No More Doom and Gloom
Have you ever read a book or article so focused on the negative that you walked away from it feeling like you were digging yourself out of a deep hole? I have; in fact I just finished a piece about how we’re headed for the darkest of dark ages because of our addiction to oil and petroleum based products. It might as well have been called ‘How the Earth Will End This Time.’
The various arguments of the article are that we are addicted to oil and that oil is a finite resource. With any finite resource, we only have to get past the point of maximum production to start noticing bad effects like much higher prices and much stiffer competition for the resources that remain. Because we are not addressing the problem in this country, we are in for even worse times. No other sources of energy can adequately help us survive at our present level of comfort. When our current way of life starts disappearing humans will for the most part turn on each other.
These new voices crying out always claim to be different from the last voices preaching the end of our earthly days. They say this time the emergency is real and we should all sit up to listen to this new authority. Why is it that these people always claim their negativity is just realism?
The piece I read was well-grounded with some decent facts about energy usage in the West, with particular attention on our addiction to oil. But then the article spun out of control with wild hypothesizing about where we will end up when oil reserves start to run low--grim and feral was the author’s view. Most large cities will disintegrate due to lack of cheap available resources and arable land. In the South and the Southwest, both with strong gun cultures, people will take up arms against each other. People will no longer be able to live in climates that are too hot or too cold without having cheap cooling or heating. Clearly, this writer has little confidence in humankind. People like this fail to understand that having little value for humans helps create situations where the best possible vision of the future is dim. Whatever happened to the idea of humans as the ultimate adaptable species?
There were blatant unsupported statements that no combination of other energy sources will sustain us at our present level of consumption. But our present level of consumption is part of the problem since we’re devouring the planet on which we live. I’ve never thought it was the point to just replace one addiction with another. It seems the point of overcoming addiction is so one becomes a person who can rationally choose what is best in any situation. We can’t respond to our oil addiction with another energy addiction. The same logic that gets you into a bad situation cannot be used to get you out.
As if rejecting any combination of alternate energy sources wasn’t enough, the author felt the need to make a list of reasons why each alternative wouldn’t work. All renewable sources of energy are discounted for various individual reasons; but they are rejected as a group because they would only be good for small local use. Apparently in the age of the mega-corporation small and local are bad.
One particularly telling bit of blindness in the piece occurs in the discussion of why biodiesel won’t work. For this author, biodiesel doesn’t make sense because it requires large amounts of monoculture crops. And the only way to grow acres and acres of one crop is to use heavy amounts of petroleum based pesticides and fertilizers. Biodiesel doesn’t require one crop; many crops can be grown for oil. And do I need to say that even though petroleum based pesticides and fertilizers may be the norm that they are unnecessary and part of the problem?
Enough already, I say. Where are your suggestions for how things might work? As Buckminster Fuller pointed out decades ago, we are living off our energy savings account when we use oil reserves. Fuller also suggested that we should, and could, be living on our energy income--the daily energy available from our own sun. Variety and diversity create systems that are much better able to withstand change. Local sources of energy, and many more than one source, are just what is called for. If I have solar and wind and water power to count on, then I’m less devastated when one of those systems is temporarily not functioning well.
Though the entire message of the piece I read was hopeless, the author finished in fine ironic form by stating that the only people who are likely to survive the sure devastation that is immanently upon us are those who can rely on hope and have deep faith in humankind. That is likely to be true. In my experience, when disaster strikes, humans usually step in to help one another. I have no reason to believe otherwise this time. So I’m finally done with the apocalyptic merchants of fear. Those of us who have faith and hope are already moving toward a better future.
© 2006 Khris Fruits
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