From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> >1. Draw your devastating conclusions from the experience
>> >of the inperfect democracies we had so far.
>>
>> I draw my conclusions from the millions of years of human behavior --
under
>> every kind of society that has existed.
>
>Classical Athens, Heian Kyoto, Khajuraho [Medieval Cambodia],
>the circle of the early 19th century American Transcendalists /
>Unitarians.... There *have* been some (to borrow a phrase from
>Elsa Morante's novel _History: A novel_) "flowers not weeds".
This point is that ALL human development has had one direction: MORE STUFF.
No society can last through perpetual declines in standards-of-living -- it
collapses.
Joseph Tainter, who has studied about two dozen societies that have
collapsed, points out that energy is the key ingredient. Moreover, the only
way to avoid dieoff, is through "extreme hardship".
COMPLEXITY, PROBLEM SOLVING,
AND SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES,
by Joseph A. Tainter, 1996
http://dieoff.org/page134.htm
[snip]
Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will
be. If our efforts to understand and resolve such matters as global change
involve increasing political, technological, economic, and scientific
complexity, as it seems they will, then the availability of energy per
capita will be a constraining factor. To increase complexity on the basis of
static or declining energy supplies would require lowering the standard of
living throughout the world. In the absence of a clear crisis very few
people would support this. To maintain political support for our current and
future investments in complexity thus requires an increase in the effective
per capita supply of energy-either by increasing the physical availability
of energy, or by technical, political, or economic innovations that lower
the energy cost of our standard of living. Of course, to discover such
innovations requires energy, which underscores the constraints in the
energy-complexity relation.
CONCLUSIONS
This chapter on the past clarifies potential paths to the future. One
often-discussed path is cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy
costs. This could come about through the "crash" that many fear-a genuine
collapse over a period of one or two generations, with much violence,
starvation, and loss of population. The alternative is the "soft landing"
that many people hope for-a voluntary change to solar energy and green
fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and less overall consumption. This is
a utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will come about only if
severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations makes it attractive, and if
economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of ideology.
The more likely option is a future of greater investments in problem
solving, increasing overall complexity, and greater use of energy. This
option is driven by the material comforts it provides, by vested interests,
by lack of alternatives, and by our conviction that it is good. If the
trajectory of problem solving that humanity has followed for much of the
last 12,000 years should continue, it is the path that we are likely to take
in the near future.
[ The entire piece is archived at http://dieoff.org/page134.htm ]
-------------------------
Oil is going to "peak" in about seven years.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/98/0615/6112084a.htm
Jay
