Once upon a time, humans knew how to survive (and even thrive), utilizing strictly renewable energy sources, but agribusiness and fossil fuel dependency have effectively deprived most of the global population of its hunter/gatherer survival skills, and in doing so, have overproduced by billions the number of hungry mouths the earth is being asked to feed.

One of the markers of the onset of the condition known as ‘peak oil’ is skyrocketing prices at the gas pumps. We are certainly not there (i.e. at ‘peak oil’) - yet. But the spike in fuel prices caused by Katrina suggests that the anti-fossil fuel theorists and advocates are, well, not far off the mark. What do you think about this?
~Crazybaldman

Simple Wisdom
“We are a society that is killing its grandchildren to feed its children.” Tom Brown Jr.

Below is an excerpt from a webpage describing the energy dilemma. For the full page click here:
http://dieoff.com/synopsis.htm

“H.T. Odum’s solar “eMergy” (eMbodied energy) measures all of the energy (adjusted for quality) that went into the production of a product. Odum’s calculations show that the only forms of alternative energy that can survive the exhaustion of fossil fuel are muscle, burning biomass (wood, animal dung, or peat), hydroelectric, geothermal in volcanic areas, and some wind electrical generation. Nuclear power could be viable if one could overcome the shortage of fuel. No other alternatives (e.g., solar voltaic) produce a large enough net sej to be sustainable. In short, there is no way out.

The fact that our society can not survive on alternative energy should come as no surprise, because only an idiot would believe that windmills and solar panels can run bulldozers, elevators, steel mills, glass factories, electric heat, air conditioning, aircraft, automobiles, etc., AND still have enough energy left over to support a corrupt political system, armies, etc.

[ If you are interested in more specific details, read the messages at http://www.egroups.com/messages/energyresources or write to me at mailto:j@qmail.com ]” http://dieoff.com/synopsis.htm

Disasters are almost by definition about the failure of authority, in part because the powers that be are supposed to protect us from them, in part also because the thousand dispersed needs of a disaster overwhelm even the best governments, and because the government version of governing often arrives at the point of a gun. But the authorities don’t usually fail so spectacularly. Failure at this level requires sustained effort. The deepening of the divide between the haves and have nots, the stripping away of social services, the defunding of the infrastructure, mean that this disaster—not of weather but of policy—has been more or less what was intended to happen, if not so starkly in plain sight.

…

Many of the stories we hear about sudden natural disasters are about the brutally selfish human nature of the survivors, predicated on the notion that survival is, like the marketplace, a matter of competition, not cooperation. Cooperation flourishes anyway. (Slonsky and Bradshaw were part of a large group that had set up a civilized, independent camp.) And when we look back at Katrina, we may see that the greatest savagery was that of our public officials, who not only failed to provide the infrastructure, social services, and opportunities that would have significantly decreased the vulnerability of pre-hurricane New Orleans but who also, when disaster did occur, put their ideology before their people.

We should not be surprised, then, that what transpires in the immediate aftermath of a disaster is nothing like the popular version. People rarely panic or stampede, nor do they often immediately engage in looting or other acts of opportunism. The Scottish-born mathematician Eric Temple Bell, who witnessed the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, saw “no running around the streets, or shrieking, or anything of that sort� but instead people who “walked calmly from place to place, and watched the fire with almost indifference, and then with jokes, that were not forced either, but wholly spontaneous.� Another survivor, San Francisco editor Charles B. Sedgwick, noted-perhaps somewhat hyperbolically-that “even the selfish, the sordid and the greedy became transformed that day-and, indeed, throughout that trying period-and true humanity reigned.� This phenomenon of “surprising� human kindness and good sense is replicated time and again.

Many official disaster-preparedness scenarios nonetheless presume that human beings are prone to panic and in need of policing. A sort of Hobbesian true human nature emerges, according to this version, and people trample one another to flee, or loot and pillage, or they haplessly await rescue. In the movie version, this is the necessary precondition for John Wayne, Harrison Ford, or one of their shovel-jawed brethren to save the day and focus the narrative. In the government version, this is why we need the government. In 1906, for example, no one quite declared martial law, but soldiers, policemen, and some armed college students patrolled the streets of San Francisco looking for looters, with orders to shoot on sight. Even taking food from buildings about to burn down was treated as a crime: property and order were prized above survival or even reason. But “the authorities� are too few and too centralized to respond to the dispersed and numerous emergencies of a disaster. Instead, the people classified as victims generally do what can be done to save themselves and one another. In doing so, they discover not only the potential power of civil society but also the fragility of existing structures of authority.

It’s worth the read.

I do understand it’s just another set of Leviathan’s broken promises. I also understand it’s an example of things to come. It still makes me furious, though.

How many conservatives (and perhaps liberals as well) have asserted over the years that a strong authority figure is the only thing preventing people from generally running around and engaging in murder, mayhem and destruction?

Yet in NO, we find that apart from a tiny minority, in a situation of mass starvation and desperation, the great majority is maintaining civil discourse, person to person supportive behaviors and, in some cases, full on organic tribal development.

Sounds like solid evidence suggesting that, in reality, man is NOT flawed…

Janene

As a result, it is beginning to feel a bit like the 1970’s, another decade in which people lost faith in their institutions and lost a sense of confidence about the future.

I included that last paragraph because, interestingly, the turmoil of the 1970s was largely traceable to the North American Hubbert Peak….