Apologies to all for the bile above. Sometimes, it just gets to be too much.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 10 2005 9:00 utc | 4

@ Monolycus–no worries, mate. There isn’t bile enough, it seems.
W himself claims to be born again….and we know the basic idea behind the Rapture, that is, all the good, God fearin’ folk will go to heaven, whilst all others, well, don’t–
Bush’s policies in Iraq, on global warming,Israel, hell, most anywhere, are so abysmal that planning must be part of it–because millioms of deaths don’t matter in this context, and neither does the environment.
At times, I even believe that “the elite” –whatever that means — intend to eliminate the hoi polloi. Robotic and genetically-engineered servants will be cheap and plentiful.
OK. Thanks for this space.

Posted by: thepuffin | Jul 10 2005 13:38 utc | 6

“A self-destructing species suggests to me that the Intelligent Designer is a prankster.”
Either that, or he/she/it just isn’t very intelligent.

Posted by: Billmon | Jul 10 2005 16:13 utc | 8

Would putting the brakes on carbon emissions really have ruined the economy as Bush stated while opposing Kyoto or any other efforts to limit the absolute amount of carbon emissions?
My basic question is whether or not a capitalist system can sustain itself without economic growth. No matter what the issue, all ends of the political spectrum fall back on economic growth as panacea. Can we not have a real debate about growth without everyone blindly defending the necessity of growth? Are there no other viable economic models that would allow civilization to flourish and sustain a good standard of living without undermining the environmental and ecological base of the pyramid that supports all life on earth? As we erode the life support base we must rely more and more on the base of technological services that are kept functioning by a growing economy and a growing demand for energy. Seems like a vicious cycle that Bush and the Competitive Economic Enterprise team love to peddle. Unfortunately, we are all caught in the centripedal force of their axles of evil.

Posted by: lou | Jul 10 2005 19:06 utc | 10

Lou, it probably wouldn’t have ruined the economy, if it was done properly – there’s a lot of work to do to change from an oil-based, massively CO2 spewing economy to something more broadly based and more efficient. It would however cause massive dislocation in the economy, and would have required Americans to make sacrifices.
Bush’s first rule: never ask for a sacrifice. I don’t think he understands the concept. He couldn’t possibly ask them to drive smaller cars, to drive less often, to make their houses more energy efficient. The American way of life is non-negotiable. Of course, you can’t negotiate with the laws of physics, but Bush knows laws don’t apply to him.
And, of course, the people most affected by any changes would be his “base”, the very rich in the energy industry.
The corporate system (I’m not going to call it capitalism any more, since that covers too many systems. and it’s got not one thing to do with free-markets or laissez-faire) can’t survive without growth as currently constituted. I’ll leave it to one of the experts to explain why.

Posted by: Colman | Jul 10 2005 19:39 utc | 12

OK, and Bush wanted leeway to wreck the economy all by himself without doing any cleanup…?
Someday, all his family’s millions won’t save them from dying out with everyone else.

Posted by: Scorpio | Jul 10 2005 20:05 utc | 14

Alabama and Colman,
Thank you for your replies. Economics is way out of my range of expertise, if I have any, but I wonder if we had a more accurate and precise scale of growth that measured real progress, I think we would find that we are on the descent. Does not our GDP measure all kinds of economic activity including payment for building prisons, fighting crime, fighting pollution, building arms, fighting terrorism, building inefficient technologies and modes of transport, increasing corporate profits via outsourcing, etc.
Bush wants to measure our net economic output per unit of carbon emission as a means of avoiding putting an absolute cap on carbon emissions. More economic growth per unit emission is better in his calculation even though the outcome will mean more carbon dioxide emissions.
What have we gained here? Seems like we could be achieving a great deal more progress on much less or even overall negative “growth”. Smaller might mean smarter.

Posted by: lou | Jul 10 2005 20:13 utc | 16

Monolycus | July 10, 2005 04:45 AM
every day & every night unfortuabtely my friend
thanks for your post – it amplifies all the other things you have said
passion is not the immature mind but on the contrary is the refined & tough heart

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 10 2005 21:34 utc | 18

jj
in fact i’d welcome a class war right now

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 10 2005 21:57 utc | 20

jj: “One thought on global warming. We’re missing the point if we merely think of it as a distant apocalyptic possibility”
It is very possible that events will cascade rapidly into unforeseeable scenarios that no one has yet imagined. Mankind will likely interact in a negatively synergistic manner with many of these events, compounding their effects. Our ability to adapt will be affected by diminishing energy supplies, the continuing migration of the world’s people from rural to more densely packed urban hell holes, terrorism and the war against terrorism, pandemics worsened by our alteration of native ecosystems, conflicts over diminishing resources, etc.
Difficult to see the wingnuts’ prediction that warming will be good for us!

Posted by: lou | Jul 10 2005 22:08 utc | 22

Lou, Wingnuts actually saying that?? Thanks for elaborating – just as we spiralled up ever so slowly over the centuries, so we’ll spiral down, but possibly over 1 century. And when faced w/that, it looks like everyone’s going so far over the deep end that it could all explode in mere decades.
Our ability to adapt will be affected by diminishing energy supplies, the continuing migration of the world’s people from rural to more densely packed urban hell holes,
this is one thing that particularly sets me off about the Pirates “treaties” they’re shoving down everyone’s throats to give patina of legitimacy to their plunder – NAFTA & it’s carcinogenic cousins. It’s critically important now as the Culture of Oil fades, that we stabilize the peasant cultures around the globe. These rural communities have the residue of knowledge built up over eons of evolution. Many are self-sustaining, making virtually no demands on the outside world. Once they’re driven off their land & the Pirates take over that knowledge is lost forever and they’ll have no way to sustain themselves, as Lou notes. So, it’s not about amending these treaties, they must be crumpled & burned. Their fundamental assumptions are completely askew. The only question they answer is how can the Pirates most efficiently plunder the globe – the people be damned. Where the hell do these Pirates think they live anyway? Unless they have 2nd homes I don’t know about on Mars…
Listening to Elites is Utterly Toxic. But here’s a link to a non-toxic website: Link Compendium site w/energy/resource news & what local communities are doing.
#######
As I was driving the other day…I thought about all the wind generated @25-30mph & wondered if we couldn’t hybridize a car w/a sailboat, to harness that wind & store it to help charge batteries. I’m not an engineer, but that’s a lot of energy wasted – & there’s no way of driving w/out creating that wind.

Posted by: jj | Jul 10 2005 22:34 utc | 24

Bike Race Plagued with Debilitating Disease
By NICHOLAS K. PAUL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
July 10, 2005
PORTLAND — The famous Seattle-to-Portland bicycle battle this weekend was barely
half way through when first reports began coming in of an epidemic of what was being
described as scrotal abrasion, a medical condition usually referred to as SCROTUS.
Seattle P-I reporter Grey Bates was the first to notice an unusual twist on these reports.
“I’d been assigned by the editor to cover S-T-P, but my usual beat is the political scene,
so naturally, I started asking the injured bike racers for their political affiliations. It was
only after I’d returned and was typing up my report, that I noticed the odd correlation:
all of the SCROTUS victims had declared themselves as registered Democrats!”
Ken Mehlman, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, immediately fired off
a salvo in the Washington Post,” “As the first woman ever to serve on the United States
Supreme Court ….” (A Republican aide standing near whispered the issue was about the
Seattle-to-Portland bicycle race SCROTUS attack, and not the ex-Supreme Court Justice.)
Mehlman was heard muttering sarcastically after the microphones had been turned off,
“How the hell can Democrats be suffering from scrotal abrasion, if they have no balls?”
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement
condemning the Republican slur, “”I join all Americans today in offering my condolences
to victims of today’s Seattle-to-Portland bicycle race who were suffering from SCROTUS.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their friends and their families. We remain
steadfast in our commitment to defeating Republicans who threaten our personal values.
Their scanties are so firmly stuck up their asses in allegiance to Neo-con fundamentalist
frock hats, it’s no wonder they didn’t come down with scrotal abrasion.”
The President of the U.S. Bishops called it “tragic” that the remaining bicycle riders now
have to face, “the primal terror which seeks to divide rider against rider and which over-
shadows the contest with a specter of scrotal tears perpetrated against the innocents.”
Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., made the comments in a letter of support
and condolence to the race event organizers.
The SCROTUS victims have been released from Portland General Hospital, and are being
returned to Seattle by AFL-CIO support vans and accompanying SEIU para-medical staff.
/API

Posted by: tante aime | Jul 10 2005 23:35 utc | 26

The rich and powerful have the responsibility to change all this.
Assuming they want to change all this. What if global environmental devastation, like the War on Terra, is part of the plan to produce a over culture of neo feudal aristocrats?
Their actions make far more sense once you realize the destruction and chaos is intentional.
It doesn’t matter how indebted they make every ensuing generation into perpetuity with their feckless gluttony because they will work to ensure that there won’t be any future generations?
Nahh… although the Dominionists have always pretended that, they’re counting on the existence of future generations. Who else is going to do all the work? They just want to make sure they’re the ones with all the guns and gold.

Posted by: kelley b. | Jul 11 2005 0:43 utc | 28

Let’s talk about what a sincere attempt to reduce carbon emissions would really entail.

Current fossil fuel-based lifestyles must be drastically changed to limit the harsher impacts of climate change. A blind eye is being collectively turned to the gross insufficiency of action being taken. The only policy that can prevent the relatively “safe” concentration of carbon emissions accumulating into the atmosphere from being exceeded is the Contraction & Convergence programme proposed by the Global Commons Institute, which aims to lessen emissions at the same time as working towards an equal per capita ration for the world’s population. Rationing will have to be mandatory – reduction of CO2 emissions on this scale cannot realistically be achieved on a voluntary basis.
Yet the public is in denial. We delude ourselves that our current energy profligacy – let alone its spread, as reflected in the continuing rise in road, rail and air travel – does not have to stop. Ask anyone what they intend to do in retirement, and the great majority will say “see the world”. Ask anyone whether they think government will be prepared to curtail choice to that end, and they will say “no”, glibly and outrageously implying that we are too selfish to save the planet.
[…]
Meanwhile, the Government wilfully continues to hold to the view that economic growth and protection of the environment are reconcilable objectives when it is clear that this growth is too closely coupled to greenhouse gas emissions for this to be possible.
[…]
Against this highly disturbing backcloth, only one solution appears to be viable: Contraction & Convergence. Support for it is growing rapidly – all the main political parties, with the exception of Labour, are behind it (as are the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the General Synod of the Church of England and the House of Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee).

That is Mayer Hillman (a personal hero of mine from waaaay back) writing in the UK. In the US, I don’t think it can be said that any political parties — except the marginalised Greens — are in favour of CandC. There are independent grassroots efforts along these lines, such as those being organised by the Post Carbon Institute. But on the whole, both parties toe the 19th century industrial line: growth is good, and artifacts are worth more than biotic infrastructure.
As a conservative contested w/me over at Eurotrib, “If it comes down to people vs trees…” (s/he will cut down the trees to employ some more people, every time). This attitude perplexes me, as it assumes that there is some fundamental disconnect between “people” and “environment” (trees, watersheds, species diversity etc). Whereas anyone and everyone should know that people eat plants and animals, and animals eat plants and other animals, and if we kill all the plants and animals — particularly the really small ones in the soil and at the bottom of the food chain — we don’t eat. If we kill the soil, we don’t eat. If we pollute our water sources, we don’t drink (or we drink and get sick and watch our kids die). If we kill the trees, there’s less oxygen and less shade and less water. If we clearcut hillsides, we kill rivers and streams and there’s less fish. Every time we destroy fundamental biotic infrastructure, the day comes closer when we go hungry because we’ve wrecked the systems that provide our food. It is ourselves we are destroying.
The Oglalla’s running dry. Saline incursion is plaguing farmers in my local agricultural valleys. When we wreck agriculture we wreck our civilisation — hello? anyone awake up there on the bridge?
The worst of it is that, as China demonstrates, humanity can continue to scrape by in a seriously degraded environment — a sickly, struggling humanity in many cases, suffering from toxicity, indifferent nutrition, poverty, and the ironfisted rule necessary to maintain order in such conditions. Is this our collective future? A whole world that looks like China — the landscape eroded and dominated by fast-growing weedy species, all the larger species gone forever, millions making a marginal living picking over vast garbage heaps, hoping to reclaim something valuable from the detritus of industrial overproduction? Sure we can live like this — “we” being our species. We can live in deserts, we can live in snowy wastelands, we can live on rocky, cold, foggy islands. But the conditions under which we are likely to live in a depleted, scarred, bankrupt ecosystem are harsh both physically and politically. Democracy is unlikely to thrive under these conditions — to say the least.
Sometimes it is not our extinction I fear so much as a mean, ugly, and sickly future — a future of decimated, algae-choked oceans, forests replaced by weedy scrubland worldwide, vast deserts where we destroyed living prairies with our liquidation-based agriculture, poisoned lakes, fishless rivers, birdless thickets, struggling unhealthy crops, sickly animals, pests, parasites, ailing children — and the absolute rule of anyone who can control the last remaining food supplies. As I noted someplace over at Eurotrib, whether we survive in such a world under warlordism and violent anarchy, or under some kind of hypertechnomanagerial corporate totalitarianism, it’s not a future that any person accustomed to a moderate amount of freedom can look forward to with equanimity.
Especially when — and this is maddening — there is an alternative. There are other strategies, more likely to succeed in the long term. The trouble is that they are humble, low-tech (in the tooling and interventions sense, not in the knowledge and skills sense), labour-intensive, and regionally/locally empowering instead of centralising and profit-squeezing.
What Will We Eat As The Oil Runs Out? asks Richard Heinberg, high-profile prophet of peak oil doom. His point is that our survival is best assured by yeoman or peasant agriculture, by diversification, localised production, sustainable/organic practise.
Ethiopian Environment Minister Tewolde Berhan says that organic agriculture is the only real solution to famine in Africa. “His application for a visa to attend talks in Canada on GM labelling was turned down earlier this year, suggesting that his influence is feared.”
Increasingly, voices are being raised in defence of distributed ubiquitous micro-power projects instead of centralised monolithic super high-tech power sources like nuke plants. Again the emphasis is small and humble, over grandiose and gargantuan; on local vs centralised. And the implication is local control, local autonomy, and less profiteering and gouging for centralised corporadoes and financiers. Thus we can expect to hear reams of propaganda about how these distributed solutions will never work. Kinda like the mainframe manufacturers assured us that the personal PC was a pipe dream and would never be more than a toy. They and their monster products would always be necessary for serious computing. Well hmmm. Let me introduce you to my Beowulf cluster 🙂
Small is not only beautiful, it’s safer, more resilient (can terrorists take out every home power plant on a million homes? tough job. but it’s not that hard to shut down a nuke plant that powers a million homes). It was the people on bikes who managed to get home earlier than anyone else after the London bombings — small, human-powered, autonomous, mobile, they were not dependent on gargantuan monolithic systems or controlled, regimented roadways.
I would say the watchwords for a survivable future are Small, Light, Mobile, Ubiquitous, Low/Medium-Tech, Maintainable, Local, Distributed, Replicable.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 11 2005 1:44 utc | 30

So, much for my attempt to keep a can-do upbeat Sunday thread!!

Posted by: jj | Jul 11 2005 5:07 utc | 32

Thanks De for the clarification…
KUNSTLER NAILS IT:
What all these cretins seem to miss is the cold hard fact that today’s transient global economic relations are a product of very special transient circumstances, namely, relative world peace and absolutely reliable supplies of cheap energy. Subtract either of these elements from the equation and you will see globalism evaporate so quickly it will suck the air out of your lungs.
…
GLOBALISM IS YESTERDAY’S TOMORROW.

Posted by: jj | Jul 11 2005 6:37 utc | 34

Sincere thanks for the posting and follow ups here, plus the great links.
Those holding a great chunk of the earth’s wealth would find our discussion here quite alarming. In their linear way of thinking they are not aware that we are at a crucial crossroads, that any alternative path is even necessary. The conventional thinking seems to be that we can create some alternative for cheap oil that will maintain the existing oil based infrastructure and have a minimal impact on our way of living.
It will take much of the earth’s wealth to steer this ship on to a sustainable path. But, perhaps more difficult will be the change in ethos that would be required within each person. In the west there are very few that would willingly accept that “the earth can provide for every man’s need but not every man’s greed” (Gandhi).
But, ironic as it might seem, and related to the posts above, it could be that the Chinese are more amenable to a shift in worldview than the western world is. They know that the growth they seek will not be fueled on oil for more than a few years. They see that catstrophic effects of their environmental destruction. As much of the world’s wealth shifts to them, perhaps they will begin to lead the way. Or perhaps, their own oligarchy will keep the western model concentrating wealth and power in a rigidly, immutable form.

Posted by: lou | Jul 11 2005 12:00 utc | 36

Interview with Jared Diamond
Radical Critique of Jared Diamond Part 1… Part 2… Part 3… Part 4
and an interesting account of how liquidator-industrialism triumphed over conservationism as Stalinism took over the USSR. Author’s notes on the intimidation and politicisation of the science community are particularly relevant, imho, in view of BushCo’s assault on the sciences and corporate “undue influence” on the academy and on research.
His critique of Diamond ranges from fuzzy to trenchant; I think it is at its strongest in Part 4 where he asks how someone as smart as Diamond could be taken in by a Chevron Potemkin village, and points out the unhealthy ties between WWF and various corporate ransackers and vandals.
Anyway an interesting read from a rare animal, a Marxist environmentalist.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 12 2005 1:24 utc | 38

try these
Part 3
Part 4

Posted by: b real | Jul 12 2005 14:38 utc | 40

no problem, DeAnander, thanks for drawing those to our attention. the critique of guns germs & steel is also of interest, as several things hav always bothered me about that book.

Posted by: b real | Jul 12 2005 16:50 utc | 42

@cog you and me both!
in spare time I try to acquire skills or at least rudimentary knowledge useful in a more localised economy. but it is humbling to realise that in most 3rd world economies I am not good enough at any basic useful skill to earn my daily bowl of rice.
I’m guessing that in a post-Peak economy there will be big niches for small appliance repair, bicycle repair, low-power local transport (bike couriers and messengers, rickshaws, bike and moped based hauling using trailers); also travelling services like knife and tool sharpening, sewing machine adjustment, “rag and bone men”, DC electrical systems trouble shooting and repair, carpentry, tailoring and clothing repair/alterations, shoe repair, furniture repair… “victory gardening” (urban gardening) may become a part time money maker for some.
in other words a lot of jobs that have atrophied because we currently throw stuff away instead of fixing it, may become lively entrepreneurial oppos in a more frugal economy. I am dubious about the future of glassblowing, welding, and other crafts that use enormous amounts of heat (energy) — those services may get very expensive. possibly street-vending of hot foods, or operating an oven-for-fee service, may become important again as it was in earlier epochs when a small household or single person could not justify the fuel expense of heating up an entire cookstove or oven for just one meal.
the fabrication of hand powered tools may be a growth sector 🙂 one can already find many such tools from e.g. Lehman’s (suppliers to the Amish and Mennonites) but as long haul shipping may get very costly I would expect to see local ingenuity at work fabricating local versions of hand-crank, pedal, treadle, bow, and other similar human-powered drives for small toolage.
some industrial skills like machining, mechanical engineering, metalworking, etc may actually become more valuable/important than they are at present with energy-intensive automation and remote outsourcing eroding their employment base in wealthy nations… high-knowledge specialities like soil biology, entomology, plant propagation and breeding, water reclamation and analysis, basic health care, chemistry (can’t make biodiesel w/o chemistry skills), nutrition, etc. would be essential to regional viability.
but of course those who play with crystal balls tend to get glass splinters, so take all this with several grains of salt… in a more dystopian scenario the only skill that matters will be stockpiling, aiming and firing guns (ugh).

Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 12 2005 23:23 utc | 44

May I also offer my thanks to the link in the link which lead to J.M. Blauts critique of Guns, Germs and Steel.
Some things I knew why they annoyed me (China for example) and some I didn´t know in particular. What annoyed me most however, was that I (as a student of both history and science) could easily see that Diamond had not bothered to actually try (or failed) to understand the positions of modern history and thus fell in so many traps already found and marked. It just could have become such a good book otherwise. And that annoys me.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jul 13 2005 0:41 utc | 46