Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Nihilism

I’ve been having a discussion with a fellow on the Energy Resources List. He is of an extremely nihilistic bend in terms of the peak oil issue. Some of our discussion follows, as I think it is of some broader and more general interest:

>On the other hand one could favor business as usual.

No. It’s not binary. It’s not black and white – it’s not like that. The next few paragraphs run according to your straw man argument, but I’ll comment on a few points:

> The population is still increasing, the rain forest is still being destroyed,
> lakes and rivers are still being polluted, topsoil is still being blown
> away and animal species are still going extinct. We are literally
> destroying the biosphere.

And even if we were all teletransported instantly to some Star Trek Fantasy land never to return to the earth, these species would continue dying off and the biosphere would still be a sinking wreck. It would return to an equilibrium faster without us, but we’re still talking many thousands of years.

>We could hope to delay the peak, and the collapse until around 2040 or 2050.

Well, if Deffeyes is correct, the peak is already here. I don’t think delaying the peak is interesting. I don’t find the binary logic behind the argument useful. What IS interesting is how we are going to manage the transition to other fuels and gracefully depopulate the planet.

I think we can all agree that Peak Oil is a fact, and an inevitability. However: imagine something totally extra-ordinary happens: they come up with something like cold-fusion that’s cheap and easy to do. Then oil could peak and no one would really notice…

It’s not the transition itself that’s in question or doubt – it’s more the character of said transition. While I am usually loathe to agree with the likes of Lomborg on anything, he does have a specific insight when he says “You don’t buy gasoline, you buy transportation”. If cars no longer ran on gas, you would still have to buy traonsportation, but gas wouldn’t be part of the equation.

This doesn’t solve te ecological problem, but that’s another issue. I’m simply demonstrating that the reduction in oil production doesn’t *by necessity* require a die off. It CAN, and if things don’t change, and quickly, probability reduces to certainty, but presuming certainty I feel is illegitimate as I discuss below.

>Peak oil in this decade would be terrible.

I tink it’s already here – we’re just cruising on the glutted plateau.

>But peak oil forty years from now would be far, far worse.

I see – I see – you’re conflating the demand/production curve crossings in the economics of petroleum production with some kind of instant die-off.

Well: it looks like you now have a test case. If we are around in 30 years, you’re wrong. If we’re not, you’re right, but it doesn’t matter. Now how is that a useful position?

>I find hoping for a much-delayed peak absolutely morally and ethically repugnant.

I think it’s a non-issue. The peak is upon us – it’s just a question of how it is managed, and the character of the transition to other energy sources takes on.

>And anyone who thinks the earth can support such a population indefinite for half
>a century without destroying what little flora and fauna is left upon this earth simply
>has not a clue as to what is happening to the earth.

I agree – it looks bleak. But not impossible.

>If we had a choice, now or later, it would not be a choice between
>good and evil. It would be a choice between evil and a much greater
>evil.

So we should all vote CHTHULU for president? After all, why settle for the lesser evil?

I’m too cynical to believe in nihilism, and I find the doomsaying in the peak oil debate has its uses as a goad when it is understood in an if/then context. But if it is presented as a certainty, then there is:

a: no point in discussing the issue
b: there is no point to this forum, except as a form of black humour
c: no point in even trying to survive the catastrophe, as those who do will be living lives of a Hobbesian sort, and who wants to live like that?

As a consequence, the nihilist position can be seen as a parasitic middle class luxury. If there are things needing change, the proper thing to do is to change them and to form communities of people to help change them. What needs to be done can be scaled according to need at point. In the USA getting people out of their cars and getting them to turn the damn lights off when they go to bed would be a good “start.” Getting people to grow food instead of lawns would be a really good idea as well. Developing neighbourhood windmill energy projects would also help. But, most of all: GETTING PEOPLE TO STOP HAVING SO MANY DAMN KIDS would be the best thing of all.

The list is long, and there is much to be done. I find the nihilist position disuseful and unconvincing outside of an if/then context. Within such a context, it is EXTREMELY useful and actually, necessary. But outside of such a context, *at this present time* it has no value. Given the stakes involved, the extreme nihilist position outside of the if/then context, is therefore immoral. Russia had nihilists first, in the 1880s, 1890s. Once the nihilists were discredited/jailed/killed off, they had a proper revolution. That the revolution resulted in a disaster of an empire is not relevent – the point is nihilism goes nowhere, and is just as much of a detriment to free and creative thinking as the cornicopian neocon fascists presently running the show.

The only thing that results from nihilism is a cult. Nihilism won’t keep the hospitals open, won’t make the discoveries we need, or even reduce the population – after all – if it doesn’t matter, then it doesn’t matter- have a jillion kids – their lives are their problem, not yours, and besides – it doesn’t matter.

You can’t forge a new society from doom. People need someplace to go and have fun. If it’s dancing in some over lit discotheque in Las Vegas with a buffet of meatballs and oysters, or dancing in front of a camp fire by some rawhide tents cooking up a chunk of buffalo – it’s still fun. People are social primates. As such they need to be led. Pointing a direction into an abyss is not leading. Pointing a direction into a foggy area that seems to go down around the abyss will have to do- travelling down that foggy bottom is all we really have.

So, hold hands, stay close, keep walking, and sing!