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Page added on September 29, 2012
Peak Oil: The 6 billion ton hamster
I’ve always thought of myself as a smart guy. There I was, at 30 years of age, producing award winning advertising, designed to manipulate people – through fear, envy and stupidity – into consuming more and more, exponentially. Pretty smart, right? Many people would wish for such a career, just to improve their income or their lifestyle.
Well now, at the age of 60, I’m happy to admit that I was wrong. I wasn’t a smart guy at all, just a cog in the wheel of a self-interested system. Awash in the propaganda, I was just a tool for “business as usual” – in my opinion (now), the recipe for more human misery, inequality and injustice than we have ever experienced before.
It’s time I took a clear stand, and denounced this system for the reckless human experiment in waste it is. This system, if it continues, will kill us all! We will, without sufficient controls, destroy the very environment we rely upon to survive.
The evidence
Firstly, it is possible that within this century we will – without thinking much about it – needlessly consume most of the affordable fossil fuel resources at our disposal. This includes oil, gas, coal and most of the unconventional resources.
Hand in hand with this, we are performing the most gratuitous chemical experiment on our climate, atmosphere and oceans. It’s almost as if we are terra-forming the planet for a life form that requires more C02 in the atmosphere than us to survive.
Thankfully, there are some people who agree with me, one of whom is Richard Heinberg, senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon Institute in California. Richard is a very good writer, a superb communicator, and a person fully committed to a post-carbon world.
Richard Heinberg
Richard recently addressed about 360 people in Canberra, Australia. Here’s what he had to say, compliments of 2XX, ACT Peak Oil and the sponsors below. I highly recommend Richard’s talk, as it deals with the most important issues of our time; the depletion of our finite fossil fuel resources, climate change and the end of economic growth:
Richard Heinberg was touring Australia as a guest of Sustainable Population Australia and sustainable population activist Dick Smith. The Canberra leg of his tour was co-sponsored by ACT Peak Oil, The Australia Institute, Nature and Society Forum and See-Change.
Many thanks to Rod Taylor from Fuzzy Logic for permission to use the audio and the pictures, and Jenny Goldie for all her hard work in getting this tour together.
Please see t5he blog for all the links to those involved: http://ianmcpherson.com/blog/?p=2675
6 Comments on "Peak Oil: The 6 billion ton hamster"
BillT on Sun, 30th Sep 2012 12:05 am
Yes, we have all be brainwashed to buy ‘stuff’ we don’t need so that we feel like we are: successful, part of the in crowd, happy, healthy, etc. The brainwashing is now turning to liking to be a serf for our new masters, the corporate elite, whom we made by buying ‘stuff’.
I saw this first hand last week when I had an exchange of e-mails with my high school class president of 50 years ago. He is a graduate of West Point, doctor/instructor and part of the 1%. He is blind to reality in so many areas it is not even funny. Top of our class and very intelligent, he said some really stupid things in his e-mails regarding Romney that made the indoctrination of the sheeple very obvious to me. The Empire is lost. The best we can hope for is that it all collapses before there is a chance for it to become a full dictatorship and starts World War 3.
Whoknows on Sun, 30th Sep 2012 1:39 am
I can’t see US becoming a dictatorship nation. The nation is already a highly centralized government. In fact, historically, US was a totalitarian where only land-owning males were eligible to vote.
To enter the nation, one had to accept the policy of indigenous subjugation. Immigration was restricted to European peasants, who were viewed as being capable of living in a brutal state. To humanize the development, full employment was virtually guaranteed. To the European population, that is.
That is ending. Becoming “American” always had inconsistent admission requirements, but the rewards involved being materially better off than the rest. It’s probably going to be more difficult to control impoverished Europeans in the US. Those who were promised full employment, pensions, et al will have nothing but debt.
I am not sure if African-American-style deterrence would work. Police gunning a Euro-American randomly isn’t going to work in a fairy tale nation like the United States. Those in Europe are not surprised at the notion that individuals with virtually identical superficial traits ( particularly ‘race’) can harm you. Wars in Europe dismantle such a paradigm in Europe.
On the other hand, Americans invest heavily in superficial divisions. Thus we see in a nation that is supposedly diverse and yet are highly unwilling to make education more local as in ‘homogeneous’ Finland. Voting patterns/opinions are much more diverse in ‘homogeneous’ Finland than in the ‘multi-culural/racial’ United States. Fascists, who use violence against worker movements, are present in the political sphere, but so are far-left Marxists. The Communist Party in Germany could’ve trampled the Nazis who ended up forming a minority government due to severe compromises.
The European American paradigm is infallible and willing to redefine itself regularly. One can see that in the incorporation of African-American culture ( well before Hip Hop) into American life, and yet keep environments ‘racially’ segregated. The ‘homogeneous’ Russians accepted Alexander Pushkin and blonde haired, blue-eyed Nordic women mingled with Black men without lynch mobs entering the scene. Introducing a totalitarian government in such a malleable (or stable) political framework would be pointless. I don’t think balkanization is going to occur, but that’d be a lot more likely, in my opinion. Each state will attempt to recreate the “dream” but miserably fail. Civil war and the rest will follow.
VivKay on Sun, 30th Sep 2012 2:57 am
There’s no precedent for unending and perpetual growth anywhere in Nature. A human baby can triple its weight in the first year of it’s life, but this rate can’t continue, obviously. Human overshoot of natural resources will stifle economic growth eventually. To suggest a slowing down of economic growth is heresy for the mainstream media and politicians. We should be planning to adapt to declining energy and natural resources, not forcing the impossibility of perpetual growth – then facing the crash in the end! Richard Heinberg was a great inspiration, and a down-to-earth reality check.
BillT on Sun, 30th Sep 2012 4:24 am
Whoknows, you may be correct, but aren’t we already in a semi-dictatorship? Can you leave or enter the country just by driving/flying over the borders as once was possible, not too long ago? If you have not flown out of the Us and then returned, you have no idea of the existing police state.
That the military is being trained to police the riots and soon-to-be uprisings all over the country, once the job of the State’s National Guards, is not pointing toward a dictatorship in form if not fact?
That the government is trying desperately to hold it all together with wars and the printing press, doesn’t tell you that the next step is declared Martial Law if not WW3 or both?
Do you see the similarities between pre-Hitler Germany and the current situation in the Us, or are you denying that more and more power is being transferred to the President and away from the States and even the Congress?
I guess we can agree to disagree, but time will tell which of us is right. But, if you have not traveled outside the Us, I suggest you make a trip to say, Paris and back and see what the rest of us go through when we travel. My family has been in the Us since 1734, but that means nothing to the TSA goons whose grandparents migrated here early last century from some 2nd or 3rd world country.
Whoknows on Sun, 30th Sep 2012 2:28 pm
BillT, I’ve traveled quite extensively and understand that US is more-or-less a fortress. Being a Westerner outside of the “new world” provides me a rather interesting perspective, in my opinion.
For one, US always had a very restrictive immigration system. Just ask the Asians and Pacific Islanders who were barred from entering the United States. Liberian slaves were deported out of the United States once they began to organize. The nation has a harsh history.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying all is well. What I’m suggesting is that the United States needs to radically change. Not just to prevent it from becoming a more violent state, but dismantling the infrastructure that has been around for decades if not centuries.
This will require a change to system more resembling that of “homogeneous” Finland. I like to stress, Finland, because it is perceived as homogeneous and yet has a more diverse political platform that multi-racial America. It is obvious that the puritanical nation resembles Iran than say, advanced Scandinavian states!
Saying that, it just seems to me that an outright totalitarian state isn’t required in US. I think the military will likely re-appear in Southern Europe in order to suppress a very polarized political arena. It’s possible that I could be wrong, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Truck, Trailer, Heavy Equipment Dealer on Sun, 30th Sep 2012 3:22 pm
Very interesting, and informative article over Opec, I am interested to see if the world total might not actually decline in the next decade!