> The reason I mention it here is that it puts some > flesh and feeling on the warnings of the doomers: > the peak oil doomers, climate change doomers,
> nuclear terrorism doomers, global virus doomers,
> general-malaise doomers.

This is baloney. The movie is a movie--it's fiction. The truth is that never in the history of the world have so many people had it so good. Across the entire planet people are leading lives of ever greater material access and ever greater benefits of health.

This apocalyptism is a favorite tool of the left to paint a negative picture which they hope beings converts to their side. It is bullshit, and always has been. Of course there are problems in this world--just as importantly, there are many bright people with solutions, and just as importantly, every day we have more wealth with which to pursue these solutions. Compared to all of history, our lives are nearly magical, and only getting more so. Read some history for a change--what do you think life looked like during WW2, or the American Civil War, or during the Spanish Flu, or during the great and terribly devastating European epidemics, or during earlier times when adults died at 35 and many children died at birth and people led lives of real scarcity? That was suffering. Paying $3 for a gallon of gas is not.

Stop whining and stop hoping for the apocalypse. It is not coming and you only look like fools.

...spoke at my brother's high school graduation. One thing I remember him saying is that for each generation, freedom is not an automatic thing, but something that has to be maintained. It requires effort by each generation.

Human institutions are not indestructable, and they don't spring to life automatically (although the neoconservatives thought they would after the Iraq invasion). In fact, they can be fragile when things aren't maintained carefully. Just look at how government did at all levels in the wake of Katrina. Not that Katrina is a normal occurence, but it showed a little something about what can happen when cynics are at the controls...

d4,

Yes, things are better now (on a material level, if you're an American) than they have ever been.  That's not the point.

The point is, civilization is much more fragile than most people give it credit for.  There is no guarantee that tomorrow will look like today, despite our (very natural) human tendency to assume it will, because for most of history, it did.  The further we climb up the technological curve, the higher we can reach, but the more precarious our position becomes.

Now, in fairness, I also believe that civilization is much MORE resiliant than most doomers give it credit for.  But it's still important to imagine, and think about, what could happen if we drop the ball as a species.  If a movie helps make that excercise in imagination more visceral and effective, so be it.

If a movie helps make that excercise in imagination more visceral and effective, so be it.

Well said!

...as far as stealing great lines (Shakespeare, anyone?)

I think Jefferson gets the credit on this one: "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

But yeah, I mean, in a world where people can get seriously injured in some absurd pre-Christmas scuffle over Tickle Me Elmo, I wouldn't be surprised, if something happened to provoke a crisis in the availability of consumer goods generally, to find that it wasn't safe to walk down the street anymore.  I'm certainly not one of those building-a-bomb-shelter-in-my-basement types, but didaster preparedness, and being prepared for life to change dramatically, are reasonable things to think about, and because we are so sheltered, and lead such a cushy life, we hate more than anything to have to think about such things.

I am looking forward to seeing this movie, though it is apparently of the sort that leaves me depressed and vomiting.  A piece of dialogue was excerpted in the Sunday NYT: Picasso's Guernica and Michelangelo's (damaged!) David are in the scene.  The fragility of our conservation of art, whether or not in view of potential social displacement and political destabilization, is a terrificly important subject.  It is not high up on the lists of most environmentalists, I think, i.e. lists of things to worry about; but it is worthwhile to mention that some of us at least are indeed worrying about it.

I recall seeing in fragmentary and poorly projected form, in my high school's auditorium during lunch, a few scenes from the 1962 movie "La jete'e."  A post-nuclear-war dystopia thing.  The shot of the broken Arc de Triomphe destroyed me for days.

On Alfonso Cuaro'n: I like "Y tu mama' tambie'n," and I adore Gael Garci'a Bernal (e.g., "Motorcycle Diaries" was a very good if imperfect vehicle for him; and he had a fun little role as a universally cute devil in that metaphysical anti-US doggy romp, "Sin noticias de Dios," "No News from God," or else, "Don't Tempt Me").  But I do not think "Y tu mama'" is a great movie.  In spite of the Mexican background sociology, the story is about French subject matter, and it is told in a French cinematic style.  Francophile (and Mexicanophile!) that I am, I happen to find most French cinema boring.

Is "Wizard of Azkaban" a good movie?  IMHO, none of the Harry Potter movies matter, really.  They are all fluff.  If your Harry Potter experience is based on the movies, in ignorance of the books, you have segregated yourself within a boring class of critics who clearly miss the point.

In fact, "Wizard of Azkaban" is my favorite of the six Harry Potter books.  It lays the foundation for the Dumbledore/Voldemort/Muggle cosmology, and establishes Harry's values and affections, and offers real hope.

Cuaro'n's pendulum was excellent.  And he managed the scenes around Hagrid's cottage very nicely.  But he made too much of the Womping Willow, and too little of the map, and the tunnel.  His Dementors were as bad and unconvincing as were Peter Jackson's orcs.

I suppose he handled Emma Thompson's character well enough.  Sybil Trelawney is a minor but irksome problem.  On the one hand, Hermione and Harry dislike her, and Dumbledore himself agrees that she is a fraud.  On the other, she is lovable in her own way (were I a Hogwarts student, she would be my favorite teacher); and in "Order of the Phoenix," both her vulnerability and her occasional prophetic powers enter in; so she cannot be simply dismissed.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Did Scorse bag his own ID and adopt a new cover as D41295?  I'm just askin'.

Does this sound like Jason?
Compared to all of history, our lives are nearly magical, and only getting more so.

I haven't known Jason to say that everything's wonderful and rosy now and that we have the economy to thank--only that economics is too important to overlook, which is most likely true even if I personally do not understand and therefore frequently overlook economics...

D4's style and Jason's style are quite different.  Also, Jason is a narcissist, and he would never waste anything he thought worthwhile under a pseudonym.  But content-wise, JMG, I sort of see your connexion.

What I found most loathsome about D4's post in this thread was that on the one hand, he/she made some valuable historical observations about various hardships, indeed deadly circumstances, faced by people in the past, but then he/she used them as a debating tactic, an argument for why we should stop complaining, sit back and do nothing.  Pretty diabolic counsel, if you ask me.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

D4's comments reflect what I have heard called the McDonough paradox.  Basically, it's the idea that the surest way to make the alarmist/doomer's worst fears come true is to take the actions suggested by the deniers (i.e. nothing), whereas if one acts with the haste suggested by the alarmist, then the future might look as rosy as that predicted by the most die-hard skeptic.

GreenEngineer wrote:
> Yes, things are better now (on a material level, > if you're an American)

No--things are better for practically everyone on the planet.

> The point is, civilization is much more fragile > than most people give it credit for.  There is
> no guarantee that tomorrow will look like today, > despite our (very natural) human tendency to
> assume it will, because for most of history, it > did.

In fact, you have it exactly backwards. Tomorrow has ALWAYS looked like today--for every day in history, except maybe the day a comet hit 65M years ago. There have been no great leaps backwards.

> The further we climb up the technological curve, > the higher we can reach, but the more precarious > our position becomes.

What is the evidence for this? There is none that I can see. Technology makes our lives more stable and LESS precarious. Do you have any doubts about where your food is going to come from tomorrow? Your heat? Your medical help? Your transportation? Sure, you might pay a few more cents per gallon--maybe even a few more dollars per gallon--but life has never been free, has it? And if gas gets too expensive, the free market will ensure that alternative methods of transportation will come into being to allow us to go as never before.

Stop painting such a negative picture and drop the apocalyptic fetish. I don't even think you believe it.

Shorter d41295: Stop worrying and take your Soma.

GreenEngineer wrote:
> D4's comments reflect what I have
> heard called the McDonough paradox.  
> Basically, it's the idea that
> the surest way to make the
> alarmist/doomer's worst fears
> come true is to take the
> actions suggested by the
> deniers (i.e. nothing)

When did I ever suggest we do "nothing"? I have never even implied it.

On the contrary, we will have to work very hard to overcome the problems of climate change and peak oil and food supply and other challenges to the environment.

But we will do it. We have always done it. Throughout history people have worked extremely hard to make their lives better--wealthier, healthier, easier. It's what human beings do. I see absolutely no evidence that we will suddenly stop doing this. On the contrary, we have never before had such levels of knowledge and wealth with which to work.

I am not a "denier" and I do not advocate doing nothing. I advocate getting busy, today. Overcoming problems is how we got to have such large brains. Use them.

jjwfmme wrote:
> Shorter d41295: Stop worrying and take your Soma.

Clearly you have failed to understand anything that I've written. That or you have purposely misinterpreted me.

See my message above, and then tell me where I said to "stop worrying."

Sounds like a powerful movie.  The only thing that pains me about the reviews is the idea that fiction "shows" or "proves" how fragile civilization really is.  No, it doesn't.  Of course, obviously, it is making viewers question how fragile civilization really is, and that is a good thing.

Looking around the real world, I think it is apparent that while modern civilization is generally stable, there are times when it is not.  It is possible for previously gentle civilizations to flip into violence and then be unable to climb out.  That kind of violence can, terribly, be a stable state.

But when you look around at Northern Ireland, Lebanon, etc., I think you also see that there was often trouble in the foundation of the house.  Longstanding hatreds could come to a boil.

Is that really true broadly?  If civilization is "fragile" why hasn't western europe, or north america, fallen into that abyss in the last couple centuries?

I agree that civilization is resilient--people pull through in a pinch, which has been a historical strength of our democracy--but it can also become complacent. Considering the way our elected officials and corporate citizens have acted regarding certain issues, like climate change, I think David can be excused for writing an occasional jeremiad.

Bart, you write:

Yes, that is one theme in recent history. But if you've studied history, you know that wars devastate nations, empires fall, and civilizations destroy their natural resource base.  There are no guarantees. Often disaster follows a period of optimism (WWI after the optimistic turn of the century, WW2 and the Great Depression after the Roaring 20s).

Why don't you point to a model collapse of civilization, so I can better understand you?

Was WW2 such a collapse?  I'd not call it that.  At the time (and pre-WW2) "doomers" were looking for something that would take us down deeper, through generations of war, and collapse.

What really are the real-world models for these fears?

Bart Anderson wrote:
> But if you've studied history, you know that
> wars devastate nations, empires fall, and
> civilizations destroy their natural resource
> base.

And civilizations make use of new natural resources in ever new ways.

History is not a smooth path. Countries die. Most do not. But these are relative blips. The fact is that never before in history have so many lived such comfortable and healthy lives. We now take for granted many things that in decades and centuries past required huge amounts of struggle or which were simply impossible.  

> Often disaster follows a period of optimism (WWI > after the optimistic turn of the century, WW2
> and the Great Depression after the Roaring 20s).

Also relative blips in the upward curve of history. Yes, some people suffered. Some people are always going to suffer whether the world is powered by fire, by oil, or by nuclear fusion. We made tremendous strides in quality of life before the Great Depression, and we have made huge strides since the Great Depression. In the big picture it was a small event that set us back a mere few years.

> I would argue, for example, that the population > increase and rise in living standards are due
> mostly to our use of fossil fuels since the
> 1800s, rather than to capitalism or science.  
> This means that we have a big problem as we
> gradually stop using fossil fuels, whether
> because of depletion or because of global
> warming.

Yes, it will be a problem. But throughout history we have found more resources and new resources, and throughout history we have had new ideas and developed new technologies that have enabled us to overcome any shortage problems. Why are we suddenly going to stop thinking now? What is different about this period that means we are unable to use our brains and wealth to overcome our problems and to develop solutions? I see absolutely nothing. There are a plethora of ideas out there about how we can overcome our energy problems. The free market is working to overcome them -- look at the development of wind power in the last few years, or the development of solar energy in the last few decades. Or in fuel cells. We are at the mere beginning of such revolutions. As some markets become old and tired, new markets will open up and bold and brave people will take advantage of them.

It has been this way forever and it simply is not going to stop now. I'm surprised you people have such little faith in our civilization and such little faith in yourselves. Buck up and face the future with courage and optimism, not apocalyptism and defeatism. The defeatists of the world have existed forever, and history has always left tread marks across their backs.

jjwfmme wrote:
> I agree that civilization is
> resilient--people pull through
> in a pinch, which has been a
> historical strength of our
> democracy--but it can also become complacent.
> Considering the way our elected officials and
> corporate citizens have acted regarding certain
> issues, like climate change, I think David can be > excused for writing an occasional jeremiad.

Well, some people become complacent. Maybe even most of them. But there have always been individuals with intelligence and daring and vision who reject complacency and who build the future that does not yet exist. They pull the rest of us into the future. It has been this way forever. Some elected officials are certainly mediocre--most of them, even. But the leaders come along at regular intervals to also pull us into the future: Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy. And if the elected officials don't lead, the brilliant men and women who create our new sciences and technologies make them irrelevant and and civilization adopts their new and better ideas. It will be the same with climate change. The world will warm a couple of degrees, which will open up huge new swaths of livable territory in the US, Canada, and Russia. Some people will become refugees, sure. They will be tiny minorities. As climate science is better understood and more readily accepted (and look at how much that acceptance has changed merely since 2000, or, for that matter, since 2004) and as its signs become ever more prominent, society and governments will devote more and more resources to solving the problem. Bright people will invent new solutions, and they will become rich precisely because they are better solutions and because people will want them. When in history have humans ever laid down in the face of a problem? Never. We have always and continuously developed better ways to feed ourselves, to defend ourselves, to house ourselves, and to take what we're given and mold and master it into solutions. There is nothing special about where we're at now. Nothing.

The free market is working to overcome them

I'm all for the free market, but not a brainless one. It seems like many of the advocates for a free market are arguing for these days. Talk about a fetish.

If we mindlessly relied on the free market, the solution to our problems would be all about the people with the deepest pockets-- namely, Big Coal and Big Oil.

Just talking about Europe, to say nothing of East Asia, WWII was an unspeakably terrific moral collapse, as well as a physical one.  And any failure to appreciate that is also a failure of historical judgment.  Just because pro-American governments got established before long in West Germany, France and Italy does not mean "civilization is resilient."

The inward-looking American perspective is morally clueless, apparently, so far as judging these matters goes.  Just consider: the hundreds of thousands of casualties in the Soviet Union.  And then, on the other hand, consider the fate of Eastern European nations, following the fall of Berlin.

And consider what befell European Jewry.  Only a Gentile would take away from that story the happy moral that civilizations are always resilient and in the end triumphant.

Soon after WWII, Britain was more or less forced to grant independence to its South Asian possessions.  That was a good thing.  But the Partition of India and Pakistan, little known to most Americans, was one of the most horrendous, bloody episodes of civil strife in history.  And that story is not over, it is still playing out today.

For deeper considerations, there is Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."  Smaller, easier and more contemporary in style, is Thomas Cahill's "How the Irish Saved Civilisation," which builds on the first chapter of Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation," "By the Skin of Our Teeth."

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

jjwfmme wrote:
>> The free market is working to overcome them
> If we mindlessly relied on the free market, the
> solution to our problems would be all about the
> people with the deepest pockets-- namely,
> Big Coal and Big Oil.

In fact you're wrong, as the development of wind power, solar power, and fuel cells shows. These are all the free market at work. Or that the acceptance of anthropogenic climate science shows. Big Coal and Oil do not have all the power.

And if you don't like the free market, then I'm sure you'll have no trouble pointing to the multitude of advances that have come about through government planning. Let's see your list....

Tom Philpott wrote:
> There's nothing in it for you.

It is sad that you think the readers of this blog must be in such complete lockstep that any competing ideas can only be from a "troll."

What exactly do you find so threatening?

d4: What exactly do you find so threatening? Not threatening -- just boring and a waste of time. I'm tired of slogans and lack of depth.

Most of us are quite familiar with mindless libertarianism. Some of us may be recovering libertarians.

It is possible to be an intelligent conservative and/or libertarian. But one has to understand the arguments of one's opponents, and see that reality is more complex than a set of talking points.  

I often disagree with economist Jason Scorse who posts on Gristmill, for example.  But his thinking has become increasingly interesting and hard to categorize, as he engages with other points of view.

Bart Anderson wrote:
>>    d4: What exactly do you find so threatening?
> Not threatening -- just boring and
> a waste of time. I'm tired of
> slogans and lack of depth.

That's funny, seeing as how this last post of your's contained no new ideas and so no depth whatsoever. I guess that's how it is if you reflexively buy the liberal line.

This is actually an interesting discussion. I'm sure everyone's penis is a perfectly adequate size, so let's sheath them and focus on the topic at hand.

For the record, I'm not much of a doomer myself, and I've criticized that kind of thinking elsewhere. The power of the movie for me was just that it showed a situation that is not drastically different from our own (the social circumstances, I mean, not the infertility thing), but nonetheless horrendous to contemplate.

On the larger question: Odo, you ask for historical models, but show me any historical model where there are 6.5 billion people on earth. The amount of energy we use has no historical precedent. The disparities of wealth and health, the global flow of goods and information and people, the ability of small groups of people to wreak global havoc, etc. etc. -- all these have no historical precedent.

It would be nice to think that things can just continue on the way they have, but that means accepting that there are no physical or ecological barriers, that sheer ingenuity can fit exponentially more people on the same planet at historically high levels of consumption. Perhaps that true, but it doesn't seem to me that history is a particularly good guide for what to expect.

www.grist.org

jjwfmme, I am still waiting for your list of advances, technological and otherwise, that have come not via the free market, but via government planning.

I can straight away think of only one: nuclear weapons. Do you really want to hang your hat on that?

Let's see your list. Otherwise we will assume the superiority of the free market.

David Roberts wrote:
> It would be nice to think that
> things can just continue on the
> way they have, but that means
> accepting that there are no
> physical or ecological barriers,

This is absolutely and utterly false. There are some physical limits (the speed of light, the laws of thermodynamics, etc.), just none that are holding us back. Or none that ever have. If there are, please name them instead of referring to them in the abstract.

> that sheer ingenuity can fit
> exponentially more people on the
> same planet at historically high
> levels of consumption.

"Sheer ingenuity" has always and everywhere worked in the past to ensure ever higher standards of living for an exponentially expanding population. Why should it stop now or anytime soon? You failed to say.

> Perhaps that true, but it
> doesn't seem to me
> that history is a particularly
> good guide for
> what to expect.

WHY isn't history a good guide for what to expect?
WHAT is a better guide than history?

Do you always try to end arguments by fiat, instead of by reasoning and argumentation?
 

d4: if you reflexively buy the liberal line.I was a raving Ayn Randist before you were born, you young whippersnapper!  Marched for Barry Goldwater and knew all the answers at age 12.  

Trouble is ... reality got in the way.

> Re: Let's all calm down

And, we are not uncalm. We might have passionate beliefs, but that does not mean we need to calm down. If anything, the majority of the people here need to calm up.

> I was a raving Ayn Randist before you were born,
> you young whippersnapper!  Marched for Barry
> Goldwater and knew all the answers at age 12.  

> Trouble is ... reality got in the way.

How about explaining what it is you mean, with details and examples, instead of expecting us to be able to read your mind and somehow magically be able to understand what it is you are obliquely referring to by "reality." That is not too much to ask.

Tom Philpott wrote:
> ... the narrator of Raymond
> Chandler's detective novels,
> had a great way of responding
> to idiotic remarks: silence.
> Confronted by a feeble
> wisecrack from a would-be
> tough, Marlowe would describe
> his reaction something like
> like this: "I let that one
> hang there. There was nothing
> in it for me."

And once again Tom Philpott has contributed absolutely nothing whatsoever to the substance of the debate at hand.

"I let that one hang there. There was nothing in it for me."

As a reproductive health advocate, I found this movie extremely interesting for reasons other than environmental.  A lot of the discussion around population issues gets stuck in the extremes: "the population explosion will destroy the environment, suck resources dry, and derail development" or "the birth rate is dropping and pretty soon economies will crash, senior citizens will be penniless, and human life will perish!"  What's really intriguing about this movie is that it incorporates both of those extremes - people destroy the environment, which then (perhaps) causes infertility... thus threatening human existence.  In reality, the anti-choice movement are the ones preaching doom and gloom... but sometimes the picture they paint resembles the one in this movie - one in which there are no more children.  

From a purely film-as-entertainment point of view, I love Children of Men. I think the characters were interesting, full of good and bad - in fact, Theo is not a very likable guy, yet I still felt myself really pulling for him... hoping he'd make it.  The plot is interesting and unpredictable.  The cinematography is breathtaking!  That seven-minute long single-shot sequence amidst explosions? Incredible.  And it wasn't a typical Hollywood wrap-up ending.  Nicely done.

Cheers,
Tyler

I haven't read everything Bart has pointed to, but I'll do a quick answer to David on:

On the larger question: Odo, you ask for historical models, but show me any historical model where there are 6.5 billion people on earth. The amount of energy we use has no historical precedent. The disparities of wealth and health, the global flow of goods and information and people, the ability of small groups of people to wreak global havoc, etc. etc. -- all these have no historical precedent.

It would be nice to think that things can just continue on the way they have, but that means accepting that there are no physical or ecological barriers, that sheer ingenuity can fit exponentially more people on the same planet at historically high levels of consumption. Perhaps that true, but it doesn't seem to me that history is a particularly good guide for what to expect.

I don't expect things to continue on as they are.  I expect change, but even then not all the possible futures I see are happy ones.  I might hope at best for a soft landing of some sort, but to my eye the most darkly possible future is "China everywhere."  It would be sad if every region in the world hit Chinese environmental and resource limits before trying to curb population.

Modern China is to my mind at once a disproof that the rest of us will collapse anytime soon (we have a ways to go before we test the same limits) and at the same time, an illustration of how damaging a non-collapse can be.

Would you say Europe has dodged that bullet, and is diverging from that path?

"Odo, you ask for historical models, but show me any historical model where there are 6.5 billion people on earth."

Since the world population has been increasing steadily for essentially the last 600 years, for the last 600 years, one could always have asked the question, "When has the human population been as large as today?"

In fact, Thomas Malthus predicted approximately 200 years ago that human population would collapse within 50 years.  

Not only was he spectacularly wrong, but human beings are becoming farther and farther removed from the famine and/or pestilence he thought were just around the corner.  

"The amount of energy we use has no historical precedent."

That could also be said essentially every year for the last 600 years.

"The disparities of wealth and health,..."

It's interesting that you should focus on "disparities," rather than progress.

Yes, there were few disparities in health when the average life expectancy was under 40 years, and when doctors were not even aware that germs caused disease.

"...the global flow of goods and information and people,..."

You say that like it's a bad thing.

"...the ability of small groups of people to wreak global havoc,..."

Now, there (finally) is something definitely worth worrying about.

Of course, the flip side of that is that never before has there been the ability of small groups of people to do so much global good.  

Mark Bahner

Modern China is to my mind at once a disproof that the rest of us will collapse anytime soon (we have a ways to go before we test the same limits) and at the same time, an illustration of how damaging a non-collapse can be.

Well put.  I'm going to keep that in mind, because it's a succinct and effective way of illustrating my primary concern about the future of humanity.

Caveat, though: "anytime soon" is (I estimate) of timescale 5-10 years at the rate of change we're dealing with.  Decades out, I think collapse is still a real possibility.  Sooner, it's maybe possible as the result of a cascade of catastrophic trigger events, but such a confluence is pretty unlikely.

To all the population skeptics:

First of all, you got the definition of "exponential growth" wrong.  It's a growth rate where n = n^x, and x is greater than one.  It can be very slow, depending on the value of x, but the problem is, the size of the growth increment increases as the base number, with each iteration.

Earth's population is still growing exponentially.  The exponent is decreasing over time, but it's still exponential (i.e. nonlinear) growth.

Second, the fundamental problem is not population per se (though I would argue that it is at the root).  It is resource use and, more importantly, damage to the biosphere.  And those things are certainly growing on a worldwide basis.

... in that I agree the last 10K years have been humanity's ape ass tied onto a fossil fuel rocket. It's carried us up, way up, and now it's going to stop firing. We have to figure out how to fly, quick. Some people want to build a new rocket. The sustainability crowd wants to build a glider.

I'm not a doomer -- I don't think we're going to plunge to our deaths. I think we can build a glider. But this lollipop Randian utopianism grates. There's no more rocket fuel. Y'all talk about the last 10K years like it establishes some sort of permanent human trajectory. But what about the 10K years before that, or the 100K before that? Seems like there's a much longer, better established trajectory, and that's organisms balancing with their ecological niche -- and when overshooting, dying out.

www.grist.org

It is all speculation. There is no model for what is happening. It is all new. And it is mostly beyond our control. Our town can't even get everyone to pick up after their dogs. Change starts with the individual. Are 6 billion people going to suddenly have an epiphany... oh yeah, those Grist bloggers are right? While you all debate the nature of the collapse of civilization, others prepare to ride it out.

Some say most species eventually go extinct and humans will follow. But not all go extinct. Cockroaches have been around for millions of years, barely changed. Humans are just as adaptable.

Are you planning on dying or surviving? What are you doing, personally, to save your life, your descendents, and the rest of creation? Have you all given up your 1500+ square foot homes? Your imported food? Thermostat set below 60F? Your freezer? Your television? Your computer? Why aren't you living in minimalist huts for the sake of preserving humanity? I don't expect you to, but you must have decided where to draw the line. How much are you really willing to sacrifice to save the planet? How much is accomplished by blogging to a select few, most already sharing your views, the rest obnoxiously opposed?

Are you CHANGING any people for the better? How so?

Time to stop laying on the guilt trip and set an example for everyone else to follow. Lectures are pointless. Examples are priceless. INSPIRE ME TO BE A BETTER PERSON.

By the way, thanks Mr. Roberts for the heads up on the movie. It looks very interesting and I'm looking forward to watching it. I'm not willing to give up my TV and DVD player for the sake of the planet.

Hopefully, the movie will scare the crap out of me and encourage me to devote more effort to ensuring a soft landing for our civilization. I'm really not interested in a road-warrior lifestyle. I'm just not aggressive enough.

Later.

I am intellectually apocalyptic, but in real life where I and many others are trying to prevent The End, I can see no earthly use for it.
Apocalyptic scenarios are about as useful as trying to save a drowning person, by throwing him or her an anvil.

Starting with the trenches of World War I, and the crematoriums of the holocaust, on through to the detonation of the first nuclear device at Trinity site in New Mexico in 1945 (where Oppenheimer witnessing the nuclear blast, quoted the Bhagadavita "Behold I am death, destroyer of cities.") our imagination has been monopolized by apocalyptic scenarios. Utopia was one of the first casualties of the Battle of the Somme. It hasn't been seen or heard from since.

I think we should be bold, and buck the tide, and while not dismissing all the grim scenarios we see around us, we should start to promote utopian scenarios where we do get things right, and come out of this pit into some place that is worth living in. If all we have to offer people are ashes and sack cloth, we had might as well close up shop and go home right now.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

GreenEngineer--
Thanks for the note on math.  I started to write that post myself, but I was having trouble for some reason explaining it as simply and clearly as you did, so I gave up. :)

A fed troll..will eventually explode and get the boot. But who wants to go through the process?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

arguments over the definition of "exponential" are inconsequential and trivial.  if you engage the troll in this, then it encourages more ridiculous posts --- and takes the discussion away from the more interesting and consequential arguments.

I too saw Children of Men recently, and I loved it as much as David Roberts did. In fact, I just can't stop thinking about it.

What struck me most about the film was the very real-world sense of uncertainty. We, like the characters, are left with no sense of what caused the infertility epidemic, let alone whether humanity will have the wisdom--or ability--to remedy the imbalances set in motion by the previous generation.

And let's face it, guys--we're uncertain about a helluva lot. We don't know which endangered plant species may one day yield a life-giving drug. We don't know where some pollutants will turn up after they've been released into the environment. We don't even know what the carrying capacity of the earth is. And yet, we as a society continue to ignore all the things we don't know, figuring we'll be able to sort it all out if and when our actions become a problem.

But amid all of this uncertainty lies one scientific certainty--environmental degradation is not always a linear process. Increasing a problem by a unit may cause a unit's worth of damage for a while, but once a system's threshold is reached, we may find ourselves sliding off the proverbial cliff. A chemical considered "safe" for exposure to humans may become lethal when combined with another. Fishing at a certain level may cause a small decline in population, while fishing at another may disrupt the reproductive cycle enough to cause near extinction. And someday all our melting glaciers might, just might, flush enough freshwater into the ocean to shut down the thermohaline circulation belt in the North Atlantic, sending a chunk of Europe into a deep freeze.

Or not. We just don't know. But wouldn't it be nice if we started doing a little preventative care before the patient gets too sick to save?

Bart Anderson wrote:
The question is, what will happen to this system of energy-science-capitalism as energy is severely constrained?

Why do you think energy will be severely constrained?

Not that it matters, really, but who knows what our friends in Dubai are up to.  Anyway, whatever the Seleucids (a Hellenistic dynasty of Macedonian origin, whose capital was Antioch, and ruled Mesopotamia and the Levant from the late 4th to the late 2nd centuries BCE) had in mind when they attacked the Nabataeans (an Arab tribe, whose picturesque capital, Petra, in what is now Jordan, was used as the location for the climactic scene of "Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail"), it certainly was not to gain control over petroleum, or anything like it.

There is a fascinating exhibition now making the rounds -- it was in NYC, at the American Museum of Natural History, last year -- , of art and archaeology from Petra.  It is sponsored by the museum in Cincinnati, whose name I forget, and which has an impressive collection of Nabataean artefacts, as well as by the Jordanian government.  Clearly, Petra was an important trading center.  BUT petroleum products were not included in what was being traded there.  Generally, ancient peoples used olive oil, fat from animal sources, and to a lesser extent coal, for illumination.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

According to Wikipedia...

"Petra not only possessed the advantages of a fortress but controlled the main commercial routes which passed through it to Gaza in the west, to Bosra and Damascus in the north, to Aqaba and Leuce Come on the Red Sea, and across the desert to the Persian Gulf." In my opinion, this is a sufficient explanation for repeated attacks on the city.

More interesting...

I recall reading that Petra was supplied with water by an elaborate array of channels and cisterns that collected run-off from the mountains around it. The water could then be released slowly to irrigate the crops necessary for sustaining their population -- which exceeded the natural carrying capacity of the area. An important element of the collection system was the vegetation that prevented erosion and accumulation of sediment where water was stored.

One theory regarding the decline of Petra...

Overgrazing. They essentially put too many animals in the hills around their city. The vegetation was severely reduced. This changed the hydrology of the area. And their system for collecting water collapsed. Add in a couple of unexpected droughts that further reduced the water supply and they were history. The population declined. The remaining water management system fell into disrepair. The city was ripe for conquest. I wish I could recall where I learned about this.

I think there is a lesson here.

Yes, Bart, you are certainly right about the value of bitumen.  The historic sites that Dr. Zayn Bilkadi mentions are in Mesopotamia (N.B., Ramadi, well known by now to many Americans).  I believe there were also bitumen sources in Anatolia.

Anyway, Petra was not on a trade route between the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia, on one end, and the Mediterranean on the other.  So we should allow it to remain uncertain for now, why the Seleucid general Athenaeus attacked Petra.

You surely realize that you should not say "oil" when you mean "petroleum."  Olive oil in particular has been of terrific importance to the economy of many Mediterranean countries, from antiquity to the present.  There is a myth that when the city of Athens was founded, Poseidon and Athena competed for the honor of being its patron god.  Poseidon gave the city a spring of water, from which leaped out a horse -- beautiful, but a symbol of warfare.  Athena gave the city an olive tree, a symbol of peace.  The Athenians chose Athena; and indeed they grew rich by cultivating olives, and exporting olive oil.

On Petra: It was indeed for a while an important trading center; but if it was all that important, the Seleucids, the Ptolemies and the Romans would have done whatever it took to secure it.  The Romans were much more interested in securing northern Mesopotamia, including such centers as Aleppo, Edessa and Nisibis.

The ruins of Petra are very interesting, in that there are preserved not only the monumental tombs cut into the faces of cliffs, but also a Hellenistic column-lined avenue, a theatre, and a few temples.  But there are no residences!  One not unreasonable speculation is that it was a fascinating cultural meeting place of tent-dwelling Bedouin and Hellenistic urbanites.  Imagine: caravan-driving Arabs, writing Aramaic inscriptions, attending performances of Euripides tragedies in the theatre!

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

The Oracle at Delphi was a gas leak?  Fossil fuel used for divine inspiration.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

My beloved husband Michael is away for the American Library Association convention, in Seattle, of all places (don't worry, Grist folk, I did not tell him to dash up to your offices and give you all a big wet kiss from Canis):

Actually, it means, first of all, that I get to have Little Dog all to myself;

It also means, I get to watch whatever TV shows and movies I want to, without his demanding, "No, don't you dare turn off that stupid thing right now or I shall throw the TV out the window."

And so: first: a beautiful documentary, done by an Italian-American film-maker from Salem, Massachusetts, Joe Sultero, mostly about the story of his brother, Paul, who was sexually abused by a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston back in the mid 1960s, and his parents and their reaction.  Someone in my parish discussion recommended it, and did well to do so.  It is called "Hand of God," and it is very well done, and I highly recommend it too.  And I would not have got to see it, had that dear husband of mine not been out of town.

Also: The current movie to see, "The Battle of Algiers," by Gillo Pontecorvo.  Brilliant.  Plus, there are two accompanying disks, on the first of which I watched a documentary on the interesting though disappointing career of Pontecorvo, narrated by the late Edward Said; and on the second of which there is a fascinating documentary history on the independence of Algeria, including a fascinating discussion of what we would call "terrorist" bombing.

The book by Alastaire Horne on the French defeat in Algeria is all the rage right now.  And rightly so.  He has no idea if George W. Bush read it, although Henry Kissinger recommended it.  Kissinger, for his part, says he has never seen the movie.  So, who knows who knows what.  The movie struck me as more comparable to the Israeli situation than the Iraq situation, but the latter parallels are nevertheless there.

Finally, altogether different, there was the animated movie, "Beyond the Hedge."  Superb!  There can be no better indictment of Western suburban sprawl; a magnificent Western suburban epic!  Little Dog and I laughed and laughed.

And, I do not know if anyone ever developed a crush on a singer, sight unseen, just by listening to him: but I sure do have a thing, right now, about Ben Folds.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Biomass in the form of wood was the main energy source before coal.  Some want to return to biomass now.

Not a good plan then or now.  With it's land and soil devestation it stops natural CO2 sequestration.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Not yet.  One of the ISS astronauts said how he missed salad greens, in a recent interview.

The emotion I felt was about global warming, not infertility so I thought it was just me. I pushed the wrong button of a DVD and saw something most unexpected.  

On the DVD click the Possibility of Hope, very much about global warming, a mostly moral view from mostly famous philosophers. It is a fascinating short film.