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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Lessons from the Collapse of the USSR (Orlov video)
Dmitry Orlov, FORA.tv via abitare’s CAPS blog
Dmitry Orlov – Dmitry Orlov is an engineer and a writer on subjects related to Peak Oil. He was born in Leningrad and moved to the United States at the age of 12. Orlov was an eyewitness to the collapse of the Soviet Union over several extended visits to his Russian homeland between the late 1980s and mid-1990s. He has a BS in Computer Engineering and an MA in Applied Linguistics. His latest book is Reinventing Collapse (June 2008). His article Closing the Collapse Gap compares the collapse-preparedness of the USA and the USSR.
(28 February 2009)
Quote: “Being poor takes lots of practice.”
British historian Mark Jones on the world crisis (and energy)
Mark Jones, MarxMail
The root causes of the world crisis lie within the sphere of production as well as circulation. In a sense the entire history of industrial capitalism is a history of the deployment of fossil fuels and machinery to substitute for muscle power and biomass energy; and the trajectory of rising social productivity can be plotted on a graph whose vertical axis is labelled ‘hydrogen’ and whose horizontal axis is labelled, ‘carbon’.
Increasing productivity means decreasing the carbon consumed in fuel energy and increasing the proportion of hydrogen. There is an imperative about this, far beyond the requirements of mere competition which force capitalists to take the value out of products, primarily by reducing material, energy and labour inputs. The deeper imperative, inscribed at the level of the mode of production, is intimately linked to the historical destiny and fate of capitalism.
For if the process of ‘dematerialisation’ is insufficiently rapid, the system runs into increasing entropic difficulties: roadblocks assail its attempts to restart and renew cycles of accumulation. The present growing disintegration, systemic breakdown and anarchy within world capitalism are symptomatic not so much of disorders within the sphere of circulation as of ineradicable problems arising within production itself.
The crises within circulation are only manifestations of a deeper malaise resulting from the long-term slow-down in rates of productivity growth, themselves arising from the growing technical difficulty of ‘decarbonising’ energy systems and dematerialising production, and the growing loss of energy-efficiency within the global energy system. This is true despite the vaunted improvements in energy production especially in oil and gas expro, and in the equally vaunted ‘virtualisation’ of production and delinking of energy inputs to material outputs.
… As capitalism grows old as a system and as resources become more scarce, the level of energy expenditures tends to rise. For example, half a century ago, over 10 times more oil was discovered per meter than today; the cost of an exploration well of 30,000 feet is 120 times higher than that of a well of 5,000 feet.
The nuclear industry represents the most extreme sorts of costs, measured in this fashion. The costs, however, are not encountered when uranium is extracted from the earth, but when after the ore has been transformed into energy. The radioactive wastes require an inordinately expensive treatment, since the half-life of plutonium 239, for example, is 24,600 years. That is why the nuclear industry is so dangerous. The capitalist class does not want to invest in the storage capabilities to protect us from such wastes. They would prefer to send it off to places like Mali to poison poor people of color.
Agriculture is the most highly visible aspect of the capitalist economy’s tendency to attempt to pay for these hidden costs in a destructive manner. Massive use of fertilizer and conditioning of the soil requires significant energy resources, mostly derived from petroleum and byproducts.
[Quoting From the preface to In the Servitude of Power: Energy and Civilization through the Ages, by Jean-Claude Debeir, Jean-Paul Deléage and Daniel Hémery, Zed Press, 1986]
Four hypotheses have ordered our investigation:
1) energy is the most restrictive but not the only mediation of humanity’s relation to nature and the fundamental condition for the existence of human groups;
2) the mobilization of energies is organized within systems with social, technical, political, mental and other dimensions, which we call energy systems;3) all energy systems are currently deteriorating and one of the crucial battles of the future is the search for a path to energy transition and substitution;
4) this transition cannot be reduced to simple technical developments, to the designing of new energy chains. It necessarily implies an overall transformation of society on a world scale. This transformation, whatever is duration and pace, will be global. Until now, no revolution has truly or lastingly challenged the material foundations of social organization. In any case, these cannot be modified by fiat. Yet no social alternative can be conceived today that would not establish a new energy system.
(written 20 October, 1998 – posted 27 February, 2009)
The late British Marxist historian Mark Jones wrote many posts about energy and resource depletion before his death in 2003. -BA
The Free Nature Movement
Chuck Burr, CultureQuake
Why the environmental movement has failed to protect the environment. Introducing the “Free Nature Movement” and why like abolition and suffrage it can succeed in freeing nature from humanity.
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Environmentalism is not a movement. For a political campaign to be considered a movement, it has to drive a new right into the constitution. Recycling and carpooling is not amending the constitution. The environmental movement cannot, as it is currently structured, protect the other species from our burgeoning population.
Nothing is effectively achieved until the constitution is amended. A 28th amendment that gives all other species equal rights to humanity would enable legislation to begin to reverse the 233 years of exploitation that the U.S. is founded upon.
This is not as far fetched as it sounds.
… What will the new lifestyle look like?
You have to accept that we are not going to be here to see it. We will see the transition from the age of exuberance to the age of powering down; that is happening now. The age of powering down will be one of learning lost skills, building community, figuring out how to do with less, and leaving behind much of the stuff we can’t use any more. If you take the seats out, your SUV may make a nice playhouse for the grandkids.
In this phase, humanity may begin to loosen its grip over nature. The diminishing human population will start to leave more room for the other species. Our mindset will have not changed yet, the world will “still belong to man,” but nature will get some breathing room. I just hope there is enough of her left to regenerate. Humanity is pushing every species except cows to the edge of extinction.
If enough of nature is left after 2100 years, that is when the restoration time begins. Hopefully what is left of modern culture will be so shell shocked in 100 years by what they have lost that our descendants will just walk away from that failed lifestyle and live closer to the earth. They will have to.
It is easy to describe a future supped-up 1850’s lifestyle maybe with radios, but it is the ethics and story that we live by that will make all the difference. For the last 110 years our ethics have been blinded by an addiction to a cheap energy surplus that created all this stuff, technology, and the middle class. Without cheap energy, it will all go away. Lets hope there are people starting to think about building knowledge arks now.
The point is that it is the story we live by that can free nature. If we can remember the original story that worked for humanity for three million years, that “humanity belongs to the earth,” then we will be able to let go of our selves, our grasping, and our freedom in order to free nature.
Chuck Burr is the author of “Culturequake: The End of Modern Culture and the Rise of Earth Culture.” He teaches permaculture in Ashland, OR. Chuck has an MBA in finance, a BA in accounting, interned for President Reagan, is a retired software CEO, and has served on several nonprofit boards.
(3 March 2009)
Nate Hagens – On Credit, Depletion, Energy Nationalization – Radio Interview (audio)
Eric Wilson, “The Terminal Moraine”, WWSP
At The Oil Drum, Gail Tverberg introduces the show:
Nate will be on University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point radio this afternoon from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm EST (5:30 local) discussing the ongoing credit/financial crisis and the impact on energy. He also talks about the broader backdrop the world finds itself in, and what might be done. Topics include energy nationalization, industrial agriculture’s impact on behavior, the currency crisis, and localization efforts.
It is a very good interview though Nate incorrectly stated the US oil peak in 1971 when it was 1970. Also there seems to be someone playing a tuba or a polka band in the background at times.
This is a link to the Live Radio Show.
If you missed the live show, this is where you can download an MP3.
(27 February 2009, TOD notice posted March 4)
