James Howard Kunstler, dyspeptic critic and peak oil Paul Revere, nails the people whose approach to the twin calamities of global heating and peak oil is to spend all their time trying to cobble together the McGyver solution that saves the day, rather than trying to adapt to the new, low-energy imperative.
My belief is that the more time we spend trying to find the McGuyvers, the more likely we are to respond poorly when we find that no amount of McGuyvers are going to allow us to maintain the carburban dreamscape.
Most particularly, I fear that the more energy (psychic and economic) we invest in trying to maintain the status quo, the more likely we are to decide that the skull-and-crossbones markings on the "coal to liquids" box really is just "doom and gloomerism" that really doesn't apply to us, because hey, we really need that liquid fuel ...
Kunstler says it better than I do:
It only made me more nervous, because this longing for "solutions," strikes me as a free-floating wish for magical rescue remedies, for techno-fixes that will allow us to make a hassle-free switch from fossil hydrocarbon power to something less likely to destroy the Earth's ecosystems (and human civilization with it). And I think such a wish is, in itself, at the root of our problem -- certainly at the bottom of our incapacity to think clearly about these things.
I said so, of course, which seemed to piss off a substantial number of my fellow festival attendees.
My position on this can be easily misunderstood. I don't want civilization to collapse (I like Mozart and access to root canal). I don't want Homo sapiens to go extinct, or the planet to parboil. I certainly don't believe in doing nothing in the face of this emergency. But I also don't believe we are going to make any hassle-free switch in the way we run things -- or that we should want to. Would the USA be a better place if we could run Wal-Mart and Las Vegas on wind power? I don't think so. Would the public benefit from another hundred years of suburban living -- and an economy based largely on creating ever more of it? All the Prozac in the universe would not avail to offset the diminishing returns of that bullshit.
In my travels, I have noticed a disturbing theme among the educated minority of eco-advocates: they are every bit as dedicated to the status quo (in their own way) as the NASCAR morons and shopping mall developers. The eco-advocates want cars, too, and all the prerogatives (like free parking and country living) that go with them, just like the WalMart shoppers. If this were not so, then why do the eco-advocates cream in their jeans whenever somebody presents a snazzy new vehicle that runs on a fuel other than gasoline? Indeed, why are some of the eco-friendly pouring all their efforts into the invention of such things instead of into walkable communities and the reform of our stupid land-use laws?
I encountered this ethos most strikingly a few years back at Middlebury College in Vermont, where angry biodiesel advocates assailed my lack of enthusiasm for their particular "solution" -- which seemed geared mainly to allow them to continue to drive their dad's old cast-off SUVs to the snowboarding venues of that progressive little state. But the wish to keep running all our cars permeates what little public discussion there is of the global warming / energy crisis issues at all levels. Even the elder statesmen of the eco-movement talk it up incessantly. The first great victory will come when they shut up about it and put their minds to other tasks.
The eco-advocate community is still hooked into the Faustian bargain of technology with little consciousness of its diminishing returns, and to some extent have made themselves unwitting tools of the truly clueless and wicked who run business and politics in our land. With this particular group in Telluride, which was composed heavily of Boomer eco-adventurers (mountain climbers, trekkers, kayakers), the infatuation with ever-cooler adventuring techno-gear extended naturally, it seemed, to their uncritical view of magical techno-fixes aimed at "solving" the climate / oil mess.
Calling all radicals: Unite for Kerry-Boxer
Dispassion as the world ends: The absent heart of the great climate affair
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odograph Posted 1:54 pm
28 May 2007
That's the ultimate irony, isn't it? Jim feels he cannot meet his goals, in world-changing, without physical travel using fossil fuels.
And what if he's right? What if we still need mass travel?
What does that do to the argument that "merely" better cars & etc., are at least, an improvement?
Put another way, should Jim really board a plane or ride a 120 MPG biodiesel motorcycle?
Sure biodiesel sucks, but with that motorbike you use a shitload less of it (or any other hydrocarbon) to move Jim to is next conference.
(A bicycle is even better, but I'm assuming we cant ask Jim to do weeks between engagements.)
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Sam Wells Posted 2:07 pm
28 May 2007
Just now a NY Times article same out about coal to liquid fuel conversion, which essentially makes stinking diesel out of dirty coal. There is a high level of bi-partisan support for this, like 51 cents a gallon for fake diesel.
Folks that's not technology that's called fake diesel. Coal gas and liquids have been around for a century but the synthetic diesel was invented by the Nazis. Great. It still burns like distillate oil and is no better in terms of global warming potential.
Technology should be the combination of energy and technology to provide the least emissions while providing the most bang for the buck. Just talking one fuel or another is pissing into the wind. /sammie
Onward through the fog
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JMG Posted 2:59 pm
28 May 2007
Kunstler has been a consistent advocate for rebuilding both the physical infrastructure of cities and the rail system in America that would enable more people to travel with far less impact.
No one can deny the huge target Kunstler (or Gore) paints on themselves by challenging business as usual vis a vis fossil fuel usage, whether from a global heating perspective or from a peak oil perspective. I think it was at this site that someone posted something about HP's videoconferencing systems--I think Kunstler and Gore and plenty of other people would leap at the chance to avoid most travel.
I did a talk on peak oil at my local community college and, as a result, was later asked to give a similar talk at a community college about 75 miles away. I accepted, on the condition that I could go to MY local community college and give the talk via the videoconference facilities (which I knew both schools had).
The woman who invited me agreed, and we planned to invite students at my both schools to participate. Not terribly surprisingly, this fell apart---the higher echelons at the distant school wanted a warm body or nothing. So I was faced with driving 150 miles to give a one hour presentation about the need to stop driving so much. Pretty easy for me to decline--I would have had to pay my own way anyway, and for no honorarium, and I feel strongly that schools and institutions should make full use of the technology that they have to slash travel. But what if I made my living giving lectures and writing? Probably would have been tougher to say no.
And I still don't know if I did the right thing--the chance to take part in an annual series of special lectures aimed at the whole campus was maybe one I should have grabbed. But I was trying to change an institution, like Gore and Kunstler are trying to change institutions. By refusing to travel to speak, I probably made no impression at all; should Gore and Kunstler make the same choice? Must individuals who are trying to warn that the system cannot be sustained as presently constituted abjure all use of the system as it stands or forever be branded hypocrites?
I dunno. It's graduation seaon around here. The number of high school grads jetting off for "senior trips" (drinking and trying to get laid in exotic locales) strikes me as a far bigger issue than does the inevitable travel by folks like Gore and Kunstler.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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odograph Posted 10:43 pm
28 May 2007
I'm saying if Jim Kunstler, with all his belief and motivation, still travels thousands of fossil fueled miles per year, what does that say about everyone else?
How soon will everyone in a free society give up that kind of mobility? The middle-of-the-roaders? The cynics? The skeptics?
I was dinged a day or two ago because I saw 120 mpg (diesel or biodiesel) as an improvement.
Well, what I'm driving here is not an attack on Jim, but an illustration using Jim's trip. How the heck can rational people reject improvements to our current system?
How the heck can they reject improvement when they haven't even gotten the Jim Kunstlers of the world out of airplanes and shuttle vans?
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Trebuchet Posted 12:31 am
29 May 2007
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odograph Posted 12:39 am
29 May 2007
But I also think he uses his writing skill to divert the eye from a very interesting question. He states, and then discards his own use patterns ... while having no other immediate and practical step for the transformation of society.
In engineering (or Dilbert) such plans are caricatured with the phrase "at this point magic happens."
So, if we want to take this as more than an emotional trip, if we want to apply Al Gore's tests of reason ... we have to say what the alternate next step is.
And we have to rationally disprove that incremental savings on the fossil fuel side will not aid, or buy time for, or mitigate, in concurrence to such a plan.
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odograph Posted 12:44 am
29 May 2007
Those books can help us apply a little Reason to the Narrations we provide ourselves.
When you say:
"If [whatever], then there's no energy for the BIG inevitable change of a much-lower-fuel-energy future."
That's a big if. And, see Taleb & etc., we have to decide if we are being seduced by the reason and logic behind it, or more by the narration, the power of the story.
I have not seen a rational proof, even a strongly inductive proof, that this is our future. It is merely a possibility ... and a seductive story line.
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:35 am
29 May 2007
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SustainableGreen Posted 2:02 am
29 May 2007
As usual, there is a tremendous lack of self-examination, but instead a blindness, or even outright, knowing hypocrisy, not to mention disjointed thinking, in our behavior. What Kunstler is saying can be summed up by invoking two important and related, but overlooked principles.
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." What part of this don't we get? Is it narcissism that prevents us from seeing our behavior when we primp in front of the mirror?
Another related principle comes from the extremely valid and valuable 12-step program. Step Four is: "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves."
Doing the second helps us get to the first. Otherwise, each of us is driving at top speed, pedal to the metal, right toward the precipice, trying to get everyone else to stop. This for goddam sure ain't leadership. When we constantly rationalize and justify our own excesses, while wringing our hands over all the excesses of others, we can't expect anyone to follow.
In many many ways, technology is the broke-down
horse we rode into town on--why do we so blindly expect it to get us out of the town we make for ourselves?
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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amazingdrx Posted 2:22 am
29 May 2007
Everyone sit on your wallets and consume less and the problem will go away?
Nope. A revolution in technology carries an economic boom along with it.
These gloomsters who do nothing but deride new technology are not helpfull. Take their lead and the torch will be passed to corporate power pushing nukes and clean coal.
The challenge is to choose the right new technology. Instead they deride real attempts to solve GHG problems with effective solutions.
They are waiting for a massive switch to electric trains, urban living replacing suburbs and rural life, and massive human labor toiling on the land again. It's a false hope, a very gloomy hope.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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jayohara Posted 2:44 am
29 May 2007
why is that gloomy? could it get more gloomy than a society awash in cheap, useless plastic crap?
i'm riding of the high of reading this article from Orion magazine, maybe you'll find it interesting too.
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odograph Posted 3:33 am
29 May 2007
But again, even while we talk about arguably-better lifestyles, the question is whether we try to reduce the impact of the big spenders.
A world where every body rides bikes would be really nice, but I'm not going to hold my breath until it comes true.
... I still see the argument against incremental improvement as a game of pretend. "Let's pretend" that we can make a big jump, and get there without going through all the middle ground.
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zacaroni Posted 3:36 am
29 May 2007
Also: the McGyvers are out there, and so is the technology. They/it has been around for years. Why do you think it hasn't been implemented yet? Anyone? Anyone? Hmmmmm....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ1dECu5sSc
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David Roberts Posted 3:43 am
29 May 2007
grist.org
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gmunger Posted 4:56 am
29 May 2007
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JMG Posted 5:03 am
29 May 2007
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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ebaerren Posted 5:19 am
29 May 2007
The internal combustion engine isn't what's caused global warming, or reliance on an unstable region of the world for the blood of our economy, it's how we've used them. While it's good and necessary to improve the technology we use, even more important is a fundamental shift in attitude. I mean, how many fewer miles would Americans drive if the places we worked, the schools our kids attended, and our grocery stores were all within half a mile?
This has always been Kunstler's argument, and it's almost identical to the one he forwarded in "Geography of Nowhere.
You can criticize the man for riding in airplanes, I suppose, but how does this rebutt his basic point that our cities are unlivable and that we need to a better job of planning them?
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SustainableGreen Posted 5:24 am
29 May 2007
I'm with D.R. and Odo. But I would point out that with all the parallel threads going on, and the lack of discipline and focus in many of these threads, a lot gets lost in the disorganization and chaff. Two I can think of are "...80% by 2050", and another is one is 'GW and vision' both of which have good ideas, mixed in with a lot of off-topic squabbling and ax-grinding. These two are just examples as well.
The larger problem is that there seems to be no single active organizational focus, in the model of MoveOn, or whatever, that can provide the necessary national and international focus. This the larger problem for the larger focus, and as I said in a previous message we need at least a 3-pronged approach to change things in the way we truly need.
SO, why doesn't GRIST set one up? Why doesn't GRIST get with all the other better groups in all fields, whether it is weather, or agriculture, or population, or energy, or transportation, or architecture, etc., etc., etc., and put one together?
NRA, the unions, and the G-D Republicans are highly organized and therefore function at a higher level with a stronger focus, with better results. What ARE we waiting for?
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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David Roberts Posted 5:41 am
29 May 2007
grist.org
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Flamingo Posted 6:02 am
29 May 2007
What he missed was the opportunity to actually LEAD an organized multi-directional dialogue that could spread to the community level and actually get people out there having the same conversations about global warming and the climate crisis and what to start doing about it in local communities and in homes. He should have had a partnership with MeetUp and there should have been a whole wave of meet-up discussions after seeing the film that could have continued long afterwards. Of course, we can do that on our own, but there was such an opportunity for Gore to be the catalyst for a common conversation on at least a National level that had the potential really spread and to live on, and really be followed by action. Opportunities to motivate people on the national level like that are rare.
It's kind of odd, actually, given how much he rails about the one way nature of news and TV that he didn't think to attempt that and still isn't.
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:05 am
29 May 2007
The third option is to Do More, with Less.
Or ideally Do the Same, with a Lot Less
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SustainableGreen Posted 6:11 am
29 May 2007
Hey, D.R.:
All I am seeking is some results from all the chaotic democracy, and it is my own fault for daring to bring up any discipline.
So...Can we focus on the idea of organization, ignoring the regressive results of regressive people who also organize? Can we distill an approach and establish an entity to offer a central organization to provide some real results? To rally people at all levels and offer them something tangible, purposeful, cumulative, and progressive to do? Isn't that the goal of so many of these threads and participants? Is there no one individual or group with that leadership?
Again, what are we waiting for? Could we have succinct on-topic answers to these questions?
At a certain point, 'recursive' becomes a supreme waste of time, energy, and talent. Let's move on to some actions that yield results.
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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Charles Barton Posted 6:51 am
29 May 2007
"In my travels, I have noticed a disturbing theme among the educated minority of eco-advocates: they are every bit as dedicated to the status quo (in their own way) as the NASCAR morons and shopping mall developers. The eco-advocates want cars, too, and all the prerogatives (like free parking and country living) that go with them, just like the WalMart shoppers. If this were not so, then why do the eco-advocates cream in their jeans whenever somebody presents a snazzy new vehicle that runs on a fuel other than gasoline? Indeed, why are some of the eco-friendly pouring all their efforts into the invention of such things instead of into walkable communities and the reform of our stupid land-use laws?"
I do not believe for one moment that we have to make drastic changes in our lifestyle in order that we confront the CO2 issue. In fact it would be very desirable if we don't have to. If fossil fuils can be replaced. Electricity coming from nuks, for example, could solve many problems. For example, plug in our electrical cars for a recharge after we get back from Walmart. Ya if we don't have a Walmart all the people who work there will be out of work. Maybe they could find employment as cobblers, since in Kunstler's ideal world, we are going to walk everywhere. Kunstler has not thought enough to wonder how much desperate grinding poverty his supposedly eco-friendly world would create. He doesn't really care though, because people don't matter to him, only his concept of am ideal environment does.
Charles Barton
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amazingdrx Posted 4:10 pm
29 May 2007
We'll all live like the amish. With immigrants to do all the heavy labor. Gurus like Kuntsler will still have electricity, but only in secret, shhhh.
Yikes, guess he hasn't heard the amish are buying solar panels.
Yep JMG, he really nailed it, hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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JMG Posted 5:36 pm
30 May 2007
http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/2007/05/feels-like-im-d ...
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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spaceshaper Posted 11:21 pm
30 May 2007
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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odograph Posted 11:49 pm
30 May 2007
Peak oil, maybe even more than environmentalism, is a place where people want to reduce all that to a simplified story line. It makes a better rant, or a better book, when there is really just one problem, with one solution. That's even true when one has to assume a bunch of unknowable things, in order to make that narrative work.
I like some of those books ;-), but I pick and choose from them. I see them as part of the positive-moving mess ... rather than (to draw a parallel) the One True Diet Book.
The truth is that even with all the fuzzy unknowns we face, there are problems we can see around us in the world today. There are a thousand little things we tiondo to move things in the right direction.
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