And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats.
The Partridges are feeling insufferably smug these days.
Halfway through the Bush regime, we cashed in our stocks, bought our house outright and tore up our mortgage. Though declining in value in this housing market crash, our modest home is our castle and now the bank cannot take it from us. We are completely free of debts. The Toyota Tundra truck, which twice took us to Alaska and on numerous camping trips, is now confined to necessary short hauls. An $85 fill-up last week convinced us that those long trips in the Tundra are luxuries that we can now do without. Last August we bought a Prius and, because we work at home, we have managed to drive it less than 800 miles a month. That amounts to about twenty gallons of gas or, coincidentally, another $85 a month. We can handle that. We are led to believe that in a couple of years, we might convert the Prius to "plug-in" electric power, and cut our gas consumption by two-thirds. We are also contemplating solar panels on our roof which might supply all our home electricity needs, with juice to spare to power the electric Prius and to sell back to So. Cal Edison.
Does that mean that we are well-prepared for the rocky times ahead? Unfortunately, we are not.
Those same soaring fuel costs, made manageable to us by the Toyota engineers, are also borne by the trucks and railroads, etc., that bring food to our table. Also by the farmers who require petroleum to fuel their machinery and to produce their fertilizers. Add to all that, the cost of home heating, of petrochemicals (notably plastics), of the movement of all goods and services, and it soon becomes clear that petroleum is the primary indispensable commodity of our industrial civilization. When oil prices rise, so to does everything else. Whatever we might save at the pump, we pay more at the marketplace. (See my "The Oil Trap")
It is becoming increasingly obvious that with the extraordinary expansion of the economies of China, India and Southeast Asia, the demand for petroleum has outstripped the global supply which, for the first time, posted a slight decline from 2006 to 2007. Don't expect a significant post-summer decline in the price at the pump. Minus $4 gas is but a memory. "Peak oil" may at last be upon us.
If oil extractions decline from now on, so too must the global economy, absent a massive worldwide investment in alternative energy sources and a thoroughgoing reconstruction in personal life styles. (I prefer the term "oil extraction" to the usual "oil production." The earth, not Exxon-Mobil, etc., "produces" oil and on a time scale of millions of years). But few governments are proposing such investments to a degree that will significantly offset the energy losses from declining oil extraction. (Iceland and the Scandinavian countries are worthy exceptions). And still worse none of the remaining presidential candidates dares even to suggest a commitment to alternative energy development sufficient to adequately deal with the oncoming emergency.
The good news is that we could conceivably avoid disaster. The far worse news is that we almost certainly will not. There are just too many wealthy and powerful corporate interests invested in denial and in business as usual, and these interests control our government and our media.
The Prescient and Forgotten Warnings of The Club of Rome.
In 1972, just two years after the first Earth Day, the Club of Rome published its report, "The Limits to Growth." Utilizing computer modeling methodology that was state of the art at the time (and, since then, greatly refined and expanded), the report projected that continuing resource use at then current rates of growth would result in critical shortages in the early 21st Century, and a human population crash at mid-century. Sadly, the world economy is right on schedule, as it has continued its resource use and depletion roughly at the rate projected in 1972 by the Club of Rome. Reports from around the world of water shortages and food riots ominously suggest that the projected population crash might also soon be upon us.
"The Limits of Growth" was roundly criticized for many of its assumptions and for the alleged invalidity of its computer-modeling methodology. And yet the fundamental assumptions, projections and conclusions scarcely require computer modeling for their validation. Long before the invention of the digital computer and the development of modeling software, scientists have told us that planet Earth has a finite supply of resources, a finite capacity to absorb the waste products (pollution) of human activity, and, by implication, a finite limit of sustainable human population. The advent of industrialization and the explosive growth of population has brought about an exponential increase in the depletion of resources and the consequent outflow of pollutants. Fragile ecosystems are unraveling as the rate of species extinction is now greater than at any time since the demise of the dinosaurs, sixty million years ago.
The very life-support system of the planet is facing radical transformations. Consider, for example, the atmosphere. All terrestrial and maritime life is sustained by a thin film of air, three quarters of which resides within five miles of sea level. In proportion to the diameter of the Earth, the atmosphere is thinner than the skin of an apple. And mankind is significantly altering the physics and chemistry of that life-sustaining "skin" – a fact unquestioned by virtually all atmospheric scientists outside of the employ of the energy conglomerates and a few right-wing think tanks. We've read and heard a great deal about "global warming" brought about by an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Less discussed, and possibly equally significant, is the fact that this CO2 is increasing the acidity of the oceans which in turn threatens the maritime ecosystems. At the base of those ecosystems are the phytoplankton which produce more oxygen than all the tropical rain forests.
Environmentalist warn us that "the Earth is threatened." Not so. The planet will survive for a few billion years more, whatever we might do to it. The urgent questions before us are whether and for how long our species and our civilization will continue to be a part of it, and what kind of a legacy we will leave to the generations that follow us.
The Perilous Optimism of the Cornucopians.
If the era of permanent scarcity, predicted thirty-six years ago by the much-maligned Club of Rome Study, "The Limits of Growth," is now upon us, to be followed soon by economic collapse, what are we to do about it?
Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. Partridge has taught philosophy at the University of California, and in Utah, Colorado and Wisconsin. He publishes the website, "The Online Gadfly" (www.igc.org/gadfly) and co-edits the progressive website, "The Crisis Papers" (www.crisispapers.org). His book in progress, "Conscience of a Progressive," can be seen at www.igc.org/gadfly/progressive/^toc.htm .
I don't think so. A species that fouls its own nest and eats its young is hardly fitted to continue. We are a dirty, greedy, aggressive lot, hell bent on destroying each other. With our big brains and reasoning power, we should have been able to evolve into something better.
by
macdon1 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 99 comments)
on Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 8:53:27 PM
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