Growth - elephant in the room

[LLETSA]

'From the Peak Oil perspective, then, both Left and Right agree: Hubbert’s curve shows us that scarcity and apocalypse are nigh. Let us remember, however, that scarcity and apocalypse are capitalist business as usual (Caffentzis 1992). In capital's history thousands of scarcities have been created in order to impose work and make a profit.'



Never before a scarcity of the very lifeblood of the society and system of production we know (in its capitalist form or otherwise), however.

 

[butchersapron]

It's beyond politics!!

 

[LLETSA]

It's beyond politics!!

Who said that?

Far from being beyond politics, it's about as political as it gets.

 

[butchersapron]

Who said that?

Far from being beyond politics, it's about as political as it gets.

I'm glad you think so, your recent posts suggested that you thought otherwise - at least in terms of the future rather than analysis of why we've reached this point. A steady stream of definitive statements about will happen no matter what might have clouded my judgment though.

 

[LLETSA]

I'm glad you think so, your recent posts suggested that you thought otherwise - at least in terms of the future rather than analysis of why we've reached this point. A steady stream of definitive statements about will happen no matter what might have clouded my judgment though.

All I've offered in this thread is what I think is most likely to happen. It is far from being what I'd prefer to happen (boo hoo.)

The main reason why this is as political as it gets is that it's the one area where nobody can pretend (although, of course, many will try) that 'the market' contains the answer. In a situation where the resource that's dwindling is the very life blood of the society and economy that we and a good few generations before us accepted as normal, 'the market' actually offers very little. If cheap and easily accessible oil is required to manufacture and maintain purported alternatives (to mention only one of the associated problems), market fundamentalism is crippled from the start.

My knowledge of the subject is, like that of most people, limited, but as far as I've ever been able to see, the pioneer Peak Oil theorists don't all agree politically. All of them, though, have had to struggle against the expected denial or silence on the subject by government and corporations (although this may be changing.) As with climate change, there is no conspiracy to make the rest of us do what we don't want to do.

One of the more optimistic economists who subscribes to the theory, Jeff Rubin, predicts that the end of globalization that Peak Oil makes inevitable will result in the reindustrialisation of countries like the UK. Hopefully this would see the return of class struggle politics in a major way.

 

[Corax]

technology can only increase efficiency, and that efficiency can never be greater than 1:1 so yes, there are limits to growth.

Yes.

Much of the weighty discussion on this thread goes over my head, because I'm profoundly intellectually lazy. Or I might just be stupid. One of those anyway.

But essentially, perpetual growth relies on perpetual population increase and/or perpetual increase in resource consumption.

Like it or not, this means that eventually we'll run out of planet in one way or another.

So unless you see starfaring as realistically on the cards, which it isn't, it's undeniably an unsustainable position. The best that can be hoped for is postponing the inevitable.

And no, I'm not a hippy.

 

[elbows]

Thanks to butchers and others for explanations and giving me much to ponder. It will be a bit of a struggle for me because Ive never got the hang of talking about stuff in quite the same way that people tend to talk about class analysis, capitalism etc. I think I get it, or at least just about enough of it to form some understanding, and its an extremely important angle to approach things from, I just cant help looking at it from a slightly different angle myself.

Certainly I found it very easy to recognise the pitfalls of 'peak oil complex' that were identified in that article. No doubt Ive fallen into some of them myself in the years that peak oil has been on my radar (since approx 2002 in my case). Ive probably sounded rather certain about all sorts of things that are inevitable as a result of peak oil, and some of them really arent inevitable. This is an especially easy trap to fall into when confronted with beliefs that the problem doesnt exist, or is relatively trivial to fix, is a con to disguise some other sort of transition, or can be magically solved by the ideology of that persons choice.

Really the only thing Ive decided to be certain about is that its a real problem which is either already being felt or will be in the near future, and that in various ways it will be a major shaper of our future. Beyond that it all comes down to how the various different groups of people react, how the problems manifest, whether peak oil even becomes the face of the crisis at all (as the story can be told in economic/financial crisis or environmental terms instead).

In terms of the failure of peak oilers to consider stuff from various angles including workers struggle, I see this largely as a temporary thing that happens because of the sorts of people who have bought into peak oil theories early, and the failure of the issue to expand much beyond certain fringes. If/when peak oil goes mainstream there should be a much broader spectrum of people looking at the myriad of issues. This is why I am more concerned with the possibility that underlying oil realities will be kept masked, by an economic narrative and other stuff such as the war on terror.

The article suggests that the real concern should be that new class struggles in various regions will be attacked using peak oil as ideological cover. I need to understand better what they mean by ideological cover because Im a bit confused, I cant see it as a cover story like the example they gave of Iraq and Nuclear weapons, but rather the real underlying reason for conflict.

The article may have a point when talking about capitalism surviving, creating or thriving off of scarcity and apocalypse, but Im really not sure how many assumptions its safe to make about this sort of stuff at this stage. Only once the struggle has entered a more dramatic phase will we get to see whether it faces a potentially deadly foe of one kind or another.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Because of capitalist inefficiency.

Kind of. The soil erosion is mostly due to industrial agriculture, which in turn is mostly due to capitalism. With cheap oil it's generally more profitable to use unsustainable technologies in order to reduce labour costs. When yields start dropping no matter how much fertiliser you use, you just displace some more poor people or cut down some rainforest or something and start over again.

Trouble with that approach though is that it's blatantly unsustainable and really fucking unpleasant for the indigenous people who are typically being displaced.

Still, market forces will solve it - they can always try to get jobs making trainers in a sweatshop eh?

 

[Dr Jon]

As we've seen with the collapse of the banking system, the notion of sustainable growth is an oxymoron.

The only possible sustainable civilization has to be one that lives within its means, using only renewable resources. Sustainability is blatantly incompatible with Capitalism, or with our present world population which vastly exceeds carrying capacity. It is now too late for voluntary / compassionate reduction of population to a sustainable level, even if people could be wise and sensible enough to agree to such a move. We shall see a brutal smash & grab for what economically recoverable resources remain, before the inevitable die-off.

On the global scale, humans are no smarter than yeast in a fermentation vat. Once finite resources have been used up and ecosystems have been trashed, it's game over. No replays.

 

[Beanburger]

As we've seen with the collapse of the banking system, the notion of sustainable growth is an oxymoron.

The only possible sustainable civilization has to be one that lives within its means, using only renewable resources. Sustainability is blatantly incompatible with Capitalism, or with our present world population which vastly exceeds carrying capacity. It is now too late for voluntary / compassionate reduction of population to a sustainable level, even if people could be wise and sensible enough to agree to such a move. We shall see a brutal smash & grab for what economically recoverable resources remain, before the inevitable die-off.

On the global scale, humans are no smarter than yeast in a fermentation vat. Once finite resources have been used up and ecosystems have been trashed, it's game over. No replays.

So you're not an optimist then?

 

[Dr Jon]

So you're not an optimist then?

Not really, not any more, I'm afraid.

My most optimistic hopes are that we and our governments can manage the collapse in a compassionate way, with the least suffering.

 

[rover07]

We've barely scratched the surface of the planet. Resources will become more and more expensive to extract, but there's shedloads to share. There are roughly 6 billion (6x 10^9) people; the mass of the Earth is roughly 6x 10^24 Kg.

That's 1x 10^15 Kg - or 1 trillion tonnes - per person.

I don't think we're going to run out any time soon.

Absolutely...and after that there is the moon, asteroid belt, Mars...we just keep eating our way through the solar system

 

[LLETSA]

Not really, not any more, I'm afraid.

My most optimistic hopes are that we and our governments can manage the collapse in a compassionate way, with the least suffering.

As I said earlier, optimism and pessimism have absolutely nothing to do with it.

 

[Diamond]

Not really, not any more, I'm afraid.

My most optimistic hopes are that we and our governments can manage the collapse in a compassionate way, with the least suffering.

You make it sound as if the globe is being put to sleep.

 

[Barking_Mad]

We're just a bit smarter than the average parasite!

 

[Dr Jon]

You make it sound as if the globe is being put to sleep.

I think that is likely to be better than the tsunami of social and environmental breakdown, chaos and suffering that is headed our way.

 

[Dr Jon]

We're just a bit smarter than the average parasite!

Great T-shirt slogan!

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

Two words. Nuclear and Fusion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power

 

[Dr Jon]

Two words. Nuclear and Fusion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power

I think your username says it all really...

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

I think your username says it all really...

At least my science isn't dismal.

 

[LLETSA]

At least my science isn't dismal.

What science?

 

[sus]

The whole scenario of resource depletion and peak oil depresses me. I would like to think that we could transition to a sustainable economy and that it would have some anarchist hallmarks but I don't really know if that is possible.

I have signed up to email alerts from my local branch of the Transition Towns movement but haven't been able to make any of their events yet. None of the main political parties are talking about Peak Oil at the moment.

I find the whole situation quite scary.

Looks like they're getting it. It's not like they can keep ignoring the fact without looking pretty stupid when there are peope from right across the spectrum from deep greens to oil company CEO's saying we're already at the "platau"; maybe "peak" is too scary for the punters

http://transitionculture.org/2010/03/24/government-%E2%80%98peak-oil-summit%E2%80%99-starts-the-process-of-government-acknowledging-peak-oil/

 

[sus]

You've been missing the 'if' out though haven't you? And the 'in principle'. If my uncle was my aunt....

The fundamental natural resource will never run out though will it?

 

[Dr Jon]

What science?

I think it was merely a derogatory reference to Malthus and the "Dismal Science"

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

I think it was merely a derogatory reference to Malthus and the "Dismal Science"

Yep, that was it.

 

[Falcon]

I know it's really bad form to just direct posters to a link or another article, but i also know that you're one of the posters very likely to actually read this - so i will. It puts the case (briefly) far better than i ever could - remembering to read the basket of these issues for 'peak oil' of course

George Caffentzis on the Peak Oil complex

It's a peculiar little essay, with a fairly shaky technical summary and a self servingly partial survey of the data and literature.

But Peak Oil theorists do not seem to be interested in the history of class struggle in and around the oil fields.

I know his essay is not intended as an account of peak oil, but if he wants me to be interested in the stuff he knows about and thinks is important, he needs at least to be accurate about the stuff I know about. So this matters:

After all, the sum of two arbitrary bell-curves is, in most cases, not a bell-curve.

Yes. It is.

Isn’t it a bit paradoxical to claim to know what cannot be known, i.e., future knowledge?

That is precisely what statistics allows us to do and why P10 estimates invariably converge to P50, but I'm fairly certain he hasn't heard of parabolic fractal distributions any more than he has heard of the central limit theorem.

I'll forgive wonky statistics, but I won't forgive selective statistics:

It is usually used to power machines that have replaced human labor in response to workers’ struggles

No, it isn't. If by "usually" he means "its most common application", its most common application is to power transportation. In the UK transportation has been the biggest oil user for 18 years and accounts for 36% of final energy use.

In its most usual application it has on balance created opportunity for human labour (the argument of how that opportunity is translated into actual labour is different and one I acknowledge): no amount of human labour is going to propel a 747; thousands of BA cabin crew enjoy an occupation that only exists because of hydrocarbon; transportation moves resources around to let people do useful things with them, moves the finished products to other people that might find them useful and relieves the people who work with them from the unpleasantness of living in the factory. He cannot surely be lamenting the passage of this replacement? ...

Signorini: The Riverbank (1864). Five men pulling coal along the Arno​

So much for his technical analysis. Turning to his literature analysis:

The working class is blamed for its profligate consumption while the capitalists are chided for their shortsighted greed.

I briefly checked my copies---there is no analysis of consumption by "class" or attempt to blame any particular "class". Conspicuous by its absence from his list of representative tracts is arguably one of the most seminal - Greer's "Long descent". An argument that imposes your preferred structure, then attacks the structure, is unconvincing.

While it is not true that oil is "usually" used to power machines that replace human labour, it is of course true that a significant use is for that purpose. I presume he omits Greer because it contradicts his point that peak oil literature does not adequately acknowledge the role of labour.

In fact, Greer makes a far more persuasive argument for the consequences of capitalisms regard for human labour as "inefficient", and the necessity and inevitability of the restoration of human labour to the centre of economic activity as energy supplies decline. Twilight of the machine is a good recent example that advances the case that people must be restored, without requiring any of the apparatus of "class".

 

[Dr Jon]

I thought I'd resurrect this thread in memory of Albert Bartlett, who passed away last weekend aged 90.

Famous for his lecture Arithmetic, Population and Energy and author of The Essential Exponential! he worked tirelessly to raise awareness of population and sustainability issues.



Al Bartlett - In Memoriam

Tribute to Dr. Albert A. Bartlett

Vale Albert Bartlett

ETA
Interview with Al from last year

 

[Dr Jon]

Growth Fetish: Five Reasons Why Prioritizing Growth Is Bad Policy

1. Growth doesn't work. It doesn't deliver the claimed social and economic benefits.
2. Our measure of growth -- gross domestic product or GDP -- is fundamentally flawed.
3. The focus on growing GDP deflects us away from growing the many things that do need to grow.
4. The over-riding imperative to grow gives over-riding power to those, mainly the corporations, which have the capital and technology to deliver that growth, and, much the same thing, it undermines the case for a long list of public policies that would improve national well-being but are said to "slow growth" and to "hurt the economy."
5. Economic activity and its growth are the principal drivers of massive environmental decline.

 

[Sasaferrato]

Growth cannot continue on an infinite basis. As a planet, we are already 'over subscribed'. To be brutally honest, instead of desperately trying to keep Third World babies alive (I give money every month towards this), we should be trying to prevent so many babies being born in the first place. Overpopulation and poverty go hand in hand.