Lately, I've been hearing a lot from the optimist camp that conservation, if done correctly, will be enough to save us from the deleterious effects of Peak Oil. To someone who is new to the subject, or who has not paused to examine the situation, this may seem reasonable. Optimists point to how much driving Americans do compared to Europeans, for instance. It is argued that if Europe can do without all the driving, so can America. I read a recent argument that, if necessary, people could start living where they work during the week. They could prop a cot right up next to their desk and sleep there, rather than driving to and from work. Aside from the spectre of indentured servitude this raises, there are other fundamental reasons to object to it, consequences be damned.

The first thing that comes to mind is that offices everywhere will have to build showers and provide lockers, or deal with a bunch of really stinky (and eventually ill) workers. Most offices I've worked in use all their available space and sit on a slab foundation that isn't plumbed for a full bathroom. Some buildings can be modified, and a few already have executive showers. But most buildings will require a relatively significant investment of cash, and risk significant damage to the foundation, to install showers.

The next thing that comes to mind is how someone locked into sleeping at their office during the week will take care of their children? Someone will obviously have to be hired to do so, and to take the children to school. If the purpose of living at the office to begin with is because gas has become so expensive that there is no alternative, then when one realizes that the cost of day care is already very high, it's easy to question this solution. Nor could we go back to a family living on a single income. Mortgages and groceries are already too high, and the requisite capital isn't present in order to increase wages significantly. The only solution I see is that children would have to start sleeping at state-subsidized schools. Boarding schools have provided a model for this, but they have also always been quite expensive, and the money to operate them on a broad basis has to come from somewhere. At the end of the day, people need a certain minimum allotment of resources in order to live.

Here's where I sense the optimist will want to say "But hey! We've saved a lot of money on gas by living at the office! We can afford to do this now." And this is the crux of the conservation issue. For a while, we will have saved money, and for a while, we might be able to afford this solution. But eventually, this will no longer be possible. Prices will continue to tighten, and conservation will have to proceed apace. No matter what we do, we will eventually get to a point where conservation means not eating, not having shelter or clothing, etc.

The philosopher in me senses a far deeper issue at work here. Something about the labels "Optimist" and "Doomer" seems fundamentally wrong to me, or at least that's my intuition. What's bugging me is why it would be considered "optimistic" to look forward to a future where people sleep at their place of business while their children are miles away sleeping where they go to school? I don't know about anyone else, but if it suddenly became law or custom that people had to sleep where they work a certain number of days, my boss would demand people work from 6 AM to 9 PM, and use the increased productivity to fire a bunch of people. In his mind, it would be only fair since he is now providing housing. Is the doomer scenario of powerdown and living close to the land actually worse than this somehow? We'll return to this question in a moment.

Right now, I think it's important to get a clear grip on the history of wealth. We don't need to understand anything in great depth of detail. It's commonly acknowledged that the industrial revolution broadly altered economics. Throughout history prior to roughly 1850, wealth originated in land. The more land one had, the wealthier one was. The reverse correlation did not hold--it was possible, especially during and after the high middle ages, to be wealthy and own little land. But wealth ultimately came from land--the resources that made a person wealthy were grown on, dug out of, or otherwise related to, land. The goods that were traded all followed this pattern. It was possible for someone to purchase goods from a land owner and transport them to another market where a better price could be charged. But the merchandise itself came from land and total supplies in a given economy were inexorably tied to the amount of available land.

The industrial revolution changed this significantly. As hydrocarbon fuels provided previously undreamt-of levels of energy, the origin of wealth began to shift from land to a combination of land and coal, and thence to a combination of land and oil, with the ratio of oil to land increasing steadily as time passed. Wealth still required land, but it was not inexorably tied to it. Oil provided a means to increase the amount of food that a given unit of land could produce, first by increasing harvest efficiences, then by making it easier to clear land, and finally by providing fertilizers and pesticides. Crop yields are now 8 times what they were prior to 1850. Oil has had a similar widely acknowledged impact across all areas of the economy (and at least for a while it made sense to speak of one global economy). Mines are more productive thanks to the added muscle that oil provides. Quarries are more productive for the same reason. Long distance transportation has a greatly increased capacity; supertankers could hold a thousand galleons.

To me, the best way of thinking about this is to understand it as oil having created a bunch of "virtual" land. In so doing, it increased the available wealth via the same old relationship between land and wealth. In principle, the increased yields possible via a combination of fertilizers, pesticides, and machine harvesting is no different than if a bigger field had been plowed and more people hired to harvest it, all other things being equal.

But it is also widely acknowledged that oil is a finite resource. Land is merely bounded. The difference between the two is that land is palpable and readily apparent to everyone in a given locale. Additionally, while it may yield only so much grain this year, next year it should do the same. Oil is not palpable, and is not reuseable next year. Prior to the industrial revolution, people in a village knew how much land they had because they could see it, could walk over it, could measure it if they wished. Outputs year to year were constant, or perhaps improving slightly. Once oil made that land more productive, whether through increasing crop yields, mine yields, quarry yields, or something else, it added an intangible to the equation. They could not measure how much oil they would ultimately have or when or whether it would some day become unavailable. In the initial phases of industrialization, oil seemed more or less endless, and had anyone paused to reflect, it might have seemed that we'd have no problem creating as much virtual land as needed. This attitude, unconscious though it probably was, worked its way into public policy, and led to increased population. Why not? We seemed to have the (virtual) land to sustain them.

The lessons passed down from our ancestors were forgotten as they principally had to do with living in harmony with nature, rather than creating and using up more and more "land" to suit. It seems to me that once that disconnect happened, it was very easy to institute other disconnects as well. We disconnected from the land, we disconnected from our parents, and it became easy to disconnect from each other, from our children, and ultimately, ourselves. Once land became virtual and disposable, the elements of human life followed suit one by one.

It isn't my purpose to launch into full-blown social criticism here. Instead, I will ask a couple questions. Optimists seem to be motivated to argue that we will find a way to continue our current system more or less indefinitely. One founding principle of all optimistic arguments is that we must conserve resources to the end that we can transition our system of virtual land to the support of some other source of energy. As I hinted earlier, we're at the point now (or we soon will be) where conservation means a series of deeper and deeper disconnects. Disconnection from our families and children, from any kind of hobby, from our own humanity. Sleeping at the office was actually suggested by an optimist on JD's weblog. What should seem obvious from this long post is that the apparent underlying motivation of this suggestion is to maintain a failing system as long as possible. Should we seek to do so? Should we seek to stay alive at any cost?

"Doomers" are often called such because the scenarios they envision and argue as likely involve a massive die-off. Optimists want to eliminate such a possibility, but the question that presents itself is how it can be anything more than forestalled? We know that truly sustainable forms of energy cannot be scaled quickly enough at this point to do any good. And nothing is going to quickly replace the nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides necessary for current food production levels. We have not the land available any more to sustain ourselves; the human race grows as land shrinks. There's no question that we need to conserve as much as possible, but should we go to all lengths to preserve society as we know it? Should we be willing to engage in the evisceration of what makes us human in the name of optimism? Regardless of how much we conserve (and perhaps because of how much we conserve), a die-off is inevitable. It has, in fact, already begun. In the face of this, isn't it really madness to try to stay plugged into a system that imposes greater and greater levels of virtual reality on us? Isn't it madness to seek to enslave ourselves to a dying system? How can it be called optimistic to try to maintain a system that perpetuates such huge income gaps, environmental hazards, spiritual darkness, diminishing liberty, lack of reason, and sheer turmoil as the one we have now?

I believe the choice is not between life and death; that choice has been made for us. The choice is between cowardice and courage. Yes, conservation is important; but past a certain point, we have to get back to real land and real life, come what may. What may come will be terrible, of course. But it's coming anyway. Let's face it now, not leave it when we are a little older, or for our children.

I agree 100%. There are many who preach the sanctity of life but truly hate and despise all life and liberty. What human with a life and say they love life would want to sleep in the office at their desks? These "humans" are not humans anymore but abominations. And their seeds are being released on society. Its a weird corporate/social welfare experiment. We will see how it all plays out.
and read the new National Geographic it has an article about the longest lived societies today. The US and the top industrialized nations aint on it. So its a bunch of horse shit these cornucopians talk about how modern society lives the longest with all their pharmecueticals and chemicals.
It creates a new industry and profits. Thats all. They are Bullshit artists. Con men. They are liars and cretins. Looking to get their own way. spoiled brats. The longest living live free and close to the land eating healthy and excercise. Good genes help too. All these Pharmecuticals are nothing more than a way for extra human biomass to have a "job" and making profits. They dont fool me.
Keep far away from me. Your buyproducts give us cancer and kill the strong. I would love to pull the plug on all these dependent hacks. Liars.

Interesting article, well written and passionate. I'm not certain that sleeping at work, as unappealing as that sounds to me, would constitute such a disconnect from humanity. It might be simply what is considered necessary for many people.

Your article made me think of another great shift in our history, which was the agricultural revolution. To many hunter-gatherers of the time who witnessed that period, tilling the ground must have also seemed like turning away from everything that made us human. I can imagine it must have seemed insane to some. And yet, the agricultural revolution did not occur because anyone thought it would be a neat idea to grow things. I don't think anyone actually wanted to make the shift to surviving through back-breaking labor. It occurred from geopolitical necessity, like all revolutions - driven, as in our current situation, by overpopulation. Hunting-gathering could not support as many people per square mile as cultivation could. And so, uncomfortable as it must have been, the shift was made.

Ultimately, though, I agree with your conclusions: even if such disconnect takes place (and I think it will - people will try to hold on to as many pieces of their former lives as they can), it won't be enough to stave off the crash for long. Over and over again, humanity has managed to sneak around sustainability ceilings: agricultural revolution, colonialism, industrial revolution, green revolution. But I just don't see it happening this time. There's nowhere else to go.

I'm not a doomer. But I am a hard lander. There will be a depression. A lot of people are going to die. The world is going to change forever. Hopefull, eventually, to something better.

Do you think we will get to this point in the next 5 decades? If so, please give some data that support it.
Else, that is, if we get to it after 2050, why do you think a transition to other forms of energy would not have happened by then?

The "backbreaking work" you are describing that kills people early is just a manifestion of our constant effort and enrgy expenditure to keep entropy in check. The farmer must work himself to death to keep the breeding masses from starving. You have intelligent breeding rates and live in tune with ntures cycles one must not work "him or herself to death.

Instead of creating exponential bodies of humans, a logarithmic production of humans require less energy invested. Thus longer healthier higher quality of lives. Freer and happier.
Observe the Sardinians.

This is reaching for moot points. The situation is the more human biomass it does not matter what energy source we have. Quality of life will be very very low. Please understand what is happening. Your techno fixes do not solve anything. Is there a differnece living on top of one another with nuclear or oil. Nuclear is not a replacement. I am sick of this BS falacy. Drop your population then nuclear is viable in moderation. Plus The resources were sequestered all these years into coal and oil and profits. Not into TRULY VIABLE alternatives. PO. com should ban Bullshiters.

Please, what is the reasoning behind this? If oil is able to feed this "biomass", why wouldn't an other energy be able to do it?



Why "very very low"? Why not just "low"?



Yes, the difference is that nuclear will last longer.



Nuclear creates electricity.
Oil creates electricity.
Thus for electricity, nuclear is a replacement, or isn't it?

For other needs, there are other solutions.
Fusion + Hydrogen could be one for transportation.



... and people disconnected from reality.

I got one word for u Bullshit. U are detached from reality. Thus the human biomass. U are one of them. Keep away. Read up and do ur homework and do not come near me. Your reality is all evident in this day and age. Detached from reality? your full of SHIT.

Thanks.



Do you believe that because something is deemed necessary, it does not constitute a disconnect from humanity? It seems to me that someone who is forced to give the majority of their time to someone else simply in order to ensure their survival is in a situation where they must disconnect from their own humanity.



I've done some study on this, and what isn't obvious today is that agriculture had very humble beginings. Initially, it was probably discovered accidentally. A hunter-gatherer threw away some seeds from a primitive vegetable he had found, only to discover many of that same plant springing up there months later. For a long time, and in hunter-gatherer societies today, this is how agriculture is practiced.

The transition to a completely agrarian society took many, many centuries, and is still not complete today. Even in civilizations previously considered agrarian, hunting and gathering were still vital.

The most likely reason that agriculture caught on was not because of environmental pressure, but rather, to increase overall wealth. Small hunter-gatherer societies can gather all the food they need from the wilderness in a short amount of time. They began to experiment with agriculture (of the type mentioned above) to provide not only security, but also to give them an advantage over neighboring groups in trading.

The transition to a mostly agrarian society was, in fact, traumatic, and we bear the seeds of that trauma to this day. I think it would take a long time to go into, but suffice it to say that legends to do with the "fall from grace" probably have to do with this transition. In a sense, the problems we face today with energy and wealth distribution are a direct result of this early transition.



I don't think the initial stages of agriculture were driven by necessity so much as ambition and laziness. Agriculture was not, initially, back breaking at all, and still isn't necessarily in some parts of the world. However, it gave some humans an advantage over others, and it upset the natural culling processes that kept human numbers in check. This, in turn, did cause people to have to turn to agriculture for survival, and at that point, it began to be traumatic.

However, the example of the transition to agriculture is disanalagous to the situation at hand. In principle, anyway, agriculture is indefinitely sustainable. Practiced in the way that ancient peoples practiced it, it doesn't strain the global ecosystem. Nor does it make sense, with ancient techniques, to speak of "peak agricultural products." While ultimately unnatural, agriculture is not anti-natural.



Agreed.



I hope that we do find something better. I think more than anything, it's going to take a re-alignment of individual lives.

I think it's pretty likely.



Surely you are familiar with the data that is already out there? I can suggest some authors if not. If you wish to debate that data and its meaning, I'm open to doing so.



I was waiting for someone to take this tack; though I did not mention it specifically in the OP, the structure of my argument is designed to avoid this criticism. The Achilles heel of the doomer argument is the die-off itself. If it can be shown that a die-off will be avoided, there's much less room for doomerosity. Obviously, I think that a die-off will happen. Let's begin by constructing a dichotomy: Either we will find alternate and adequate sources of energy prior to supplies of oil becoming wholly inadequate to supporting human civilization, or we won't. I believe we won't.

But suppose that we do. The principle fact remains that we are applying energy to land to create virtual land. Eventually, no matter what energy source we turn to, it's going to fail us. Even wind and solar energy require materials that we will one day use up, or scatter so far and wide that getting the right components back together for recycling will require an insurmountable concentration of energy. The only way to avoid this is if we colonize other planets. So the only truly viable optimistic scenario looks like this:

1) Oil supplies remain adequate for at least the next 20, preferably the next 50, years.
2) After that, we've transitioned to nuclear, and through some as yet undiscovered means, we begin to mine the asteroids and the moon for chemicals and metals. Alternately, we find some other means of either recycling or creating those necessary chemicals (especially fertilizers and pesticides, which nuclear cannot create) from resources on earth.
3) Eventually, we've transitioned to solar and wind power, or some as yet undiscovered technology. This technology provides enough energy for a mass migration from this planet--or nuclear lasts long enough to do the same.

I think a reasonable person, educated on the currently available facts, will find this the least likely of possible scenarios, absurd ones excluded. Other scenarios have to propose a breakdown in one of those steps, and if so, we're left dealing with the notion of virtual land and its eventual failure. Would you like to argue that point?

Why are you getting so emotional?
Because I pointed out that your reasoning may not be more than wishful thinking?

Yes, I am one of them. I am part of the civilization you hate.

I am familiar with Peak Oil data, if this is what you mean, and I think a depression is likely. However, I am not aware of any data suggesting that we will not be able to eat or to have a shelter and some clothe by 2050. Where is it?



Do you think this will happen in the next ten thousand years? If yes, why?
If no, why do you even care?

Hey Laurent- I think your right that Holmes is way too emotional about your posts. This should be a place for a free discussion of ideas without antipathy if people disagree. It sounds like you're in the boat of saying that we'll bemost likely headed towards a depression but that nuclear/wind/solar and perhaps fusion will eventually prevent a full scale destruction of civilization with the associated massive die-off.

One thing I realized pretty early was that even if we could find a replacement for oil based transportation (let alone our fertilizer needs), we would have to not only have power plants that supplied electricity but also could be transformed and delivered to hydrogen cells for transportation/industrial use. We're talking about not only solving our electrical grid problems, which are very difficult already, but adding in the need to supplant oil with alternative forms of energy as well.

In my most optimistic frames of mood, I try to envision civilization powering down out of necessity, reducing our energy use to a fraction of its current state and running that very different world on a combination of nuclear, wind/solar, and unfortunately...coal. Even in that scenario, and especially due to the lack of immense supplies of nitrogen based fertilizers, I believe we would have to pare down the world's population a great deal. With my super-rosy optimistic glasses, I see this being done not by wars and starvation but by a shorter life span due to less medical intervention as well as tax incentives and governmental penalties for overbreeding. I mean- jesus- this is my rosy view... I won't tell you what I think about on my bad days.

ok- here's a hint- I won't talk to you about the difficuty of ramping up nuclear production to an unprecedented level during a worldwide depression, the difficulty of maintaining a nuclear powered world without an oil based foundation, the likelihood of resource wars over the remaining oil supplies, the possibility of class based uprisings due to inequality (look at France right now), etc, etc.

So by all means, promote an optimistic viewoint- I think there's too little of that here. But give us plausible scenarios that we can sink our teeth into. I assure you there are many of us hungry for that.

Your texter abbreviations are very distracting. By substituting "you" for "U", "you're" for "your" or "ur", you will make yourself better understood.

More generally, blanket accusations by all kinds of people posting here to "read up" and "do your homework" without specifying specific books, links, or articles are pretty tiresome. We all know that many viewpoints can be backed up by written sources. Be more specific please.

ashurbanipal, your article is a comment on conservation "if done correctly." It sounds to me like this sleeping at work idea is just a bad example of that. Simple, no need for larger conclusions to be drawn. However, there are plenty of cars at rush-hour with one person in them. The US has alot of wiggle room with extensive conservation efforts.

holmes, to address one of your points (i think), yes - conservation efforts should be placed in a larger context of population (umm..."biomass"...eeewww) control through education, health efforts and birth control. we may be in for an inevitable decline in quality of life as measured by certain metrics no matter what we do, at least for a generation or so, but it will certainly be better than that produced by the "don't come near me" solution.

Really? All evidence I've seen from the origins of agriculture, shows that the change took place during a climate change, and that bone structures from early farmers show that they were malnutritioned/malformed, weak etc. Hardly showing the same health as their hunter-gatherer ancestors. And, really, why would someone want to get to cultivating land in those early years, becoming an easy target for opposing tribes and predators?



The point, as I've seen it, is that it doesn't matter. The only option/solution would be a space-age. Otherwise, we might be able to concerve and reinvent our way out of one energy crisis, have more children and use up more exhaustable resources, run into another shortage (water, land etc.) And then facing the primary problem again. Conservation seems more like a mitigation, not a solution.