mmasters wrote:aflurry wrote:i've been following PO for a couple of years now. it is all very convincing... the center cannot hold etc etc. but until the center actually ceases to hold, we are the fools hunkered down in a bunker while the sun continues to shine outside and people play frisbee.
Um, maybe overreactive or a bit paranoid but certainly not foolish. From reading your post you seem to understand PO and the tragic consequences of being ignorant yet you seem to be longing to be one of the ignorant types.
i'm not sure i do think of PO as a tragic consequence of being ignorant. i look at it this way:
the oil was there. it was only a matter of time before we found it. with one billion people on earth there were one billion independent responses to the availability of oil, now six billion. basically overshoot was inevitable. and the mess of modernity was an incredible conflagration never seen before and never to be seen again. ever. the earth will be engulfed in the sun before they build skyscrapers this high again. isn't it kind of great to live during the time when you may get to see how the story ends?
i know people who moved out to the woods in the early seventies under very convincing evidence that society would soon collapse. life is more of a struggle for them now because they didn't play the game that was being played at the time. i don't think they regret it personally, but i can tell you the choice was not for everyone. i'm not advocating conformity but i certainly am criticizing the snotty know-it-all attitude that that people adopt after they read a little Kunstler and the first couple of chapters of The Limits to Growth. esp because, i still think those people were right, it's just that they misjudged what "soon" meant.
My post was in response to Heinekin's lament. "Nothing is happening?" I too cringe at the big boxes and SUV's. i just think that the idea that there are or have been any "exits" is wishful thinking. the idea of efficiency has been dashed to pieces so many times on this board. because of jevon's paradox, every positive action has an equal and negative reaction. so when you hunker down and conserve, 5,999,999,999 other people pick up the slack.
if there is benefit in your actions it is for you personally, and it's probably more of an aesthetic benefit... a reminder that you may have control over your small, tiny slice of the world. helps for courage maybe.
and if people are already struggling, making larger scale changes to their lives may not be possible. it's like the personal equivalent of retooling the auto industry... it requires energy input we ain't got.
besides, alot of these madd maxx scenarios are just as far-fetched as limitless growth.
The one pertinent quote in that Harper's article is that PO is the leftist "Left Behind." Now that is funny.
Whatever happens, PO is not just retribution on the overfed. It's a pretty near inevitable consequence of there being oil in the ground in the first place. And also, I see the same junkies walk by on the street year after year and i think they can't possibly still be alive, but there they are, and here we are and who knows how sick and in debt and ruined we can get before it finally becomes impossible to sustain?