Idaho Mountain Express: You Crazy Optimist

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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

You Crazy Optimist

By JOHN REMBER

Two years ago I began this column, thinking The End of the World would always be fun. The web-postings of survivalists, religious wacko-bongos, free-market fundamentalists, and paranoid old farts would always provide something amusing to write about. And there wasn't much chance their apocalyptic scenarios would come true.

For example, as I write a person claiming to be a Mt. Wilson astronomer is saying that a minor star is traveling through the Oort Cloud. It's kicking comets and Pluto-like objects and abandoned Borg starships out of orbit, and 600 of them will smash into and destroy the Earth in 2010. That's well before the Mayan apocalypse of December 21, 2012. The Mayans got trumped on this one, although if you got in a time machine and went back to the Yucatan in 800 A.D. and told a Mayan priest what was really going to happen, he'd say, "Like I care? We'll all be dead then, anyway."

But lately The End of the World isn't fun anymore. It's not only because George Bush, contemplating his place in history, keeps saying, "Like I care? We'll all be dead then, anyway." It's also because a good many intelligent and sane people keep saying that It's The End of The World As We Know It.

As We Know It should be a comfort that allows us to say things like, "and I feel fine," but the apocalyptic laundry list being put forward by these serious thinkers doesn't allow for much good feeling. The end of cheap oil, in particular, threatens to destroy the constellation of laws, ethics, rituals, and high privileges that we call American Civilization.

If you've spent time watching the Fox Network lately, you might think that destroying American Civilization would be a good thing, or that it's already happened. But when civilizations die, most of the people who depend on them die. A few people make out like bandits: people with basements full of AK-47s, oligarchs who buy up state property at pennies on the dollar, warlords who inflame ethnic or racial hatreds, or religious leaders who promise post-suicide salvation. But the rest of us suffer big-time.

Even if you plan on coming out on the winning end, a dying civilization doesn't offer much to cheer about. Two-hundred-dollar oil and intermittent electricity and a nose-diving housing market will not restore anyone to virtue. Lazy speculators will not suddenly find the value of hard work, nor lying politicians the value in truth. Robin Hood notwithstanding, thieves will not find value in charity. Torturers will not start killing people with kindness.

Instead of adversity bringing the best out in Americans, as has happened when our ethical, moral, and constitutional frameworks were intact, our psychopathic side, the side that cleaves to slavery and racism and genocide, will emerge.

These are strong words, especially in the face of the direction that America has gone for most of its history. But lots of things have changed in the last eight years, and our nation's traditional course toward forethought, toward decency, and toward rigorous self-examination is one of them.

No doubt you would like to make up your own mind on this issue, especially if your ticket to old age is Social Security, a functioning health-care system, or a stable currency. So here's a short annotated reading/viewing list from those smart-and-less-than-crazy folks who have deprived me of my happy-go-lucky stance toward the End:

Brazil [the film]: Terry Gilliam's dystopic and not-so-fictional vision of what a bloated bureaucracy does when it comes under threat from terrorism.

The Road: Cormac McCarthy's vision of post-Big-Mac America. Still fiction, thank God.

The Long Emergency: Non-fiction. Jim Kunstler, the author, is a bit wacko-bongo, but he's awfully convincing on what this country will face as soon as oil demand exceeds oil supply.

Nature Bats Last: An I-wish-it-were-just-opinion blog by Guy McPherson, a professor of natural resources at UA Tucson.

The Archdruid Report: A long-running ecologically-oriented blog by John Michael Greer. A comprehensive examination of what happens when a species outruns its energy supply.

If you get through this list and are still optimistic and don't have your fingers in your ears, yelling "Nyaah, Nyaaah, I can't heeaar you," I'd like to talk to you about a bridge. And not just the one that collapsed in Minnesota.

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The comments below are from the readers of mtexpress.com and in no way represent the views of Express Publishing Inc.

Smackety

07/12/08 - 05:17

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

jcwinnie – Johnson City, NY

07/11/08 - 10:02

My concern, and this would seem totally evil, is that to maintain a conservative agenda at the federal level, the current president is starting a war with Iran. In other words, creating the conditions for "stay the course" thinking, "Bama lacks war experience," yadda-yadda-yadda.

JAPOF (Just Another Paranoid Old Fart)
("And, just how did you know that about me anyway, hm?")

Robin Datta – Fresno CA

07/10/08 - 06:35

Jimmy Carter's MEOW (moral equivalent of war - speech)
www.pbs.org
or
www.mnforsustain.org
preceded these folks by more than a quarter of a century.
Unfortunately we cannot turn the clock back.

But I do have Clusterf**k Nation, The Archdruid Report, Nature Bats Last, The Energy Bulletin, The Oil Drum, Casaubon's Book, World Changing, Open the Future, TomDispatch & other RSS feeds on IE7.

Only "The Good Lord" (or whatever alternate might be the preferred expression) knows where it is headed, but it seems clear that Kurzweil's singularity excepted, it will be less than pleasant.

Byron

07/10/08 - 00:01

A well written article.

You want to know the REAL reason we are at the mercy of foreign (and hostile) oil producing countries, the REAL reason why we're in this predicament? The Republicans. It has been their unswerving (paid) alligence to Big Oil and Coal and conspiracy to back-burner and trivialize clean and renewable energies like solar and wind every step of the way.

We need never have been in this predicament. If they had decided to do the right thing way back when we might have been free of oil by now. It's a scandal of the first order. People have been calling for clean alternatives for decades now but the Republicans in Washington, in bed with Fat Cat CEOs, have done all they could to favor Oil and Coal by giving them huge subsidies and tax breaks while simultaneously roadblocking R&D into renewables. Why? Because de-centralized alternatives would mean no longer being dependent on a large central corporation to provide one's energy needs. A population with their own solar panels or wind turbines etc. would OWN their energy and not have to continually pay for it and they simply could not have that. With all stationary buildings "off-the-grid" we could have greatly reduced oil use which would have made it last longer, perhaps long enough for us to come up with a better solution for transportation. But no. Frankly, it's just insane.

One would think that with the sudden spiking of gas prices recently, though, they would remember their supposed role of looking out for the American people and would realize that we should be investing in renewables - but you’d be wrong.

“Separately, Democrats also failed to get Republican support for a proposal to extend tax breaks for wind, solar and other alternative energy development, and for the promotion of energy efficiency and conservation. The tax breaks have either expired or are scheduled to end this year…. The oil companies could have avoided the tax if they invested the money in alternative energy projects or refinery expansion. It also would have rescinded oil company tax breaks — worth $17 billion over the next 10 years — with the revenue to be used for tax incentives to producers of wind, solar and other alternative energy sources as well as for energy conservation.”

www.huffingtonpost.com

www.ens-newswire.com

findarticles.com

When Bill Clinton tried to make it fairer again the Republicans put the breaks on anything that could lead to a switch away from dirty energy (oil, coal, nuclear).

clinton4.nara.gov

Hamlet

07/09/08 - 13:50

Fella, you are remiss in your failure to note that the most credible site for all things collapse is:

www.dieoff.com

Reply to Hamlet

Robin Datta – Fresno CA

07/10/08 - 06:47

Unfortunately, Jay Hanson's dieoff site does not have an RSS feed (that I am aware of) even though it is updated regularly.

clifford J. Wirth – State of Veracruz, Mexico

07/09/08 - 10:22

No the end of the world does not look good.

Global oil production is now declining, from 85 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. At the same time demand will increase 14%. This is like a 45% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always be higher than production; thus the depletion rate will continue until all recoverable oil is extracted.

We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.

This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: www.peakoilassociates.com
Anyone interested in relocating to a sustainable location? Get in touch.