I subscribe to and I read Harpers articles with great relish. It is the oldest magazine in the US-I believe several hundred years. This article was up to their very high standards. The guy neither dissed nor bowed to peak oil. He treated the theories and the oddball characters in a refreshing way. It was very good.

Matt, sometimes I think you use this alpha male pissing contest thing as an excuse for being a lawyer at heart. Not everyone is always sniffing crotch and planning dominance.

You need to learn about human evolutionary behavior and the role that altuism, propagated by group selection, has in pack and tribal coherence. Suffice it to say, people do act honorably and selflessly for simple generous reasons, even if the behavior is programmed by our genes.

It was that issue of Fortune Magazine that I learned about your site Matt. Just thought I should let you know. That article also confirmed my thoughts about Peak Oil, I figured "someone" wealthly would understand this problem then take action.

Mr. Rainwater made billions guessing. Now, he is guessing again.

I've said it many times: within the tribe, yes altruism if highly prevalent.

It is most prevalent when banding together to take the resources of others. Think of the heroics a military unit is capable of, amazing sacrifices are made for other members of the unit. Think "band of brothers."

The flip side is My Lai, Haditha, etc.

Best,

Matt

None of which has beans to do with anything remotely resembling libeeralism. I would think writers for Harpers would have a rudimentary education, at least.

Isnt 'Liberal' used as a term of abuse in America, in the same vein as 'tosser' or 'knobhead' would be in the UK?

So is there some veiled abuse towards the Peak Oil proposal from Harpers?

Or maybe its just plain ignorance. Harpers must think the Peak Oil theory comes from one end of the political spectrum, whereas in reality its a scientific theory relating discovery to production curves and essentially (as is all science) apolitical - peak oil theory supporters coming from all political backgrounds from far right to far left.

I think this has to be one of the bigger misconceptions about the societal and cultural transformations that will come as a result of Peak Oil, either near or long term. There has been and always will be a "machine" because the machine is humanity. It will never be stopped until we learn how to radically alter human psychology and sociology. Stupidity, greed, and materialism have always been with us and always will be with us. Our earliest recorded histories decry our persistent social follies and failings. It is only because we remain persistently stupid and unable to learn from the past that great poritions of religious texts continue to have any relevance after thousands of years. We don't get it. We don't learn. There was never a untopia on anything more than the smallest scale in rare and isolated pockets throughout history. It's ridiculous to think that just because our physical technology will be reversed perhaps two centuries that somehow our social technology will be advanced. Were there no wars 200 years ago? no famine? no greed? no rich and elite? no powerful men using others as pawns? no tenant farmers and slaves? no crime? no racism? no prejudice and bigotry? no capitalism? no poverty? Did everyone share and help each other on a continental scale?

Peak Oil will not change the rules of the game, merely the color of the uniforms. Humans will still be the players. What we're going to get is the same greedy, bigoted, selfish, short-sighted humans simply operating with new constraints. We'll have shorter life spans and instead of being a slave to wage labor, we'll be a slave to the weather, praying for rain for our crops. There will be no new and wonderful era ushered in from our dreams and wishes, but rather just the recycling of an older time replete with all its miseries.

like I said, the "gross materialism" of the American culture will end with cheap petroleum. And then the damage done to the environment by rampart resource extraction will heal. That is my hope anyway. Thus the liberal religious component

liberal has two common meanings. On the one hand it refers to the once dominant left-of-center political ideology of the American Democratic party, before that party became Republican-Lite. It is also used in economics to describe the open free-market. And yeah, after years of american right-wing attacks on anything not reactionary and ignorant the term has finally become corrupted and reduced to caricature. It is a sign of our times that a term once associated with generosity and compassions now means weak. We are in for hard times post peak only because we expect it from each other and ourselves. We are a fallen civilization already.

I am also hoping that some good may come of these changes, but given human nature and its dreadfully redundant history, I sadly have grave doubts that anything will change. I think scales of our activity will change for a while, and the objects of our greed will change, but our basic motivations will not. Instead of oil, cars and electronics, we'll covet livestock, land, water and renewable resources. We'll fight wars over them, too, as we alwas have. It's likely that disparities in wealth will eventually become worse than ever as the laws of most nations allow the rich to own and control excessively far beyond their personal needs. Most of our descedants will eventually be tenant farmers.

If by "gross materialism" you mean the massive scale at which cheap energy allows us to consume, then certainly that will end. However, I don't believe that materialism will end. We will still continue to consume as much as we can. People will still retain their base instincts to hoard and make displays of wealth for purposes of personal security, power and control, social and sexual status. Perhaps the small family farm might not be able to hoard and consume as much as before, but you'll once again see the rise of a landed elite than certainly will give you the relative equivalent of gross materialism.

If there is a die-back of population, the environment might have a chance of recovering. However, as the world turns its eye back to the land, we could in the future see more environmental degradation than ever. Without conscious population control, every bit of land that can possibly be used will be. It won't be that different from we see now when a developer bulldozes land for a new suburban development. We'll swarm the earth like ants, cutting down every forest, leveling every hill to plant crops until we create another set of foreseeable disasters or we reach the ultimate carrying capacity of the planet and a consequent undulating population plateau.

There might be a short time in between miserable eras in which small pockets of decent agrarian communities manage to exist, but I see no evidence in human nature or history as to why the overall trend in economics and freedom for the next couple hundred years is going to be good for the average person.

Land reforms might go some distance to mitigating a few issues, I'd hazard to guess, but we've seen how violently and successfully most governments have put down these attempts to return the basis of real power to its people.

Damn you Windmills... Stop being so sensible. Your display of common sense and understanding of human nature is disturbing. I just hope I live long enough to see it all unwind...

It's not "human nature" though, it's our culture's nature. There have been thousands of cultures which didn't/don't act as described.

Windmill you are missing my point. I was only agreeing with the author's description of a one group of people: the Left-of-Center Doomer who is well represented here at PO. The author described an almost religious conviction that the End is Near. What is 'liberal' about this particular apocalyptic myth (in the sense of 'a story', not a fabrication) is that it is not handed down by a revengeful and omnipotent god but rather our by our selfish genes coupled with a corrupt corporate hegemony

This liberal apocalyptic belief is tempered by the hope that warning ('the people') early enough, coupled with good planning, intentions, and preperations (by a 'good government') will save the human race and the planet. I have that hope and belief also. So do a lot of people here, in spite what the facts and what our experience tells us otherwise. That is we are screwed 6 ways to sunday

Damn you too Ludi.... How am I ever going to be able to get to sleep tonight? Good point though.. Actually, I'm not sure how we can even call what exists today as culture, as culture (thinking Paris Hilton...)

"Nature" can't change, but culture can...

.....can it change in time to avoid the worst? This seems doubtful.

Will culture change during energy descent? Undoubtedly. Those who can't imagine anything different to western capitalism will prove themselves right locally, and make excellent serfs.