Tags
anthropocene, climate change, earth day, Learned Society of Boyle, peak oil, reality check please
I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that.
So the good ship Industrial Civilization ploughs its course through the coal and oil of the ages, screaming toward the twin icebergs of climate change and peak oil with all engines ablaze. Aboard it we scream, “Stop! Turn! Do something!” but all for naught. Why?
Not for lack of awareness, that’s for sure. I still encounter people who don’t believe the problems are real. They exist. In droves. But generally, they’re people whose sense of proportionality differs because they’ve already focused on other problems. Ones no less real, and far more immediate. The very problems that are why the expansion of industrial civilization happened the way it did, and had the benefits it had. Poverty, disease, hunger. Fundamental lacks of the foundation levels of Maslow’s hierarchy.
We can’t leave the carbon in the ground. No-one can. The oil will burn. The climate will change. The Anthropocene catastrophe will not be averted.
Of course, industrialization didn’t solve these problems. But in short time spans and localized areas, it helped a lot. And it still does. That expenditure of fossil fuels is providing direct benefit. It has costs, yes — the externalities are awful, and grow worse with time. Everything has a price. But it’s worth while to not mistake what we have bought with that price. And what we would reap if we tried to pay it down early.
Society is like a gas, encapsulated in the elastic bubble of a nation. The more energetic the gas, the farther outward it can press its influence, and the more space (affluence) is available to its residents. Drain that energy away and it comes tumbling in. Do this too fast and you create internal turbulence. Analogously, diminish the economy too fast and you generate internal unrest.
Diminish the energy use rate too soon, and you strand resources. This is the prisoner’s dilemma perfected. Whoever did not cut back their power is in a position to overwhelm those who did, via either politics or force, and take their resources. If such a state does not already exist at the time, one will rapidly find itself created to take advantage of the opportunity. We can’t leave the carbon in the ground. No-one can. The risks to any nation of significance that tries are too great, and would only end in it losing and its policies being reversed anyway.
Insignificant nations can viably change directions to start building “post-carbon” economies. Some of them may be the powerhouses of the next round. But right now, they aren’t called insignificant for nothing. The oil will burn. The climate will change. The Anthropocene catastrophe will not be averted.
So. What now?