George Monbiot (Guardian Utd): An answer in Somerset

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Tuesday August 24

An answer in Somerset
The Age of Entropy is here. We should all now be learning how to live without oil
By George Monbiot

'Never again," the Texas oil baron and corporate raider T Boone Pickens announced this month, "will we pump more than 82m barrels."

As we are pumping 82m barrels of oil a day at the moment, what Pickens is saying is that global production has peaked. If he is right, then the oil geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, who announced to general ridicule last year that he was "99% confident" it would happen in 2004, has been vindicated. Rather more importantly, industrial civilisation is over.

Not immediately, of course. But unless another source of energy, just as cheap, with just as high a ratio of "energy return on energy invested" (Eroei) is discovered or developed, there will be a gradual decline in our ability to generate the growth required to keep the debt-based financial system from collapsing.

A surplus of available energy is a remarkable historical and biological anomaly. A supply of oil that exceeds demand has permitted us to do what all species strive to do - expand the ecological space we occupy - but without encountering direct competition for the limiting resource.

Read more.

[brainshrub]

1. Monboit scares me

because he makes so much sense.

Here is the intentional community I'm involved in:

www.earthaven.org

[CHIMO]

2. Hate To Rain

On the first line, but using less energy will result in a decrease in the rate of increase in entropy.

Monbiot should be asked to clarify. Is he saying we have to use more energy?

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Monbiot seems clear enough in insisting we use less energy

As things are, that's not likely to happen. As long a fuel is available and cheap, people will use it. Right now, I am using a personal computer, a coffee maker and two lights. I just finished using an electric stove to fry two eggs and hot running water to wash the skillet and the dish. We may think of it as magic when we turn on the switch, but on further investigation, we know that some sort of fuel is necessary to make that happen. In about two hours I will go to work in a vehicle that uses an internal combustion engine powered by petroleum. I did that yesterday, I am doing it today and I will do it again tomorrow. I am dependent on fossil fuel, as are all my neighbors.

The way we live is based on the consumption of fuel. Most people find it difficult to even think in terms of an alternative.

However, there will be less fuel available for more people. Saudi Arabia is reportedly pumping oil at record levels, yet the price has risen to $50. Why? Demand is also at record levels. The price of fossil fuel is going to continue to rise. The only solution is to reduce dependency on fossil fuel.

In this piece, Monbiot tells of a Walden-like settlement in Britain. The settlers ran into problems with bureaucratic red tape. Monbiot tells this story in order to point out that government is geared toward encouraging the consumption of fossil fuel and discouraging alternate life styles that are less dependent on it. That, he suggests, is something that must change.