Having most recently seen a very thought provoking documentary called The End Of Suburbia,I came upon this article in Rolling Stone. Thought I'd post it to peak intrests in the problem,pun intended http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633?rnd=1113439994015&has-player=true

I am truly concerned about the 21st century.  I just think we all drank the kool aid - the press, the gov't, business, religion.  It's like the collective head is just way up its ass.  

It's the "why" that gets me.  So let's assume for argument's sake the scenario in your link is way overstated.  But one can't ignore how things are trending, and the accelerating forces at play - consolidation of media, global corps whose sole moral compass is a stock price, complexity of information that requires enormous filtering (and thus is subject to marketing strategems), and the fact that under stress, people become more protective, sink into more primitive developmental states (more aggressive, think more concretely (see the election of 2004), define "us" more narrowly, etc.) I personally think the root cause is that science (what is objectively true), spiritual (what is subjectively beautiful)and good (what is moral) are compartmentalized throughout all our systems.  We need to reclarify what it means to be human, and paint a better picture of what the "good life" is.

And it ain't buying rose scented douche or that new penile enlargement we have all been pining away over.  

If this analysis is even close to on target, among the most important needs is the need for leadership at its finest.  I think the times require a new set of founding ideals for a very different world, ideals that bring a greater understanding of the interdependency of everyone and all our systems - technical, economic, political, social, etc.

The problem is, for it to emerge, navigating the media will take extraordinary genius.  This is the stuff the public discourse needs to embrace.  I didn't hear even a peep that tracked in this general direction in the '04 election from either candidate, and that scares me more than Bush winning.

Anyway, thanks for the link.



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I’ll be honest with you, I check out TER mostly for the babe info. Anyways, it looked like a good article but I have the attention span of a fruit fly so I skipped down to the last sentence:

“Years from now, when we hear singing at all, we will hear ourselves, and we will sing with our whole hearts.”

I’m all for singing, hearts, ourselves, and anything else that doesn’t send me to the doctor.  So are you saying Revelations and the end to Suburbia is a good thing?

The Dark Ages that followed the collapse of the roman empire were ultimately the result of another long energy crisis, the loss of a stable food supply. Way back then food was closer to a primary energy source as almost all production was the effort of humans, many of those were slaves, effectively human machines, and animals. The Romans experienced a drastic falloff in grain production before the general collapse of the empire. The area between the Tigris and Euphrates, Mesopotamia, had the same experience a thousand years earlier. The message is clear and unmistakable. Civilizations are vitally dependant on energy, either as food (mankind through the 18th century), coal (the first industrial revolution), or oil (the second industrial revolution).... any old farts remember the crappy 1970s, full of crime and decay ? That was the result of a relatively modest temporary energy restriction.

Environmentalists have cried that the sky was falling before.  The Club of Rome in the 1970s and Paul Ehrlich's overpopulation books gave these warnings a bad name.  

This time though, they could be right.  As this article points out, I can't help but notice that none of our alternative energy strategies have really panned out.  There's no way oil can be replaced by natural processes at the phenomenal rate this society is extracting it.  The massive overstating of reserves by Shell is especially worrying.  Why would they do such a thing?  Because they didn't want alternatives to come in.

I hope we haven't reached peak oil yet, though most indicators say that we have.

How ironic on the eve of Earth Day,they passed the drilling in Alaska's ANWR I came upon this today and thought it somewhat explained your questions as to why they exaggerate=MONEY! If the solutions offered in the energy bill are any indications of Bushs ideas for the future we are all in trouble. From all I've read and heard on the subject the good estimates for hitting peak is 2020,but some say as little as in 3 years. So either way it's going happen within our lifetime. The real question now isn't when,but what's next?http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1464050,00.html

How ironic on the eve of Earth Day,they passed the drilling in Alaska's ANWR I came upon this today and thought it somewhat explained your questions as to why they exaggerate=MONEY! If the solutions offered in the energy bill are any indications of Bushs ideas for the future we are all in trouble. From all I've read and heard on the subject the good estimates for hitting peak is 2020,but some say as little as in 3 years. So either way it's going happen within our lifetime. The real question now isn't when,but what's next?http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1464050,00.html

He was perhaps too soon, but he was right in the same way Malthus was and is right.

But given how resistant the conservatives have been to these notions, and how well funded their campaigns are to discredit them, maybe Ehrlich's exaggeration wasn't such a bad mistake.  I think they would have grabbed on to anything to discredit him.  

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