Old News

Industrial civilization, as we know it, cannot exist without petroleum. We humans are facing an extinction level crisis. Any careful examination of the writings and papers of the world’s leading energy scientists will convince the reader of the validity of the fossil fuel energy crisis.

This problem is real and it is even worse that it appears.

Richard C. Duncan, Ph.D. of the Institute on Energy and Man, explains our crisis in his Olduvai Theory:

“In 1989, I concluded that the life-expectancy of Industrial Civilization is horridly short. This hypothesis was defined in terms of a measurable index, world energy-use per person, and named the “transient-pulse theory of Industrial Civilization.” I sketched its maximum point at 1990, followed by a persistent decline. Ö By 1996, however, I had successfully tested the Olduvai theory against numerous sets of data. The following facts emerge.

“The life-expectancy of Industrial Civilization is less than one-hundred (100) years. Industrial Civilization doesn’t evolve. Rather, it rapidly consumes “the necessary physical prerequisites” for its own existence. It’s short-term, unsustainable. “This is a one shot affair Ö there will be one chance, and one chance only.”

“My previous study put the ‘cliff event’ in year 2012. However, it now appears that 2012 was TOO OPTIMISTIC.

“The newest study indicates that the ‘cliff event’ will occur about 5 years earlier than 2012 due an epidemic of ‘rolling blackouts’ that have already begun in the US. This ‘electrical epidemic’ spreads nationwide, then worldwide, and by ca. 2007 most of the blackouts are permanent. The ‘modern way of life’ is history by ca. 2025.” 

But, the above paragraphs are really old news. They were among the first words published at CommUnity of Minds. The original purpose of this website was to encourage a community effort to address our problems. The fossil fuel energy crisis was designated as Problem # 1. Now we are over a year later, and the vast majority of humans are still ignoring this crisis. Why? Bonnie Goodell from Volcano, Hawaii writing on RunningOnEmpty2 may have an answer for us.

Why?

Bonnie Goodell

The Polynesians provide interesting models of what happens to populations when a new source of easy protein is discovered.  I think these case histories could easily be applied to oil, as regarding human behavior, at least.   Christmas and Easter Island are the two most horrific – where the colonists just plain used up everything, in short order, even the trees, and were then reduced to scrabbling pretty brutally for the survival of a few.


According to James Belich’s “Making Peoples” about New Zealand, when the Maori got there, there followed a few hundred years of killing and eating a remarkable cornucopia of easy protein in the form of sea mammals, giant flightless birds, etc., until they had been decimated or destroyed, at which time they had to go back to sweet potatoes and much reduced protein consumption, along with a population crash.   The Hawaiians did the same thing – caused the extinction of giant flightless birds, etc.  Some Hawaii scholars think that the Kapu (in Hawaiian, Tabu elsewhere) system developed first as resource management, and only later as enforcement as classism and sexism. 

The resource management systems they developed are the same as what is now being reinvented, in a few positive instances.  For instance, certain areas and/or times of year were kapu to fishing, either of all fish or certain species.  (Note the recent news about the function of oceanic fishing reserves in vastly increases available catches outside the reserves. Polynesians would say “Duh!”) In Hawaii, the konohiki- resource bosses – was charged with imposing these kinds of kapu as needed to protect resource health.  Hawaii, using these systems had developed, by 1770 a stable system, based mostly or Kalo (taro) culture and (ocean) fish ponds, capable of supporting up to a million people (comparable to current population) requiring only a couple of hours of labor a day, and no outside inputs. This was a very sophisticated stone age culture that was, upon the arrival of westerners, already in the process of transitioning from tribalism to nationalism.  May I suggest that the larger land masses of New Zealand and Hawaii gave these peoples more time to figure out what they were doing wrong and adjust their behavior, though probably not without going through some pretty lean times, and population crashes.  Oil, being a finite resource, is unlike birds and trees.  But the human behavior involved is, I think, the same. Fossil fuel IS protein for the purposes of its function in stimulating human population growth.

The UK and some other countries have been much more successful that the U.S. in at least seeing the need for an environmental commissioner that functions like a konohiki.  But not nearly far or fast or local enough to ease any transitions, yet.  Even in Hawaii, although there are remnants of parts of the Hawaiian system, as in public beaches and gathering rights, without the konohiki to tell people when to leave the resources alone to regenerate, decimation is once again occurring.

Konohiki had pretty absolute authority, delegated by chiefs, but would lose their jobs if the resources declined.   Most isolated cultures probably eventually developed the konohiki function.  But commerce, which is basically ritualized and socialized looting of tribal neighbors, has within it always the hope of getting the best of a deal ã exploiting someone else. Not that it is bad, but hope of dominance springs eternal and inevitably leads to cycles of population crashes.

It is indeed sad that it is the U.S., by its dominance, which will be the last to suffer and have therefore the most time to change behavior and so prevent much local suffering.  Other countries, for whom the writing on the wall is much more legible are understandably frustrated by the U.S.’s
continued insistence that the writing is not yet legible.  But, in fact, as long as the US views itself tribally rather than globally, our crazy policies are not actually crazy.  Sad.