About Me

The difference between Jamais Cascio, who sits at the center of WorldChanging.com, and me is that he is a technological optimist and I am a spiritual optimist. I'm no Luddite; I just don't think we have the collective wisdom and will to ride present and projected technologies and delivery systems into a sustainable future that preserves, much less improves, people's lives at anything like current population levels. Nor do I think we have time.

Jamais, on the other hand, thinks that we may have (or come up with) everything we need, technologically and socially, to avert disaster. In a piece titled "Apocaphilia, Peak Oil and Sustainability," he explains,

(There is extensive feedback to the "Apocaphilia" piece, and it's worth spending some time on.)

To Jamais and many of his respondents, there is no light at the end of the Kunstlerian tunnel — it's curtains for humanity. Kunstler himself is not quite that pessimistic; he expects eddies of sustainability to form in the torrent of post-peak-oil chaos. I on the other hand think that full-on Apocalypse is the most likely outcome, leaving no one and no place untransformed (and for the overwhelming majority of us, that will be a distinctly out-of-body transformation).

And yet I call myself an optimist (and I want to be clear that what I am optimistic about is the human race, on the Earth, not some abstract universal destiny). How can this be? It's simply that the evidence before me has overwhelmingly convinced me that Apocalypse is both necessary and in the very best interests of humankind — and that we will, as a species, survive it and go on to thrive.

And what evidence is that? Well first, all the data and analysis on current trends — economic, political, technological, environmental, etc. — that I look at is the same stuff that Jamais sees; and I suspect that we apply similarly high standards of rationality to the attempt to compehend it. The result? We both conclude that the Earth is in trouble, and neither of us can be at all sure about the outcome; but we wish to be hopeful, in our own ways.

However, there is an additional, small but crucial, increment of evidence that I seriously consider but (I suspect) Jamais discounts; and that is evidence based on spiritual experience. It's subjective and highly abnormal in nature; and to people like Jamais and friends, grounded (and I would say, stuck) in the exclusively scientific approach to life, it's not evidence at all.

Yet, I claim, those scattered, ephemeral (nonreplicable) bits of experience are the most powerfully convincing evidence I have encountered; and it is exactly those experiences that have allowed me to glimpse the light (!) at the end of what is shaping up to be a long, dark apocalyptic tunnel.

All I can really say to doubters is, you may be overdue for some concerted spiritual exploration, entheogenic or otherwise. You technophiles are missing 99% of the Big Picture. Don't look now, but you won't get there from here without discovering what sort of beings you really are and what the Earth intends to be next. Balance, people! Openness!

In Sept. 2004 Amory Lovins and colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Institute published Winning the Oil Endgame (downloadable for free here), in which Mr. Lovins proves conclusively — we're talking decades of research and millions of dollars spent on this report and its predecessors — that the US could transition to a conservation- and alternative-fuels-based society, import no oil by 2040, and use no oil at all by 2050. The first thing I have to say about this is that he's almost certainly right, since Amory is a lot smarter than the rest of us. And if there's even a chance that he's right, then we have to take him seriously and read his damn 332-page report — and plenty of people are. (Actually, there's a shortcut: Scientific American, in its Sept. 2005 issue, has an article by Lovins that tidily summarizes his work. An even briefer synopsis was contained in the press release announcing the publication of Winning.)

Criticism of his report has, however, been meager and spotty. Lovins' critics just aren't in the same league; they haven't done their homework, haven't paid their dues, don't have really big brains, don't trot around with calculators slung on both hips. They're just Lilliputians, nipping at the soft spots between Amory's toes.

In an interview on Salon, James Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, attacked Lovins' "Hypercar" concept on the grounds that it tended to "promote the idea that we can continue being a car-dependent society." He said he was "against the idea that somebody in Amory's position would focus on cars at the expense of something else like promoting walkable communities." Unfortunately, Kunstler's position is ludicrous unless you believe (as he and I do) that we're headed straight for a place where walking is not optional. Lovins is doing his damnedest to keep us from going to that place. He's heroic! He's courageous! And he and his technosupremicist friends may yet lead us in a motorcade straight to hell (which may or may not be a walkable neighborhood). But to suggest that Amory Lovins should not attempt to find an overall solution to our transportation problem (which is more than two thirds of our oil problem) is just silly; it's superficial.

In his rebuttal, Lovins requests that Kunstler "kindly look at my 1999 book 'Natural Capitalism,' [where] he'll find that Chapter 2, 'Hypercars and Neighborhoods,' emphasizes the importance of both, and strongly supports New Urbanism." In his rerebuttal, Kunstler states, "I'll stand by my assertion that we will not be able to run the Interstate Highway System, Disney World, the New Jersey suburbs, or any of the other furnishings and accessories of the American dream on any known alternatives to petroleum and its byproducts." By way of "substantive argument," he offers Chapter 4 of The Long Emergency. Unfortunately, Chapter 4, while it contains a competent lay summary of our energy options and a number of assertions like the one quoted above, does not offer anything that can hold a candle to a Lovinsian überanalysis.

Richard Heinberg , in the Sept. 2005 issue of his monthly MuseLetter, mounts a brief but somewhat more telling attack on Lovins' position, but only by leaning heavily on the big brains over at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), who in Feb. 2005 coughed up a report for the US Department of Energy, titled Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management (Robert L. Hirsch, principal author). The SAIC study gives short shrift to conservation, admitting that "a comprehensive discussion of this subject is beyond the scope of this study." It does discuss potential fuel savings in the transportation sector, but with nothing like the force and creativity of the Lovins study.

Where the SAIC study catches Lovins out, however, is in demonstrating, quite convincingly, that there just isn't enough time, in advance of the oil peak (or perhaps in the wake of it, since we may be peaking now), to implement a program such as Lovins proposes. The authors say, for example:

So it comes down to the question of whether we have already gone too far in our enthusiastic depleting of oil. Peak oil is a mere sidebar in the the Lovins study (pp. 24-5), but he lands with both feet in the camp of the oil optimists:

But then Lovins adds, "But historically, major shifts in energy supply have also required decades ..." — thus agreeing with SAIC that time is of the essence.

Unlike Lovins, the SAIC study cites the predictions of specific authorities with regard to oil peaking (p. 19). In the "before 2010" camp we find such names as Bakhitari, Campbell, Deffeyes, Goodstein, Simmons, and Skrebowki — an impressive lineup — while the "after 2020" list has only three names: CERA, Shell, and Lynch (and yes, "Shell" refers to Shell Oil). It may be that SAIC has omitted the opinions of "most industry strategists," but at least we know who they're citing in support of their concern over near-term peaking.

And my two bytes? I think Amory knows what to do, and so does the System; but we clearly lack the will and political leadership, and soon we may lack the resources, to do it. And perhaps there is just too much momentum in directions that are too destructive. And that may be for the best. It may be, as I have suggested elsewhere, that the System must fall (and most of us die and move on) in order for the Earth to be preserved as humanity's home.

Sept. 2 — I've heard more than one person suggest that Katrina (and aftermath) may be a tipping point on our merry way to Apocalypse. I don't know that it is (and I rather doubt it — it takes a lot to quickly tip the global system); but it certainly does have all the earmarks of the sort of catastrophic event we can expect, with increasing frequency, from the confluence of meteorological and other environmental instability, economic vulnerability, and profound societal imbalances (as between haves and have nots). So we ought to be paying close attention here. Neil Harvey, a local friend, put it very well:

August 22 — All of a sudden, Matthew Simmons (see July 6 entry below) is hottest. There was a long, well-constructed piece in the New York Times Magazine yesterday on Simmons, Saudi oil, and peak oil generally. This morning the author of that piece, Peter Maass, was on NPR's Fresh Air, with Terry Gross. And at noon Simmons was summoned to the studios of Neil Cavuto's Your World on Fox News. He looked like a man who had been interviewed a hundred times too many this week.

August 18 — The citizens of Willits, Ca. have mounted a major effort, called the Willits Economic Localization project (WELL), to prepare for the consequences of peak oil or other disruptions. They've been working on this for less than a year, but they appear to have made considerable progress, and the city government itself has gotten strongly involved. Here's a news article outlining their work, and this is their own site.

July 6 — Saudi Arabia is the key player in the peak oil endgame. The entire developed world is counting on the Saudis to not just maintain but increase their production. Now, Matthew Simmons, a leading oil-industry investment banker, has taken apart, exhaustively and conclusively, the myth of abundant Saudi oil, in Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. The book was reviewed by Michael Klare in the Asia Times, June 29, 2005. There was another important review by Prof. John Gray of the London School of Economics, on the New Statesman website, July 27.

What does this mean to you and me and our chances of continuing to put bread on the table? This question is explored in a concise yet comprehensive way by Richard Heinberg, in a June 23 address titled "Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply." (There's more about Heinberg on the Resources page.) He examines the debate over whether eco-agricultural practices such as biointensive gardening and permaculture can save the day once oil shortages become serious. He doubts they can, because the adoption of these methods would require a wholesale economic transformation of societies. He concludes, "the debate over the potential productivity of chemical-gene engineered agriculture versus that of organic and agroecological farming may be relatively pointless. We must turn to a food system that is less fuel-reliant, even if it does prove to be less productive."

The point I'd like to make about all this is that, in an apocalyptic scenario, it is those people who have adopted eco-agricultural practices and lifestyles (or who never lost them) who will be best able to survive.

June 12 — Paul Tillich?... Honolulu?... Ducks?! Jody sends this intriguing bit from Oahu.

June 5 — Ran into a report of an interesting Ron Insana interview of Sir Julian Robertson, legendary manager of the $1B+ Tiger Hedge Fund. He anticipates complete global economic, political, and infrastructure collapse.

June 4 — After I launched this site last week, I received several responses that focused on the question, "How bad will it get?" I've posted portions of those messages, along with my response, on the Community Survival Forum page.