Im sure we will find a way

[Guest]

Ok, I know that some people are panicking over peak oil, and mind you I am one of them. Figuring out ways to get around this oil crisis is going to take some time, but I think that over all weve done on this earth so far that there is going to be some way to get the energy we need, just have to have faith. Dont u think?

[davidyson]

No. Faith won't help us at all.

The only thing is to vote Bush out of office and get public pressure organized for a WWII-like effort to turn our societies around to follow the path to sustainability.

Everything else is just doctoring the symptoms, not the cause.

Davidyson

[jato]

Bam! Smack down!

You are both right. Faith keeps us going when times get tough.

The only thing is to vote Bush out of office and get public pressure organized for a WWII-like effort to turn our societies around to follow the path to sustainability.

Davidson, you too must have some faith that your suggested course of action might work.

Did I make any sense?

[davidyson]

jato,

I don't know. I only know that doing nothing will definitely lead us into desaster.

I guess it's not faith but rather an attempt to keep my own conscience clear by doing at least what I can.

Also, I do think if we would be starting to turn around, like, now, we might actually make a difference to the steepness of the societal decline.

Davidyson

[jato]

Also, I do think if we would be starting to turn around, like, now, we might actually make a difference to the steepness of the societal decline.

I think you are right. However, I think it will take an energy crisis before we take the needed steps here in the USA. We are addicts who need who need a continuous energy fix. People on this board like to analyze the problem without taking the "human factor" into consideration. Just look at our wonderful human history consisting of conflicts, wars & suffering.

(This post was co-written with Rallyman)

[Grond]

The human factor is almost always to solve a problem when it needs solving. Sometimes that ethos leads to a world of two step forwards one step back.

But I hear alot of naysayers talking about how it will be ten steps back and that's it. Then we'll all be wandering the world in peasant rags and driving our plowshares with oxen -- every so often turning up some strange device that the village elders will refer to as a "cellphone". I even saw one poster say something like 'and the windmills will require spare parts; all of these things will be irreplaceable'. Yeah? And since when is it that just because the electricity goes out for a while that the human collective conciousness loses the memory of how to machine parts? Will the loss of electricity also render all the libraries in the world obsolete? Will the loss of electricity cause hospitals to spontaneously turn to dust?

Okay it takes longer and the pieces aren't as precise as before. Maybe going back and rethinking the indutrialized world will be the greatest leap forward since the age of Enlightenment. Some people say that is a pollyanna attitude. But you can't undo what's been done in the past 100 years. Nobody is ever going to forget how to split subatomic particles because there is an energy shortage. Penicillin will still be manufactured. Life will go on.

Too much doom and gloom and waiting for the world to come crashing down. It's precisely that mentality that has kept too many people shackled to the illusions of Christianity and the false assumption that one day a 'heavenly father' will come down out of the skies and solve all the world's problems with a wave of the magic crucifix.

My impression is that, as I mentioned before, the world will not so much leap into the 22nd century as it will limp into it. So what?

[clv101]

But you can't undo what's been done in the past 100 years. Nobody is ever going to forget how to split subatomic particles because there is an energy shortage. Penicillin will still be manufactured. Life will go on.

It's perfectly possible to lose knowledge, civilisations do collapse and things are forgotten. Think of Stone Henge in the UK or the Great Pyramids? The skills and knowledge that build them and certainly the reasoning behind their purpose was lost. In the last few hundred years we've rediscover the lost knowledge and guessed at the reasoning behind them but that doesn't change the fact that there have been periods in history where we've lost what we once knew.

In many ways it's very hard to look back and see what has been discovered and lost in the past... since it was lost. Who knows what pearls of wisdom were lost forever after the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria, the Mayans?

Much of our knowledge is very venerable - it's stored electronically or it's so advanced that very few people know about it. Things like splitting the atom, genetic engineering, microprocessor manufacture, building/launching satellites etc... it wouldn't take much for extremely specialised knowledge to be lost.

[MonteQuest]

Grond quote:

I even saw one poster say something like 'and the windmills will require spare parts; all of these things will be irreplaceable'. Yeah? And since when is it that just because the electricity goes out for a while that the human collective conciousness loses the memory of how to machine parts? Will the loss of electricity also render all the libraries in the world obsolete? Will the loss of electricity cause hospitals to spontaneously turn to dust?

No, but the ability to meet demand for many manufactured will be impossible in most cases. The hospitals won't turn to dust, but the patients will. And while people are starving it will be hard to use up that oil to build nuclear power plants while people idly stand by.

Manufactured. Like it is a given. I, and many others who post these boards try in every way to make cogent, salient arguments based upon facts, not some prophecy from the Hall of Fools. We are a very complex, industrialized society that has always operated on the margins. Today, even without the advent of peak-oil, we find ourselves unable to sustain our present economic climate.

Since our economy at any given moment consists of sixty million people scurrying to the next ‘blue light special” to buy goods on credit made by people 12,000 miles away, we can expect some pretty far-reaching consequences.

Lastly, where will the capital come from to do all this? We are dealing with a mechanism of rate and magnitude beyond our ability to forestall. That is not doom and gloom, that is the hand we have been dealt. It is up to us to determine our hand and to place our bets. I hope you win.

[Canuck]

Okay it takes longer and the pieces aren't as precise as before. Maybe going back and rethinking the indutrialized world will be the greatest leap forward since the age of Enlightenment.

I think this is possible, too. A different way of living could hardly be worse. What we have today is a comfortable insanity. I do not believe humans will become extinct. Those who build the next civilization - whatever shape that takes - may indeed do better.

The challenge is getting from here to there. I can't figure out how that is possible. It starts with recession and inflation and it move to recession, inflation and intermittent shortages of different kinds of goods including power. We lurch from monetary crisis to monetary crisis.

What then? I don't know, but I can't scrape up any positive responses to the energy crisis or positive scenarios.

But you can't undo what's been done in the past 100 years. Nobody is ever going to forget how to split subatomic particles because there is an energy shortage. Penicillin will still be manufactured. Life will go on.

Knowledge is not going to help. I can know exactly how a simple product like a book of matches or a pencil is made without having a hope of making either.