Deep thought – Apr 16

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

Faustian economics: Hell hath no limits
Wendell Berry, Harpers
The general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily forseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning. The strategies of delay have been a sort of willed oblivion, or visions of large profits to the manufacturers of such “biofuels” as ethanol from corn or switchgrass, or the familiar unscientific faith that “science will find an answer.” The dominant response, in short, is a dogged belief that what we call the American Way of Life will prove somehow indestructible. We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves.

… Our national faith so far has been: “There’s always more.” Our true religion is a sort of autistic industrialism. People of intelligence and ability seem now to be genuinely embarrassed by any solution to any problem that does not involve high technology, a great expenditure of energy, or a big machine.

… It is this economy of community destruction that, wittingly or unwittingly, most scientists and technicians have served for the past two hundred years. These scientists and technicians have justified themselves by the proposition that they are the vanguard of progress, enlarging human knowledge and power, and thus they have romanticized both themselves and the predatory enterprises that they have served.

As a consequence, our great need now is for sciences and technologies of limits, of domesticity, of what Wes Jackson of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, has called “homecoming.” These would be specifically human sciences and technologies, working, as the best humans have always worked, within self-imposed limits. The limits would be the accepted contexts of places, communities, and neighborhoods, both natural and human.

… perhaps our most serious cultural loss in recent centuries is the knowledge that some things, though limited, are inexhaustible. For example, an ecosystem, even that of a working forest or farm, so long as it remains ecologically intact, is inexhaustible. A small place, as I know from my own experience, can provide opportunities of work and learning, and a fund of beauty, solace, and pleasure — in addition to its difficulties — that cannot be exhausted in a lifetime or in generations.

… And so, in confronting the phenomenon of “peak oil,” we are really confronting the end of our customary delusion of “more.” Whichever way we turn, from now on, we are going to find a limit beyond which there will be no more. To hit these limits at top speed is not a rational choice. To start slowing down, with the idea of avoiding catastrophe, is a rational choice, and a viable one if we can recover the necessary political sanity. Of course it makes sense to consider alternative energy sources, provided they make sense. But we will have to re-examine the economic structures of our lives, and conform them to the tolerances and limits of our earthly places. Where there is no more, our one choice is to make the most and the best of what we have. (END)

(May 2008 issue)
Long article (eight pages) from poet, essayist and farmer Wendell Berry, whose writings have served as a moral compass for generations of Americans. His “Long Legged House” made me decide to stop wandering and settle in one place, and his “Unsettling of America” was the first glimmer I had of the problems of modern agriculture. The article is behind a paywall. -BA

Economist Sachs believes we can save world
Mark Parent, Chronicle Heald (Nova Scotia)
Economist Jeffrey Sachs’ new book, entitled Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, bears a strong similarity to Thomas Homer-Dixon’s book The Upside of Down.

Not only do Sachs and Homer-Dixon share common concerns about the future but even the list of challenges that they claim humanity must navigate in order to fend of looming catastrophe seem similar.

While Homer-Dixon lists six global challenges, Sachs contents himself with four: “protecting the environment, stabilizing the world’s population, narrowing the gaps between rich and poor, and ending extreme poverty.”

The difference between the two authors lies in their respective backgrounds and temperament. As an economist, Sachs spends a considerable amount of effort explaining economic theories and terminology as well as in analyzing the cost of solving the four challenges he sets out.
(13 April 2008

Recipes for Disaster: review of Kunstler’s novel (large JPG)
Paul Greenberg, New York Times Book Review via Kunstlers’s blog

… In light of the present crisis (as of now, still small “c”), however, two eco-millenarian novels — an old one called “Ecotopia” by Ernest Callenbach and a new one, “World Made By Hand” (Atlantic Monthly, $24), by James Howard Kunstler — are worth a look…

Literary utopias tend to emerge when an appropriate niche opens up. The niche that suited “Ecotopia” in the early 1970s and the one that now accommodates “World Made by Hand” have certain similarities. Shortages and unrest in the Middle East foreshadow the end of oil. A brewing recession gives rise to doubts about our economic fundamentals. An unpopular president wages an unpopular war. And across the country, a growing eco-consciousness raises hope that a different system might replace classic, marauding American economic progress.

[“Ecotopia”] is redolent with the optimism of the baby-boom generation in full swinger mode. … Self-published in 1975 and reprinted in 1977 by Bantam, “Ecotopia” went on to sell nearly a million copies.

… After a few hard years of transition, life in Ecotopia is pretty awesome. Cutting-edge comforts like plastic hairbrushes and drip-dry polyester shorts are missing, but the workweek is only 20 hours. Labor is rewarding and communal, and involves things like replanting forests, studying the language of whales …

… Ecotopian couples are “generally monogamous,” Weston reports, “except for four holidays each year, at the solstices and the equinoxes, when sexual promiscuity is widespread.”

In short, it is a lot of fun to live in Ecotopia — much more fun than dwelling in the mournful Hudson Valley town of Union Grove, the setting of “World Made by Hand.” … Union Grove (a ringer for its creator’s hometown, Saratoga Springs) is a contemporary East Coaster’s torture chamber designed to sock it to shortsighted, petroleum-guzzling Americans.

… Union Grove is a beachhead of civilization after things have fallen apart. Terrorist bombs have taken out Washington and Los Angeles, oil is long gone from the town, and a powerless federal government may or may not be bunkered in Minnesota.

… Some people hang themselves in basements in despair. Others turn hobbies into trades, as [protagonist] Robert does with carpentry and violin playing.

… Kunstler is not immune to faith in social transformation, as Robert’s conversion from isolated tradesman to community-minded leader of men and handsome women attests. But he thinks it must be forced on us. … Our selfish, oil-assisted present will have to fade into a dream before sustainable communal life becomes a reallity.

I would prefer to live in Ecotopia, but the verisimilitude of Kunstler’s world leads me to think the future is Union Grove.

Paul Greenberg is a W.K. Kellogg Foundation food and society policy fellow. He is writing a book on the future of fish
(20 April 2008)
Kunstler says his book was “dissed… in a snotty ‘think piece'”. I don’t think the review was at all negative.

The contrast between “Ecotopia” and Kunstler’s novel is instructive. Perhaps “Ecotopia” was able to be more positive because 30 years ago the world had fewer people, more oil, and a thriving grassroots movement. -BA