Since 1972

[degringolade]

 

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a realist.  Folks in this society, filled with the obligatory positivism that is the only acceptable means of intercourse refer to me as a pessimist.  That is because I can see bad results as a consequence of behaviors and recognize that not stopping those behaviors will inevitably lead to the aforementioned bad results.

Now, being a realist, and realizing that my personal decisions have a vanishingly minuscule effect on the direction the world is taking, I tend to wonder why I am so worried about reducing my footprint on this planet.  Just in the US I am 1/327,000,000 (0.0000003%) of the problem.  Even if I went full hair shirt and lived in a recycled hut built from scavenged materials my actions would not have an appreciable impact.

Now, I think that folks should go out and read Gail Tverberg's shiny new post at Our Finite World.  I have always stated (to my friends dismay and mortification) that the oil is running out.  We have harvested the low-hanging fruit and in the next couple of years we will mostly be learning far more than we wish to know about energy return on energy investment (EROEI).  

Gail's excellent article lays down what will be the price of going renewable.  The bill is very, very steep.  Here in the USA, folks have completely forgotten about peak oil, primarily because of the obligatory positivism stated above.  Our suburb and car culture with big box stores and 3,000 mile Caesar Salad's in Montana in January will have to take a hit.  It will not only have to take a hit, it will have to be thrown down and beaten.  

I have taken the liberty of including a copy of a graph from the original run of World 3.  Now, this one is gussied up pretty well from the original, computer graphics advancing how they have, but it is the same graph that I saw and understood back in 1972.  It was just back then I thought that, since I was going to be dead at the time the turning point came to pass, I wouldn't sweat it too much.

 

Well that indecision may bite me.  I think that most of the political nonsense that is going on right now, the lack of real decisions, the lack of real options: These things are torn from our societies by our lack of will, our parsimony, and our procrastination.  

I am just hoping that if I change enough now and make enough effort in living within my means that I will not die with a heavy heart and guilt with what I have helped do to my descendants.