The Forecaster's Eyeglasses

A major focus of this blog has been to try to guess the outlines of the future, and to outline possible strategies for preparing for that future.  People who try to guess the outlines of the future need a certain mindset if they intend to safely engage in the guessing game without making fools of themselves.  One essential characteristic of the required mindset is humility - the kind of humility which keeps the guessers from taking themselves and their guesses so seriously that they are unwilling to take on emerging information which may contradict the original guesses.  Another essential characteristic is curiosity - the kind of curiosity which dedicates itself to observing and tracking emerging trends.  Lastly, what is needed is precision - a rigorous logical precision in evaluating both one's guesses and one's observations, as well as logical rigor in evaluating whether one's observations confirm one's original guesses.  The scientific method is an example of this kind of rigorous precision.  

A large body of guesses about the future has to do with the effects of resource depletion and environmental degradation on modern industrial society.  As an example we can consider the many books written on the subject during the first decade of the 21st century.  Spokespersons such as Julian Darley, Richard Heinberg, James Howard Kunstler, Dmitry Orlov, Nicole Foss, and Raul Ilargi Meijer promoted the view that the world's supplies of petroleum were on the verge of entering a phase of declining output, and that this irreversible decline in output would trigger catastrophic changes in the world's industrial societies, or to put it more starkly, the sudden catastrophic collapse of industrial society.  Some of the predictions of these people seemed to leave the realm of fact-based analysis entirely and became instead the embodiment of the subconscious night terror of white Anglo-European society over the possible loss of their own dominance and control of the earth.

So how did the predictions of these people fare in the face of events?  The answer is decidedly mixed.  Many of these predictors were able to draw the correct linkage between the impending decline of global petroleum output and U.S. foreign policy under the presidency of George W. Bush.  And according to the analysis of the German Energy Watch Group, the world has indeed long since passed the peak of global conventional oil production.  However, the predictions of the "collapsitarians" failed to account for the technological innovations which allowed the petroleum industry to temporarily boost output of petroleum liquids by means of fracking, ultra-deep drilling, horizontal drilling and other unconventional means.  (Of course, the use of these techniques also led to widespread groundwater contamination as well.)  These predictions also failed to account for the innovations in solar pv cell production, electricity storage technology, and electric vehicle design which have occurred from 2010 onward.  (However, these predictors of collapse did manage to breathe new life into a genre of literature which had gone dormant after the threat of nuclear war seemed to recede from the 1980's onward - namely the genre of post-apocalyptic fiction!  Move over, John Wyndham, Brian Aldiss, Pat Frank, Stephen King, and Walter M. Miller - you've got new neighbors...)

In other words, while resource shortages have begun to appear, they have been partially mitigated by technological advances.  Thus, society in general has most definitely not collapsed.  Yet ordinary people - especially those who are not among the privileged - have found that the number of potential threats in their environment has multiplied.  We who are not among the world's privileged therefore must learn to navigate that threat environment.  This navigation will require us to identify both emergent trends and potential risks.  So I'd like to lay out a few of these trends and risks in the remaining space in this post.  Let's consider the following:

• Energy.  The global energy situation is a mixed bag at present.  As mentioned above, global oil production is definitely past peak right now, and I'd like to suggest that this includes not only conventional oil, but all petroleum liquids.  This is why oil prices had begun to rise in 2021 even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  What is more, global production of coal may already have peaked.  According to the Energy Watch Group, global production of uranium has also already peaked.  Therefore the outlook is not good for those societies and industries which rely primarily on fossil fuel.  However, the outlook for renewables - especially solar photovoltaics - is quite sunny.  (Pardon the pun.)  As mentioned previously on this blog, analyses conducted by the German Energy Watch Group show that the transformation of global industrial societies entirely to renewable energy conveyed by electricity is well within the capabilities of these societies.  That transformation was already in progress before the start of this year, and has only accelerated as nations have come to realize that they cannot allow themselves to become dependent on the resources of thug regimes with imperial ambitions such as Russia.

One wild card in the energy mix is the potential contribution from nuclear fusion energy.  Two weeks ago the United States achieved ignition for the first time in a laser-triggered inertial confinement fusion experiment.  What this means is that by using laser light to implode a fusion target, the experimenters were able to produce more energy than the lasers used to initiate the fusion reaction.  However, this does not mean that a practical commercial fusion reactor is just around the corner.  So far, most fusion experiments have focused on the deuterium-tritium reaction, which produces most of its energy in a form that is very hard to harness for electricity generation.  The reaction also produces a very high neutron flux, which tends to destroy reactor materials over time in addition to producing lots of radioactive waste.  The disadvantages of the deuterium-tritium reaction represent a serious engineering challenge.  It remains to be seen whether that challenge can be overcome.

• Material Resources. I don't have time today to do an exhaustive analysis of resource bottlenecks, but I can definitely say that shortages of key materials have begun to appear in a number of industries.  Taking the construction industry as an example, from 2020 onward there have been shortages of lumber and steel.  In addition, there have been increasing shortages and delays in obtaining finished construction assemblies such as electrical switchboards, switchgear and transformers.  The appearance of shortages need not be a catastrophic thing, but shortages will force the world's economies to shift to a more circular model.  This will force a shift in the ideologies of many right-leaning people in the United States, for instance.  The good news is that a number of heavy industrial corporations have begun to move toward embracing the circular economy.  However, the existence and increasing severity of material shortages may prove to be more of an economic constraint than the shortage of energy was supposed to be.

• Climate and Environment.  The events of the past three or four years have provided blatant proof of the accelerating pace of global warming and its resulting environmental degradation.  From the spectacular Russian wildfires (most of which were caused by humans) which took place every year during the last ten years to the massive wildfires and smoke events which occurred in the western United States in 2020 to the horrible extreme temperatures which were seen in the U.S. Pacific Northwest in 2021, we have begun to witness weather events which have not been seen on the earth for millions of years.  Moreover, recent studies show that the melting of the earth's permanent ice is happening as much as 100 times faster than scientific models have predicted.  Many have predicted that increasing alteration of the earth's climate will result in large-scale migration of "climate refugees" from more chaotic or inhospitable regions to more habitable regions of the earth.  The assumption has been that these refugees will be from among the world's poorest people.  But it seems to me - especially given the random distribution of extreme weather events over the last few years - that many of these refugees may come from the world's most affluent populations.  Think of rich retired snowbirds fleeing from Arizona or jet-setters fleeing coastal resort properties in Florida.  Perhaps the best prospects will belong to those people who are wise and savvy enough to make a habitable space wherever they may find themselves - even if it means making one's bed in Sheol.

• Social Justice and Human Rights.  It is in this area that the greatest threats have arisen over the last decade.  The poor and oppressed populations of the earth won a number of significant victories during the 20th century.  Those victories led to such things as the end of the British Empire, the liberation of formerly colonized nations in the Global South, and the establishment of polities of liberated people who were able to begin to build their own collective power in order to fulfill their own human potential.  A number of observers including both social scientists and science fiction writers predicted that this trend would only continue until the entire earth had become an egalitarian society in which each human being was valued equally and in which each human being could flourish.  However, such idealistic thinking failed to recognize the latent power and personality-disordered nature of the oppressors, nor did it take into account the fact that the oppressors began to organize themselves to take back their lost glory.  Thus many of us failed to notice the efforts - at first subtle, then more blatant - which began from 1980 onward in the United States to attempt to reverse all the civil rights gains achieved by the nonwhite in the United States from 1865 onward.  We failed to recognize the emergence of revanchists both domestically and globally.

Now we stand at a crossroads - especially those of us who are people of color in the United States.  Our strategy to date for dealing with the re-emergent threats we face has been inadequate, to say the least.  That strategy has consisted of joining ourselves to a "progressive" agenda which does not place our unique concerns first and foremost, because it was not set by us.  Those who push this agenda on us have instructed us to engage in a "strategy" which largely consists of begging the oppressor to be nice.  This hasn't worked.  We have allowed our struggle to be hijacked by people whose priorities are not our priorities.  And we who are people of color in the United States have allowed ourselves to be turned into the foot soldiers of someone else's agenda, in the hopes that we might be able to receive some of the crumbs which fall from the table of that someone else when they have accomplished their agenda.

We need to start constructing our own agenda.  That agenda must start with us coming together to create our own structures of self-reliance just as Gandhi did in India at the beginning of his struggle against British imperialism.  This will involve struggle and hard work.  We need to stop being afraid of struggle and hard work.  To quote from a certain book on strategic nonviolent resistance, we need to realize that "the guilt of falling into the predatory hands of [oppressors] lay in the oppressed society and, thus, the solution and liberation need to come from that society transformed through its work, education, and civility."  Or, to put it another way, if I get out of bed and go into the bathroom to brush my teeth and I find a wolf there, it is 100 percent the wolf's fault if I get eaten by the wolf, since most reasonable people would never have any reason to expect a wolf in their houses.  (That nasty wolf must have sneaked in!)  But if I live in a place where wolves are commonplace and are very vicious, and I know this to be true, and yet I take no precautions when I leave my house, it is still 100 percent the wolf's fault if I get eaten, because the wolf is an evil, predatory beast whose evil nature moved him to start chewing on me.  But in this case, it is also 100 percent my fault, because I knew that there were wolves near my house, and I knew what sort of creatures wolves are, and yet I did nothing to protect myself.  Chew on that for a while.

Note that this list is not exhaustive.  In particular, I ran out of time to discuss the emergence of potential pandemic threats and the threats to public health which have resulted from the spread of disinformation and denialism by the Global Far Right.  Nor did I discuss the geopolitical threat posed by national revanchism, although this naturally follows from a consideration of threats to human rights and social justice.  While Russia is a blatant example of a revanchist threat, it is by no means the only example.  And there is the question of how the emergence of artificial machine intelligence will evolve and how much of an impact it will make on our daily lives.   But I must leave these considerations for another day.

The Scorching of the 45th And Beyond

 This is another quick post.  In view of the record-breaking heat across much of the Global North this summer, I thought it might be instructive to document the effect which that heat has had in my particular locale.  So here are a few pictures from my garden and backyard, along with some comments.  These pictures were taken about ten days ago, and they document the damage which was caused by the Pacific Northwest heat wave of late June.

Heat stress suffered by a shade tree in the backyard.  Note the yellow, dead leaves.

Another view of the same tree.

Damaged leaves and fruit on the apple tree.

Heat damage suffered by a hazelnut tree.  Again, note the discolored leaves.

Heat injury to a conifer.  Note the dead branches and withered needles.

What the heat did to the kale.  The scorched leaves are discolored.

About two weeks before the heat wave of late June, I planted onion seeds.  The heat killed most of them.  Not all news is bad, however.  Some of the hardier and more well-established plants in the garden continue to produce, as seen below:

The artichoke plant turned into a space alien!

The summer squash did well.  The zucchini (not shown) - not so much.

Whoa!  Vashka!  How'd you get into this picture?!

And now for some comments.  I live just a bit north of the 45th parallel of latitude in the United States.  Temperatures this summer have been at least ten degrees above historical averages for much of the last two months.  This is true of nighttime temperatures as well.  The fact that nighttime temperatures have been so high is an undeniable proof of the effect of increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, since carbon dioxide blocks longwave infrared radiation (IR), but is transparent to shortwave IR.  This means that as the earth warms during the daytime because of absorbed shortwave IR, it is increasingly unable to release the heat thus stored when the sun goes down, because the heat released from the ground (and from hardscapes in urban heat islands) is radiated as longwave IR.  That is why such low-tech adaptations as opening windows at night are less effective now than they used to be.

The fact of anthropogenic - that is, manmade - climate change is undeniable.  However, as we have seen during the last year and a half, there are two potential responses to the undeniable.  The first response is to make peace with reality and to try under that peace to live gracefully with reality.  So we have nations such as China.  China is actively researching collective, intelligently-planned ways to adapt its society to mitigate the local effects of a warming climate.  The Chinese are especially interested in using natural, low-tech means of lowering ground-level temperatures in urban areas, as documented in a BBC report titled, "Can You Cool A House Without Air Conditioning?"  

Then there are nations such as the United States, in which a distressingly large percentage of the population have given themselves to national narcissism.  For the sake of their damnable goal of white supremacy they are willing to sacrifice reality on the altar of their narcissism.  Their last, best chance of achieving their goal of total domination of the world was embodied in the presidency of Donald Trump.  But Trump made a serious (even though willful) mistake in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, so we got a bunch of doofuses who refused to acknowledge the mistake and refused therefore to treat the coronavirus pandemic with the seriousness it deserved.  These doofuses showed up mask-less and armed to the teeth at the state capitols of states with Democratic governors in order to "liberate" their states from mask mandates and other public health directives which these governors put into place to attempt to deal with the pandemic.  These idiots have also by and large refused to get vaccinated in 2021, as documented by a news story titled, "No, We Didn't Get The Vaccine...We're Republicans" and another story titled, "GOP Legislators in Missouri Oppose Vaccine Efforts as State Becomes COVID Hotspot."  You see, to admit the reality and seriousness of COVID-19 would be to admit that their chosen hero majorly dropped the ball.  And as good, textbook cases of narcissism, they cannot admit any mistake whatsoever.

This is why I believe that it will be very difficult for the United States to mount a coordinated, collective, realistic response to the climate crisis which has now begun to severely bite us.  For the Republican/white supremacist/evangelical devotion to predatory capitalism and unrestrained economic growth at any cost represents a mistake of much longer standing than the mistake of backing a doofus who dropped the ball in dealing with a pandemic.  If the MAGA crowd were not willing to wear masks, they sure won't be willing to deal intelligently with a climate crisis which is beginning to destroy their livelihoods.  They are a textbook case not only of narcissism but of cultic thinking.

(One note: I am almost finished with my series of posts on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  I want to do another series of posts which are coordinated around a central theme, but I can't decide which theme I want to tackle next.  One theme that appeals to me is the theme of how cults - both religious and secular - establish themselves in a society.  It seems to me that this would be especially applicable to the United States, which seems to form cults as easily as some bodies form tumors...)

Lastly, I want to talk a bit about the use of natural mitigation strategies for local climate change effects.  From the pictures above, one can clearly see that just planting trees may not be enough to guard against urban heat island effects.  Rather, the trees must be managed so that they themselves can survive heat stress.  And it may be that trees that are historical natives to many northern climates will have to be augmented with trees that are not natives to the far North, but are native to historically hot and dry climates, trees such as the fig tree, which is able to establish a deep root system and to mitigate heat islands by efficient evapotranspiration.  This will require further research.

P.S. Not only has much of the United States dropped the ball on climate change mitigation, but Russia has hugely dropped the ball.  The wildfires in Siberia are now bigger than all other wildfires on the earth combined.  Putin's flying monkeys tout his so-called intelligence and wisdom, but Putin's Russia isn't doing very well right now.

Tying Two to Two

I have been thinking today about a Greek word I encountered a few weeks ago during my daily Bible reading.  It is found in Matthew 13 and Mark 4, shortly after the Parable of the Sower, and it is the word συνίημι ("syniemi"), which means literally "to send, bring, or set together."  In a metaphorical sense it also means to "put two and two together," that is, to understand the meaning and implications of a thing.  The passage in which this word appears reads thus:

For the heart of this people has become dull,

and with their ears they scarcely hear, 

and they have closed their eyes, 

lest they should see with their eyes, 

and hear with their ears,

and understand (σῠνῑ́ημῐ) with their heart and return,

and I should heal them.

Here we have a picture of a people who were diseased - and who indeed were suffering from their diseased condition - yet who were doomed to remain in their suffering because of their refusal to put two and two together.  Consider the many forms of suffering that arise from this willful refusal to put two and two together - a refusal that is one of the hallmarks of addiction or of cultic thinking.

And consider those nations which have historically identified themselves as the Global North.  Note how the cultures and political discourse of so many of these nations has been hijacked by the ideology of predatory laissez-faire free-market capitalism, the worship of wealth, white supremacy, and the selfishness of "libertarianism" and "conservatism."  Those who promoted this hijacking have loudly and insistently preached the message that there should be no limits or restrictions placed on the "liberty" of individuals for any reason whatsoever.  They failed to mention that they are most concerned about preserving the liberty of those individuals in a society who have the greatest economic and political power, who are thus free to indulge their selfishness by stepping on the toes (and any other convenient body parts) of all the rest of us.  Yet what is both noteworthy and tragic is that so many of the rest of us have bought the same message and drunk the same Kool-Aid which is sold to us by the wealthiest and most powerful members of our society.

But in recent decades, a number of crises have emerged as a result of this thinking.  I will consider only two of these today.  Let me mention that both crises could have been mitigated or avoided entirely had our society held a more collectivist mindset - that is, had we been the sort of people who value the common good above the unrestrained exercise of individual "liberty".  The first crisis is that of manmade climate change.  Yes, I said "manmade."  Other accurate phrases or terms would include "anthropogenic" or "human-caused."  We have known for decades that industrial activity was altering the earth's atmosphere in ways that would alter the climate - yet the defenders of "liberty" have loudly and insistently denied such knowledge.  Why?  Because to admit the impact of human industrial activity would have forced these people to confront a moral choice.  They would have been faced with the choice of "understanding with their hearts."  And that choice would have cost either a numbed conscience or possibly lots of money.  The Global North does like its money, doesn't it?  (The white American Evangelical/Protestant church really loves its money!  Must be why so many of its members and leaders can't seem to put two and two together...)  And in addition to the numbing of conscience, these nations chose to continue the destructive chasing of economic gain because many of their citizens told themselves that the consequences of their choices would never fall on them.  They said, "What do we care about polar bears?  Or about poor island people drowning in rising seas?  That's so far from us!"

Except that now it isn't far away at all.  Last year was the first year of my life in which I lived in the midst of a widespread, potentially lethal climate event.  It was an event for which to escape, many of us would have had to travel up to a thousand miles to the east.  It was an event during which the amount of free oxygen in the local atmosphere dropped to such levels that dangerous levels of carbon monoxide were produced.  And it was caused by wildfires that raged from Southern California to southern Canada.  We are about to experience another potentially lethal climate event, as daytime temperatures over much of the American West will exceed 100 degrees for several days, and nighttime temperatures will not drop below 70 degrees.  (See this also.)  Moreover, there will be few places to which to escape, because much of the rest of the United States is also experiencing climate crises including severe weather.  And both the heat and the severe weather are likely to recur several times this summer.  Would you like a little fire with that order?  Or maybe you have enough money to escape to Europe for a while.  Except that Europe is enduring its own heatwave (especially Eastern Europe), and parts of Russia have turned into a bit of Hell.  (See this also.)

There is also the ongoing crisis of the coronavirus pandemic.  What is noteworthy about the United States is the large number of people who have not yet been vaccinated - especially in southern "red" states - as well as the number of people who continue to refuse to wear masks in public.  I ran into one such gentleman this morning when I made a quick dash to buy some groceries.  I pointed him out to one of the store clerks, who told the man to put on a mask.  He protested, saying that he had been vaccinated.  Then the man looked at me and announced that he had been to Afghanistan.  I don't exactly know what reaction he hoped to get out of me - he was fat and had gray hair, and if he was really a vet, it was obvious that it had been a long time since he had graduated from the college of violent knowledge.  I just looked at him.  Had he caused trouble, he would have been able afterward to boast that not only had he been to Afghanistan, but he had also been to jail.  He did put on a mask.  People like him are the reason why the United States is so slow in returning to any semblance of a pre-pandemic "normal."  

The United States ignored for a while the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as a result, the American economy was badly damaged even as our leaders prioritized profits above dealing with the crisis.  The United States is now no longer the strongest nation on earth.  The Global North has ignored the implications of climate change until now, and as a result, the differential in power and wealth which the Global North has built with respect to the rest of the world is eroding.  Could it be perhaps way past time for some of us to start putting two and two together?

Firebugs Of A Feather

 

What a devil!

Human dysfunction tends to run in patterns.  And this blog has noted several times the similarities in the types of dysfunction that characterizes Russia in the age of Putin and the United States in the age of Trump.  So my curiosity was piqued today when I checked the stats for this blog and discovered that I had gotten a lot of hits from Russia over the last 24 hours.  "Someone over there," thought I, "must be very interested in my most recent blog post.  Or maybe they just have a general interest in my blogging!  Who could it be, and why???"

I could think of only two reasons why people in Russia might be interested in what I have to say.  Either those reading my stuff are members of the FSB who have put a price on my head, or there are ordinary, everyday Russians who are facing the same deadly dysfunction which has characterized the United States under Trump.  Because I am a very little fish in a very big pond, I concluded that it must be the latter.

So I Googled "wildfires russia 2020" and came up with the following interesting hits:

• "Wildfires in Siberia have burned down an area larger than Greece," CBS News
• "Another Intense Summer of Fires in Siberia," NASA Earth Observatory
• "Russia's Wildfires Double in Size Within Week", TASS (via the Moscow Times)
• "Nearly 300 wildfires in Siberia amid record warm weather," phys.org

To the ordinary people in Russia who want to just live and let live - to those who are not interested in building an empire or trashing people who are not white and not Russian - I extend my sympathy to you this fire season.  I hope moreover that I can provide some consolation to you, knowing that "the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished in your brotherhood that is in the world," as the Good Book says.  We have our climate arsonist to deal with, and unfortunately you have yours as well.

And to those in the United States and elsewhere who continue to drink Trump-flavored Kool-Aid, let's do Russia a favor.  Trump blames the overwhelming severity of wildfires in the United States on "poor forest management," suggesting that we ought to send people into our wildlands to rake up leaves.  Let's send Trump to Siberia to do some raking.  Just make sure he doesn't have any matches.

A Bed In Sheol

 Twilight comes early.

Sunset choked to death on clouds of ash. 

"Eat the fruit of this tree

and you shall be like God" -

but the idol of our godhood,

kindled by that pyrotechnic tree,

burns now to the ground.

I live in a city which hasn't seen blue sky or stars now for the last five days and counting.  I have been inside my house for about the same amount of time, and during that time there has not been a day in which the air has not smelled like smoke.  I should have gotten a lot done in that time (including house cleaning and repair, writing a blog post, and other business), but instead I must confess that I've been somewhat glued to websites like this:

• Portland Oregon Weather Underground
• Oregon Department of Environmental Quality - Air Quality Monitoring Data
• Oregon Smoke Information
• AirNow Interactive Map of Air Quality
• Smoke Forecast - FireSmoke.ca

Call my preoccupation a fetish, but as Samuel Johnson once said, "Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."  This year is beginning to feel to me like the run-up to a mass execution.  First, the stupidity and malignancy of Donald Trump.  Then the coronavirus.  Then the emergence of a blatant, murderous racism reminiscent of the American South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the very public murders of unarmed African-Americans.  Now massive wildfires for those of us in the American West, and a very active hurricane season for those on the eastern and southern seaboards of the United States.

A few facts about the wildfires.  First, for the last three days, the smoke has produced widespread areas of pollution levels that have been designated as hazardous by State and Federal agencies.  That's "hazardous", as in, "Any exposure to the air, even for a few minutes, can lead to serious health effects on everybody. Avoid outdoor activities."  Second, the three biggest pollutants of concern have been smoke particles with diameters of 2.5 microns and below, smoke particles in the 10 micron range, and carbon monoxide.  The presence of carbon monoxide is especially troubling because CO is only produced when there is not enough oxygen present to ensure at least a stoichiometric mix of oxygen and carbon-bearing materials.

Many of the fires have been caused by downed power lines or by lightning.  Many of the fires have also been caused by typical human activity.  But the fires have also become yet another occasion for political posturing by the American Right.  Trump claims that this season's wildfires are the result of "poor forest management," but the facts don't support him.  Many of the wildfires that have started this fall did not originate in forests.  And there is overwhelming scientific evidence that the worsening fire seasons worldwide are a consequence of manmade climate change.  Much of that evidence was compiled over the last two or three decades by national laboratories funded by the United States Government.  Names like Livermore, Berkeley, and Argonne come to mind.  These national laboratories are now the victims of Trump budget cuts.  Therefore I expect that like the coronavirus, or deteriorating social relations, or fraying social safety nets, or a declining currency, Trump will willfully and deliberately botch his response to this exigency also.

And that had me thinking at 4 am this morning.  You see, these things don't just impact me as a series of facts that fit into an analysis.  (Even though I'm rather strongly geeky!)  I am thinking of how last Monday I enjoyed an evening walk through the neighborhood and spent time in my backyard watering the veggies and playing my guitar beneath a clear twilight sky with two cats at my feet.  That was my chill time, my therapy which enabled me to cope with a world that has recently become chaotic because of rich and powerful doofuses who want to Make Themselves Great Again due to long-standing inferiority complexes.  Trump is such a doofus.  But I thought I had learned to take him in stride even as I saw through his attempts to cause chaos.  Now the consequences of his doofus chaos have flared up in new and unexpected ways - much like the re-emergence of flames from a fire that was not properly put out.  And it's not just his doofus-ness.  It's his constant gaslighting, his absolute refusal to tell the truth about anything, lest he lose what he perceives to be the advantage of pulling the wool over the eyes of those who listen to him.  It's getting to be a bit much.

So because I had a hard time sleeping at 4 am, I was searching the Web for stories of Americans who have left the country for good within the last few years.  And I was checking out what it would take for me to emigrate to Canada.  (I found out that I'm just a few points shy of the minimum needed for a technical professional to be allowed to emigrate.)  But then I thought of the people I'd be abandoning if I did such a thing.  And I thought of how even the world's best places did not start out that way.  They were built by the sweat equity of those who were willing to sacrifice to try to construct a righteous order in the midst of chaos.  I also thought of how some of the world's best places are under attack from those who want to impose their chaos on what was a righteous order.  Becoming a refugee is a temporary protection at best.  And one can't be a refugee forever.

But trying to build or defend a righteous order in the midst of the chaos that is the United States just now seems to me like trying to make my bed in Sheol.  (Or if you like the King James Bible, it seems like trying to make my bed in hell.)  At least the Good Book promises that though I make my bed in such places, there is One Who is with me.  And the art of making a sleep-worthy bed in unpleasant places will become a valuable skill as the great societies of the world run up against the reality of resource constraints and as their leaders grapple with the involuntary ending of their dreams of godhood.  On that note, I'm going to lie down and try to take a nap.

P.S. Here and here are a couple of links to some interesting articles on wildfires and climate change.

When The First Amendment Is Revoked

A troubling development has surfaced in the preparations being made by the Trump team to seize the White House which they "won" in a rigged election this past November.  It appears that the Trump team issued a list of 74 questions to Department of Energy personnel, asking them to identify which employees and contractors worked on climate change initiatives under President Obama.  Among the items in the questionnaire are the following:

• "Can you provide a list of all Department of Energy employees or contractors who have attended any Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon meetings?  Can you provide a list of when those meetings were and any materials distributed at those meetings, emails associated with those meetings, or materials created by Department employees or contractors in anticipation or as a result of those meetings?"
• "Can you provide a list of Department employees or contractors who attended any of the Conference of the Parties (under the UNFCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change)) in the last five years?"
• "Which programs within DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama's Climate Action Plan?"
• "Can you provide a list of the top twenty salaried employees of the lab, with total remuneration and the portion funded by DOE?"
• "Can you provide a list of current professional society memberships of lab staff?"
• "Can you provide a list of all other positions currently held by lab staff, paid and unpaid, including faculties, boards, and consultancies?"

These questions are being asked by the transition team of a President-elect who has vowed to dismantle Obama's climate action policies and who has publicly said that "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."  It is therefore understandable that the scientists in the Department of Energy are looking at the questionnaire from the incoming Administration in the same way that a flock of chickens might look at a fox who is asking for each chicken's name and address.

However, the point of my post today is not to argue whether climate change is real, or whether, if real, it is being caused by human activity.  (On these two points, the science is indisputable.  As to the consequences we are now reaping, see this, this, and this for instance.)  My point is, rather, whether the scientists who are seeking to do objective, fact-based work at the DOE have good reason to be worried about what a hostile incoming Administration might try to do to them.  For it is well known that Donald Trump is a classic narcissist, and we can also be reasonably certain that most of his inner circle shares his disease.  One of the rules for survival in proximity to a narcissist is this: Don't ever disagree with him.  If you break that rule, be prepared for retaliation.  And if the narcissist not only controls your employment, but also knows all your professional associations and positions held outside of your regular employment, he can majorly ruin your chances of finding any kind of employment in your particular field.  There are many stories around just now of people whose careers were ruined by narcissists or bullies. 

So it will be interesting to see how dissenting scientists fare in the DOE under a Trump administration.  That will tell us how the Trump administration will respond to dissent in general.  Early reports are not encouraging, as seen here, here and here, for example.  I think that it is very likely that we will have to endure an extremely thin-skinned President who is determined to live in the narcissistic bubble of his own fantasy, a President who will explode in narcissistic rage at any fact, reality or person who dares to burst that bubble.  He will be Nixon on steroids.

And for that reason, I think it is prudent for those of us who will have to live under such a President to consider two of Gene Sharp's Methods of Nonviolent Action (from his book How Nonviolent Struggle Works), under the heading of Social Intervention: creating alternative social institutions, and creating alternative communication systems.  What is more, these alternative social institutions and alternative communication networks must be tough, survivable, and able to function even when they are denied access to the resources available to official institutions and communication networks.  It might be a very good idea to ask how you would form a network of people you can rely on when your power to form networks is being interdicted by the State.  It might be a good idea to ask how you can communicate with a wider audience or an audience spread over a wide geographic area when you can't use Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Blogger, or any other electronic Web-based social media - either because access to these media is denied, or because dissenters who try to use them might wind up getting arrested.  Message in a bottle, anyone?

Living In A Place Named "Predicament"

Explosion Kitty walking away from the Zombie 

Apocalypse 

And now in this post we return to the roots of this blog (and we show how a discussion of national and cultural abnormal psychology relates to those roots). This blog began as a diary of my observations of the changes in mainstream American society which are being caused by the decline in energy and natural resources needed by the global industrial economy. Personally, I think some of my earliest posts on the topic were rather amateurish, due to the fact that I didn't quite understand at first everything I was looking at. (Petroleum geology, in particular, is not my forte.) But even people who were born yesterday can catch up a bit by staying up all night studying. ;)

When writers seriously discuss resource depletion, climate change and their likely effects on the global industrial economy, some readers tend to react as if they'd just met a conspiracy theory/zombie apocalypse nut. But these subjects actually have a very solid technical background. Let's explore that background for a moment.

First, there have been thinkers from way back who understood that the earth is finite, and who accepted the possibility that humans might one day bump against the limits of the earth's resources. Two 19th century names come to mind: Thomas Malthus postulated that the human population could grow to a level that would not sustain extravagant lifestyles. Svante Arrhenius postulated that human industrial activity could release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in such quantities that it could cause significant long-term changes to the global climate. Malthus and Arrhenius did not have the benefit of computer modeling to validate their assumptions. But in the 1970's, there were scientists who did have that benefit. A group of these scientists assembled under the auspices of the Club of Rome to study possible future scenarios for the global industrial society from the 1970's to 2100. They discovered a number of scenarios in which the industrial economy would run into hard constraints related to the amount of virgin resources which could be extracted, and the amount of industrial waste which could be dumped into the environment without serious side effects. Running into those constraints would lead to economic contraction and population distress. Their findings were published in a volume titled The Limits To Growth, which has been periodically updated to the present. The First World in general, and the United States in particular, did not heed the warnings of The Limits To Growth, and so now we see the beginnings of our society running into hard constraints.

One of those constraints deserves special mention. In the 1950's, M. King Hubbert, a petroleum geologist for the Shell Oil Company, derived a simple formula from calculus to model the flow rate of an oil field as a function of its proven reserves. (See this also.)  The implications of this formula led Hubbert to conclude that production of conventional oil in the United States would peak in the early 1970's and enter into irreversible decline thereafter. He also postulated that production of conventional oil worldwide would peak some time in the early part of the first decade of the 21st century and enter into irreversible decline thereafter. He published his conclusions in a prominent peer-reviewed journal and managed to make his Shell Oil bosses very unhappy. The trouble was, he was right.

Hubbert's assumptions were validated by Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere in an article titled “The End of Cheap Oil,” published in Scientific American in 1998.  This article provoked a flurry of both interest and controversy and was a catalyst in the formation of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, or ASPO in short. The Oil Drum website was also born, as well as organizations like the Post-Carbon Institute. A child lately born among this brood was the Energy Watch Group which began as a collection of geologists and other scientists sponsored by the German government under the leadership of Hans-Josef Fell of the German Parliament. (The Energy Watch Group correctly stated that the peak of global conventional crude oil production (excluding shale and tar sands) had already occurred by 2008.) All of these groups were characterized by strong technical leadership consisting of scientists with strong technical backgrounds who were well-qualified to discuss the field they were addressing, namely, the likelihood of near-term declines in global conventional oil production.

The discussion of the likelihood of near-term decline in the availability of cheap oil naturally led to the discussion of the likely impact and effects of such a decline on First World economies. This led to the generation of a number of scenarios. At first, those producing the scenarios were strongly technical types very similar to the people who were studying the possibility of production rate declines. For instance, the United States government commissioned a group of respected scientists led by Robert Hirsch to study the likely impacts on American society of permanent near-term declines in availability of oil. The results of that study were published in 2005 in a document now known as the Hirsch report.

The Hirsch report predicted major disruptions to industrial society unless preparations were made sufficiently far in advance (as in, 20 years) of the peaking and decline of conventional oil production. Hirsch, et al, did not exactly talk about zombies, but the impacts described in the report were dramatic enough to inspire a number of other people (including several people without technical academic degrees) to start mapping out possible scenarios. These scenarios tended to fall into two general categories: a “fast crash” case and a “more nuanced” case.

In the “fast crash” camp were such people as the creators of the World Without Oil website, a supposed reality “game” in which people could explore the impact of a sudden drop in oil availability. (I discovered the site in 2007, and noticed that most of its scenarios tended to be variations on a violent “zombie apocalypse” theme. But I'm getting ahead of myself.) There was also Matt Savinar, a blogger who formerly devoted himself to covering the impacts of peak oil on industrial societies. Matt earned a degree in law (and thereafter started calling himself the “Juris Doctor of Doom”) while trying to build a business selling what I would call “doom preparation kits” of emergency rations and other “collapse preparation” supplies. But there came a point in 2010 where he suddenly felt “led” to switch from collapse preparation and law to astrology. Among the ranks of “fast crash” writers were also people like Guy McPherson who is trying to build a career as a traveling doom counselor, Michael Ruppert who reportedly shot himself in 2011, and James Howard Kunstler, a former journalist and writer of fiction who used to regularly predict at the beginning of each year that the stock market would crash to a level no greater than 4000 points in that year.  Over the last few years, Mr. Kunstler has expanded his offerings to include extremely racist, misogynist and right-wing statements of the sort that make it clear that he is eager to throw those whom he deems powerless under the bus if he thinks he can get away with it. 

The “more nuanced” camp also had a number of members, who generally tended to be much less colorful and much more cautious in their assessment of the future, and who also tended to be much more prudent in giving advice and recommendations for dealing with a future of economic contraction. They also tended to be strong and deep systems thinkers. Three names immediately come to mind: first, Richard Heinberg, a fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute, and David Holmgren, who together with Bill Mollison founded the discipline of permaculture (a discipline which is now being seriously taught in government-sponsored Australian universities, by the way). In looking at a future of scarcity, such people as these tended to recognize the need to play a long game.

Over the last several months, the differences in outlook between the two camps has intrigued me, not least because the way a person sees a situation tells a lot about what's inside that person. And the differences in outlook between the two camps has been interesting from a psychological, sociological and spiritual viewpoint. The key assumptions of the “fast-crashers” was that a sudden or serious shortfall in availability of the resources and consumer goods needed for a middle-class American lifestyle would result in the eruption of instant anarchy, with violent mobs (all assumed to be poor and usually dark-skinned) raping, pillaging, looting and burning everything in sight. Therefore, the proper way to prepare for such a shortfall was to buy a doomstead in Montana or some other isolated place, and to stock it with an abundant supply of guns, ammo, baked beans and gold pieces, and to outfit one's doomstead with as many trappings and gizmos as necessary to preserve “liberty!” (and a middle-class lifestyle) into the post-apocalyptic age.  (Another key to preparation was to watch the stock market obsessively every day, watching for the first sign of collapse in order to know when and how to shift one's "investments" in order to preserve maximum value.)  In such a fast-crash world, the kind of morality that regarded other lives as precious enough to share your material goods with them (especially the lives of people different from you) was to be regarded as excess baggage to be discarded as soon as possible, and the “survivors” of such a crash were exhorted to adopt a moral compass that looked a lot like the compass of selfishness that guided Ayn Rand throughout her miserable life.

One problem with such a viewpoint is that it was and continues to be contradicted by evidence from every available corner of the planet. For instance, there are hundreds of millions – even billions – of people who live in societies with per capita incomes much lower than the per capita income of the United States, and these people live quite peaceably as long as they have their basic needs met. They are not zombies. (What warfare arises among these people is usually provoked by resource-hungry Anglo-American or European powers, and not by the indigenous people themselves.) And there are a lot of poor people in the U.S. who are the salt of the earth. Who says that instant anarchy has to erupt if people don't have all the stuff that most mainstream Americans are taught to crave? Such a belief is a fallacy typical of spoiled mainstream Americans who tend to believe that if they can't have a lifestyle of “special” privilege and comfort, the end of the world must be at hand. Another problem is that people with this point of view are trying to sustain an unsustainable lifestyle by a zombie apocalypse version of hoarding, like Gollum or Smaug the dragon in Tolkien story The Hobbit. So we have people who outfit their doomsteads with several kW of solar panels and massive battery storage systems so they can enjoy all the comforts of home in case the grid goes down. (Good luck trying to get them to share any of their stash.) Why not learn to live without some of those comforts, since after all, the batteries and panels will eventually wear out?

To me, it seems that the fast-crash scenario has become something of a blank slate on which certain personalities project fantasies whose characteristics have been covered repeatedly in the psychology-related posts of the last year and a half on this blog. So it is probably not surprising that over the last few years, such zombie apocalypse/prepper thinking has been picked up by the talking heads at Fox News and similar media outlets, who have gotten into the business of hawking gold and emergency rations as part of their campaign to instill mass hysteria into a captive cult audience of aging white Baby Boomers. (That's how I knew I tasted something funny...) Another example of this is the post-apocalyptic novels of James Howard Kunstler, in which he places the survivors into ranks and social classes that suit the fantasies of Anglo-American narcissistic males. (I bought his first "collapse" novel, but I have to admit that I didn't even get halfway through it, as the prose in his novel seemed to be no better than that of the Left Behind novels.  (Although I am a Christian, I couldn't stand those books - it's a sin to make cheap art out of Scripture.)  Here are a few trenchant lines regarding Kunstler's book from a Los Angeles Times reviewer.  If you want to read some well-written post-apocalyptic fiction, I would recommend Stephen King's The Stand, although King does not deal with resource depletion and climate change.)

The more nuanced camp has thus had increasing appeal to me over the years. I now consider myself to be a member of that camp. I believe the official reports of the Energy Watch Group and of Robert Hirsch's task force. I also believe the authors of the Limits to Growth reports. I therefore believe that our global industrial society (and American society in particular) is already encountering some non-negotiable changes. But I also believe that this fact does not give us a pass to throw away our moral compass. Rather, that moral compass (and a firm grip on reality) should guide us in assessing our situation. We should be asking whether we face a problem to be gotten over, or a predicament to be lived with graciously. (I believe the evidence points to the latter.)

If then we face a predicament, how shall we address it? What are the strategic goals we should have? One reason I like people like Richard Heinberg is that he seems to be looking for solutions which benefit as many people as possible (rather than clamoring hysterically about a coming zombie apocalypse)! If helping as many people as possible is to be our goal, that goal will guide the technical adaptations we pursue. The search for technical adaptations will have to take place on three scales: the individual, the local, and the societal. And these adaptations will not be effective without first adapting psychologically, namely, in deciding whether we are willing to accept a humbler lifestyle. Dysfunctional psychology will interfere with the wise choosing of appropriate technical adaptations! Can “we” get over our modern Western, American dysfunctional psychology in an age of limits? Or will we continue to hawk the same “solutions” that got us into our present mess: guns, “liberty!!!”, selfishness, the “free market,” the exaltation of the “agentic” over the “communal” (as blogger CZBZ puts it)? The coming days will mark the end of Anglo-American “fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love,” and "we" will have to heal our diseased mindset, lest we continue to try the wrong solutions to the wrong problems. Those who keep pushing wrong approaches may end up trying to feed themselves with long spoons in Hell.  And let me tell you something.  The rest of the world will not simply roll over and die so that you can have a temporary extension of your fantasies of unlimited power.  You will have to adapt to life in a multipolar world and a multicultural society.

As far as technical adaptations, that has been my focus for the last few years, and it is the reason why I have gone back to school. I believe that the formulation of technical adaptations to resource scarcity and lower energy availability will require the presence of people with a strong background in math and the sciences. That will be the background of people who are interested in playing “the long game,” and that is the background which I have been acquiring. Those with such a background will not only be able to formulate technical adaptations, but will also be able to test and fine-tune those adaptations so that they work optimally. Along those lines, I intend, God willing, to write a post this summer about a project that I've been working on since last year. Stay tuned...

The Beginnings of Damnation - An Expanded List

Here's an article on another blog which illustrate the point I made in my last post, namely, that the United States is beginning to reap the consequences of its materialist evil (as is Europe):

• "Eventual Consequences"

And here's a news article which expands on the climate consequences for the United States:

• "Drought and Heat Waves Are Much More Likely to Mix, Researchers Say"

On Reaping What We've Sown

It's been rather cold and rainy in the Portland metro area lately.  However, that wasn't the case at the beginning of May, when we were subjected to daytime temperatures that were 20 degrees above seasonal averages for several days.  That was also when carbon dioxide levels in the earth's atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in history.  The present Portland coldness and wetness can be viewed as a merciful yet extremely temporary respite from the consequences of our actions.

Yet other parts of the United States are not so lucky.  I am thinking of the recent massive Oklahoma tornado.  I am also thinking of the doofus responses to the tornado on the part of some of the elected officials and many of the citizens of Oklahoma, not to mention some of the media talking heads who remain constitutionally unable to see the link between atmospheric pollution and an increasingly menacing climate.  Republican Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, who denies anthropogenic climate change, urged her citizens to pray to God for rain in 2011 in response to record heat and drought in her state.  Now she finds herself "praying" to Washington for federal dollars to rebuild some of the devastated parts of Oklahoma.  I wonder if she has given up on prayer to God.  Such a development wouldn't be surprising, as she is typical of a long list of Republican, conservative darlings of the political wing of American evangelicalism (which is really just Constantinianism): loudly proclaiming their commitment to Biblical morality, especially in sexual matters, yet unable to walk the talk in their own personal lives.  In this regard, she is rather like Mark Sanford.

Then there's Republican Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who opposed Federal aid for the victims of Hurricane Sandy, yet is appealing to President Obama for aid for the victims of the Oklahoma tornado, saying that their situation is "totally different" from that of the victims of Sandy.  How is that so?  In both cases, a big storm came with big winds which huffed and puffed and blew a bunch of houses down.  Senator Inhofe, what do you like about the Oklahoma victims that you don't like about the Sandy victims?  Inhofe is also a staunch climate change denier and a darling of American conservative Constantinians evangelicals .

I am thinking of all of this in the light of a book I recently received, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore The Obvious At Our Peril, by Margaret Heffernan.  (That book has been a good read, by the way.)  When people willfully blind themselves, perhaps there comes a point when they become irreversibly blind.  As the ruin starts to fall around us, let's all have an eye-gouging party; why not?  But before Mary Fallin gouges her eyes out, she should read the part in the Good Book where God promises that whatever a person sows, that he will also reap.

The World, According To Me

I've been busy. That is why I haven't been blogging over the last six months. Ironically, my busy-ness has consisted of me scrambling to find ways to become less busy while still paying the bills. At my last office job, I found myself being worked a bit too hard for my liking (they wanted me to be available between 50 and 60 hours a week). So I've been teaching a bit and trying to freelance. And I've been exploring ways to lower my “burn rate.” It's the teaching and the scrambling to freelance that has been keeping me busy.

My abstinence from blogging has made me aware of the divide that exists between those who have a powerful voice in our society and those who have no real voice. Being a blogger, by the way, does not automatically grant a powerful voice to a blogger. After all, I have to admit that there are probably not that many people who read my blog. Even as an active blogger, therefore, my voice has been very small. But having taken my place for a few months among those who have no voice, I have been observing how much effort, how much money and how many words have been expended by those whose voices are powerful. All that effort and all those words have been expended in order to inculcate in ordinary people a world view that just happens to be convenient for those with powerful voices. I thought it might be good to let these people know just how an ordinary person without a voice views the world, so that they can see whether they have been wasting their time and money. I can't speak for all ordinary people, but I will speak for myself.

To sum up what the people with powerful voices have been saying, I think they've been trying to convince ordinary people that the United States is still a first-rate nation, that the U.S. is the blameless and pure defender of freedom and democracy, that we still live in a world of abundance un-threatened by shortage of any kind, that the “free market” can be trusted to distribute said abundance to any and all who are worthy of it, and that our mad scramble for material abundance is having no effect on the earth. The most pressing thing that ordinary Americans should worry about, therefore, is which teen star is getting divorced.

If this is what the loud-voiced have been trying to communicate, I'm afraid they haven't succeeded with me. The disconnect between their message and my world-view can be summed up under four general headings: oil, geopolitics, climate change, and economics. There is also a fifth heading, which I call “the proliferation of sheep dogs.”

Oil

A lot of well-placed people have been insisting over the last year that Peak Oil is a fallacy, and that the world has plenty of hydrocarbon resources to last for several decades more. Even people who pretend to be members of the counterculture have said things like this. (See, for instance, what George Monbiot and Noam Chomsky have been saying.) For me, however, the Bible on Peak Oil has been the 2007 Oil Report, titled, “Crude Oil – The Supply Outlook” from the Energy Watch Group of Germany. That report made a number of bald, blunt statements and predictions: first, that global oil production peaked in 2006; second, that global oil production would experience steep declines post-Peak, and third, that the steepness of the declines can be quantified (for instance, the authors asserted that production would decline from a 2006 high of 86 million barrels per day to 58 million barrels per day in 2020).

I like predictions and statements like this, because it's easy to tell whether the predictor is right or wrong, and you don't have to wait very long before finding out. (Which is easier to verify – a predictor telling you that you will meet someone famous at some time in your life, or a predictor telling you that you will meet Genghis Khan and his Mongol army tomorrow morning at ten?) I believe the Energy Watch Group report. I believe it because, from 2007 until now, the world has been acting as if the report's predictions are true. Everything that has happened from 2007 to now makes perfect sense when viewed through the lens of those predictions, from the oil price spike and economic crash of 2008 to the slow bleeding economic death of the West and the OECD at present (and the frantic attempts to rob oil-producing countries like Syria and Iran by means of “regime change”).

That means that an ordinary person like me regards as liars those people who deny that we are living post-Peak. This includes people who made a name for themselves writing for sites like The Oil Drum and who are now writing articles claiming that global oil production is still growing, albeit slowly. Whenever someone posts an article like that on the Web, they are wasting their breath (and keystrokes) as far as I'm concerned, because I'm not going to read what they write. I also regard as suspect those articles which dismiss the peak of conventional crude production by pointing to steady levels of “total liquids” production. (Just such an article appeared here, of all places. Suffice it to say that the production of many of these “liquids” yields either a very poor positive return or an actual negative return on energy invested.)

Geopolitics

The decline of the energy resource base of the industrial world has, of course, led to a mad scramble for the world's remaining energy resources. This is paralleled by the scramble for the other raw materials needed by a modern industrial society. This is the reason why Syria has been branded a rogue regime, and the reason why the West has instigated and is financing the insurgency against the Syrian government. This is also the reason why the West is trying to destabilize Iran.

I normally don't save newspapers, but I have a copy of the Oregonian from 2007 in which there is an article describing a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate of the Iranian nuclear program. In the view of the U.S. intelligence community, there was no evidence that Iran was trying to build a nuclear weapon. Therefore, anyone who writes an article claiming that Iran must be prevented from building nuclear weapons is regarded as a liar by an ordinary person like me, along with people who say that we have a moral obligation to remove Hafez Assad from power in Syria, or those who say that the 10,000 well-fed American troops who went to Haiti after their most recent earthquake were sent to help the Haitians, or those “compassionate conservatives” who insist that America has a “responsibility to protect” the citizens of other nations from using their resources as they see fit.

Climate Change

Need I say anything about this? Many well-funded voices in America, both secular and religious, have insisted that climate change is a hoax by the liberal Left who “hate our freedoms!” and want to hinder the prosperity promised by free market capitalism.

To those who have said such things, I have a question: How do you like our summer so far? Have any of you keeled over from heat stroke? How many of you have lost your homes to wildfires so far? How many of you will be starving due to crop failures? I'd like to weep for you all, but the heat has dried up my tears.

I'm struck by something the Governor of Oklahoma said recently when questioned about the climate change-induced drought gripping her state. She asked people to “pray for rain.” Now, I am a Christian, and the Bible does command Christians to pray for their needs. But I am a peculiar type of Christian. I believe that the chief thing God wants to do with Christians is to transform us into decent people. The main point of our earthly lives is our moral development, not the satisfaction of all our earthly cravings. Therefore, God frequently allows us to suffer the consequences of our stupidity – in order to teach us a lesson or two. In asking prayer for rain, this Republican ditz makes it seem as if what Oklahoma is suffering is some supernatural judgment, and not merely the natural consequence of ignoring very simple physics and chemistry. (Let me ask you, if you play on the freeway and get run over by a semi truck, was it due to a supernatural act of God or your own stupidity?)

Unfortunately, I suspect that Governor Mary Fallin's “request for prayer” will be typical of the responses of a large majority of Americans to the age of limits, as they chuck adult reasoning in favor of appeals to magic.

Economics (and Sheep Dogs)

The loud voices which dominate public discussion in our country are all preaching the same message: namely, that the chief aim of our society must be to pursue economic growth at all costs. Selfishness and greed are exalted above all virtue, while frugality, community spirit and altruism are demonized. Above all, the message has been that economic growth is still possible, and that there are no structural, functional limits to growth. Therefore, everyone can be rich if he wants to be, and everyone should want to be.

By contrast, a counterculture has arisen in the United States and other countries. This counterculture recognizes that economic growth has ceased throughout the industrial world, and that those things that look like growth are merely zero-sum transfers of wealth from one group of people to another by means of swindles. Many people within this counterculture are able to accurately trace the reasons for the cessation of growth to the decline of our resource base and the pollution of our environment by economic activity.

However, a funny thing has happened as certain members of this counterculture have become more popular and have acquired powerful voices of their own. What has happened as time has passed is that the message of these “powerful voices” has changed to resemble the message of the mainstream which this counterculture is supposed to oppose. In other words, the supposedly countercultural voices have been turned into “sheep dogs.”

Let me define the term “sheep dog.” In a society dominated by privileged ruling elites, there are certain people who become popular and well-known spokespersons for those exploited and oppressed by the elites. These spokespersons are tolerated as long as their popularity and influence is not great enough to threaten the established order. However, once they achieve a critical mass, both they and their message are usually co-opted by the ruling elites in the hope and expectation that the energy of both the spokespersons and their followers may be turned in directions that are harmless to the ruling elites. They become the sheep dogs of the elites. Sometimes these sheep dogs are manufactured by the elites. (This process occurred in the ancient Roman Empire, by the way. There's a book that describes the process – I think the name of it is Subversive Virtue.)

Within the Peak Oil/climate change/limits-aware counterculture, a fair number of sheep dogs have arisen. I have time to mention only two just now. I think of Tom Whipple, a retired CIA analyst whose first involvement in the Peak Oil scene was commendable, in that he raised the issue in an intelligent, easily understandable manner. But Tom has lately seemed to run off the rails – on the one hand, foaming at the mouth about how Syria and Iran are rogue states which must be overthrown, and on the other hand, raving about how new breakthrough technologies like cold fusion will enable us to continue to lead an opulent life for decades to come. (Earth to Tom: even if “cold fusion” was a viable physical process (which it isn't), scaling up a fusion power plant to produce the amounts of energy our society demands while keeping the physical size of the plant at a reasonable scale would quickly turn the “cold” fusion plant into a “hot” fusion plant, with all the problems that entails.)

Then there's Jay Taylor, a supposed finance “whiz” who hosts an Internet radio program, “Turning Hard Times Into Good Times.” In his radio show, he claims that he will guide you into keeping your money from “Wall Street” by giving you information on stocks that's not found in the “mainstream media.” He can show you how to grow your money by smart investing, yadda yadda. According to Mr. Taylor, America is in its present jam because we have let the Government get too powerful, rather than letting the free market work its wealth-creating magic.

(Earth to Jay Taylor: if you claim that you're trying to keep me from being robbed by Wall Street, why are you then telling me to invest in mining stocks? The age of “investment” characterized by people getting something for nothing merely by purchasing the right stocks is over. Our entire debt-based economy is running off the rails. You are not the counterculture. You sound just like the Wall Street Journal.)

Yes, indeed, that's what Jay Taylor sounds like. (For that matter, even Max Keiser has lately joined the cheerleaders of “free market” economics.) Such people appeal to the greed of those members of the upper middle class who seek to hold on desperately to unearned privileges and prerogatives. To this class such people say, “Yes, the world is a dangerous place and your wealth is under threat! Come here and we'll tell you how you can guard all your stuff from the coming zombie apocalypse! We're trustworthy; we're not the mainstream!” But I've got something to say to anyone who claims to be countercultural, yet allows himself to be interviewed by one of these bozos: Don't grant them interviews anymore. But if you do, tell the rest of us exactly when you start talking on the show and when you stop so we can skip the ads for stocks and the free market rah-rah. Otherwise, people like me may not bother listening to you anymore. My cat can beat up your sheep dog.