Archive for the ‘Peak Oil’ Category

10,000 Foot View

30 April 2010

Think of the oil spill in the Gulf from a 10,000 foot view. Think of the pathetic humans shouting and scuttling about, trying to control what they’ve released. Think of the life damaged and dieing, all for human greed and hubris, all so we may live our rich little lives of luxurious banality.

One can’t help but feel that we’re getting desperate now, caught between our need for the energy to sustain our lifestyle and the harm that getting and using that energy causes the world. “Oh shit, but we can’t stop….”

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and on and on and…

13 December 2009

So I started following the doomer blogs and sites 18 months ago. Many of them were predicting TEOTWAWKI within weeks, or months, or maybe even a year.

Yet here we are, 18 months later, still rolling along, pretty much as we have been. They say a lot of people are out of work and a lot of people are hungry, although I don’t see the proof of that when I look around. To me, everything looks pretty much as it always has.

And the doomer blogs are still spouting off about the end of the world and climate change and peak oil and financial meltdown and you’d better have 600 pounds of wheat and 5,000 rounds of ammo and there’s really no hope without the ability to farm 10 acres and live like people did 200 years ago. And there is that part of me that’s so sick of the world as it is that welcomes the end times, whenever they get themselves ready to arrive, and so I entertain these fantasies of a world without cars or without having to sell my soul to earn money, yet the end times never come, and so I keep on waiting, and prepping in my modest way, and going to the soul-sucking job 5 days a week to keep the money coming in and the benefits and make sure the kids have what they need. And so that’s my life on December 13th, 2009.

I don’t think I could go back to just living, I don’t think I can abandon everything I’ve thought for the last 18 months. But I have to recognize that the disasters the doomers have predicted have not come to pass. I mean, here we are. There is a lot more resiliency in our civilization than they have understood. But I do feel foolish and betrayed and sad that we’re dealing with all the same old problems instead of the new ones I think would somehow be better.

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Doomer Blogs

28 September 2009

I keep coming back to this same idea, sometimes it takes me weeks or months, but I always come back to it: the time spent reading about how financial/climate/peak oil doom is right around the corner is time wasted. What possible good can it do you? You’re not going to pick up on some late-breaking news story that will help you survive the apocalypse. Last-minute prep is not really possible except in a very very limited sense. You have to be living a local, sustainable lifestyle that won’t notice when the outside world goes to hell. You have to be ready all the time, because when and if a fast crash goes down, no more preparation will be possible.

I love reading blogs, but doomer blogs are a waste of time. And there are dozens of blogs that talk about people’s struggles to attain the kind of lifestyle I’m working to attain, blogs that can inspire and teach me.

And yet…I keep drifting back to the doom and gloom. Yes, there’s a part of me that wants to be told how bad it’s getting and how awful it’s going to be. And there’s a part of me that wants society to fail, that wants the world to return to a simpler, more honest place. I want all the investment bankers and other cheaters and smart guys to fail miserably. I want farming to be a high-status occupation. I want the world to be set right, and I think the way it is now is wrong in thousands of different ways.

Yes, I think I want all that, even though, truth be told, the chances of me successfully shepherding my family through that kind of breakdown are slight.

I’m hoping that writing this out and acknowledging that part of me wants the world to change in a dramatic way will help me to focus my energy, work on what is possible, and stop wasting time on doomer blogs. We’ll see.

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