[onlooker]

P, because this ship like the Titanic cannot be turned around or deviated. So they are trying to maintain business as usual as long as possible. We are truly in a bind as a human species are we not?

[onlooker]

Tell me, since 2005 when all the dire consequences of various perils like peak oil, GW, economic collapse, environmental destruction were known, what measures has global civilization enacted or taken to prepare or to deal with all this. NONE. It is maybe why I continue posting I am frozen perhaps like all of you in a time period somewhere around 2005 when maybe their was still time to do something about all this. Now I do not think so. As Ibon has stated consequences will occur and we will muddle through as best we can. I think what unites us all on this site is we proactive and diligent people with regards to the eventualities of life and are stupefied by humanities both lack of awareness of these issues and even more so lack of action to head them off. Oh well hungry going to eat something. haha.

[ennui2]

what measures has global civilization enacted or taken to prepare or to deal with all this.

Brown-tech drill-baby-drill and kicking the can down the road. You may not like these measures, but they are measures, nonetheless, and they have had one positive impact, which is to forestall Mad Max style doom.

[onlooker]

what measures has global civilization enacted or taken to prepare or to deal with all this.

Brown-tech drill-baby-drill and kicking the can down the road. You may not like these measures, but they are measures, nonetheless, and they have had one positive impact, which is to forestall Mad Max style doom.

Yes I suppose they are measures ennui, but more like band aid measures, like putting your finger over a ruptured dam. But your right they have bought us extra time.

[ennui2]

But considering that this is a dilemma and not something that has painless solutions, it's all just a matter of opinion on what constitutes positive mitigation and what doesn't. For instance, look at the reaction to China's abandonment of the one-child policy. Very few brought up the real-world risks of overpopulation. They focused on the damage to freedom and attempts by the Chinese to have just male babies. There isn't any mitigation that would be universally adopted by the public because, whether people want to admit it here or not, BAU status quo has a lot of advantages to Joe Public. When Obama gave his speech about KeystoneXL, he tried to counter the prevailing opinion that green-tech is bad for the economy. But there are free-market types that simply don't want government to favor technology, you know, let's not ban incandescent bulbs or subsidize EVs, because this interferes with the invisible hand of the free market. You see what I mean? It's easy to sit here and just say "look. We're not doing anything!" But then you realize WHY that gridlock exists. People have very strong opinions about the way things should be, which usually comes from a value-system that is pretty far away from the laws of ecology or thermodynamics.

[onlooker]

People have very strong opinions about the way things should be, which usually comes from a value-system that is pretty far away from the laws of ecology or thermodynamics.

Good comment Ennui.

[ennui2]

Ennuie might want listen to his own advice and stop lecturing on issues he doesn't understand.

You're trying to change the subject. There is this unspoken assumption by people here that there is a narrow band of mitigations that have little or no downsides. But the fact is that what you or I view as a mild sacrifice is not necessarily seen as a mild sacrifice outside of the doomer echo-chamber, hence the pushback over incandescent bulbs. Whether the move to compact fluorescent or LEDs would "solve" limits to growth is NOT the issue. The issue is the fact that there can never be enough of a universal consensus to do anything due to all of these competing interests and value-systems. (The push-back over incandescents has nothing to do with the embodied energy comparisons, since nobody gives a crap about that issue. It has everything to do with people being inherently anti-regulation due to their definition of what constitutes 'freedom'. Same deal with wanting freedom to breed or roll-coal or live in a McMansion or whatever.)

I have listened to green rhetoric full of this or that utopian prescription for humanity for ages and always, always, the rubber never meets the road because of how diverse people are. There are some people who are so adamant about the free-market or small-government that they simply will not listen to ecological arguments, as irrational as it is. They would rather we go over a cliff than to sacrifice their fundamentalist beliefs.

That is ultimately the problem. It has nothing to do with publishing, let's say, a study that goes over the embodied energy comparisons that you're trotting out about light-bulbs. Data isn't important. People's convictions are, and they are most often based on emotion or sense of identity or some other irrational factors.

You yourself are part of that fundamental human flaw, which is why you keep trying to portray me using a strawman, so you are a supreme hypocrite.

There's really only ONE issue, which is human nature.

Hubbert pushed for a technocracy (think dispassionate Vulcan like logic applied to decisionmaking). That doesn't work because people make decisions mostly out of emotion. That's why bubbles happen, for instance. And it's why societies rise and fall, the quick gratification. The get rich quick scheme. The "I'm alright jack, keep your hands off of my stack." Utopian prescriptions are just mental masturbation unless you can prove they can be adopted by the mainstream.

But just go right back to hurling personal insults my way, Pstarr. Keep taking out your frustration on me like a punching-bag. But when I rant like this, it's based on all of my thousands of hours of absorbing these issues. This is what I consider to be an informed opinion, and the trajectory we see unfurling before us seems to be validating it. The idea there will be this magical sea-change into permaculture and donkey carts--now that is the pie in the sky. It has nothing to do with what I want to see happen. It's about me actually viewing the real world through a realistic lens.

[onlooker]

So true we HAD the means to powerdown at least here in the Western Hemisphere but we have not done anything in this respect to what Pstarr refers to permaculture etc. So now we are supposed to believe in some new techo-magic to come rescue us when the very foundations of this civilization are approaching a terminal phase. Who Ennui is being less realistic here. In fact your just one step below Kaisers beam me up Scotty illusions in fantasy concoctions. For us true realists it has not been easy reconciling this present we are in, but that is the nature of reality you either see it for what it truly is, or your not seeing it.

[ennui2]

Dude, intelligent folks gave up on permaculture and powerdown years ago. Not because those models were not solutions to the peak-oil dilemma (they were) but because we ran out of time. You must not have kept up with things here since you last quit.

I went off and did my Transition training, twice, actually, once in VT and once in Boston. I've seen the failure of activism first-hand. You have no grasp of where I'm coming from at all.

But for you to imagine that autonomous electric cars, robotics, and AI are now solutions is ludicrous. Your recent introduction to applications programming notwithstanding.
...
Ennui can not see his fanasty concoctions because his livelihood depends on them. He needs to believe that digital technology will usher in a new world.

And then you continue with the permanent straw-man. I never, ever, once, said any of these things are "solutions". Go back and find a quote where I called them solutions. You won't find them. You have just decided you must label me a Greame-style corny and by darnit, that's the label that has to stick, no matter what. But it's inaccurate.

I am sure by now the few other posters are sick and tired of this feud, but the bottom line is that it's powered by your complete and utter failure to comprehend what I write and fall back on a straw-man caricature. I can't communicate with someone who has such a thick straw-man filter.

But just because I don't think they're solutions doesn't mean I'm going to scoff at them and yearn for donkey-carts instead. This is a process. Doom isn't going to happen overnight, and just as the other thread about robots destroying jobs indicates, we are entering into this dichotomy where BAU technology continues to move into sci-fi land while civilization is also going off an ecological cliff. For a short while it will be possible to enjoy that ride, and I do not intend to just shuffle around feeling miserable 24/7. All that accomplished was a trip to the ER with an anxiety attack.

You presume to know what's best for me, how I should think and behave, and that kind of condescension is just the sort of thing that pisses someone off when they don't agree. Stop making it into you vs. me and keep it issue-based. That's what Pops should be insisting in these feuds but for whatever reason he refuses to weigh in.

[ralfy]

But considering that this is a dilemma and not something that has painless solutions, it's all just a matter of opinion on what constitutes positive mitigation and what doesn't. For instance, look at the reaction to China's abandonment of the one-child policy. Very few brought up the real-world risks of overpopulation. They focused on the damage to freedom and attempts by the Chinese to have just male babies. There isn't any mitigation that would be universally adopted by the public because, whether people want to admit it here or not, BAU status quo has a lot of advantages to Joe Public. When Obama gave his speech about KeystoneXL, he tried to counter the prevailing opinion that green-tech is bad for the economy. But there are free-market types that simply don't want government to favor technology, you know, let's not ban incandescent bulbs or subsidize EVs, because this interferes with the invisible hand of the free market. You see what I mean? It's easy to sit here and just say "look. We're not doing anything!" But then you realize WHY that gridlock exists. People have very strong opinions about the way things should be, which usually comes from a value-system that is pretty far away from the laws of ecology or thermodynamics.

The gridlock exists because of those laws.

[ralfy]

Ennuie might want listen to his own advice and stop lecturing on issues he doesn't understand.

You're trying to change the subject. There is this unspoken assumption by people here that there is a narrow band of mitigations that have little or no downsides. But the fact is that what you or I view as a mild sacrifice is not necessarily seen as a mild sacrifice outside of the doomer echo-chamber, hence the pushback over incandescent bulbs. Whether the move to compact fluorescent or LEDs would "solve" limits to growth is NOT the issue. The issue is the fact that there can never be enough of a universal consensus to do anything due to all of these competing interests and value-systems. (The push-back over incandescents has nothing to do with the embodied energy comparisons, since nobody gives a crap about that issue. It has everything to do with people being inherently anti-regulation due to their definition of what constitutes 'freedom'. Same deal with wanting freedom to breed or roll-coal or live in a McMansion or whatever.)

I have listened to green rhetoric full of this or that utopian prescription for humanity for ages and always, always, the rubber never meets the road because of how diverse people are. There are some people who are so adamant about the free-market or small-government that they simply will not listen to ecological arguments, as irrational as it is. They would rather we go over a cliff than to sacrifice their fundamentalist beliefs.

That is ultimately the problem. It has nothing to do with publishing, let's say, a study that goes over the embodied energy comparisons that you're trotting out about light-bulbs. Data isn't important. People's convictions are, and they are most often based on emotion or sense of identity or some other irrational factors.

You yourself are part of that fundamental human flaw, which is why you keep trying to portray me using a strawman, so you are a supreme hypocrite.

There's really only ONE issue, which is human nature.

Hubbert pushed for a technocracy (think dispassionate Vulcan like logic applied to decisionmaking). That doesn't work because people make decisions mostly out of emotion. That's why bubbles happen, for instance. And it's why societies rise and fall, the quick gratification. The get rich quick scheme. The "I'm alright jack, keep your hands off of my stack." Utopian prescriptions are just mental masturbation unless you can prove they can be adopted by the mainstream.

But just go right back to hurling personal insults my way, Pstarr. Keep taking out your frustration on me like a punching-bag. But when I rant like this, it's based on all of my thousands of hours of absorbing these issues. This is what I consider to be an informed opinion, and the trajectory we see unfurling before us seems to be validating it. The idea there will be this magical sea-change into permaculture and donkey carts--now that is the pie in the sky. It has nothing to do with what I want to see happen. It's about me actually viewing the real world through a realistic lens.

The issue isn't so much human nature but a world with physical limits. The latter remains no matter what changes are made to the former.

[ralfy]

Dude, intelligent folks gave up on permaculture and powerdown years ago. Not because those models were not solutions to the peak-oil dilemma (they were) but because we ran out of time. You must not have kept up with things here since you last quit.

I went off and did my Transition training, twice, actually, once in VT and once in Boston. I've seen the failure of activism first-hand. You have no grasp of where I'm coming from at all.

But for you to imagine that autonomous electric cars, robotics, and AI are now solutions is ludicrous. Your recent introduction to applications programming notwithstanding.
...
Ennui can not see his fanasty concoctions because his livelihood depends on them. He needs to believe that digital technology will usher in a new world.

And then you continue with the permanent straw-man. I never, ever, once, said any of these things are "solutions". Go back and find a quote where I called them solutions. You won't find them. You have just decided you must label me a Greame-style corny and by darnit, that's the label that has to stick, no matter what. But it's inaccurate.

I am sure by now the few other posters are sick and tired of this feud, but the bottom line is that it's powered by your complete and utter failure to comprehend what I write and fall back on a straw-man caricature. I can't communicate with someone who has such a thick straw-man filter.

But just because I don't think they're solutions doesn't mean I'm going to scoff at them and yearn for donkey-carts instead. This is a process. Doom isn't going to happen overnight, and just as the other thread about robots destroying jobs indicates, we are entering into this dichotomy where BAU technology continues to move into sci-fi land while civilization is also going off an ecological cliff. For a short while it will be possible to enjoy that ride, and I do not intend to just shuffle around feeling miserable 24/7. All that accomplished was a trip to the ER with an anxiety attack.

You presume to know what's best for me, how I should think and behave, and that kind of condescension is just the sort of thing that pisses someone off when they don't agree. Stop making it into you vs. me and keep it issue-based. That's what Pops should be insisting in these feuds but for whatever reason he refuses to weigh in.

If they are not solutions, then what is the point of discussing them?

[Pops]

That's what Pops should be insisting in these feuds but for whatever reason he refuses to weigh in.

I have, you both continue, what should I do?

Pete is pissed the world hasn't ended
You are pissed you believed him
...

[ennui2]

If they are not solutions, then what is the point of discussing them?

I think you have an overinflated notion of what discussion here can accomplish. None of us are in a position to move the needle on things at a macro level. It's just a bunch of personal ideology clashes and competing predictions for the sport of it. Anything beyond that would be delusions of grandeur.

There's really no real "point" in any of this discussion and all the information that flows through here is easily gleaned by following the news or doing a few google searches.