Culture can change if the environment is right to do so. Culture and environment are each functions of the other. Will culture change during energy descent? Absolutely, it will be a new environment. What will it change into? Who the hell knows.

And "Nature" is constantly changing as well. Evolution. It's just changing at a rate that is not especially useful to our predicament.

Some, perhaps many, perhaps most will experience "the worst". Not everyone is going to make it, and this is how it works out best for the long run. From an evolutionary perspective for the human species, the future is unknown and rapidly changing, and the "best" strategy for survival of the species is to not put all our eggs in one basket.

Most of our eggs are in growth, capitalism, consumerism, fascism, gloabilization, and being merchants of death. A few eggs are in things like permaculture, sustainability, "back-to-the-land" thinking, localization, and respect for the ecology. Most people on this board know which eggs are more likely to survive long-term, but we are unique and fortunate to have access to these resources and information, and we are receptive to these ideas. The other 6.5 billion+ do not and are not, they have access and exposure only to what the media or government tells them, and if they do have access to this information they lack the means to process and/or accept it.

Just be aware that eggs might be laid in your area that have "feudalism" or "warlordism" written on them. And that bad eggs in general will still stink for a long time before they go away.

But regardless of the specific future, people will continue, and in the face of a new environment, they will do something else.

And so the Christian environmentalists want it to end how? We continue to confuse Fundamentalists with Christians. I suggest the book, "Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity" by Bruce Bawer for a good explanation of how the label 'Christian' has been co-opted by fundamentalists.

Religion is only one of many dimensions that define the spectrum from 'liberal' to 'conservative':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-right_politics

No wonder it's so confusing, I assumed all the fundamentalists I hear about on the news were muslim.

Oiltopia I don't know any Christian environmentalists. The Bible says man has dominion over nature, whereas we non-believers see people as a part of nature just as vulnerable to ecological inbalance and population explosion as any other living species or population.

Regardless. All Christians believe that sin sends you to hell. The nature of The Trip down there appears to be a key characteristic of the Fundementalist version. They get hauled off by 4 Horseman whereas liberal christians might escorted by hummers.

Untrue, the Church of England is no longer convinced by the medieval idea of hell.

They're out there, though they appear to be a minority. I thought the recent statement by evangelical Christian leaders on global warming was a welcome change. Catholic leaders also released a pastoral letter a couple years ago that called for better environmental stewardship of the Columbia River Basin. And here's another Christian treehugger group. I'm an evangelical atheist myself, but I think the "greening" of (some) American Chrisitians is definitely a positive development.

Is there a link to the Harper's article? I'm too cheap to go out and buy it.

I'm a confirmed athiest.

I think I would not fit in any box with one tiny little label like "atheist" on it. And honestly rogerhb I am sure neither will you ...

so does that mean that there is only heaven? If so why bother being good?

I'm not on the General Synod so I don't know the big picture...



Not the box, let me out of the box.....

I agree with Matt and Aflurry, and would go a step further to say that the article is basically a smear job of Peakers.

The comparison of Peak Oil adherents to America’s religious Doomsday cults, and the time the author spends describing the brainstorming of the Manhattan Peak oil club’s goofy ideas about saving the city (*one member suggest digging up 5th avenue and turning it back into farm land) is essentially intended to discredit the movement as a bunch of kooks.

Anyone reading this piece lacking a previous understanding of the basic economic challenges or geological issues will probably dismiss PO as a new, quasi-religious fetish of the environmentalist left.

Matt makes a terrific point about the Rainwater piece. Showcasing billionaire capitalists, not people typically characterized as having weak grasp on reality, is a far more effective lens through which to examine the issue. T.Boone Pickens, Richard Rainwater, Jim Rogers – there seems to be no shortage of rich guys betting on Peak Oil these days.

I never buy magazines but this thread came to mind waiting for the train by the kiosk in the subway.

Reads like the author fully believes in peak oil but hasn't reached the acceptance stage yet. Maybe mocking the theory is his way of coping with it.

This quote was pulled into the middle of the page:

"I found myself immersed in a feeling I have experienced many times since learning about peak oil: I move through the world in wonderment at all that is slated to vanish"

He knows the reality, he's just naturally finding it a bit surreal like most of us.

This was my take on the article. Comparing the peak oil movement to the Left Behind mass psychosis tempts the reader to dismiss the whole rationale for peak oil.

I read the article yesterday, and today I sent Harper's a little email thanking them for writing a cover story on Peak Oil, but I also critiqued Urstadt's article for comparing various apocalyptic religious movement with an imminent geophysical phenomenon - one that has already occured in 33 of the 48 major-oil producing nations on this planet....important facts that the Harper's article ommitted...and this geological issue should not be compared with various religious movements.

I also mentioned in my email to Harper's magazine that both Bill Clinton and Al Gore have recently stated in public their belief that we are either at or near peak oil...and neither of those two men can be dismissed as "radicals" or doom-and-gloom prophets...

MPR: A conversation with Bill Clinton (from a July 7, 2006 interview)
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/displa ... 11/midday2




...and here's what Gore said on Larry King live in June 2006...



http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... kl.01.html

Even if Harper's makes it sound like a doomsday cult, we have quite a few powerful people in our cult. I think we worship truth and science. If that makes me a cultist, then so be it. It seems like peak oil is happening right on schedule. I don't particularly like it, but maybe it's time to start doing something.