It’s disheartening to see so little confidence in our optimists.

McMillin’s comment that primitivists should come out fighting is absolutely lacking in elementary military science.

Primitivists are natural guerrillas.

Guerrillas live by hit-and-run. They feel no shame when they ignore challenges. Recently the US forces in Iraq have tried to challenge the guerrillas to come out and fight in the open. There was no response but the proverbial sound of crickets.

When the US forces turned their backs and tried to walk away, they tripped off various IEDs, of course. That’s the guerrilla way.

Expecting guerrillas to fight in a way convenient to their enemies is not, IMHO, the apex of intelligence.

However much I may disagree with the mathematics, science, and other reasoning on this site, I certainly hope I will never embarrass myself by McMillin-esque outbursts.

I’m sorry you feel that way, Engineer Poet, but I certainly understand not having enough time to write. I certainly have quite a bit I’ve been putting off myself. As I detail in my autobiography elsewhere on this site, I’ve actually changed my worldview on a fundamental level twice in my life because of convincing arguments. I’m afraid I just don’t find your arguments the least bit convincing.

While your comparison between my mode of thought and that of other apocalyptic beliefs has merit (you’ll see an article listed in my projected “canon” dealing with just this, titled “The Eschatology of the Left”), but then, the same can be said of your beliefs. Or do you deny the messianic role you have placed in technology, as savior of mankind and redeemer from our sins?

If you have such responses, please post them. I’d like to see something that would ease the burden of the future — at the very least post the partial research. The issue I’ve found with the argument so far is that it is revolves around energy usage, which is only a portion of the problem. Consumption crosses across a lot of barriers, which includes land usage and resource usage, both of which deal with very strict limitations, unless you have something akin to the ‘replicators’ of Star Trek fame.

I don’t mean to be too facetious on this. The point is this: something’s wrong with the world and the way it is going right now. That, I believe, we can agree on. If nothing changes and all rates of consumption, population, etc. continue with current trends, we are in serious trouble.

Now, posit a future where we can change those trends. What can cause a (relatively) quick, worldwide transformation that leads us to a hopefully indefinitely sustainable future? What are your solutions? And how are you implementing them right now?

It’s more than just energy. It’s more than just food. If it were all that simple, my city, Los Angeles, would be the greenest, happiest place on the planet.

It’s not like anything I have to say, no matter how well supported by facts, is going to change your tune.

Reflection: They either didn’t subscribe to the comments, or they had nothing to say anymore. Or something.

Or they couldn’t take the humiliation any more.

I just re-read this entire page. What a great article… and a few great comments.

Peace,
Devin

In other words, you reversed the logic of a theory known to be faulty… and got another faulty theory. Human population is limited by food supply, but it is not determined by it; the last
century-plus of experience in the developed countries disproves the premises behind both Malthus’ theory and yours.

No, I wasn’t doing anything as elementary as reversing Malthus. Your understanding of this issue seems to be quite basic; I came to my conclusion through careful observation of the facts, and then noted it was the direct opposite of Malthus’ argument. Despite our hubris, humans remain irrevocably animals, and bound by the same biological laws as any other animal. I would strongly advise you to read my previous article on this issue. If you can find some flaw in my reasoning there, by all means comment as such. But your “rebuttals” here, throwing up spurious refutations I answered before you even made your first comment, does not do much to bolster your case, or your appearance.

Why can’t so many people be maintained sustainably? I just gave you a sustainable blueprint for their food supply. I think we could use a lot less people in e.g. ecologically sensitive areas, but tragedies

Because people require more than food. They require space–space to live in, and space to dump their wastes. And space between those two. They require resources for shelter and day-to-day existence. They require oxygen, water, et cetera. In short, as I have said from the beginning, the problem is not feeding so many people. The problem has much more to do with an overall, holistic view than the myopic Malthusian view. Agricultural production per hectare doesn’t mean nearly as much as ecological footprint.

Another fallacy: Truth By Blatant Assertion? You’ve declared the scenario bogus without supporting argument.

Like sound bites on the evening news, your quote has taken my conclusion and neglected its reasoning. From that snippet, you’re criticizing me for providing no supporting argument? But I already did, in full, both in response to your original comment, and in my previous article. How many times must I make the argument, before you’ll stop saying I never made it? Since that number is obviously at least one more than I’ve currently done, I’ll reiterate.

Your scenario for world population numbers, while quite common and pulled from reliable sources (I’ve seen them plenty of times before), are utterly bogus. A lowering population from a peak of 9 billion is predicated on the rest of the world becoming like the First World. Besides the fact that this would contradict a basic fact of biology that any species’ food supply determines their population (though you would hardly be the first to suggest that we are so magically exempt, nor the first to fail to come up with a valid mechanism for that exemption), it also neglects another basic fact, namely, that “wealth” is always relative. Having a million dollars just makes you poor if everyone else has a billion, after all. Even in absolute terms, the prosperity of the First World depends on the poverty of the Third. We externalize our cost of living by offloading it onto the Third World. Despotic regimes in the Middle East (like the House of Sa’ud) maintain low energy prices for us. Our consumer goods are manufactured in sweatshops. Our lifestyles–the size of our ecological footprint, and our concomittant low birth rate–rely on the Third World’s poverty (i.e., their small ecological footprint) and their concomittant high birth rate.

This being the case, the Third World can never disappear, unless we accept a lower quality of life, and the entire world submits to a single average. However, that average still requires more resources than the earth has, because humans need more than just food. Your statistics reminded me of the factoid that every person on earth could fit inside Texas, which is true, but meaningless. We have ecological footprints that are much bigger than that, factoring in not only our food, but our food’s food, the space we need to live, the energy we use, et cetera ad infinitum.

However, it seems you did not understand what I meant by this, as evidenced by your assertion later on:

You are quite wrong. The Third World has never been richer than it is today, and the poor in the United States have luxuries that kings of 300 years ago would have envied: central heat, telephones, automobiles! Even the third-world poor have radios and television. Finding ways to deliver food, education and luxuries sustainably would improve the world all around.

This is all true; and all irrelevant. For me to be “wrong,” I would have to have said this was not the case at some point. I never did, because it’s all quite true. That said, “rich” and “poor” are relative terms, and always have been. The material goods I possess would have made me a king of unfathomable power in the Middle Ages; that exact same amount now makes me middle class. Your assertion here merely underlines the relative nature of wealth. Ergo, no one can be rich, unless many other people are poor. Given this, while there are rich, there must be poor. There can be no First World, without a Third World.

However, I believe your argument has more to do with absolute quality of life, and that you are dismissing the perception of poverty and oppression. Fair enough; even by those standards, the existence of the First World is predicated on the existence of the Third. This is not about outsourcing; outsourcing is only the most recent faddish way that First World corporations have discovered to externalize their costs. It is this externalization that makes the Third World so important; the First World pays for only a small fraction of the true cost of its lifestyle. The Third World has to pick up the rest. How does that work? Often directly, with low-cost labor and sweatshops, yes.

However, these costs are more often absorbed indirectly. Foreign aid and military support to various Third World dictatorships have maintained them in situations where they would otherwise have fallen to popular revolt. The Third World debt crisis is “a symptom of an international economic system that tolerates growing and abysmal poverty as a normal condition.” Through the World Bank, the IMF, and outright military support, we have shown that we will go to great lengths to keep things as they are in the Third World. Why? Because these conditions maintain First World prosperity by destroying the Third World. We maintain conditions where sweatshops are the best alternative available, and where it’s better to grow cash crops for First World consumption than food for your starving family.

In The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan provided a brilliant sociological analysis of the early Roman Empire. In it, he shows that the Pax Romana was peaceful and prosperous only for the heart of the empire. Its peripheries suffered constant war and poverty. This was, in fact, by design. The overall level of turmoil could not be lessened, but Italy could enjoy such a Pax Romana by exporting its ills to the provinces. The Pax Americana is no different; we’re not eliminating violence or poverty, we’re merely pushing it out of sight.

So, if the Third World does succeed in becoming like us, who will grow the cotton we clothe ourselves with>? Who will grow the coffee beans? If democracy comes to power in the Arabian Penninsula, what happens if they decide their national interests are best served by charging us the actual cost of their oil, rather than externalizing our costs in the form of oppression and terrorism?

In a more direct way, our present society is based on the successes of the Green Revolution, and the emergence of a new kind of industrialized agriculture so utterly dependent on oil that I’ve taken to referring to it as “petroculture.” Agriculture has always required more calories of work than it yields in harvests. In the past, this shortfall was solved with beasts of burden. Land that was too rocky or infetile to be cultivated could be grazed; thus, we could use animals to leverage energy sources otherwise cut off to us. This was always inefficient, as each step in the conversion lost a significant ortion of the energy along the way, but it got the job done. With the Green Revolution, we have replaced domesticated animals with dead ones. Absolute production has increased dramatically, but the conversion is even less efficient. We now require 10 calories of labor (primarily in fossil fuels) for every 1 calorie harvested.

So, interestingly, while it is true that the food is actually grown in the First World, the energy with which it is grown comes primarily from the Third World. Without a Third World, where will our prosperity come from? I have no doubt that the First World and the Third World could switch places, but one needs the other, wherever they may lay geographically.

Your explanation for the current and projected price of oil is…?

That’s easy. Refineries. We’re at capacity, and crude does you little good by itself. Here’s another fine example of civilization’s fragility. We can’t afford to make refineries that aren’t going to be used, as that’s a “waste” that a competitor could use against you. So instead we’re always at capacity, so if something happens, there’s no redundancy to protect us. If it’s just a small accident, we merely see a price hike.

You demonstrate a lack of historical perspective. The United States was the largest oil producer in the world for the first half of the 20th century; the shift to the Middle East was begin by European powers (who do you think drew the borders of Iraq? The British.) This political move was driven by technological considerations; oil was the best fuel for the developing technologies, so securing oil was essential for economic and military superiority.

Actually, Giuli convinced me to make my thoughts on this matter a full book. How the North American Hubbert Peak led to the energy crisis of the 1970s and the Twin Pillar Policy with Iran and Saudi Arabia, the role of that policy in our relations with the Shah and the following Islamic Revolution, and how those two forces–our need for oil, and the aspirations of the Muslim world to rid itself of foreign-backed tyranny–have shaped our current “War on Terror.”

But, the question is, how is any of this at all relevant to the subject at hand? I mentioned that Saudi Arabia gives us a lower price on oil than it’s actually worth, essentially translating the remainder of the cost into the oppression of the Arabian people. How does the history of how that came to be impact its present reality?

There was a time, not much more than a century ago, when the extant technologies had little use for petroleum; it was this funny goo that bubbled out of the ground, and sometimes got used in patent medicines. Then some fractions of it were found to make good lamp oil, much more readily available than spermaceti; heavier fractions went for candles or lubricants or sealants, lighter ones were dumped if they exceeded the demand for cleaning fluid. And then someone noticed that bottled naptha could fuel the engines used in those newfangled horseless carriages; you can probably fill in most of the rest.

Actually, we’ve been using gasoline as a fuel for fire from time immemorial. What changed was our process for refining it, and the carborateur engine. However, energy is hardly the only use we need to replace. We’ll need to find a substitute in our plastics, our fertilizers, and all of those things we depend on petroleum for.

What you are obviously not ready to do is project the future. The hints are all there: oil is going up in price; greens and neocons are getting together to fully electrify their hybrid automobiles; a host of technologies are under development to make ethanol from cellulose, hydrogen from sunlight, or just make the plain-jane photovoltaic cell cheaper and easier to use. You can buy a photovoltaic jacket today and charge your cell phone or iPod as you walk; soon you’ll be able to buy a conversion kit to make your Prius go ten miles or more without gasoline (up to 30 if you’re willing to pring for lithium-ion batteries). And that’s just this year’s stuff.

Because there is a need, and people are beginning to see that. They’re scrambling for alternatives. They’re used to the artificial game of economics, where if there is a need, it will always be supplied. Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t always work like that. Just because I need to be able to fly when I fall off a cliff, doesn’t mean I’m going to miraculously sprout wings.

Our civilization was saved by a deus ex machina at the end of the Bronze Age, in the form of charcoal. I don’t count on miracles to repeat themselves, simply because we need one. Nor is it even necessarily a good thing. Had we never found charcoal, civilization would have died then and there–no Inquisition, no Crusades, no devastation of the New World, none of it. No Holocene Extinction, no global warming.

There are insurmountable barriers to replacing petroleum with alternative energy. While I haven’t studied these in detail, I understand them well enough to know that these are not simple matters we can easily solve with a mere technical solution. Even the overlap f these sources would only supply some small fraction–likely less than a quarter–of the energy oil provides. To say nothing of oil’s other uses, as I mentioned previously.

Are you even paying them the slightest bit of attention? Not that I can see.

Quite a bit. I intend to have solar panels on my yurt, for instance. I have a good friend (who, incidentally, believes as I do), who is quite an authority on these matters. Actually, Jim comments on this log occasionally. He keeps me abreast of most of the new developments.

However, to analyses such as these, they are irrelevant. Spitting in the ocean, and nothing more. Great things for people to know for their own “Afterculture,” but suggesting them as a solution to Peak Oil is so naive it’s ridiculous.

This is downright funny. It proves that you aren’t even listening to the argument you’re claiming to refute, even when its conclusions are drawn partly or totally from your postulates.

I have to admit, I’m deeply confused. This all started when I said Malthus was wrong, because feeding a large population is not a major, systemic concern, because food supply determines population. Rather, our problems lay in our overall ecological footprint, and the catastrophic loss of biodiversity fueled by our growing population, and its increasing monopoly on the earth’s resources.

You then said this wasn’t a problem, because we can easily feed our population.

Which, I had started out saying wasn’t a problem. I point this out, and that your argument is a refutation of Malthus–making it, in fact, almost a support for my own scenario.

Now you say this.

I have to say, I’m deeply confused as to how any of this relates to anything I’ve ever said. So perhaps I’ll simply repeat myself once again: food supply drives population. We keep increasing our food supply to feed our population, which only increases our population. We’re caught in a “Food Race” with no possible end by catastrophe. Producing more food is not a problem; feeding our population is not a problem. The problem is that there’s so many people, consuming 40% of the earth’s resources. There’s only so many people the earth can support, and we’re already far beyond that number. Any solution to come up with more food merely fuels the Food Race–that is, it exacerbates the problem, and solves nothing. Like pouring gasoline on a fire to put it out.

Reason is irrelevant, faith is everything. If I needed more proof that you’re of the same stripe as the rapture crowd, I couldn’t ask for better.

While I remain truly stymied by what the frig you’re talking about, since you’ve mentioned this twice now, I’ll admit that environmentalism is definitely the Eschatology of the Left. It’s revealed (from scientists or angels, what difference does it make if we haven’t examined the facts ourselves?), promises torment to the wicked, salvation to the just, and a time of terrible tribulation followed by eternal paradise. The parallels are very strong.

However, I believe you mean to draw this parallel as an attack, i.e., “Your case has many points in common with the Christian fundamentalist idea of ‘the Rapture.’ Christian fundamentalists are wrong about many things. Therefore, you must be wrong.”

I’m sure, given your strong background in logic, you can spot more than one fallacy in that argument.

And the first group of armed and hungry people from the rest of the world to stumble across them would likely kill them.

Good thing it’s so damned unlikely for a group of armed and hungry people to stumble on them, huh?

But then again, those armed and hungry people would be lost in a place they do not know. They would have the stunted instincts and perceptions of city dwellers who’ve learned to drown out all sights and sounds their whole life. They would be up against skilled hunters, trackers and scouts, at home in their native wilderness.

There have been plenty of examples of such encounters in the past, and they almost always end badly for the poor city dwellers. Remember, guerrilla warfare is tribal warfare, and the only way that any guerrilla force has ever been effectively beaten, is by another guerrilla force.

There is more than a small amount of irony in that, as Jason has specifically called the origin of photosynthetic life (which is essential to his plans for survival) a “catastrophe”. If little anaerobic bugs could have had thoughtful conversations, I can think of an argument around some shallow hydrothermal vent a few billion years ago….

I hope you’ll forgive me for snipping your delightful little scene, but it’s interesting that you chose the Oxygen Holocaust to prove your point. The ability to breathe oxygen was a mutation with very little representation–until so much oxygen was put into the atmosphere that 99% of all life on earth choked on its own breath. The oxygen breathers, though, survived, and flourished as you described. This could not have happened, except by the Oxygen Holocaust. Without it, oxygen-breathers would have remained a tiny, tiny minority, unable to compete for needed resources and emerge as they did.

We face a similar situation now. Some people–a tiny, tiny minority–are trying to change their lifestyle, to live in a more sustainable manner. If our situation continues, they will always be a tiny minority. Unless a crisis kills off 99% of the population, leaving only the well-adapted to “inherit the earth,” as our single-celled ancestors did.

People just don’t change for ideas, or because they “ought” to. If they will ever change at all, it will only be because they have to. Just as the Oxygen Holocaust so neatly demonstrates, such massive change can only be brought about with great catastrophe.

We happen to be on the brink of such a catastrophe now, and not all the wishful thinking in the world will stop it. Instead, I’m focused on being one of the well-adapted survivors, to enjoy that healthy world on the other side.

You might even say that Mother Nature, too, is no different from those “Rapture types”; she’s been through this cycle of death and rebirth eight times now, after all.

Footprint is a function of technology. The average American may be using 10 hectares at the moment, but a food-production system based on algae culture could cut that to about 0.01 hectare. That’s about the roof area of a smallish ranch house. Other energy needs could be met similarly; the entire energy demand of the United States (losses included) could be met by conversion of perhaps 20% of the sunlight falling on its roofs and pavement.

Oh my, this is a disturbing bit of naivety; I hadn’t realized we were working on such a basic level. My apologies; you present yourself as quite intelligent, I had presumed you were familiar with this.

Any animal rises very quickly to its carrying capacity. Intelligence does not mitigate this, because intelligences are different. One might decide to be “good” and not abuse the commons, but for a large enough group, you’re bound to have one who will take advantage of the others’ selflessness and abuse the commons all the more. “Abusing thecommons” could be anything, including how many kids to have. This is what Garrett Hardin was talking about in his famous 1968 article in Science, “The Tragedy of the Commons.”

Agriculture’s main problem is that it lowers ecological footprint. The United States has a very large ecological footprint, and our brith rate is low. The Third World has a much smaller mfootprint, so their birth rate is very high. Forgaers have gigantic ecological footprints, so their populations are stable.

Significantly lowering ecological footprint merely results in a population explosion. If you make food production more efficient, you won’t “return unused areas to nature,” you’ll cultivate everything more efficiently, leading to enormous rises in food supply, and then in population.

Consider, when has a new technology ever actually made our lives easier? The advent of the automobile merely spread everything out, making it harder to get where we’re going and making life without an automobile very difficult. Advances in computers do not lessen the amount of work we have, it only increases the amount of work expected of us. If an increase in food production efficiency were to lead to an abandonment of previously cultivated land, it would be an event utterly and completely unprecedented in the annals of technology, contradicting every previous innovation humanity has ever made.

The insects and grubs you’re learning to see as survival food may be “slimy but satisfying”, but they’re a regression to the past just as much as much as all life going back to hydrothermal vents. If you can’t do better than that - if you won’t even make the attempt to build a better future - you deserve to be left behind.

Well, I’m focusing more on plants and animals–Giuli can be squeamish about bugs–but that point aside, this comment reeks of the sort of snide, Eurocentric attitude that haunted the nineteenth century. “Regression to the past”? I am not arguing for a complete dismissal of all technology, and my arguments about foraging relate only to subsistence. The sad fact of the matter is, the “past” was “a better future.” They worked less for a better life, where they had a community that accepted them for who they were–not as commodities to be bought, sold, and used as units of labor. Your “better future” is nothing more than a vain hope to continue this cycle of exploitation, violence and destruction. Luckily for us all, it is a vain hope.

Part of this is convincing people that it doesn’t have to happen. You’re trying to convince people the opposite.

My point here is to set out a canon for myself, so I don’t have to keep reiterating the same, basic arguments. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, but if the philosophy I set down is convincing to someone, and they abandon the pursuit of impossible techno-utopias to live in a truly sustainable way, then I won’t shed too many tears when they join the well-adapted “elect.”

The insects and grubs you’re learning to see as survival food may be “slimy but satisfying”, but they’re a regression to the past just as much as much as all life going back to hydrothermal vents.

This statement is interesting for several reasons. First of all, you prove Jason’s point about food by instantly jumping to bugs and grubs when you think of wild food. Where exactly do you think raspberries come from? Apples? Pears? Blueberries? Do you think humans invented all forms of plant and animal? Do you really think the only things to eat in a forest are insects? Have you been in a forest? For those who know edible plants - not even to mention hunting and tracking - a forest is a grocery store in which everything’s free.

Secondly, your comment that tribal foraging is somehow a “regression” is based on a fallacy regarding evolution. First of all, evolution is not linear: we are no more evolved than squirrels, nor superior to squirrels for our greater intelligence. We’ve simply found a different niche to occupy. If we tried to fit the squirrels’ niche, we’d fail miserably. There are too few acorns for too large creatures. If evolution WERE linear, and species were competing with each other to see who could be the best, then as soon as the “best” species were rooted out, all life on Earth would instantly be destroyed, because there would be nothing for this superlative species to eat. So “progress” is not an issue in evolution. There is no “regression” to a “lower” form of life, only change based on changes in one’s environment.

So because biological evolution is not linear, what gives you a reason to assume that cultural evolution is linear? Why is civilization better than tribalism because it happened second? More importantly, how can we be “regressing” to tribal foraging when people still practice it - where they’re allowed to? (Think: !Kung bushmen.) Tribalism as a social model is extraordinarily flexible and strong. It worked for humans for millions of years, and it still works now. Civilization, on the other hand, is a horrific disaster. It’s obviously a faulty model. Why assume that because you tried out a certain model recently, it somehow works better than an older model?

They say that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. For the past 10,000 years, we’ve tried civilization over and over again and only ended up destroying more and more of the Earth - and ourselves. Is it so outrageous to look at the 3 million years in which humans were practicing tribalism and NOT oppressing each other or destroying the environment and saying, “Hey, maybe we should try that”? Oh, I’m sorry. That would violate your smug Victorian cultural imperialism.