Not to get off topic, but what did Spitzer talk about and how was it? Too bad he got caught up in personal problems, he sems to have some really good ideas.
Girlflower,
Thank you for attending, I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to connect or meet afterwards. As Erik told, we tried hard to find a time and location to have a public meet and greet but the details just never quite came together.
Right now I am in Sonora where I will be giving a public talk to quite a few people. Several local people here have done an absolutely spectacular job of preparing and have drummed up quite a lot of interest and we’re expecting a pretty large audience tonight. More than 330 tickets have been pre-sold, more are expected at the door, and one member from this site is coming up from Texas, so we’re all vey excited to by the energy and the opporunity to help align the people here around the challenges and opportunities.
Preparing for all this required me coming out right after the Commonwealth Club talk so that limited my flexibility on that end and I leave right afterwards from Sacramento on the other end.
I liked the CC speech.
Good luck in Sonora.
SG
A lot of "ifs" in that speech.
It is certain there will be a decline. It is also certain the class antagonisms that have caused the disparities in wealth will not disappear anytime soon. One thing we can draw from these two statements is the class that owns most of everything will want to continue to own most of everything. We’ve seen over the last 40 years how the 1% has increased their fortunes at everyone else’s expense. Wages have been flat or declining. Productive work has been outsourced. Since the 70’s the fortunate 1% have increased their share from about 25% to 50%. This is right back to where it was before the New Deal. These are the same folks who maintain the illusion of infinite growth on a finite planet. Their measure of wealth is debt instruments. If their past behavior is any indication of their intentions, they will likely want to continue to increase their fortunes and externalize the consequences. However, I don’t believe they are so foolish as to ignore the coming crises in energy and commodities.
The propaganda system they’ve built over the last century has done a pretty good job of convincing the producers of the wealth to part with a good share of it as long as the supply seemed ever increasing. And therein lies the rub. When it becomes glaringly evident that the supply is in fact decreasing, the propaganda system will start to sputter. The political class will have to resort to more traditional means of societal control, namely, intimidation and violence. It’s nice to talk about a rational and scientific approach to the coming scarcity. If we plan ahead and share out the scarce resources at least everyone will have enough to eat and stay warm. This runs counter to the paradigm that resources are to be funneled upward so that the political class can be maintained in their cozy world of infinite growth. The warrior class usually throws in with the political class. They will see their salvation in protecting the assets and privileges of their masters.
One can see the truth of this in the bail-outs of the Too Big To Fail institutions. The government has taken whatever measures necessary to preserve these institutions. Dismemberment or reformation were simply not on the agenda. As government is the agent of the political class, we can expect this principle to be played out repeatedly. Main Street will be left out in the cold to fend for itself. The state of the union address spells this out. Discretionary spending will be frozen in 2011. The states will be left to their own devices. Without the power to reorganize productive behavior, the states will have only more debt as the alternative. As more services are eliminated, social unrest will escalate and we’re back to the traditional methods of social control. Spending on so-called security was also explicitly left out of the coming spending freeze. The warrior class will be exempt.
The coming era of scarcity will not be a smooth transition with everyone sharing the pain. It will be punctuated by various contractions in the availability of energy, food, medicine, arable land, etc. and massive dislocations in attempts to secure the same. Persistent class antagonisms will only make the process worse and quite likely bring on struggles for access to or control of resources. Recall that the political class in Haiti and the US were quite comfortable with the likes of the Duvalier regimes. With tens of millions of American workers already unemployed, hungry, and without access to medical care, is it reasonable to expect class conflicts to diminish? The Long Emergency will not be remedied in 22 minutes plus commercials.
I have no idea how Chris can be optimistic.
It would be interesting to know how many of those in his audience change their lives to any appreciable degree. More people may be getting the message but I see very little evidence that they understand the message. My guess is that only one or two of Chris’s audience will be living differently, or have solid plans to do so, within a year.
Unfortunately, Chris’s message can give the impression that other people will get change happening and that the change only requires a bit more, or even a lot more, efficiency.
The bottom line is that sustainability requires us to consume no non-renewable resources (none, zip, nada) and only consume renewable resources at, or below, their renewal rates, and only in ways that do not degrade our biosphere. Now, of course, that won’t happen overnight, or maybe even this century, but without that being our conscious destination, collapse will occur well before there is a glimmer of a hope for a change to the right direction.
Chris said, “Brilliant people have been working at the margins for decades defining the issues and finding new ways of doing more with less.” The audience will take that away and assume that eventually the political will will be there to ensure those brilliant people get their chance to show that we can do “more with less”. Consequently, people don’t need to change much and maybe, just maybe, we can continue to have economic growth (more) using less, for ever.
Tell it like it is, Chris! We need to start changing now, and we need to start moving towards sustainability. Unsustainable societies can’t be sustained and no-one (or, at least, not many) wants collapse.
I agreed with everything Chris said, except his optimism.
Optimism depends greatly on one’s expectations and outlook. If one expects or desires our current lifestyles to continue as is then the message is pessimestic, because the current ways are unsustainable and huge change seems inevitable. However, I am optimistic that the impending changes can (maybe, if we work hard) be used to develop a higher quality, albiet different, life by simply giving up a lot of what we think we need.
Sofistek and Durango
I agree with you both. i personally found not much reason for optimism. The speech was a great synopsis of the Crash Course. It clearly is the mission to educate people to our “predicament” . But I found no meat on the bone. I did not hear the ideas that the brilliant people at the margins have been working on. Yes we can grow tomatoes, yes we can switch to cfl’s We can make sure our tires are inflated. But what about the structure of our economy and our political system? What do we do to change back to a republic from an oligarchy? How does one become optimistic when the vast majority of the American people voiced their opposition to the bailouts and it passed anyway. How do you change back to a true capitalist system when nearly 2/3 of the people of this country receive some form of compensation from the government. What is the program? What are the nuts and bolts? Where is the beef?
V
btw. I first heard Bucky Fuller say " do more with less" That was a long long time ago. We now will have to make do with less.
I’ll tell you what is optimistic.
When people like Chris can talk to you like an adult and say “here are the problems we are facing I know it looks bleak but we can over come it if we accept that these problems exist.”
I think its hilarious that proponents of Peak Oil are constantly trying to out-do each other with their personal expectations of oil-less doom and gloom. How do you ever expect anyone to take your argument seriously when your personal identity is such an extensive component of your argument?
Personally, the only reason that I accept the idea that Peak Oil is a possibility is because of Dr. Martenson. Now you criticize his methods and efforts?
Maybe you would have been happier if Dr. M’s speech consisted of this:
“All ya’ll are dead meat, but your too stupid to know any better. Thanks for coming out.”
Sorry if I have over-reacted, but given the context of this event, your criticism of Dr.M’s speech is just as offensive to me as this post is to you.
‘I went from twin engines to a double paddle.’ – Dr. M.
LOL! And the kayak is more maneuverable, to boot.
Brilliant speech, too. I guess it goes without saying (since it did go unsaid) that a country which fritters away its investment capital on a foreign military empire is not going to make the change to a sustainable future.
Such a message would be considered ‘political’ by some. But it’s one of the most basic macroeconomic facts. A sustainable economy and a metastasizing NATO alliance are wholly, fatally incompatible. This subject is not even on the political radar screen, as the president exempted ‘national security’ from his proposed discretionary budget freeze.
Oh well, another item to add to the ‘to do’ list. Thanks again for posting the rousing call to action.
[quote=machinehead]
‘I went from twin engines to a double paddle.’ – Dr. M.
LOL! And the kayak is more maneuverable, to boot.
Brilliant speech, too. I guess it goes without saying (since it did go unsaid) that a country which fritters away its investment capital on a foreign military empire is not going to make the change to a sustainable future.
Such a message would be considered ‘political’ by some. But it’s one of the most basic macroeconomic facts. A sustainable economy and a metastasizing NATO alliance are wholly, fatally incompatible. This subject is not even on the political radar screen, as the president exempted ‘national security’ from his proposed discretionary budget freeze.
Oh well, another item to add to the ‘to do’ list. Thanks again for posting the rousing call to action.
[/quote]+1 and as always = beautifully put!
@SteveS
Spitzer’s talk was recorded and is available (as should be Chris’) at www.commonwealthclub.org.
Erik
Seems to me that since macro solutions are not forthcoming from our ‘leaders’ in .gov, we should all of us smart people here at CM.com be busy nutting out localized solutions to whatever issues we perceive may become troublous as we move forward. To the extent that any of us see problems/issues and cannot at least begin to have a slash at solving them ourselves, then we’re toast, IMO. Why is anyone waiting for the cavalry to show up and rescue their booties? Seems to me that WE have to be our own cavalry. If that is a challenging or depressing thought I don’t know what else to tell you.
Dr. Chris had this thought in the ‘Reflections on Commonwealth’ thread:
“As I see it, if we can just change our ideas, the rest will fall into place. My model for this is Burning Man, the 80,000 person spectacle that arises in the Nevada desert each year proving that when people get a different idea about how to organize themselves, it happens. Instead of trying to dictate all the things that we need to be doing differently at a micro-level, establishing a new set of ideas around which individuals, organizations and communities can self-organize seems, at least to me, to be the correct approach.”
Leaving aside one’s personal feelings about 80k semi-naked technopagans, the no-master-plan-but-it-organizes-out-rather-noicely meme is valid. Seems to me that (as I’ve posted elsewhere on CM.com) if we organize our immediate surrounds, and then push out from there, at some point we’ll bump up against like-minded folks doing the same thing.
As always, my glass in 2/3s full…
Viva – Sager
JAG,
I’m not trying to out-do anyone with personal expectations of doom. The argument should be taken seriously on its own merits, not on the basis of whether I expect change to happen quickly enough.
The idea of peak oil is a reality, peak oil itself is more than a possibility, unless you believe in an infinite supply of oil that can be produced at any rate for any length of time. It is ridiculous to say, as the boss of Aramco said at Davos, that one doesn’t believe in Peak Oil.
Chris gets it, most definitely. What I criticise is that the message can appear watered down, especially to those who are looking for a fairly easy way out, and for those who are in denial. Whilst much of the speech was hard-hitting, there was just enough wishy-washy stuff in it for the attendees to be able to think that the problem will be dealt with.
I didn’t find your post offensive, because I’ve become hardened to that type of come-back to the message of reality.
SagerXX,
Absolutely correct that solutions aren’t forthcoming from governments. I don’t expect any in future. We each need to start acting in a realistic way and preparing as best we can. However, if society, as a whole (and governments have a major part to play there) doesn’t start to change, it can be difficult to individuals to prepare, in the midst of a collapsing society.
Woodman,
I’m optimistic too, but that kind of life will have to arise from the ashes of a collapsed state. That will make it very difficult and maybe even less likely to emerge, as survival takes centre stage and utopia is put on the shelf.
+10 Sager!!
Yes, it sure would be great to have macro as well as local solutions. So if that is what you believe, then the question is, how can you contribute to making this happen? Can you do something to initiate a macro-level effort yourself? Or are there people already out there trying to nurture macro solutions that you can support in some way? I mean people like Chris and others who are working to help people become aware of and understand the situation, and transition more gracefully (less painfully) to whatever the new reality is that we are heading towards?
I know the situation can be depressing and overwhelming. But complaining about problems is an easy (and ineffective) way out. And believing it is someone else’s responsibility to deal with these problems at the macro level is also an easy (and ineffective) way out.
Taking personal responsibility to be a part of a constructive effort to solve these problems ourselves is hard, and it is daunting. But that’s the task we face.
I guess my big pet peeve is that we must not remain sidelined (as individuals/small groups/whatever) just because we can’t see where exactly we’re going or what exactly the end result will be. Waiting for ideal conditions to put change into play is just another way of giving up and doing nothing.
Once enough small groups of people are already making what changes they can, ‘society as a whole’ will start to shift.
Viva – Sager
Hi Chris (cc Erik),
Your message to all of us is very impt and we appreciate your effort in bringing this forth in such a concise manner. Keep it flowing!
Not being able to meet up is fine… just be sure to know we welcome you back in CA anytime!
Cheers,
Girlflower
I have a suggestion… we need more people like Chris who understand what is going on and can get the priorities right, to run for president, congress, etc. The more abled the people there are who are “up there”, the easier it is for the ball to start rolling!
Another thing: education… more n more people are getting it… keep doing it! We need leaders who are educated.
Chris,
It’s interesting that you apply the exponential function to our problems but not to our solutions - they must be linear according to your approach. I’ll take at face value your assertion that it would take 10 years to replace half of the automobile fleet with cars powered by lithium batteries but does your analysis straight-line the current productivity numbers or does it anticipate innovation and increased productivity? Does your analysis include the likelihood that other types of batteries will be available in the next ten years? I would guess not (although I must say that I’m not sure that replacing every car currently in existence with a battery operated car is something we would want to do in any event).
You seem to insist that innovation cannot solve problems and you do so by applying current technology to the future and presenting it as “facts”. It’s difficult to understand why you do this. Is it because you insist that innovation is tied to a growth economy? Given your level of education it’s hard to imagine that you make that mistake. Innovation is at the heart of sustainable living.
I recommend your Crash Course to many people. Your analysis is brilliant. Your conclusions, however, are dreary and less than inspiring. Insisting that we already have all the technology we need is not only erroneous, it is an attack on the creativity that will drive solutions that may not yet be evident.
I know that this was directed at Chris, but allow me to step in…
Actually, I think 10 years to replace half the cars is extremely optomistic. A new car technology (like any new thing) can grow exponentially but only if it doesn’t run into external limits. With cars you have a durable item that limits the number of new cars that can be introduced each year. The downturn in the economy affects the rate of new car purchases. Low oil prices limits the desirability of smaller. efficient cars. etc, etc.
I do agree that is important to consider the huge impact that a new technology or new energy source can have. For example, one limit to the growth of cities and transporation in the late 19th century was how to deal with horse manure. The technology of cars and gasoline completely changed the paradigm. And we may yet see a similar game changer in our future. But what if we don’t? Even if we had unlimited gas or electricity, we have pretty hard limits of other resources like copper and, yes, lithium. My favorite slide from the CC is the shot of the copper nugget as big as a car from 100 odd years ago and the shot of a modern copper mine. Population growth and economic growth will run into hard limits no matter what new the technologies we devise. Technology also has hidden consequences and history is rife with examples.
I find Chris’ message very inspiring. I find the condition of this world distressing. I am ashamed at how my country (USA) wastes resources. But Chris shows us a way out. Simplify, get back to basics, slow down. I have started doing this. A small example: my wife and started a small garden last year. It’s given us extra quality time together, makes me proud of what I can do, and gives me a feeling of extra security. We also buy as much local produce as we can and have made new friends along the way. This is a much more rewarding scenario than some new technology.