York, NY. www.groveatlantic.com

Green Cities and the End of the Age of Oil
http://www.commongroundmag.com/2005/cg3206/greencities3206.html

Mirage and Oasis: Energy choices in an age of global warming

The cost of new nuclear power has been underestimated by almost a factor of three and the potential of small scale renewables critically overlooked according to a new report from nef, Mirage and Oasis, released to coincide with the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy.

Nuclear power has been promoted in the UK and globally as the answer to climate change and energy insecurity. But, as Mirage and Oasis reveals, as a response to global warming, nuclear power is too slow, too expensive and too limited. And, in an age of terrorist threats, it is more of a security risk than a solution. Instead, renewable energy offers as safe, secure and climate-friendly energy supply system. It leaves no toxic legacy and is abundant and cheap to harvest both in the UK and globally.

Renewable energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal could, in theory each individually meet all of the world’s energy needs. Practically, however, as Mirage and Oasis reveals; a broader combination of renewable energy sources than is currently utilized, tapped into with a range of micro, small, medium and large-scale technologies, and applied flexibly, could more than meet all of our needs.


The New Economics Foundation (NEF) is an independent think-and-do tank that inspires and demonstrates real economic well-being.
We aim to improve quality of life by promoting innovative solutions that challenge mainstream thinking on economic, environmental and social issues. We work in partnership and put people and the planet first.

http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/z_sys_publicationdetail.aspx?pid=209

Twilight in the Desert

As oil becomes a scarce resource, its use will have to be rationed in one way or another. There are ways to allocate oil use and direct it to its most valuable applications. But achieving such a rational plan will require a carefully orchestrated, global, country-by-country effort. Left unattended, this process could quickly evolve into genuine chaos. The global economy can function after oil supplies peak, but not in the same manner in which we live today.

A world that learns to live with a dwindling oil supply will also be forced to control the emissions that energy use creates in an entirely different way than anyone envisioned when worries of global warming first began to surface.

The biggest danger the world faces, if my thesis about Saudi Arabia's oil is correct, is that no one will begin preparing Plan B. As far as I know, there is not a single contingency plan in place or currently being written by any of the think tanks of the world that sets out a model illustrating how the world can continue to function smoothly once it is clear that Saudi Arabian oil has peaked. In a nutshell, it is this total lack of any "alternative scenario thinking" that makes this unavoidable event so alarming.

Matthew R. Simmons is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Simmons & Company International, a Houston-based investment bank that specializes in the energy industry. Mr. Simmons serves on the boards of Brown-Forman Corporation and The Atlantic Council of the United States. He is also a member of the National Petroleum Council on Foreign Relations. He has an MBA from Harvard University.

http://www.counterpunch.org/simmons06212005.html