|
Addictive Oil
by DeAnander (posted earlier on Open Thread)
To understand oil as an addictive substance requires, I think, an historical critique of energy consumption. Illich’s analysis of “energy slaves” as a substitute for human slavery might be a good place to start (“Energy and Equity” iirc). To consume fuels of some sort for cooking, for staying warm in winter, for making pottery, for smoking meat and fish, etc. is a long human tradition, just as it’s a long human tradition to ferment the juice of whatever’s handy and make some kind of tipple. Many cultures/people can handle their tipple all right, and integrated it into a healthy community life. However, alcoholism as an addictive behaviour pattern does exist, is well-attested, and causes harm; and imho petro-addiction also exists and is a major cause of various kinds of harm in our contemporary world.
An America in which the average person is said to walk less than one mile in an entire year — where people use their cars to drive down their driveways and pick up the mail in the mailbox — where children are ferried two blocks to school in 6000 lb SUVs — where motorised tie racks, garden hose reels, etc. are viable consumer goods — is an America aspiring to the indolent lifestyle of kings and pharaohs, supported by an infinite supply of energy slaves. This I would call addiction: the teenager who whines that he “can’t walk” three whole blocks, the American family that drives its 4 bikes on the back of its SUV 10 miles round trip to go for a 2 mile ride in a park; the American who easily racks up 20,000 Frequent Flyer miles every year, the 3-person family living in a 5000 sq ft home with 3 freezers and 5 TVs… in consumer culture there is no such thing as “enough”. The very daily fabric of many people’s lives has become dependent on consuming a hugely disproportionate amount (globally speaking), and an ever increasing amount, of a finite resource. (cf Affluenza, Shovelling Fuel for a Runaway Train, Luxury Fever and other critiques of the “infinite consumption” culture).
We can consume anything in quantities or in ways that match the pattern of abuse/excess/harm that we call ‘addiction’ — be it alcohol or other drugs, food, sex, or energy. The main qualities of addiction are that: (a) the consumption is excessive, and returns are diminishing so that more and more must be consumed to get the same thrill, (b) there is harm to self and others, and that harm is staunchly denied, (c) the desperate need for the consumable causes a rotting of moral fibre such that the addict is willing to sacrifice probity, honour, ideals in order to feed the habit.
I think we can see the pattern of excess in ever-escalating energy consumption as a marker of “affluence” [imho actually of laziness and stupidity, but that’s a minority opinion] in American consumer culture; in the staunch denial of harm (environmental damage, toxicity, global warming, road danger and vehicular manslaughter, etc); and in the amount of power and criminal behaviour permitted to the “dealer” (the oil cartels and oil-mafia families like the House of Bush and the House of Saud, not to mention the House of Rice, the House of Cheney, the House of Lay and many others). America’s smash-n-grab raid on the gas station that is Iraq very much resembles, to this jaundiced eye, a similar attack by any junkie on any ready source of drug money in any grimy inner city on Earth.
Consuming water can also take a similar path when water is scarce enough to be valuable and is squandered by an affluent few as a means of displaying status. We might say that in this case it’s the display of status that’s addictive, not the water itself; perhaps the same is true of petroleum, since (except for a few loonie gas-fume sniffers of school age) no one really drinks or snorts the stuff direct. But as a metaphor, addiction seems to me a fairly good fit for the dysfunctional relationship currently obtaining between Americans and other G7 dwellers, and the fossil fuel on which their profligate lifestyle is based. Like winos struggling in the gutter over the last of the bottle, we seem ready to humiliate ourselves and roll in any dirt, not to mention gouge the other guy’s eyes out and kick him in the kneecaps and nuts, in order to get that last gulp. It’s a pathetic [imho] and degrading spectacle.
In the chapter on global warming, Kyoto, and the various policy options and resulting scenarios of the latter, The Skeptical Environmentalist’s author, Bjorn Lomborg states:
“(T)he environmental movement has an interest in greenhouse gas curbs which goes far beyond the narrow concerns of global warming. Perhaps the best illustration comes from an episode back in March 1989, when electrochemists B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman shocked the world, announcing that they had achieved fusion at room temperature. As other researches tried and failed to to replicate cold fusion, it led to skepticism and today most researchers dismiss cold fusion as a grand illusion. Nevertheless, for a few short months, it was actually possible to believe that we had cold fusion within reach -essentially giving all humanity access to clean, cheap, and unlimited power.
“In April 1989 the Los Angeles Times interviewed a number of top environmentalists about their view on cold fusion.”
Lumborg then goes on to list the frankly horrified or dismayed reactions of Jerry Rifkin, John Holdren, Laura Nader, Paul Ehrlich, and Barry Commoner.
He writes, “What these statements of opposition to an almost ideal energy source show is that the relevant agenda is not about energy or the economics of energy. Indeed this could not be the case, since the question from the Los Angeles Times was originally formulated ‘what if cold fusion would be cheap and clean?’ Instead the opposition is based on a different agenda, focused on the potentially damaging consequences from using cold fusion. Essentially, the criticism points to other values, arguing for a change to a decentralized society which is less resource oriented, less industrialized, less commercialized, less production-oriented. Such an agenda is entirely valid, but it is important to realize that the discussion is no longer primarily about energy.
“So this is the reason as to why the global warming discussion sounds like the clash of two religions…[The approach I have presented] attempts to deal with the basic problem of global warming, and tries to identify the best possible policy to deal with it. But it does not ask of its solutions that they should also help fundamentally change the fabric of society.
“The other approach, using global warming as a springboard for other wider policy goals is entirely legitimate, but in all honesty these goals should naturally be made explicit. When the scenario modelers tell us that the B1 scenario is ‘best,’ they really tell us that they prefer a society with less wealth but also with less climate change. However, I think they really have to explicate this choice, given a difference in wealth of $107 trillion and a climate cost of ‘just’ $5 trillion. Likewise, will B1 really be better for the developing countries, loosing out on some 75 percent personal income?”
My own thought on this is that, while the environmental movement may have begun out of concern largely for polluted air and waterways, its primary source of anxiety and discontent has become scientific/industrial/urban/commercial society itself – that is, the modern world. Whereas early on the focus might have been the eradication of smoggy skies and filthy streams for better health and more attractive surroundings in a highly-developed nation or civilzation, the focus has gradually shifted to, or revealed itself to be, a questioning of, or opposition to, the nature and structures of our post-industrial existence.
That existence will never go, has never gone, unchallenged or unchanged, but there is irreconcilable difference between those who genuinely believe it’s a cancer, a scourge, a blight to be eliminated, and those to whom its maintenance, growth, and constant improvement are worthwhile.
Posted by: Pat | Sep 10 2004 10:00 utc | 42
Lomborg is just a fucking traitor and I can’t take seriously anyone who refers to this friggin sell-out hack.
It’s exactly what we’ve seen with Big Tobacco, find a few traitorous scum scientists that would gladly sell their soul and their parents for money, make them write 3rd rank pseudo-research book that argue that up is down, contrary to what 95% of serious scientists think, so that you can force the stupid media to play a moronic he said / she said game, just like we see now between Dems and Reps. As Krugman said, if Bush stated that Earth is flat, the headlines would be “Shape of the Earth: opinions differ”.
The true problem is that the current level of waste and consumption, and the current overpopulation, pose such a huge number of problems that you can’t simply solve one and everything will be rosy after that. You will still have 6 bio people to feed, that need clean water in increasing quantity, that will all want their McMansion, want their car, so that most of the country will be turned into parking lots, highways and suburbs, not to mention the complete destruction of any surviving wildlife and of countless species and ecosystems.
Lomborg just forgets a simple fact: mankind is one single animal species, and we’re currently speaking of the extinction of something like 50 to 70% of species more “advanced” than bugs.
Frankly, I know numerous scientists, and they definitely are not opposed to “scientific, urban, post-industrial structures. That’s also funny to mention first opposition to industrial world then to post-industrial world, since there’s quite a big difference between both. As far as I’m concerned, I sure think the commercial society is a pile of horse manure disease-plagued, but I’m not a wacko survivalist from the Montana militia, and clearly am one of the most pro-urban and pro-scientific people you could meet here around. Doesn’t mean I’m opposed to good standard of living, I’m opposed to the stupid waste that most aspects of society are – and in fact most human beings are -, with a technological level that is still very primitive in most aspects, and a scientific awareness that is closer to the Dark Ages than to the Enlightenment. But don’t worry, it’s not that people want a good and safe life that bothers me, and it is not the ultimate source of the problem. Many of the current environmental crap is caused by the current ultra-capitalist system that runs on waste and massive consumption, where people have to buy and dump stuff to increase sales, so that the GDP can increase. And most of the bad behaviour of people come from 2 sources: search for profit and competition, which are quite linked. If you get rid of these, you can then set up a socio-political system whose goals will be more reasonable and worthy: first, ensuring survival of life on Earth, second, ensuring survival of mankind on Earth, third, ensuring all all people everywhere have a decent life and decent living conditions – all those thought and sought out on a global level, with no care to tiny nations and borders.
vbo: Well, it’s clear that Africa and most of Asia has a lot more work to do than Europe or the US. We are doing our part in reducing the overpopulation; it’s on the environmental level that we have to work more, so that we can get more efficient and environment-friendly technologies that could then be implemented not only here but throughout the rest of the world. The average pollution is far lesser in poorer nations, but they’re increasing it and their booming populations are making up for their low per capita waste and pollution level. So, demographics surely show the biggest part of the burden will fall on their shoulders, sooner or later – not that there isn’t work left to do in the West, of course.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Sep 10 2004 11:06 utc | 43
How, one must ask, are we to set about “preserving” that whose complexity, the author states, is beyond our understanding? How do we know when we are successfully “preserving” it and when we are not? How can we maintain, in its current state, a system whose intricate details we do not know and cannot imagine? Something cannot be both within and beyond our capacity to control, yet maintenance requires control over – mastery of – the thing to be maintained.
Seems to me a trifle odd to pick on this one turn of phrase in Partridge’s essay, but if we must . . . the objection to it doesn’t appear very substantive to me.
A 7 year old with a hammer may be induced to “preserve” a priceless 18th century chiming pocketwatch, not by understanding how it works or being able to recontstruct it, but simply by refraining from smashing it to bits.
Or, perhaps a more apposite analogy: I don’t understand the over-200 endocrinal and hormonal mechanisms necessary to keep this body of mine living another hour or two; even given a crash course in endocrinology, a stopwatch, a laptop computer and a lot of coaching, I could not possibly “manage” or control all those mechanisms well enough to keep myself alive — and I have to sleep sometime, too. Nevertheless I can “preserve” my health by maintaining my body generally in decent condition, avoiding toxins and unecessary risks, getting a balanced diet and enough sleep and water, etc., and letting its bogglingly complicated systems manage themselves, as they evolved to do.
I disagree entirely with the premise that we can only preserve anything by micromanaging or totally controlling it down to the last detail. Preservation of ecosystems is far more analogous to the “management” of one’s general health, and requires if anything a stepping back from the reductionist, Cartesian view of living systems as simple, knowable, controllable mechanisms. Refraining from doing harm, and cautiously doing what appears to help, are all that most living systems require in order to thrive.
Treating living systems like carburetors or FEA codes, thinking that we can tinker with one or another aspect of them in isolation or somehow take over a “controller” role in a living system, has been imho one of the roots of our folly and of gross failures and inefficiencies in our agriculture and other sectors.
To think that we can only benefit from or preserve something — be it the welfare of the people or the health of an ecosystem — by totalitarian control and micromanagement, is the Soviet error. Certain systems are so complex that the techno-managerial approach is doomed to failure. We’re living with the results of those failures on several fronts at present: our food, public health, and transport systems are badly broken, and the actuarial stats are starting to show it.
When the USSR got to this point — when there was no further real evidence of progress in public health, and substantive evidence of regression — the response was to deny and bury the research and insist (as do Lomborg, Simon, and their fellow Panglossians in our own time) that everything was fine, just fine. Flailing attempts to cover up the extent of the Chernobyl disaster were perhaps the last straw for governmental credibility: there was too much evidence known to too many people, and the tissue of secrecy, disinformation and denial crumbled.
The Bush regime has been busily suppressing many different kinds of scientific research, actuarial information, public health information etc. since coming to power. It remains to be seen how many years they can get away with playing the denial game.
Posted by: DeAnander | Sep 20 2004 6:42 utc | 51
|
