sober or hysterical

I won’t name any names.

I'm tired of lazy skepticism at a distance when it comes to the peak oil, often due to people’s distaste of the die-off scenario. And a scenario it is; not a set future, or a genocidal position; simply a possible result of our current action and inaction. We could very well find a way around or through it, with technology or re-ordered society.

By lazy skepticism, I note some people who don't know much about peak oil take potshots at those who discuss the die-off; drawing hoary yet predictable comparisons to the Y2K hysteria, as if you could compare those who were afraid running out of bytes to those who are afraid of running out of energy. Or, they will literally decry discussing the possibility as being in itself a genocidal act.

Just for today, I am going to quote from Jay Hanson, a whipping boy of some of the conventional thinkers described above. He would disagree with my statement in the last sentence of the first paragraph above.

While I don't not disagree with some of what he says, I think his scenario has more current basis in reality than those who rely on tokamaks and corn, or perhaps 1000 new nuclear reactors, to puff up the flagging sails of our future industrial society as depletion proceeds, sowing chaos. Ideal solutions that should have been set in motion ten years ago. (Not ethanol; fusion, maybe.)

Also, Jay Hanson is smart and certainly fallible. And fallibility is a cornerstone of his philosophy, through which Jay Hanson has convinced himself of the inevitably of a die-off.

So, dim the lights.

FAREWELL DIEOFF.ORG
Jay Hanson -- j@...
01/12/03

I developed an interest in "sustainability" about fifteen years ago when it became clear to me that our present economic system was totally unsustainable and self-destructive. It seemed little more than a well-organized method for converting natural resources into garbage.

With great reluctance (because it has worked so well for me), I was forced to conclude that our present system of capitalism is incompatible with energy laws and can never be sustainable. My only hope was that some new form of sustainable society might be possible. So I began studying human nature, intending to discover what kinds of sustainable societies might work...

Contrary to the received wisdom, people do not think and then act. They act and then rationalize. New data from the environment is routinely plugged into existing mental hardware (like entering a number into a spreadsheet), which is then followed by an appropriate thought. Since people have no wiring for "peak in oil and gas production", news of the present energy crisis cannot generate the appropriate thought. Only prolonged eflection can grow the required mental hardware to place this critical piece of news in perspective.