2005-03-31T00:27:59-05:00 pivot admin dude http://www.chrismonster.com/test/blg/mblog.php pivotadmin@chrismonster.com mind of a monster tag:pivotpowered,2005:monsterblog Pivot Copyright (c) 2005, Authors of monsterblog 2005-03-30T23:47:00-05:00 2005-03-30T23:47:00-05:00 tag:pivotpowered,2005:monsterblog.24 2005-03-30T23:47:00-05:00

by paul hawken, 1994.  my recent reading has often quoted hawken so i though i'd finally read the source.  one nifty number off the top: every day we burn the equivalent of 27 years worth of stored solar energy.  in other words, we are consuming energy at 10,000 times the rate it is arriving on earth.

the ecology of commerce chris ]]> 2005-01-10T00:17:00-05:00 2005-01-10T00:17:00-05:00 tag:pivotpowered,2005:monsterblog.23 2005-01-10T00:17:00-05:00

i've begun asking people whether they are familiar with the debate over "peak oil".  not surprisingly, most are not. the controversy regards how an initially ridiculed, yet ultimately accurate, 1956 prediction of a 1970 peak in US oil production might be applied to world oil production.

half empty? half full? chris peak oil". not surprisingly, most are not.

the controversy regards how an initially ridiculed, yet ultimately accurate, 1956 prediction of a 1970 peak in US oil production might be applied to world oil production.

having now read several books ( and numerous articles ) on the subject, it has become quite apparent that this battle is an entrenched holy war between pessimists and optimists.

so far, this argument has largely taken place under the radar of mainstream media, with a few exceptions.

if the optimists are correct, that is almost certainly where it will remain for now.

if the pessimists are correct, then, at worst, we are almost at The End Of The World As We Know It.

are not.

are so.

too dramatic?

consider that cheap fossil fuels and their byproducts are everywhere, having become the lifeblood of 'modern' civilization, powering not only the worldwide movement of goods (and globalization), but also providing the chemical feedstocks for plastics, fertilizers, pesticides, and medicines.

the pessimists ( notable geologists among them ) predict the global peak is upon us Pretty Much Now; demand will soon forever exceed supply. the price of oil will steadily increase, and the supply will diminish.

the optimists, placing their bets on the higher range of the reserve estimates, or on further technical innovation in extracting oil, put this stark reality a few decades further away, affording us (if they are correct) the luxury of ignoring it for a while yet.

even Alan Greenspan danced around this question in a recent address.

yes, there are today some alternative fuels to oil, but none will ever be as cheap. ( if they were, we would be using those instead of oil. )

the inevitable peak does not mean the end of oil, or the end of energy, but rather, the end of cheap energy. in an economy built upon a seemingly endless supply, the implications will be painful and far reaching.

i suppose what i find most interesting about this debate is that it is not over the question of if, but of when. there is a 'boy who cried wolf' quality to predictions about running out of oil, yet, ultimately, the wolf does show up.

where this line of thinking really takes us is toward fundamental notions of sustainability. virtually all our fuel sources were, at some point, solar energy. wind, hydro, wood, biomass, oil - all of this energy came from the sun. oil is nothing more than millions of years of sunlight stored up in organisms that died, sank, and became crude. what we are doing now is liberating that energy in a much shorter timeframe of a few hundred years. ( we're also liberating the carbon as well, but that's arguably a separate problem :)

it seems to me, then, that the only sustainable rate at which energy can be extracted from these stored forms is at the same rate it is being added.

and that may require us to imagine and make real a world very different from the one we live in today.

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Asked during the second presidential debate about his performance on the environment, George Bush pointed to his administration's "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" initiatives. "I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land," Bush remarked. Since first hearing about these proposals, I had eagerly waited for the moment when someone could publicly confront the president on these ghastly misnomers.  Kerry seized the opening.  Sort of.

clear skies and healthy forests chris second presidential debate about his performance on the environment, George Bush pointed to his administration's "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" initiatives.

"I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land," Bush remarked.

Since first hearing about these proposals, I had eagerly waited for the moment when someone could publicly confront the president on these ghastly misnomers. Kerry seized the opening. Sort of.

"The Clear Skies bill that he just talked about, it's one of those Orwellian names you pull out of the sky," observed Kerry.

As Tina Fey of SNL's Weekend Update pointed out a few days later, "John, you lost us at 'Orwellian'."

Kerry was valiantly trying to highlight the creepy similarity between terminology used by the Bush administration, and that of, say, the totalitarian state Oceania in George Orwell's novel, '1984'.

In Orwell's fictional future, the defence department is the "Ministry of Peace", and the propaganda ministry is the "Ministry of Truth". The state has, in fact, set about revising the language itself to a minimal set of words that actually leave no way to even contemplate dissent.

Fey's observation got laughs, because it is amusing to watch Kerry continue to make references which sail over the heads of so many listeners.

Unfortunately, it is also sad to watch Kerry continue to make references which sail over the heads of so many listeners.

Sad, because Kerry appears to habitually overestimate the cultural literacy of his audience, thus appearing to condescend to them, which may cost him votes.

It might be interesting to know how many voting age North Americans have read '1984'...

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once upon a time, we painted stories on the rock inside caves.  arctic peoples left inukshuk which became guides for those who came later.  are blogs the twenty first century equivalent?  some sort of digital graffitti on the walls of the internet?  i don't expect they will have quite the same staying power. regardless, welcome to the lemony fresh and facelifted chrismonster.com.  this part is where i get to rattle on about this and that, in an unabashedly self-indulgent way, but, gosh, isn't that what having your own website is about?

day one chris inukshuk which became guides for those who came later. are blogs the twenty first century equivalent? some sort of digital graffitti on the walls of the internet? i don't expect they will have quite the same staying power.

regardless, welcome to the lemony fresh and facelifted chrismonster.com. this part is where i get to rattle on about this and that, in an unabashedly self-indulgent way, but, gosh, isn't that what having your own website is about?

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