Thursday, June 15, 2006
A post to a post

I found an interesting blog that I am going to add to my list at right. The writer discusses an article by Smil, and how he misses the point of Peak Oil awareness. Smil does have a point in that there are a number of people who approach this issue like a doomsday cult, but many people approach many valuable ideas in a less than optimal fashion. I posted the following as my response. To see the original post, go here:

http://www.energybrowser.com/

Hi!

Interesting blog, and interesting article. The continuing arguments between cornucopians like Smil, and nihilists like Hanson is, in my not so humble opinion, a significant problem for both sides of the argument.

Smil et al suggest that there will be some kind of an “energy fairy” that will save the day. Hanson et al suggest that not only will there be no “energy fairy”, but we are actually looking at an imminent die-off of catastrophic proportions.

What I have been advocating is a more balanced, middle pillar approach, where neither side of the coin is ignored, but neither side is accepted in total. I do think that technology will provide significant innovations that will help pull the right hand side of the resource depletion curve out a bit. At the same time, I think it is disingenuous to think that we can continue this industrial process of massive over-consumption of resources at the demand of massive over-population indefinitely.

As a consequence, there is a distinctive ideological component to the peak-oil discussion, and these ideological conclusions have very real and far-reaching results in terms of energy policy development and socio-cultural evolution.

Example – a society that is completely dependent on a form of energy that is of a limited variety will die off if they don’t shift to a renewable energy system coupled with social and cultural mores, ethics, values, and preferences that encourages the preservation of the resource base. A society that goes skipping down the lane of cornucopia disregarding the warnings will, eventually, run into a wall and fail. A society that looks at the resources available and then develops systems that can be used for millennia, and sets about developing the social and cultural preferences to enable such a permanent culture, will survive while the other dies off.

The problem is the loss of cheap petroleum energy is a global issue, and will require global solutions, as will the problems of resource depletion, climate change, and over-population in general. And this is where the likes of Smil are actually equally destructive to the likes of Hanson, et al., because following the lead of the nihilists results in paralysis, while the cornucopians advocate the unsustainable status quo.

I’ve also pointed out in my other writings that both sides are necessary – we need the concerned cornucopians to develop the new technologies, just as we need the nihilists to goad society into continuous re-examination of our directions and practices. Good Cop, Bad Cop. The problem is the citizenry of the industrial nations, both older and the newly industrialised, are used to cheap and plentiful energy and have built their expectations and infrastructure around it. These expectations and infrastructure lead to the cultural and social decisions that reinforce those expectations and infrastructure, creating a feedback of reaction and brutality.

The other problem is this: Smil et al are focussed on too short a term, while the nihilists are demanding too short a term. The Cornucopians will come up with technologies to mask the problem, but the fundamentals of expectations and infrastructure will still become increasingly manifest. In the meantime, the cornucopians get to discredit the Nihilists, while the Nihilists become increasingly distressed at the blinkered vision of the Cornucopians. Eventually, it will come to a head, and given the fact that petroleum is a limited resource, and industrial civilisation is structured around it and the society and culture it has produced is also dependent on it, it is, again, disingenuous for the cornucopians to argue for continued expansion of the human project over the back of petroleum.

Therefore, from my perspective, the only rational position is a middle position, one wher ethe dire warnings of the Nihilists are heeded, but immense investment and work should be devoted to the necessary technologies to achieve a smooth transition to a post-carbon society.

It is the cultural and infrastructural character of that society that I believe will prove most critical to the future of civilisation. It is that “criticality” that gives the nihilist position its strength, but it is the optomistic resourcefulness of the technologists and thinkers often found among concerned cornucopians that will manage the transition, as a nihilist position is no better than an unconcerned cornucopian position.

I discuss a lot of these ideas (in fact, I’ll be publishing this post there) on my blog, which is listed as my website. Let me know what you think.