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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Collapse, Financial Elite, Gross Inequality, Nate Hagens, Peak Oil, Peak Resources, Poverty, Wall Street Fraud
The video below is a talk given on Earth Day this year by Nate Hagens at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. It’s entitled “What if the Future is Real?”. This talk is not just about the issue of resource depletion and the multiple crises facing us, but about human behavior, how we perceive the natural world and our responsibilities to future descendants. Nate Hagens [Masters Degree in Finance from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont] is a former editor of The Oil Drum and worked on Wall Street for a decade before “seeing the light”. I found his talk useful. My notes/summary are below the video.
Nate’s website: http://www.themonkeytrap.us/
Collapse of Industrial Civilization 
you have outdone yourself, this is an excellent presentation. i like the way you didn’t really make any moral judgements about the way people behave, you just said, that’s the way it is, very Walter Cronkite.
the graphs are very good, illustrates clearly things that i know , but have never put together in my mind. i did read somewhere that we in the USA have the equivalent of 250 slaves working for us 24 hours a day.
sounds as if the thing to do is to move to a farm or ranch somewhere, if you cannot afford one, then maybe you will have to work for someone else. all this depends on things not getting as dire as the picture painted on your last post.
i shall abstain from making any sociological comments, especially about firearms, as that has got me in trouble lately; i will say that guns are an extension of the same power behavior, in other words, you are right on.
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I thought Mr. Hagens’ talk was excellent – very clear-cut and easy to understand.
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I was especially interested in this part of your comment “move to a farm or ranch somewhere, if you cannot afford one, then maybe you will have to work for someone else.”
This, I suspect is the horror to come if we do not learn to cooperate and share, if we are not proactive in this area. It really will amount to a return to serfdom.
You might think I’m blaming the “landowner”, actually no. I’ve been a farmer/homesteader a good part of my life and a property owner. That life is so hard you have no choice but to put those who come along and want to be there too, to work. Still, this is hardly cooperation or democracy and it’s very hard to gauge exactly what is fair.
Anyway, in the end, it’s neither a very great life for the (landowner) or the serf in my opinion. Note, I’m not talking about landowners, farmers with independent income; rather, those who are actually having to make it totally from the income generated at the farm.
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worker bees can leave
even drones can fly away
the queen is their slave
– tyler durdan
ants may be successful, but then their workers aren’t smart enough to be resentful!
i like the fact that he mentions the infrastructure, you always have to consider all the inputs.
17,000,000,000,000 watts, you need to write it out to even begin to appreciate it,
Mexico will take a major hit when Cantarell goes dry.
you can tune a guitar, but you can’t tuna fish.
we have catfish farm, raised in china, in our grocery stores, whats the carbon footprint there?
Carl Sagan wrote an excellent book about brain structure called “The Dragons of Eden”, highly recommended.
wealthy people want the power, i am convince it’s primitive behavior, motivated by fear of death?
yacht length=penis length? it’s not the tool, it’s how you use it!
our beliefs are so strong because we are so indoctrinated, plus the psychology of previous investment, the big lie.
the ruling class must keep the hamsters on the wheel, when the wheel stops? those hamsters may just turn out to be hungry rats.
polynomial may have been a poor choice of words, synergistic may have been better.
diesel, gross vs. net, good point, notice he mentioned all the inputs.
pause for a moment, let it load, i skipped “globetrekker” tonight, where they go around the world, which is after all a travelogue where the wonderful enlightened people from around the world; well, how enlightened are they if they are burning fuel to essentially advertise destinations for people to burn more fuel by visiting?
the 70’s are when that rod started knocking, won’t be long fore that old engine seizes up, better put some awl in that thing!
good point about space, people on PBS talk about what “we” will do, righty right.
guns, germs, and steel, we will respond to scarcity with violence, it’s already started.
we have learned to be selfish, it will take quite a lot of suffering to unlearn.
interesting, we used less energy 40 years ago, even with our hot rods, but then we didn’t have air conditioning, we used fans, and then only when it got really hot, but then it used to cool down at night. plus there were actual telephone operators, not machines, no cell phones, no video, 4 tv channels…………..
and oh yeah, grocery stores closed at night, when the 7-11 closed you were out of luck. how did we ever survive?
well there you go, point by point comments, a really good presentation.
we go 24 hours a day (how much energy does that take?), things used to quiet down at night, but not no more, not in the big city, and it’s not even that big.
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Great comment. Loved it. Almost like a stream of thought. I’m going to bed while the 17 trillion watt hulk of civilization hums on.
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i got the feeling you felt i should listen, so i did, i just typed in thoughts while i was listening.
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sorry to be a poindexter. if you’re talking about the solar constant, you’re short 4 zeroes. 173 Petawatts, or 1.73×10^17.
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@derekthered said:
“…wealthy people want the power, i am convinced it’s primitive behavior, motivated by fear of death?
yacht length=penis length? it’s not the tool, it’s how you use it!
Our beliefs are so strong because we are so indoctrinated, plus the psychology of previous investment, the big lie.
the ruling class must keep the hamsters on the wheel, when the wheel stops? those hamsters may just turn out to be hungry rats…”
Mr. Hagens just posted a link to a revealing article on this subject:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/06/politics-envy-keenest-rich
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i have always said that it’s not the fact that capitalism keeps most people poor (which it does), but that the real crime is the misapplication of resources.
“Governments today have no vision but endless economic growth. They are judged not by the number of people in employment – let alone by the number of people in satisfying, pleasurable jobs – and not by the happiness of the population or the protection of the natural world. Job-free, world-eating growth is fine, as long as it’s growth. There are no ends any more, just means.”
anymore i just don’t know, the paradigm is so ingrained, maybe if the people on the bottom had more they would just want more. i’m not getting my point across.
the money sloshing around the economy going to bogus default swaps for example, it could go toward underground housing.
the money system is just a big fat lie anyway, the way we use resources is the real question.
anyhow, that’s my thoughts on the subject.
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Haven’t yet watched the video, but your summary is excellent. Many points made are quite familiar to me by now, as I’ve been laboring for years to connect the dots. The one especially useful new concept (to me) is “ultrasociability,” though I doubt anyone will like being compared to ants and termites.
The bit about the 2nd Law is a bit misleading. Matter and energy aren’t lost when consumed but transformed into less available forms. The cosmological end result, as when stars burn out, all their former energy dissipated into space, is called “heat death,” but that takes years too long to count to occur. The dilemma with fossils fuels, well, we can already foresee their unavailability.
I guess I’m doomed sooner than most, since I lack optimism to keep my cortisol levels at bay. Others possess the ability to look reality in the eye and deny it, but I can’t. Denial may not equal optimism, but I’ve got almost none of either.
Last, the title is an oxymoron. The future is the future is the future whether we subscribe to it or not. If Hagen means the dystopian future prophesied by sane folk, well, then we’re back to the denial/optimism arena.
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@Brutus said:
“I guess I’m doomed sooner than most, since I lack optimism to keep my cortisol levels at bay. Others possess the ability to look reality in the eye and deny it, but I can’t. Denial may not equal optimism, but I’ve got almost none of either.”
I guess I lack the optimism gene as well, but I do have the ability to compartmentalize the ugly reality and lock it away for extended periods before it creeps back into by consciousness. I can only lie to myself for so long…sort of like the beating heart beneath the floorboards of that Edgar Allan Poe short story.
I think Hagens means the latter. He said in another video that pessimism is a cop-out for not doing something to solve the problem. Well, one can always look for life rafts or other floating objects, but what if there are none and no way to build one? Sometimes facing reality means acknowledging there is no solution to the problem(s). Acceptance is the final stage.
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“The Tell-Tale Heart”, me being an old Poe fan, “The Cask of Amontillado” gave me nightmares as a child.
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Brick by brick, CO2 level by CO2 level, extinct species by extinct species, fracking contamination by fracking contamination, nuclear meltdown by nuclear meltdown…We are being buried alive beneath environmental insult upon environmental insult.
We are pretty much being entombed within a sarcophagus of our own making, are we not?
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yes we are. i self examine all the time, ask questions about myself, don’t think i’m being conceited, but god! i wish i was stupid sometimes.
guy down at work doesn’t have this problem, he just says, “these people, they’re just f-ing dumb”, but then he doesn’t agree with everything i think, so…………
there must be some validity to the different kinds of intelligence meme, or it has to do with character, whatever that is.
i dunno, this is why i get into questioning, poking around, turning over rocks; but i still wish i could be like other people sometimes, but i just never have.
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derek(the)red sez:
This is the perennial stuff of philosophical inquiry, whether the examined life is the only one worth living. The appeals of blissful ignorance and sleeping soundly at night are not lost on me, but like you, I’m just not built that way. So we agonize. I can’t even say that one way is better than the other or whether it arises out of inborn character type like optimism and pessimism. Whatever the case, I believe that at the least we have our eyes open.
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Knowing why things are as they are brings solace.
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Thanks for posting Nate’s presentation. My only quibble is that future social leaders may not need firearms, but the people protecting them will.
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Great post xraymike! i especially like your comment comparing us to the Poe story, so true. i watched the video and only have one complaint. At the end nearly everyone who examines the data seems to want to leave the audience with “hope” to finish out the story. A few who don’t are Guy McPherson and Derrick Jensen who tell it like it is – we’re done. No matter what we do now, all we’re doing is hastening the end.
Thanks for documenting the lead up to the collapse (when the electrical grid fails for good globally and within a week to a month we get all the 439 nuke plants going Fukushima on us).
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I’ll be researching that possibility(global nuclear catastrophe) for a future post.
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Love your site and come here often. Here’s my two cents worth. The “answer” is (drum roll please) abundantly obvious to me anyway, some sort of communal living where labor is equally valued and where the basic “standard of living” available to all is mutually agreed-upon.
I used to blame women, after all there has never been a Lysistrata, about anything. Women are the prize that men will do anything for. The sociological and economic consequences are obvious and there are always a few courageous philosophers who point this out. But men trying to find solace, unity and meaning solely with a woman is like a wolf and a rabbit becoming friends. You probably think the analogy means the man is the wolf and the woman is the rabbit. No, just the opposite! Hey, I’m just generalizing to make a point. I live with a woman and the decision-making process is consensual.
Anyway, that’s how I used to think. I realize now the problem is actually unity amongst men. Men, again generally speaking, think of each other as lazy, tyrannical, perverted, crazy, stupid, well, you get the picture. I think there’s an element of truth to these assumptions, but the antidote is basic unity over fundamental ethics, goals and DEMOCRACY. Also, men, left to our own devices and in isolation from one another probably drift more towards the negative than the positive. It’s within an actual social body, in the mirror of self reflection, in relationship that helps us be our best.
Anyway, rather than talk about the perfect commune which nobody is interested in any way, I thought I would attempt to articulate why there is no interest. I’m 62 and “dropped out” in the 60s. I was interested in communal living early on, but only now do I think I realize how it could work successfully. I was a commercial organic farmer for many years and presently we live in the country (caretaking on someone else’s property) but still have a large garden 1 acre and heat mostly with wood etc. etc. http://www.the-communal-solution.us
PS I agree or think, pessimism or giving up looks and feels exactly like not caring, so should not be an option.
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That’s great! I got a good laugh and isn’t it the truth! We really can’t afford to lose our sense of humor no matter what. But laughter aside, these are serious issues and I think no stone should be left unturned. Nevertheless, I generally refrain from pointing fingers or blaming; in the end it’s fruitfulness is questionable. I do it sometimes merely to generate thought. Selling the idea of communal living though hard, I really can’t imagine much else that would seriously address these issues.
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Chris Greene sez:
You can believe what you want (veering from one type of true belief to another, I’m guessing), but I really don’t think you’re uncovering anything worthwhile here. Gender and identity politics are some sort of follow-on effect that human culture has developed, but they don’t suffice as Rosetta stones.
Critics and sociologists, if they’re looking at the problem of how/when mankind went so badly wrong, find the source of our errors in myriad different things. Jared Diamond says that it was the Agrarian Revolution. Others suggest it was the development of theology or of machines, or Enlightenment philosophy, or harnessing fossil fuels. The true source (as if there be only one) is open to debate, but it’s certainly not dudes and babes. We’re all the same species, after all.
That’s not to say that there aren’t problems between genders, within genders, or between and within identity groups. But they come long after other, bigger problems that have become our collective undoing.
I don’t mean to be nasty about this, since solving this particular subset of problems seems quite important to figuring out how communal living can possibly work, but there are some trees and then a forest.
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Actually, I pretty much agree. To get at our problems through gender examination and critical analysis is probably fruitless. I only throw that stuff out there occasionally to generate thought or out of frustration.
But what should we be concentrating on? Gardens, solar cells and windmills, lifeboat communities and the local economy idea? These are all good things, but are they enough? It seems sometimes we forgotten that there was such a thing as The Whole Earth Catalog, 30 years of Mother Earth News and probably 50 years of organic gardening magazine. There too, was a whole back to the land movement in the 70s. I was part of that, and saw nothing but a slow migration back into the system and a large number of divorces.
Any kind of “local economy idea” that doesn’t deal with those who are not (landowners) will, I think, simply degenerate into a master and servant situation. And if we are enlightened enough to pass out land to people to take care of themselves, we might as well take it to the next advanced stage (in my opinion) and live cooperatively.
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As for me I’m waiting for Near Term Extinction. Between now & then all study or mention history should be eliminated because I’ve learned nothing from history.
I’ve chosen to die dumb. I thought this would be sarcastic but I just realized that this might be true. How’s everyone’s EGO holding up while you can’t let go of that banana? lol
I would suppose everyone’s watched “Prophets of Doom”.
Nate Hagens is part of this discussion.
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Well, yes die dumb… I’m toying with that idea.
The atomization and dumbing down of society appears to be complete. Only a small number of people get what is going on. I can tell from by blog stats.
And look what the youth are doing in their spare time these days:
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The youth, I have often thought anyway, basically follow in our footsteps. That is not always easy to see, but if all we’ve done is gone along ourselves taking advantage of whatever opportunities come our way and not in some fundamental way created a different culture then that is what they will do.
And I might add having been around the counterculture my whole life, a counterculture that basically failed at creating a counter culture, our kids or those kids have often had a wicked time adjusting, figuring out what to do.
I think the onus is on us, the older folks to lead the way. Whether it’s libertarians basing their society on property ownership or anarchists basing their theirs on some sort of cooperation, I would say we need to do it. But what I’ve seen is, generally speaking, the elders drop the ball and simply retreat.
Talking about things is good and necessary. And being informed. But ultimately, I would say it comes down to actually doing something different and in relationship with actual people.
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Dumbing down, or the production of dullards, is largely due to hypo-nutrition & hypo-hydration: drinking soft drinks & eating garbage disguised as food takes its toll, as much as ingesting heavy metals. Nature’s Way is to delete excessive elements through natural causes. Many cannot even properly read or hear what is seen or said before them, because they imagined that it was going to be something else.
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Chris Green: i’d enjoy reading about your “perfect commune” and agree with your short analysis of the situation (regarding male/female) as a starting point.
Perhaps we could allow xraymike79 to exchange them to each of us and we could correspond, if no one else is interested.
Your thoughts?
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Tom: in an ideal world, one might theorize that there might ideally be a number of different types of communes to choose from.
I think there are two primary aspects to communal living. One is the ethics it is based upon, the other is the goal it is pursuing.
All we can do is state the ethics we believe are most important and hope there is someone out there who feel similarly. Same thing applies to the goal. Even though there isn’t much on the website right now because I’m rewriting it, I have stated there, in the simplest form, the ethics and goal we are interested in sharing.
Contact information is there on the website. http://www.the-communal-solution.us
The communal consciousness appears to be extremely fragile, just look at the Native Americans. And once that’s lost, it appears to be quite difficult to get back. That said, I still think it’s the only answer that deals with all the different issues humanity is confronting.
The ethics and goal we mention are not all that unusual, I don’t believe, and neither is the goal all that hard for people to agree to (by themselves). However, when it comes to setting something up so (everyone, say in our case at least 150 people) can enjoy accomplishing this goal, that’s where it gets tricky.
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where, in Australia, is it illegal to shower for more than five minutes? New one on me.
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http://beartales.me/2013/01/14/the-latest-crop-of-walmartians/
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