Welcome to the deleted thread..

So just to make sure I am not miss understanding the answer you posted, Forgive me in advance if I have it wrong..

My reply to what I believe you said


Hubris My favorite connotation is arrogance.

So is it arrogance to assume there might be a world changing "plan" or designed way of creating for capturing or using energy that would avoid the effects of the oil use gluttony we call Peak Oil.

When the light bulb came into being, was it hubris to manufacture it and did it not change many world held ideas on how to use energy and in what forms to provide light? Or was the hubris actually the candle maker who scoffed at the usefulness of something so foreign to his way of thinking?

Is it hubristic to ask HEY let's brainstorm this world we now live in and try to find an alternative that allows the entire population to roll out of the whale oil and candle existent reality into something different.. ( you might notice it did not take either a die off nor a planetarchy to spread the idea of light bulbs ).

As to the constant refrain that there is no way to carry the present population, I see no facts that cannot be shown to be based on the present economic and technological order of things, According to the better educated university professors in the 1300s there was no way to sail west to reach India without falling off the edge of the earth.. Who was hubristic, the sages or the mariners who were trading off the coast of north America as early as the 600s.

My point is (and yes this is a peak oil question as without a belief in peak oil and it's effects the question is moot)... Why is it not more hubristic to give up and join the refrain saying there is not a way to enable the current population to survive and prosper using some alternative that would be self evidently better than to continue the search for a plan that works?

Is the comfort of standing in line patting each other on the back for wisely saying "it cant be done except on a limited scale by us WISER THAN OTHERS" really better than scrambling with every fiber of the supposedly educated beings to find an answer that works for everyone?

Maybe I misunderstood your response? Maybe you misunderstand what I am asking?

I repeat my own belief that the "plan" ( feel free to substitute design, invention, new understanding, new technology or what ever other answer comes from the blending of disciplines and resulting answer) probably will NOT be a political, military, religion, or cultural trick, most of those disciplines are about bankrupt for creating new ways of dealing with the need for energy at point of use without disrupting the natural balance of life as we know it.

I feel like a poor dinosaur asking my fellows, "Hey guys, supposing an asteroid was to hit this swamp? What would we do to survive?

What do you mean we would all just have to die?

Of course you can search for a plan that works. People always search for plans that work.

So----what is your plan that works?

If you don't have an entire plan, then do you have part of a plan that works?

Ah the old "if your so smart what's the answer" answer, not really a good beginning once you are past the 4th grade... but let's act as if we were really trying to converse...(get real If anyone HAD the answer/plan they would already be putting it in motion).

However, as I called for in the beginning, this group of disparate thinkers from several views might because, they at least recognize the real problem, be the group to spark the discussion that finds a solution.

For instance look at this post from a different thread by dohboi:

Here appears part of the path to the solution, a rational depiction of a way to gain the time to implement one at least.

Of course for the discussion here to do anything, people will have to engage positively instead of challenging anyone who doesn't spout their already delineated positions in agreement with them...

Just a thought... if not here? Where?

Possibly the large uncertainty in the future price of oil will cause industry and government planners to turn away from oil. However, a problem with that idea is that the actual costs of existing forms of alternative energy are currently somewhat higher then the highest prices reached by oil during its wild swings---as a general rule, alternative energy is only viable because of artificial government subsidies.

Furthermore, the price of alternative energy itself is subject to wild swings as well, because the government subsidies are linked to the offset value of oil and the subsidies themselves go up and down in response to oil price changes. The current low oil prices actually tend to make oil more attractive because its cheaper, and make alternative energy less attractive because the diminished subsidy makes it less economic and relatively more expensive.

Well, since I'm being quoted in this thread, I guess I should pitch in a bit.

First of all, I consider myself a confirmed doomer, but I also find it impossible to avoid thinking about and working toward some kind of viable future. I guess that makes me officially schizo.

One of the paradoxes I see is that, as ronin suggested, localized economies are necessary for a viable future. But how do you globally enforce localism?

It reminds me of graffiti I once saw: "Anarchy would be hard to legislate." (Or something like that).

I agree with Plant that there will need to be a wide variety of local variations, but within certain parameters.

It might be good to turn this on its head. Any way of living is fine except one--the kind that makes future life impossible (basically the current norm).

I do still think that if people really realized what we are up against, they would lose their taste for much that has become "normal."

A full, deep realization of how abysmally we have performed as a species should send about half the population into a deeply contemplative state, uninterested in anything but the most basic sustenance and no pro-creative sex. Essentially monks and nuns. Penitence is surely the sanest response to the situation we have driven ourselves and the planet. Ideally, most of this group will come from those who have contributed most to the debacle.

(It is reasonable to say at this point with nearly 7 b humans already here that about the only kind of sex that is deeply and utterly perverse is heterosexual sex by people that are fertile and of childbearing age. Spread that meme successfully and we're half way there.)

If the rest used almost nothing that could not be obtained from beyond 100 miles (and almost all from even closer, say 50miles) or so from their homes, and if they kept themselves to under one child per couple, and that late in life, we may be able to stay ahead of die off and keep a tiny window open for the slimmest chance that GW won't spin completely out of control (though that ship may well have already sailed).

If we hold on to any tiniest scrap of an idea that we can carry on anything like most of the wealthiest third of humanity has in the last hundred years, we are utterly lost.

This doubtless seems impossible, and almost certainly it is. But essentially it is just a change of fashion.

A few years back, tens of millions of people completely gave up what for millennia had been considered the very staff of life--bread. And that was just for a silly, selfish diet fad. What if living well within our ecological means became the latest fashion? Of course, this fashion would have to then become deeply cultural and essentially never change in its essentials.

The latest understanding of human evolution is that we evolved as a species with a special ability to adapt rapidly to sudden changes in our environment. This will be the greatest test of that special ability of ours since we first crawled out of the Olduvai Gorge (probably itself as an adaptation to a rapidly changing environment).

OK, I'm done with my pollyanna rant and back to my true doomer soul--we had our chance forty years ago or so to turn this thing around and we blew it. I'm not sure we deserve a livable future.

Daniel Quinn phrases this rule as "There's no one right way to live."

Diversity is a survival strategy. Our society/culture has largely eliminated diverse ways of living, to make our way of life universal, with catastrophic consequences.

There are, of course, a few million folks still living different ways.

Excellent rant, btw, dohboi, with some very good ideas.

Thanks, Ludi. I was thinking of Quinn when I said it--should have credited him.

Maybe the Quinnites should have a thread of our own?

If we don't tackle the population problem directly, we're doomed. Infinite growth has no technofix. You can kick the can down the road long enough for any of us today to be concerned over our own personal welfare or that of our children, but all growth has limits.

The best way to go is to use a technofix as a band-aid to buy enough time to reduce our population in a humane manner. I have my doubts this can or will happen. I think we've probably already mortally wounded the planet's biosphere as far as supporting humanity and a lot of other species goes. If you add to that an energy descent, I find it impossible to be optimistic about the future. It's just various shades of doom.

Looks like Troll bait.

I think it's pretty likely we've mortally wounded the planet as far as large populations or civilizations of humans are concerned. But humans themselves, as a species, are really tough little bastards, and possibly some could survive if they are not exterminated by their fellows. Specifically I'm thinking of the San of the Kalahari, who are remarkably adaptable, but are extremely endangered currently. They already migrated from a very different ecosystem (the mountains) to live in the Kalahari. If they or other populations with especially adaptive genetics were able to survive the collapse of the world civilization, humans as a species might continue for another 100,000 or million years. But who knows.

An awful lot of smoke here and not much fire. Do some of you write research grant proposals by any chance?

Here's my plan/ vision for the future.
By 2038 the world will dramatically reduce its use of fossil fuels and convert to using solar energy in all its forms to replace it.
Liquid fuel will be primarily from algae oil grown on desert ground.
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The world population will have collapsed from war and famine during the changeover but by chance more than by design has stabilized at 2.3 billion.The religious roots of many of these wars has created a worldwide hatred of religion in general and the public expression of religious beliefs is now universally forbidden especially intolerance of others in any form.
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Over fishing of the oceans has stopped and what fishing that is allowed uses large mesh nets without bottom dragging and every fish brought up in a net is put to its hightest use. No bi-catch is thrown back dead. Fish populations are rebounding rapidly as is the overall health of reef systems.
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The drop in fossil fuel use has dropped our emissions of CO2 but climate change continues driven by forces we as yet do not understand. Sea level has risen only 300mm (1 foot) and the drop in world population has allowed relocation of those few areas effected (mostly Bangladesh).

Sounds like a job for the thought police.

Religion is inextricably tied up with culture in places like India, Pakistan, etc. You can't suppress the religion without destroying the culture. I suspect that a future global prohibition on religion would itself be intolerably intrusive and would become universally hated, just as happened within the USSR when the Stalinists attempted to extirpate religion.

An actual plan needs to include details of how it will be implemented, otherwise it's just dreamin', yarnin', or bullshittin'.

Here's my husband's "plan" along the lines of the model given by Vtsnowedin:

"Everyone will stop being dumb."

That would be the best idea of all.

We are now discussing the two end members of the various models of utopia.....i.e. either a world where everyone isn't dumb so no one does dumb things, or a world where a wise governmental authority uses its' power to do good things like outlawing religion etc. and forcibly prevents people from doing dumb things.

Yes...the world will be perfect when we have perfect people and/or perfect government.

That's why an anarchist movement based on local consenus is the only way forward.

Any centralised system will perpetuate the existing power structure.