tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9799686913817945492024-03-13T21:46:17.305+11:00South Gippsland FuturesAn ongoing discussion about energy and finance, and how we might plan our lives, businesses and community in beautiful South Gippsland in the face of a changing world.Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.comBlogger215125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-52877256797972496652016-04-12T14:17:00.000+10:002016-04-12T14:20:02.857+10:00Denial? It's universal!Just watching <span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90FLu4a0tqE&nohtml5=False" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)</span></span></a> and in the first few words he coupled with the meme obsessing me these days: Denial! It's universal, it's everywhere. There are climate change deniers. On the other side there are people — some very sweet people — who think that by slathering their roof with solar panels and getting the government to legislate that solar panels be engineered under roads, the problem of climate change will be solved! Hooray! People who believe things like that of course depend on what they think are reliable experts, but these days, reliable experts are very rare indeed. </span><br />
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<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)">What we have instead is all-pervasive PR driven by management imperatives, because almost everything has been corporatised and corporations are run by managers, right? Any smart manager knows the first thing you need to manage are perceptions. And that just comes down to PR, the wholesome face which now covers what has become almost universal racketeering. </span><br />
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<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)">Notice all the insurance ads on TV? Notice all the calls you get trying to sell you insurance? In the words of the late Julius Sumner Miller, a former chocolate salesman who traded on his cred as a science educator, "Why is this so?". Well if you read the financial news and you pick up the soiled edges of some cover sheets over things-people-at-the-top-would-rather-you-didn't-know, you might find underneath that the insurance industry world-wide is suffering from a major cash flow crisis brought on by zero interest rates and a stock market which has become a casino, so that the money which formerly was invested and then drawn on to pay out claims is no longer there. How do you fix the problem if you run an insurance company? Well once you realise you're in charge of a giant Ponzi scheme, you </span><span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)">grasp the nettle and try to reel in more marks to pay up-front fees to keep the ship afloat while praying you can cash in your chips and bail out before the whole sucker goes down.</span><br />
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)"> </span><span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)"> </span><br />
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)"><a href="http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-mystery-revealed/#more-6295%27http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-mystery-revealed/#more-6295%27" target="_blank">Jim Kuntsler's latest </a>picks up the same theme:</span><br />
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<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)">The mystery is at last revealed: why does the field of candidates for president score so uniformly low in trust, credibility, likability? Why are there no candidates of real substance, principle, and especially of real charm in this scrim of political basilisks? (Surely there are many people of substance and principle elsewhere in America — they just don’t dare seek the job at the symbolic tippy-top of this clusterfuck of faltering rackets.) The reason is that the problems are unfixable, at least not within the acceptable terms of the zeitgeist, namely: the secret wish to keep all the rackets going at all costs.</span><br />
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)"></span><br />
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)">This is true, by the way, of all parties concerned from the 0.001 percent billionaire grifter class to the deluded sophomores crying for “safe spaces” in their womb-like “student life centers” to the sports-and-porn addled suburban multitudes stuck with impossible mortgage, car, and college loan debts (and, suddenly, no paying job) to the deluded Black Lives Matter mobs who have failed to notice that black lives matter least to the black people slaughtering each other over sneakers and personal slights. None of these groups really want to change anything. They actually wish to preserve their prerogatives.</span><br />
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)"></span></blockquote>
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)">Jim is turning into a grumpy old fart these days and his posts are getting shorter and shorter as he riffs on fewer and fewer old themes. But that doesn't mean he's wrong.</span><br />
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<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)">The other day I was talking to a very nice woman whose son I had the privilege of meeting via a film course I was involved in a couple of years ago. He is an intelligent — maybe even brilliant — young guy from an ordinary background. Like nearly every nerdy kid I've spoken to in the past few years he wanted to be a game designer and sure enough he has cracked a uni course leading (supposedly) that way. But like everyone creamed off as the best by the education system, he has been led astray by the denialists running the show. "Work hard, jump through our hoops and the future will be yours!" But there will be no future in the Greenhouse World for over-educated and specialised keyboard thumpers, except exploitation and slavery in one way or another followed by the scrapheap. And of course at some level my friends son realises this and is wobbling on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Because no other path has been shown to him! For Industrial Civilisation, it's double down or death. Of course those at the top are still doing well out of this meat grinder and can rustle up any number of justifications for such criminal exploitation of the vulnerable young. </span><br />
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)"></span><br />
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)">So where does this place us individuals? Ok, so you've taken on board that the system is screwed. Then the question becomes, what do you do? Of course the so called 'selfish' types will look after number one. Some will want to commit suicide. I'm going to assume that you've chosen to live. It soon becomes obvious that No Man (or Woman) is an Island. Our survival depends on having a functioning society to live in. At this point many of us get stuck. It seems so much less stressful to go with the flow and bury the evidence piling up. Maybe the SWHTF after we're dead. Whew, dodged that one! But do you have any children? Do you have no younger person you care about who will have to live on, into the alien future bearing down on us? A detached attitude is all very well, but as even the arch-murderer Stalin is supposed to have said, "One death is a tragedy but a million is a statistic." What about that one, or half-a-dozen who you really care about?</span><br />
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<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)">I tried, when I first realised what was going on, to help my local community figure it out. I have little faith in committees but I was persuaded to form a Transition Group. It didn't work, as far as I was concerned. The concerned citizens who joined didn't think the way I thought. It ended up folding, much to my relief, as I felt my main job had become keeping the group going instead of doing something useful. Additionally I held three public meetings, one of which <a href="http://southgippslandfutures.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/stoneleigh-ilargi-in-south-gippsland.html" target="_blank">Nicole Foss of the Automatic Earth addressed</a>. Maybe those meetings had some effect but it's difficult to know. No-one talked to me about it afterwards. I had one friend who said I was being way too negative on this blog. Fair enough. Anyway that last public meeting was just over four years ago and I felt I'd done all I could usefully do, without becoming regarded is yet another cranky weirdo, which is no way to be regarded if you want people to listen to you.</span><br />
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)"><br /></span>
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)">All that has remained for me has been to go on living and acting, as far as I am able, in the knowledge of what is coming towards us. There are heaps of analogous situations, some of which can be a bit disheartening. How would it have been to be a Jew and have the Nazi Blitzkrieg rumbling towards you in the Ukraine in 1942? One the other hand there is the example of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo" target="_blank">Saint Augustine</a>, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, former Roman good time boy, who when he saw the way things were with the Empire, sat down and wrote The City of God in the early 5th century AD. From each according to their ability you may say. There are <a href="http://southgippslandfutures.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/so-where-to-now-who-do-we-ask-david.html" target="_blank">lots of contemporaries doing the best they can</a> in their own ways.</span><br />
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)"><br /></span>
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)">I've been preoccupied for the past three years with building a house and working, so my community involvement has decreased to almost nothing. I've resigned as secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, the committee on public transport in the Shire which I was on wound up, I spent nine years on the Secondary College School Council until my last kid had left. I had some involvement with a local alternative energy group but realised when I went to their last get-together that I was in grave danger of saying something which would threaten the Consensus among the Alternatives (see <a href="http://southgippslandfutures.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/musings-on-social-meaning-and-direction.html" target="_blank">this</a> & <a href="http://southgippslandfutures.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/when-system-hits-wall.html" target="_blank">this</a>). I'm not powerful enough to make unnecessary enemies and I hate to hurt my friends. Hell, I've even become nervous about what I post here. Maybe I should post anonymously?</span><br />
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)"><br /></span>
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)">My problem personally is that I am a classic nerd whose people skills are not terribly well developed, so I must be very careful not to offend people through some stupid oversight which any ten year old could avoid. And when you are dealing with a whole society of other people in various stages of denial, that's not easy to avoid! But we will soldier on and see what the future allows.</span><br />
<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)"><br /></span>
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<span class="watch-title " dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Kevin Anderson: Climate Change Communications Workshop DCU (With Slides)"><br /></span>Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-51821961468005205722015-09-07T01:53:00.000+10:002015-09-07T06:43:41.743+10:00My thoughts on Naomi Klein and her speech: Capitalism and the Climate, Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2015First, my character assessment of Naomi Klein who is (from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>) the "Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization and of corporate capitalism". I think her heart is in the right place, she genuinely cares deeply for her fellow human beings and she is intelligent and articulate. She made a speech to the Festival of Dangerous Ideas several days ago which is below. I encourage you watch it, for its own sake and because it will better equip you to understand what I'm about to say.<br />
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Ms. Klein had some interesting things to say about how capitalism works its wonders in the world, particularly her description of the fate of Nauru, which is a comprehensive multifaceted human clusterfuck in microcosm, very illustrative of the ills of the System.<br />
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At the end of the speech is a question and answer session where in answer to the inevitable "But what can poor little us do, faced with such overwhelming horror etc?" she says, get in rooms full of people like you who want to do something about it. All very good, up to a point. And if we watch the Youtube clip above, we have indeed spent an hour in the company of Ms. Klein and mostly like-minded types (although the first question is from a climate change denier who seems so dumb, he must surely have been a plant in the crowd to get everyone a bit rowdier and on side), groping for understanding and solutions.<br />
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So accepting the motivations were good, the crowd was (mainly) adoring, and the exhortation to get cracking with like-minded others was fair enough, what was the problem? Well, it comes down to her vision of how the world works, as compared to how it <i>actually</i> works. Naomi sees the world being exploited by Capitalism, which is run according to her by nefarious characters, the cartoonish archetype being Rupert Murdoch, the Prince of Darkness, plus a supporting cast of lesser demons such as Tony Abbott, our esteemed Prime Minister, oil company executives and so on down the line. Whereas, if only us good-minded types were in charge, in a trice we could have the whole system running on renewables built by worker-controlled co-ops. Without her explicitly stating it, the answer is to get a revolution happening, have Rupert and his cohorts dangling from lamposts and then the chaps with wider necks than their heads who (in consultation, of course, with the scattered remnants of the Original Persons of each continent, with their Deep Understanding of the Spirits of the Earth etc) can get cracking with their lathes and welders knocking up wind generators and solar panels.<br />
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Her geography seems as woozy as her social modeling — she seemed to think the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-03/european-migrant-crisis-drowned-toddler-photos-sparks-outrage/6745808" target="_blank">horror du jour,</a> poor little 3 year-old Aylan Kurdi, was found drowned off the coast of Kurdistan. I think I'd be telling her agent not to bother booking any lectures in Turkey.<br />
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So what's wrong with this picture of the Problems of Capitalism? Well, I could launch into the analytical issues resulting from the over-simplified dualistic thinking which runs through Judeo-Christian culture and even back to Zoroastrianism. After pages and pages (with footnotes) we might get somewhere, with talk about how Weberian social analysis is a more subtle and useful tool than classic Marxism. Blah blah blah.<br />
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But suppose instead I postulate an alien ecologist, who makes a study of Earth and deduces the rules of human ecology are really no different from that of yeast. Yeast expands in its container until it uses up all the food source or is poisoned by its excretions. Then it dies off. Ditto humans — of course, we have some more complicated internal mechanisms than yeast, but the functional result is the same. Humans have leaders whose heads remain on their shoulders just as long as they can keep things organised enough to bring home the beef. Lately we've discovered this huge store of fossil fuel underground and boy, have we had a party! Now, as a result of this bonanza, there's billions of us, but boo-hoo, the energy is running out and it wont be replaced by chicken farts, extracting sunbeams from cucumbers or chopping the heads off the current captains of our destiny. There's way too many of us! As our alien scientist explains to the faculty back on Betelgeuse 9a, there may be all kinds of wonderful thoughts running through the heads of these human creatures, but they are beside the point when the model for the growth of yeast explains the whole thing!<br />
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As far as we know, yeast cells may be full of deep wisdom. Unfortunately I don't think Naomi Klein is, although I wish her well.Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-25782286497721315442014-02-23T16:15:00.000+11:002014-02-23T16:20:53.640+11:00So where to now? Who do we ask: David Holmgren, Jim Lovelock or Guy McPherson?It's been a long while since I lasted posted. In 2012 I came to the end of long train of thought and exploration. My thinking has been changing in emphasis, but it's taken me a while to be able to articulate this change. So where am I and where are we, at the beginning of 2014?<br />
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It's obvious to me that we are in an accelerating process of decline of industrial culture. For a few years, dear little Australia seemed proof against the travails affecting the rest of the world, but now we too are on the big slide. All our automotive manufacturers have announced they will no longer build vehicles in Australia. One of our aluminium smelters is to close. Shell is selling its refinery in Geelong and its service stations. The Federal government is beginning to slash spending — no matter that it's a conservative government which is doing this — the same process would have taken place had the left-wing Labor party retained office. Tax revenues are declining and as unemployment starts to rise, the revenue from income tax and the goods and services tax (GST) will continue to fall and so the slashing will necessarily go on.<br />
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Of course the history of industrial culture has been a constant tale of birth, growth, decline and death of technologies, businesses and whole industries. But it has been a tale of growth — "Progress" — which has seen living standards rise in general. Consequently the bulk of the population is loyal to the system. It has fed us all, so we send our children off to school to be indoctrinated, disciplined and turned into reliable employees.<br />
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Downturns in the economy have been periodic features of our civilisation for hundreds of years. Like an overgrown garden, we begin to choke on our own growth, there is a collapse and many businesses and occupations are swept away while new ones are thrust into being, now that new opportunities open up. Every downturn temporarily slows or stops growth, but every upturn which follows sees growth rebound to yet higher levels. This has lead to economic theories which ignore the constraints of natural resources. After all, we seem to have come up with substitutes every time some resource has become exhausted.<br />
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When Britain had cut down all its trees for energy, suddenly there was coal. When the limitations of coal became apparent — boom! — suddenly we had oil. An even bigger boom ushered in the atomic age which promised electricity too cheap to meter! Atomic energy fell a long way short of its promise but the cheap oil continued to flow, especially after the oil crisis of the seventies and the consequent rush to exploit offshore resources. Now that we are entering another downturn, brought on by the end of cheap oil, there will be another winnowing of inefficient, aging industries and occupations followed by a resurgence powered by…nuclear fusion? Windmills and solar cells? Zero-point energy? Algae farming? Unfortunately this time, the outlook doesn't look so good.<br />
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We now have a monstrously large human population which has been enabled — <i>is in fact a consequence</i> — of the cheap oil of the last hundred years. We are not going to return to business as usual powered by methane digesters running on chicken shit. We are in fact heading into a long, painful and bitter decline in which the human population will necessarily shrink back to something the planet is able to carry.<br />
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The mouthpieces of conventional economic wisdom with their constant chants of "returning to growth soon" are sounding more and more like the quacking of ducks. And we are experiencing a crisis of faith in our leaders.<br />
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This was all predictable years ago, when the implications of the peaking of conventional oil production world-wide and the consequent rise in oil price made the course of future events quite clear. My original intention with this blog was to blow the warning hooter: "Danger, danger, peak oil. Get ready people…" but now we are into the consequences and my warnings are somewhat beside the point. The question is now, What Do We Do? A subsidiary question must inevitably be, Who Should We Listen To?<br />
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On the up-and-up, everyone is fat, happy and full of love for their fellows and glad to give disinterested advice. On the downslide, things are different. Biases and special interests tend to come to the fore. People want to protect their family, their business, their community, their beliefs, their culture or their scam. It is important to develop an acute nose for these biases, because they can distort and devalue advice from even the most previously reliable gurus and sages.<br />
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First, David Holmgren. David has been a wonderful visionary and proselytiser for his <a href="http://holmgren.com.au/" target="_blank">Permaculture</a>. As the crisis approached, he set up his peak oil web site, <a href="http://www.futurescenarios.org/" target="_blank">Future Scenarios</a>, which had a big influence on me back in the day. David walks the talk. Recently he has published <a href="http://holmgren.com.au/crash-demand/" target="_blank">Crash on Demand</a> which has caused a big stir in peak oil circles. I recommend you read Crash on Demand. David has reached something of a crisis, as many of us in the loose Peak Oil movement have. He sees that the industrial system has not crashed and is likely to become much more destructive as it fights for its survival. Remember we are all current members of this system! So his not-very-hopeful reaction is to call on aware, middle-class people who are interested in Permaculture to take the big step, disengage from the system as far as possible and maybe that lack of support will bring it down quicker, thus (maybe) saving us from the worst of the coming climate change.<br />
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So what is the problem with this? Some people are not at all happy with David's suggestions. Rob Hopkins, the genial mover behind the Transition movement, is <a href="http://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/rob-hopkins/2014-01/holmgren-s-crash-demand-be-careful-what-you-wish" target="_blank">unimpressed</a> by David's abandonment of engagement with the powers-that-be at a local level: local government, unions etc. Others think he <a href="http://farmerscrub.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/demand-crash-response-to-holmgrens.html" target="_blank">hasn't gone far enough</a>. I think he's just doing what he knows best: being a responsible social activist. However I think being a responsible social activist at this point in history is a waste of time. Just because someone listens to you doesn't add up to effective action. David's remarks have stirred up the blogosphere but does that amount to anything? And at a practical level, would a small percentage of the global middle-class withdrawing their savings from banks bring down the system? I hardly think so! David has been prodded by something into making a stand outside his normal range. That's understandable, but it's important to realise that he is making his statements as a normal, private individual. I don't believe he has any more authority or special knowledge in this area than you or I.<br />
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On to Jim Lovelock. The grand old man of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis" target="_blank">Gaia hypothesis</a> is a kind of living god, really. And he can grab the headlines, as in this <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange" target="_blank">Guardian online</a> article. Jim has been an advocate of nuclear power for some time and has adopted a few contrarian positions, some of which I agree with. He doesn't appear to owe anyone any favours and so speaks his mind freely. And he's a nice man. But why the nuclear power advocacy? I think it's important to understand where Jim (and David Holmgren for that matter) are coming from. They are products of the academic system. They are highly educated members of the middle-class, however anomalous their current independence from that class's preoccupations appears to be. So at some level they want the part of the system which produced them to continue on — namely the university system. And that can only continue in a society which has the surplus to support it. Now I may be drawing a long bow here, but I'll stick with my opinion. Jim and David are talkers: that is their business as they see it.<br />
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This tendency or bias is much more obvious with people like <a href="http://guymcpherson.com/" target="_blank">Guy McPherson</a> and his guest posters. Guy woke up from his academic slumbers, realised the game was up and went on a kind of intellectual rampage. Guy is basically an intelligent, good-natured fellow who is very angry. He has tried various alternative living arrangements but it hasn't been wildly successful. He feels trapped and has turned this into the most doom-laden viewpoint in the blogosphere. <a href="http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/climate-change-summary-and-update/" target="_blank">Humanity is screwed</a>, the planet is a few years away from shrugging us off and there is nothing we can do about it. He has <a href="http://c-realm.blogspot.mx/2014/01/dirty-pool.html" target="_blank">attacked Nicole Foss over </a>a line from <a href="http://www.theautomaticearth.com/crash-on-demand-a-response-to-david-holmgren/" target="_blank">Nicole's voluminous essay</a> on David Holmgren's Crash on Demand. His guest posters are <a href="http://guymcpherson.com/home/doomstea/public_html/guymcpherson.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/TimeToGetOutTheRatPoison.pdf" target="_blank">pretty similar</a>. The difference between Jim Lovelock and Guy & company is that the latter have given up all hope. They all worked so hard to climb the academic slippery pole, they out-studied the lazy and stupid ones, then arrived at the summit to find — desolation! Theirs is the tragedy of over-investment. Lazy swine (like me) dropped out early when we saw the game was rigged and went on to have a life.<br />
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So is <a href="http://guymcpherson.com/" target="_blank">Nature Bats Last</a> right? Are we all screwed? A little early to say for humanity as a whole — I have my doubts — but I can say one thing for sure: we're all gonna die! It comes with the job of being a member of the human race. One other thing I'm reasonably sure of too: the academic world — as we know it — is toast. Sorry.<br />
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The best essay I've come across today is from Erik Lindberg. His essay is entitled <a href="http://transitionmilwaukee.org/profiles/blogs/agency-on-demand-holmgren-hopkins-and-the-historical-problem-of-a" target="_blank">Agency On Demand? Holmgren, Hopkins, and the Historical Problem of Agency</a>. It's a long, thoughful piece at the end of which he says<br />
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Beyond this, I have very little to offer at this time. I don’t know what I should do, nor how I should recommend my friends and family to act and react.</blockquote>
Great! Exactly how I feel. But I'm having a go, building a new house and workshop in town, looking around for a recession or depression proof business (who knows, something's got to work!) and smelling the flowers. Look, life is fuckin' hard! Evolution proceeds through the death of the unsuccessful and the breeding of the successful. But you can't live in the future (or the past). Life is now, the fleeting but endless moment before death. The future is made by people living and reacting in that moment: not by solemn committees composed of the cleverest and holiest of humanity deciding what's best for us all. We simply don't know enough to run anything but our own lives, for better or for worse.<br />
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I distrust leaders, because I grew up with one. "Men are sheep. They need to be lead!" he would thunder. But leaders make sheep of us all. <br />
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Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-33901098064627540832012-09-17T09:54:00.001+10:002012-09-17T09:54:33.753+10:00Don't send your children to the minesFrom Michael Pettis' finance blog, a <a href="http://www.mpettis.com/2012/09/16/by-2015-hard-commodity-prices-will-have-collapsed/" target="_blank">dose of cold water</a> on the vaporous conceits of our bloated miners…in two years time this will be old news and we will have adjusted to the new realities, but for now it is amusing although rather chilling to see our treasurer, Wayne Swan and Glenn Stevens from the Reserve Bank strutting around as though they are personally in control of our current good fortune. It will be interesting to see how they behave when the rug is whipped out from underneath them.<br />
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The problem is of course the shortness of human memory and our brief life span. I'm old enough to have lived through three recessions, but if you're under the age of forty-five you will have never experienced one as a responsible adult, and if you spent your young adulthood in tertiary study, raise that age to fifty.<br />
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Even when the evidence of past disaster is around you, it can be hard to notice it for what it is. When I was at university at the beginning of the nineteen-seventies I lived in Carlton, which was a suburb built in the eighteen-hundreds. The whole area had narrowly survived complete demolition as an intractable slum in the nineteen-sixties. Carlton was on the up and up when I lived there: Fitzroy, the suburb to the east was still grim, poverty-stricken and Dickensian. Yet both suburbs had been prosperous when built. They were clobbered by the depression which started in 1873 and which ran through until 1896 — the first <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression" target="_blank">Great Depression</a>. Seventy-five years later they were just beginning to emerge from that disaster! Of course prosperity had returned and disappeared several times since the initial disaster but it had happened somewhere else: other suburbs were built from the fruits of prosperity while Carlton and Fitzroy were largely forgotten. Now, they are both very much up-market, one-hundred and twenty years later!<br />
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So be aware of the transitory nature of human affairs and trust not in the utterances of the mighty! The real story is written in other places. Don't worry about <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3CcxRbFiLg" target="_blank">Gina Rinehart's</a> crazy public bloviations: they will soon be amusing footnotes to history.<br />
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Be warned: don't send your children the mines!Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-45955049357476133232012-09-08T08:11:00.001+10:002012-09-08T08:11:14.074+10:00A cool view of our current economic situationFor a good current view of the Australian situation, check out <a href="http://www.variantperception.com/sites/default/files/reports/samples/australia_-_the_unlucky_country.pdf" target="_blank">this PDF</a>. from <a href="http://www.variantperception.com/" target="_blank">Variant Perception</a> (an independent global macroeconomic research service). This is investment advice, but don't be fooled by the title, "Australia: The Unlucky Country". Despite the short-term pain we're going to suffer, the longer view is still better than a lot of other places!Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-4963887515941819752012-09-03T18:06:00.000+10:002012-09-03T18:06:00.004+10:00Another good clip…<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/euhkIesmW7E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-69572543574423690822012-08-29T06:48:00.002+10:002012-08-29T06:48:43.531+10:00Spread this clip…<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4uKgU7krWzE" width="560"></iframe>Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-74860273803929516542012-06-08T21:04:00.002+10:002012-06-08T21:04:23.239+10:00Guy McPhersonI just came across this guy. He <a href="http://guymcpherson.com/" target="_blank">has a blog</a> which I've added to my blog list. Check out his talk: it's dark but good…<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yOq2A_SGTYA" width="560"></iframe>Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-48615095609828822082012-05-15T10:37:00.001+10:002013-01-03T07:56:56.929+11:00When the system hits the wallI've just watched a presentation by Jeremy Rifkin — a very clever and articulate man — which is below. It's long but engrossing — go on, watch it, I'll wait!<br />
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If you watched it you will see what I mean. But did you also see how it is a piece of theatre, rather than a closely reasoned argument? He presents us with a view of human progress which, to condense Jeremy's argument, equates pretty much with increased energy consumption! Ergo, we must keep up the energy level! And then he pulls a whole lot of techno-speak out of the air, equating distributed information with distributed energy generation (see, one works, so the other must too!) and sketching out a sexy-sounding future with the whole world of little home generators linking together, busy making their contribution to the betterment of the human species! The young people know all about this kind of stuff 'cause they're on Facebook and Twitter! So lets get them all going on it.<br />
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Only it's all a crock of — well — crap, I'm afraid. His argument for human progress is so thin, so grossly over-simplified and ridiculously reductionist as to be no better than the sort of thing that pops into your head when you've smoked some really good weed after dinner. And then to use it as the justification for leading the young people of the world off on a campaign of technological positivism, based on about as much technical savvy as in a Jetson's cartoon, is to my mind, positively criminal. To me, the underlying game here is "Keep my scam going (and my books selling) for as long as possible". From the blurb on Amazon that goes with his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Third-Industrial-Revolution-Transforming/dp/0230115217">The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World:</a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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Jeremy Rifkin is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the author of eighteen bestselling books, including The Hydrogen Economy and The End of Work. He has been a guest on Face the Nation, The Lehrer News Hour, 20/20, Larry King Live, Today, and Good Morning America. The National Journal named Rifkin as one of 150 people in the U.S. that have the most influence in shaping federal government policy. He has also testified before numerous congressional committees, and since 1994, Mr. Rifkin has been a senior lecturer at the Wharton School’s Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Rifkin is chairman of the Global CEO Business Roundtable, which includes IBM, Cisco, Cushman and Wakefield, and has served as an adviser to various global leaders, including Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Angela Merkel of Germany. His monthly column on global issues appears in many of the world’s leading newspapers and magazines, including The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian in the U.K., Die Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany, Trud in Bulgaria, Clarín in Argentina, and Al-Ittihad in the U.A.E. He lives in Bethesda, MD.</blockquote>
So this dude is a heavy hitter with influence. Maybe he is a "nice guy". But what he says, if you strip away the flashy factoids, the glossy visions and the dodgy science is no better than a high-class advertisement for himself. God help you if you take anything he says seriously (for a cogent critique of his book "The Hydrogen Economy" <a href="http://www.econogics.com/en/rifkin.htm" target="_blank">look here</a>). Keep him away from the children!<br />
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On to my next guest. This is Margaret Alston, a holder of an Order of Australia, Professor of Social Work and Head of Department at Monash University and Director of the Gender, Leadership and Social Sustainability research unit. Chair of the Australian Heads of Schools of Social Work. Much less flashy than Jeremy Rifkin, much more earnest, lots of academic credibility. This is a talk on Radio National's Big Ideas program, which is a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/rural-education/3960744" target="_blank">broadcast of the Sidney Myer Rural Lecture</a> (click to get to the page with the podcast) entitled "Rural Education…Shaping Leaders for the Future".<br />
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She is a lady with a sweet voice who is trying to Do Good Work. She starts off well by talking about the problems facing rural areas with climate change, the economic crisis and peak oil, and how leadership has to come from within rural communities rather than be imposed from outside. At about the eleven minute mark she strays off overseas, running through a number of international projects she has been associated with. The classic moment comes with her description of a conference at the Prado campus of Monash University in Italy, to do with gender and climate change. The thought of all those earnest folk (mostly women?) arriving by jumbo jet from far-flung places, trailing <strike>clouds of glory</strike> fairly impressive carbon footprints, brought a faint smile to my lips. I'm sure lots of important resolutions were passed, and great thoughts were — well — thunk. And her book about it will be out soon. Then we're off to Bangladesh which is of course full of problems, but the village people are passionate that their children be well educated even though they themselves have nothing and live in villages that get washed away every time you turn around — kablam! Just like that.<br />
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But here we have come to the meat and potatoes of the good professor's talk: education! As it is for the Bangladeshis, so it should be for us country folk in Australia! Then follows a long discussion of the problems down on the farm. Rural youngsters don't get as much education and tend to rush off to the city if they've got any brains. And how do you get young teachers to go happily off to Lake Boga to Spread the Word? Dear dear dear. With enough resources, we could be leading the world with all these brilliant country youngsters, who instead are drinking Jim Beam & Coke, crashing their utes, watching Biggest Loser, beating each other senseless or shagging in their time off from fixing fences or cleaning at the motel.<br />
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I think I've got the good Professor's schtick worked out. You make some statement about the world which catches attention and being an intelligent person, she makes an intelligent statement. Then comes the bit where you must blow your own trumpet, but in a subtle way. The international connections, the book etc. This segues into the main subject, which is to get more funding for your particular gig. Fortunately education is like love: you can never get enough of it. So her talk is — surprise! — a big advertisement for herself and her institutions. All those bright young people sitting there like little birds with their beaks open, waiting for mummy bird to drop in the Worm of Knowledge! And who is better equipped than you-know-who to play mummy bird?<br />
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Will it do any good? I think at this point, we need to find some historic, successful rural leaders of note and examine their education. How about Attila the Hun for a start? Let's get real. Rural Australia is simply a thinly-spread industrial suburb of the great international civilisation of which we are all a part. The survival of rural Australia is therefore is therefore tied closely to the fate of this mighty construct — not to whether little Johny or Jane in Grong Grong gets a diploma of Gender Studies. Unfortunately the signs aren't good. Climate change and economic collapse means quite simply that large areas of this great brown land are going to be abandoned. Those parts that will survive and thrive are quite easy to identify. They are the ones without extreme climate (sorry inland Australia, the Northern territory and Queensland!), which have good soil and which are favoured as holiday spots by the elites which will be running our cities.<br />
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As the economy starts to shrink, the chorus of entitlement-seekers will rise to a shriek. Unfortunately many intelligent people have been recruited into roles as the highly-educated technicians who run our current bloated system. Their wages are now paid by what will soon become a rapidly shrinking tax base, or by industries which cater for discretionary purchases such as cars, Coca-Cola, corn chips or holidays in Bali over which the sword of consumer cost-cutting hangs.<br />
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As reality bites will we turn away from Snake Oil salesmen like Jeremy Rifkin? Probably not — we all love a good story even if it's not true, us gullible human beings! The fate of the educators is easier to foresee — those who can teach you what you need to know will be fed and those who are peddling a scam will starve.Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-44002837343253490912012-03-21T18:51:00.000+11:002012-03-21T18:51:20.578+11:00Why open source?Here's a neat explanation by Bre Pettis from <a href="http://www.makerbot.com/" target="_blank">MakerBot</a> (who speaks on the <a href="http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/rise-maker-movement-0022086" target="_blank">Al Jazeera link</a> I posted yesterday).<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/54X28qSbKf4" width="560"></iframe>Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-18813572888563907162012-03-20T14:59:00.000+11:002012-03-20T15:02:33.631+11:00Makerspace/hackerspaceI've been ruminating for a few years on the best way to go about increasing the economic resilience of our corner of the world. For a time I focused on a scheme to <a href="http://southgippslandfutures.blogspot.com.au/2009/03/planning-for-future-economy.html" target="_blank">build business incubators</a>, and spoke to various people including our local shire's business representative, the Department of Planning & Community Development and to Regional Development Victoria, trying to drum up support. My theory: build it and they will come! I even had spaces in mind to locate the two sections, which were the retail part (in Foster, our throbbing, pulsating commercial centre!) and the manufacturing part (to be in the abandoned factory in Toora). If I could persuade the Shire to buy the Toora factory and finance the purchase of a CNC milling machine, and then somehow get a shop in <a href="http://www.foster.vic.au/foster-township/foster-photo-gallery/" target="_blank">Foster</a> which could be split up into a series of little retail spaces…but my scheme never seemed to get any legs. The factory in Toora sold to someone in Sydney for what sounds like a pie-in-the-sky scheme to set up plastic recycling (and it looks more derelict and sadly overgrown by the day) and Foster also seemed like a closed door with no suitable spaces available. Plus no-one showed any enthusiasm for dropping serious money and effort into my proposal.<br />
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It all got too hard, and if something's too hard then the time or the idea isn't right. In the meantime, doodling around on other projects lead me to the <a href="http://arduino.cc/" target="_blank">Arduino processor</a> and I started teaching my self to program it and dream vaguely of the commercial possibilities. And suddenly the world seemed to open up with lots of people talking about the new world made possible by the sudden miniaturisation and cheapness of this new generation of microprocessors. John Robb over at <a href="http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/" target="_blank">Global Guerrillas</a> has been on a tear, with lots of <a href="http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/03/controlling-drones-with-hand-gestures.html" target="_blank">posts on drones</a>, <a href="http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/03/automating-terrorism-the-decline-of-the-suicide-bomber.html" target="_blank">drone warfare</a> and his big <a href="http://www.resilientcommunities.com/" target="_blank">push for resilient communities</a>. And I was re-reading all my blog posts (for the first time since I started it!) when I clicked on the name of a commenter, leading me to the man himself, Mitch Davis, and his <a href="http://hackvana.blogspot.com.au/" target="_blank">Hackvana </a>site. Suddenly I saw the time was right! Mitch made a comment about electronics which chimed in with what I'd been thinking for a few years: to quote him<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
How lucky am I to be alive at this moment, when the hackerspace movement is taking off. Five years ago our "electronics" shops had ditched their components, and the world looked set to be slave to the consumerist mindset: We buy it, it fails, we throw it away, we buy it again. But a funny thing has happened in the past three years: The advent of inexpensive microprocessors, of open source hardware and software (I'm thinking in particular of the <a href="http://arduino.cc/" target="_blank">Arduino</a>, that incredible gateway enabler) and the manufacturing power of China means that now anyone can get into electronics. And come to think of it, electronics isn't even the main point - it's just the vehicle. The main point is that we don't have to consume, we can realise how satisfying it is to create, to repurpose, to collaborate and share.</blockquote>
So true: I did a <a href="http://users.tpg.com.au/users/storcom/murraydarling.html" target="_blank">big job up at Renmark</a> in South Australia a few years ago and discovered getting bits from an electronics shop was a real battle in Mildura. At that time it seemed make-it-yourself was dying.<br />
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That was then, this is now! I contacted Mitch and he gave me some valuable pointers: to <a href="http://www.hackmelbourne.org/" target="_blank">Hack Melbourne</a> and to <a href="http://littlebirdelectronics.com/" target="_blank">Little Bird Electronics</a> amongst other things. Checking out Hack Melbourne I saw that one of the members was an old workmate of mine, <a href="http://michaelborthwick.com.au/" target="_blank">Michael Borthwick</a>, with whom I'd worked on a <a href="http://users.tpg.com.au/users/storcom/Malaysia.html" target="_blank">science museum in Malaysia</a> back in the nineties, and he was into some wild stuff (check the <a href="http://lunarnumbat.org/" target="_blank">Lunar Numbat Project!</a>). Plus the Hack Melbourne seemed to be full of all the things I'd been idly kicking around: <a href="http://www.makerbot.com/" target="_blank">3-D printing</a>, electronic controls and monitoring, even DNA analysis. It seemed to be full of my kind of people. So following Mitch's advice I contacted <a href="http://www.geekscape.org/" target="_blank">Andy Gelme</a>, the man behind it all, who replied to me in the middle of writing this post with an invitation to visit Hack Melbourne. Yay!<br />
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My plan is to hold a meeting in a couple of weeks (after my Hack Melbourne visit), advertising to all interested parties plus the Shire's people and get something moving. I have one schoolkid on the bus I drive who's really interested and another who might be. That's one eighth of my small sample. One in eight of the three hundred and sixty or so kids at the secondary college would be forty-five, plus a few maybe from the primary school, plus who knows how many out in the general community.<br />
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Before with the business incubators, it was a big up-front investment to get it off the ground. This is scaled way back on the financial front. Getting a space to operate in is still a problem, but I do have an interest in a factory at the bottom of the town where I'm sharing with my mate Scotty. Plus another mate Gunnar said the place he's renting in the middle of the town might be available soon. Hmm!<br />
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This time I feel like I'm in tune with the zeitgeist. Check out this item from <a href="http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/rise-maker-movement-0022086" target="_blank">Al Jazeeras The Stream all about hackerspaces in Africa</a>. Cheers!Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-84680385763102653502012-03-06T10:47:00.000+11:002012-03-08T11:01:56.599+11:00Stoneleigh & Ilargi in South Gippsland!We had our public lecture with Nicole Foss (Stoneleigh from <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1270457413">The Automatic Earth)</a><a href="http://theautomaticearth.org/" target="_blank"></a> the end of last month. It was organised as part of her Australian tour, and Malcolm McKelvie of <a href="http://www.bbsn.org.au/" target="_blank">Baw Baw Sustainability Network</a> and I co-operated to put it on in Leongatha. Malcolm did a great job, whereas I was a bit behind the eight-ball for the weeks leading up to it as I had a heart attack on New Years day (my first, but a minor one fortunately) so I didn't get on top of the publicity as I'd hoped to. But it didn't matter: we had around eighty people turn up which was much better than I expected. South Gippsland Shire in the shape of Christine Hamilton from their Sustainability department was completely wonderful, organising the venue and arranging a donation to make it happen as well as cleaning up afterwards. Baw Baw Shire has also kicked in a substantial donation. So it was all good!<br />
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The lecture went well and Nicole was in fine form, especially with the Q & A afterwards. My friend Ross turned up just as the lecture was about to start and acted as moderator for the Q & A which was great. After the show we went back to our place in Foster where I was putting Nicole and Ilargi (he's a great guy!) up and we drank red wine, putting the world to rights until 12:30 or so. I mentioned to Nicole I was driving the Mount Best school bus and that if she, Ilargi and Trevor, the friend who had driven them down to the lecture, wanted to they could come with me in the morning for a spectacular tour of the hills of South Gippsland. So I woke Nicole up at 6:30, we picked up Trevor (Ilargi had elected to sleep in) and off we went. It was a perfect day, the views were superb and the kids on the bus didn't riot! After we sat around drinking coffee and talking about life, the universe and everything until just before midday when they headed off for the next lecture in Geelong. Whereupon I had to have a little lie down! It took me a couple of days to recover: I hope Nicole wasn't as exhausted as I was!Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-61193343059980760212012-02-20T09:32:00.000+11:002012-02-20T09:32:17.059+11:00In a nutshell…At last in one place, the whole predicament explained! You may have seen this before but if not, check it out.<br />
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<br />Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-71931763680252150532011-12-28T15:06:00.001+11:002011-12-28T21:47:35.068+11:00Summertime, and the living is easy…Hi everyone — it's been a long time since I last posted. We had our forum in Foster a couple of months ago and it went reasonably well. South Gippsland Shire councilors kicked in a substantial amount of money to help run it for which I'm very grateful! I was aiming it largely at the people who were on the panel and it may have had some benefit there. But it's all water under the bridge now — I feel personally that the time for consciousness raising is nearly at an end. Now is the time to start work with the new realities in mind!<br />
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But I'm having one last go at educating the public and it's a beauty! Stoneleigh (Nicole Foss) from <a href="http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/">The Automatic Earth</a> is coming to Australia on a lecture tour and we are having her give a talk down here. It will be at the Leongatha (<b>edit in response to comment:</b> Leongatha is in Victoria) Memorial Hall in the Council meeting room on February 21st at 7:30pm (2 Michael Place Leongatha) for those of you in the area. Cost will be $10.00. It will (I suppose) be basically her <a href="http://www.postpeakeducation.com/Nicole-Foss/A-Century-Of-Challenges/index.php">A Century of Challenges</a> lecture, which is pretty technical and requires at least some economic knowledge, but is very in-depth and far-reaching in its scope. Definitely a must-know for anyone seriously planning for the future at any level. I've just had a meeting with Malcolm McKelvie from <a href="http://www.bbsn.org.au/">Baw Baw Sustainability Network</a> with whom I'm jointly running the talk and we're happy with our arrangements, so it should be a good show!<br />
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So what comes next? I'm working three part-time jobs at the moment while I have a think about what business to start. What I'm planning to do at the moment is to run classes for <a href="http://arduino.cc/">Arduino</a> control systems programming and building. I'm thinking of aiming it principally at local kids (although some adults may be interested too). I want to (a) get a low capital and knowledge intensive start-up business going down here for the brighter locals and (b) find out who the best programmers and solderers are so I can employ 'em! Back when my <a href="http://users.tpg.com.au/users/storcom/">exhibit building business</a> was operational, <a href="http://users.tpg.com.au/users/storcom/aboutus.html">John Banikos</a> and I built quite <a href="http://users.tpg.com.au/users/storcom/Electrogallery.html">a few things</a> powered by PLCs (programmable logic controllers), mini computers used in industrial processes. The Arduino is a low-cost PLC essentially. There is also an ultra low-cost computer which has just been released — <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">the Raspberry</a> — which I will check out.<br />
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I'd really like to get some sort of hackerspace going and try 3-D printing too, but it will have to be one step at a time for a while!Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-76538954815190301002011-06-15T14:32:00.006+10:002011-06-15T17:25:34.728+10:00Community forum background informationOur little transition group is going to run a community forum to try and get as many key people in our district to have an understanding of the implications of peak oil for our local economy. Below is the draft of a background document I want to have available for participants. Does anyone have criticisms or suggestions? I'm a bit concerned that the references for economics are a bit thin. If any of you have any good links you think I can use, send them along!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Peak Oil & Finance Briefing Paper</span> for panelists and participants at the Corner Inlet Fuel & Finance Forum, 13th June 2011<br />Prepared by Lloyd Morcom cornerinlettransition@gmail.com <br />Transition Corner Inlet District Inc<br />Partly adapted from “Peak Oil Briefing Paper” by Kate Leslie of Transition Hobsons Bay<br />which can be found at<br /><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_vLC_EwqdPIfAFyUdCW20-JLKK9-nB4W9Hqo3gDlv38/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CLmWzukB&pli=1">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_vLC_EwqdPIfAFyUdCW20-JLKK9-nB4W9Hqo3gDlv38/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CLmWzukB&pli=1</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Executive Summary</span><br />The problem of Peak Oil and credit-based finance<br />Oil is a non-renewable resource with geological limits to its supply. In the past 150 years, we humans have used around one half of all oil. We are now using four times as much as we are finding.<br /><br />It is increasingly believed by a range of experts that the peak of extraction may have already occurred between 2006 and 2008. This means that as each year goes by, there will be less oil available. Oil in the cheapest, most accessible reserves was extracted first. The reserves left are more difficult and expensive to access and extract.<br /><br />Peak oil presents a real challenge to us as a society – oil has become such an integral part of our life that the end of abundant and cheap supply is bound to create serious disruption around the world and not least in South Gippsland. Oil is used in almost all facets of production. As well being a fuel it is the main feedstock for plastics manufacture. Its role in agriculture is crucial. In fact it underpins the stability of our economy.<br /><br />What is hidden from most of us by the complexity of the world we live in is how our economy has developed into one dependent on an endless supply of cheap energy and oil in particular for its continued existence. Our economy is credit-based and uses fiat money: that is, it uses arbitrary symbols legislated into existence for use in trade and exchange. Most of what we call money has been lent into existence by banks and governments and exists as only as symbols on paper or computer screens. Because it must be repaid with interest, the supply of money continually expands and so must the economy it supports, in order to pay back both principal and interest.<br /><br />If economic growth is curtailed by a shortage of energy, particularly oil, our economic system could collapse, as credit lent will be impossible to repay with interest and so banks would be unable to lend. This is what is currently happening more or less in slow motion to the world economy. The crises in Europe (Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain are all teetering on the edge of defaulting on their debts) and in the USA (with its enormous unfunded budget deficit to cover social security, health care and the military) are caused by an ongoing rapid increase in debt which is becoming increasingly clear will never be repaid. Currently governments have been coerced into using taxpayer funds to give financial backing to banks but this creates a political crisis which will blow up at some stage.<br /><br />Australia seems to be a long way from these kinds of problems at the moment but our seeming invulnerability is an illusion and we could find ourselves dragged into them should these international crises affect our trade, which would rapidly reveal the fragility of our own finance and banking system.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Resources for understanding the problem: Peak Oil</span><br />There are two key concepts to grasp with Peak Oil. One is the “Hubbert curve”, the bell-shaped graph that shows how a resource of any kind is exploited, with a rising level of production to a peak and then an (often symmetrical) decline. The other concept is the idea of EROEI: “energy returned on energy invested”. This shows how expensive — in energy terms — an energy resource is to exploit. For example, the first oil wells in the nineteenth century produced more than one hundred times the energy value than it took to drill and develop them. Recent offshore oil fields on the other hand have a ratio of energy returned on energy invested of nearer to ten-to-one.<br /><br />ABC Catalyst video on the problem of Peak Oil<br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaNz3qS5WAo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaNz3qS5WAo</a><br /><br />A good primer by Gail Tverberg who writes at The Oil Drum<br /><a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3726">http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3726</a><br /><br />One in video format by another Oil Drum commentator, André Angelantoni<br /><a href="http://www.postpeakliving.com/preparing-post-peak-life">http://www.postpeakliving.com/preparing-post-peak-life </a><br /><br />Australia’s CSIRO has put out a study called the Future Fuels Forum<br /><a href="http://www.csiro.au/science/FutureFuelsForum.html">http://www.csiro.au/science/FutureFuelsForum.html</a><br /><br />An explanation of EROEI at Wikipedia<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI</a><br /><br />An explanation the the Hubbert curve also at Wikipedia<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_curve">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_curve</a><br /><br />A longer discussion of EROEI at The Oil Drum<br /><a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7786">http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7786</a><br /><br />Raw figures on the world situation from the Energy Export Databrowser<br /><a href="http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/">http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/</a><br /><br />Another useful subsidiary concept is the “Export Land Model” based on work by geologist Jeffrey Brown. To quote from the Wikipedia article on it, “It models the decline in oil exports that result when an exporting nation experiences both a peak in oil production and an increase in domestic oil consumption. In such cases, exports decline at a far faster rate than the decline in oil production alone.”<br /><br />The Wikipedia article can be found at<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Land_Model">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Land_Model</a><br /><br />A discussion of how it affects Australia can be found here<br /><a href="http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3657">http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3657</a><br /><br />A longer technical exploration of the Export Land Model is here<br /><a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7007">http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7007</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Resources for understanding the problem: the economy</span><br />It is more difficult to find an objective, all-encompassing explanation of the economic situation. There are many commentators who can give valuable insights but most have a limited view or are fixated what they believe to be the particular cause. But anyway, here are some links.<br /><br />Chris Martenson has a comprehensive though necessarily US based view of the economy. His Crash Course is well worth a look for an explanation of the causes of the current big downturn: click on “Watch the Crash Course” on the top left of the web page.<br /><a href="http://www.chrismartenson.com/">http://www.chrismartenson.com/</a><br /><br />An amusing stick-figure explanation of the crisis, again US based<br /><a href="http://cravensbrothers.com/cboutlook/">http://cravensbrothers.com/cboutlook/</a><br /><br />Steve Keen is an Australian economist and the author of “Debunking Economics”. He has been shouting “The emperor has no clothes” at those economists who see a return to business-as-usual soon. He is best at explaining the housing bubble, which is so important as a cause of the huge increase in debt which has driven demand in Australia. When the bubble pops, as it’s starting to do now, demand (= spending) will fall precipitously. Couple that with the grim outlook for local manufacturing and the erosion of retail sales because of online purchases, both caused by the high Australian dollar, and we have a very nasty outlook for the economy especially if our exports falter. This is a video presentation by Steve Keen with Powerpoint slides.<br /><a href="http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2011/03/20/mortgage-finance-association-of-australia-talk/">http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2011/03/20/mortgage-finance-association-of-australia-talk/</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Government initiatives - Local</span><br />What are governments doing about it? Not much apart from a Federal Senate committee investigation in 2007, although there has been some action at the local government level. Maribyrnong City Council addressed the subject with its Peak Oil Contingency Plan (June 2009)<br /><a href="http://www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au/Files/Final_PeakOil_25_August_Website.pdf">http://www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au/Files/Final_PeakOil_25_August_Website.pdf</a><br /><br />Darebin City Council has an Adaption Plan (November 2009)<br /><a href="http://www.darebin.vic.gov.au/Files/Adaptation_Plan_Final_November_2009.pdf">http://www.darebin.vic.gov.au/Files/Adaptation_Plan_Final_November_2009.pdf</a><br /><br />In March 2007, Brisbane City Council’s Climate Change and Energy Taskforce released their final report 'A Call For Action'. Brisbane Council adopted some of its recommendations, stating “peak oil is a more recent consideration”.<br /><a href="http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/documents/plans_strategies/summary_intro_climate_change_energy_taskforce_report.pdf">http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/documents/plans_strategies/summary_intro_climate_change_energy_taskforce_report.pdf </a><br /><br />Coffs Harbour City Council (NSW) adopted a 'Peak Oil Report and Action Plan' in November 2008.<br /><a href="http://www.coffsharbour.nsw.gov.au/resources/documents/CHCC_Peak_Oil_Report1.pdf">http://www.coffsharbour.nsw.gov.au/resources/documents/CHCC_Peak_Oil_Report1.pdf</a><br /><br />Sunshine Coast Council adopted the <a href="http://www.sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au/sitePage.cfm?code=cc-strategy">Sunshine Coast Climate Change and Peak Oil Strategy</a> 2010-2020 in June 2010<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Government initiatives - Federal</span><br />The Federal Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism, on behalf of the National Oil Supplies Emergency Committee (NOSEC) examined Australia’s current level of liquid fuel vulnerability and significant trends which may affect this up until 2020.<br /><a href="http://www.ret.gov.au/energy/energy_security/emergency_response/liquid_fuel_emergency/lfe_vulnerability/Pages/lfe_vulnerability.aspx">http://www.ret.gov.au/energy/energy_security/emergency_response/liquid_fuel_emergency/lfe_vulnerability/Pages/lfe_vulnerability.aspx</a><br /><br />A Federal Government Senate Committee in 2007 published 'Inquiry into Australia’s Future Oil Supply and Alternative Transport Fuels'. It found Australia should be planning now for the enormous changes that will be needed to move to a less oil dependent future. The final report is here:<br /><a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/rrat_ctte/completed_inquiries/2004-07/oil_supply/report/index.htm">http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/rrat_ctte/completed_inquiries/2004-07/oil_supply/report/index.htm</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />International reports</span><br />The UK Secretary for Energy and Climate Change committed in 2011 to establish an “Oil Shock Response Plan”. Reputedly it will address how to protect the economy “if we knew that the oil price would soar to $250 in 2014.” An article on it is here:<br /><a href="http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2072738/exclusive-government-develop-oil-shock-response-plan">http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2072738/exclusive-government-develop-oil-shock-response-plan</a><br /><br />The US Military issued a report in 2010 warning that “by 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day.” The report may be accessed here:<br /><a href="http://www.peakoil.net/files/JOE2010.pdf">http://www.peakoil.net/files/JOE2010.pdf</a><br /><br />The German Military think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military analysed the implications of peak oil in 2010. The report was leaked. It reportedly warns of “shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the "total collapse of the markets" and of serious political and economic crises.” The Spiegel Online report is here:<br /><a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,715138,00.html">http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,715138,00.html</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Academic studies of social vulnerability</span><br />For a limited assessment of local impacts, two academics (Dodson and Sipe) have written a number of papers referencing maps of their “Vulnerability Assessment for Mortgage, Petrol and Inflation Risks and Expenses” (VAMPIRE). I draw your attention to the statement in their 2009 report that there are "increasingly pessimistic assessments emerging about the future security of conventional oil supplies."<br /><br />2009 publication by implication. Quotes oil prices in mid 2008. No census date referenced. No Melbourne map<br /><a href="http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/208220/ANZAPS09-Securing-suburbia-buy-Dodson-and-Sipe.pdf">http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/208220/ANZAPS09-Securing-suburbia-buy-Dodson-and-Sipe.pdf</a><br /> 2008 publication. Has Melbourne map on p7. Based on 2001 Census data<br /><a href="http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/References/Bruce/Dodson2008PlannedHouseholdRisk_AustPlanner.pdf">http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/References/Bruce/Dodson2008PlannedHouseholdRisk_AustPlanner.pdf </a><br />2006 publication. Based on 2001 Census data.<br /><a href="http://www98.griffith.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/10072/12665/1/41353.pdf">http://www98.griffith.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/10072/12665/1/41353.pdf<br /></a>Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-3187769448493313482011-04-02T10:36:00.010+11:002011-04-02T11:23:15.553+11:00Musings on social meaning and direction in a declining cultureI had an interesting experience on Thursday: my friend Fiona, who is a journalist on the local paper, rang me to say I should be at a park halfway between the town where I live and the one in which I grew up by just after twelve, in order to participate in some publicity for a stunt being run by Mercedes. <a href="http://www2.mercedes-benz.com.au/content/australia/mpc/mpc_australia__website/en/home_mpc/passengercars/home/passenger_cars_world/news/Jan2011/FCell.html">Several cars running on hydrogen fuel cells</a> are being driven round the world and this was to be a refueling stop for them. I turned up to find a great caravan of fuel trucks and support vans, necessary because places where you can top up your tank with hydrogen are pretty thin on the ground in South Gippsland.<br /><br />So I chatted to various characters who were there. The cars came in and were refueled: we were promised a lunch but I had to miss out as I had a meeting to attend. What was striking was the size of the fuel trucks relative to the size of the vehicles. I had heard that hydrogen is a very bulky fuel and this will necessarily constrain any distribution network designed for it: essentially, it means it will work best for a dense concentration of vehicles close to a source of the gas, hence a city. To haul it long distances to outlets way out in the sticks won't work — the amount of fuel the trucks would consume would rapidly approach the amount they were carrying, and there are problems handling it too, due to its ability to leak through the tiniest orifice.<br /><br />So I drove off musing on all this. The Mercedes people were full of enthusiasm for their project, needless to say, but is this the future of motoring? It could be the future of some motoring no doubt. Mercedes as a corporation may well survive the coming financial holocaust if their accountants are as smart as their engineers. Then they will be in a position to supply the elites in the cities with their clever cars, which have a range vastly greater than electric vehicles. But this is in no way the future of motoring for the masses. Because there can be no future of motoring for the masses.<br /><br />Dmitri Orlov has just <a href="http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2011/04/financial-totalitarianism.html">done a post</a> at Club Orlov where he talks of the evolution of this phenomena: to quote…<blockquote>…short-term political and financial trends point in an altogether different direction [from that of a continuation of the system-as-it-is]: that of the global industrial economy turning boutique. You see, one shoe has already dropped: the level of industrial activity that can be sustained today is already insufficient to provide anywhere near full employment and a reasonable quality of life for vast numbers of people; the solution is to disenfranchise them, to confiscate their savings, to cancel their retirements, to concentrate all of the remaining wealth in as few hands as possible, and to create a boutique economic and financial environment in which the lucky and unscrupulous few can continue to live comfortably…</blockquote>As I said, if Mercedes plays this right, they may well have a future, providing for those who still have power and the money in the world. But don't be fooled into thinking that "alternative technologies" must necessarily be equitable, as well as "clean".Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-21737439757043380482011-03-31T10:27:00.004+11:002011-03-31T16:18:59.860+11:00Good James Howard Kunstler interview & a great primer on the GFCJHK has only one tune in his repertoire but he plays it damn well. Here's <a href="http://www.terrain.org/interview/27/">an interview</a> on Terrain.org (a journal of the built and natural environments) where he spins it all out in fine form — lots of quotable bits including this: "We will do what reality compels us to do, not necessarily what our fantasies propose." My sentiments exactly.<br /><br />My friend Mike sent me a link to <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money">a broadcast</a> which gives a background to the current financial crisis — if it puzzles you in any way, give it a listen! It makes very clear the motivations of players at every level. Highly recommended.Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-23188807499169399942011-03-29T08:33:00.003+11:002011-03-29T08:43:08.714+11:00The passing of a master<a href="http://www.joebageant.com/">Joe Bageant</a> is dead. He was the chronicler of his people, the rednecks of the American Scots-Irish underclass, whom he loved but for whom he despaired. Read his stuff: <a href="http://www.readings.com.au/product/9781921372070/joe-bageant-deer-hunting-with-jesus-dispatches-from-americas-class-war">Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War</a> and <a href="http://www.readings.com.au/product/9781921640629/joe-bageant-rainbow-pie-a-redneck-memoir">Rainbow Pie</a>.Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-18251287991585013032011-03-28T13:58:00.006+11:002011-03-28T14:16:41.907+11:00Australia looking down the Hubbert curveHere's <a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7715">a part</a> of an interesting post on <a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/">The Oil Drum</a>.<br /><blockquote>Australia is next on the list and it appears to have passed peak oil production and as a result, exports have dropped from over 500 kbd in 2007 to just above 300 kbd today. The declines in production are expected to continue.<br /><br />"The recent start-up of BHP Billiton's Pyrenees oil field and Apache's Van Gogh field - both situated off Western Australia's north-west coast - will provide a boost in the short-term; however, the long-term trend is for production to keep falling," EnergyQuest Chief Executive Officer, Dr Graeme Bethune, said today.(this from April 2010).<br /><br />Current production is at around 540 kbd, having fallen 40 kbd in 2010.<br /><br />The decline with a projected drop of 85% in 10 years can be seen from this graph:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.theoildrum.com/files/4%20Australian%20projections.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 382px; height: 193px;" src="http://www.theoildrum.com/files/4%20Australian%20projections.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Anticipated future Australian production (Geoscience Australia)</span><br /><br />At the same time Australian consumption has been steadily rising, and is hovering just below 1 mbd.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.theoildrum.com/files/5%20Australian%20consumption.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 391px; height: 218px;" src="http://www.theoildrum.com/files/5%20Australian%20consumption.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Australian oil consumption (Index mundi)</span><br /><br />In contrast, Australian natural gas reserves are significant. As with Malaysia it has supplied LNG to Japan, starting in 1989 and has just signed a $41 billion contract for a 20-year supply of LNG from the Gorgon field, taking 2.25 million tons of the anticipated 15 million tons (0.75 Tcf) of annual production anticipated from the field, as overall gas production continues to rise.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6%20Aussie%20ng.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 373px; height: 204px;" src="http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6%20Aussie%20ng.png" alt="" border="0" /></a>Current estimates of Australian natural gas reserves are of over 108 Tcf</blockquote>Commenter <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jedi Welder</span> notes<br /><blockquote>In the graph above, Australian crude oil production seems to be all but anihilated in just 20 years from peak production. That is a realy big fall. How will they cope with that?<br /></blockquote>Indeed.Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-2224300267047894152010-12-07T18:51:00.007+11:002010-12-12T08:49:43.539+11:00Wikileaks is a watershedJulian Assange has ignited a<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/41914.html"> firestorm amongst the thinking classes</a>. He is driving a wedge between the establishment and the general run of the intellectual class who work the levers of our modern industrial/financial world. This has grave consequences for the legitimacy of our rulers. Julia Gillard has <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/us-diplomats-monitored-the-progress-of-gillard-20101208-18ps4.html">had the approval of the US establishment</a>, but is fast losing support at home because of her reflexive anti-Assange statements.<br /><br />As <a href="http://ranprieur.com/archives/032.html#assangemyth">Ran Prieur</a><a href="http://ranprieur.com/archives/032.html#assangemyth"> </a>says in his December the ninth post, it doesn't matter who Julian Assange really is any more because he's become a myth, an enabling story that allows us (the intellectual class) to construct the narrative of our time. When a culture is on the rise, it's relatively easy for leaders to manage their business and to maintain the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven">Mandate of Heaven</a>. On the downward side — which we are now on, although it may be some years before this is widely acknowledged by the intellectual classes let alone the general public — problems multiply like the heads of the Hydra. It is an unfortunate time to be in charge of anything. The compromises one must make to reach the top of the greasy pole are becoming impossible to maintain. In such a time, uncompromising types like Assange find their opportunity. The times in a sense call out for them. A few years ago <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hicks">David Hicks</a> had a similar chance to play this role but the time was premature and he was too shallow a vessel to carry the load, unlike Assange.<br /><br />In a world of six billion people, where the dominant culture has reached the limits of its power and is starting to lose its grip, the tensions thus produced must find their expression through the lives of individuals. This is Julian Assange's fate. He has prepared himself for it and will no doubt acquit himself courageously enough according to his own values. The longer term significance is impossible to assess. But after he is gone there will be others, for better and worse. All types of people who have ever existed are out there — Christs and Hitlers — and in every crowded city these individuals are waiting, hoping their time has come.<br /><br />Assange's <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20061021194534/http://iq.org/">writings</a> are vague, overly-simple and fairly one-dimensional to my mind. He is not the new Messiah, although I have a feeling he'd like to be. But we'll see what he comes up with. And more importantly, what is made of him.<br /><br />EDIT: The Archdruid in his<a href="http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2010/12/futures-further-shores.html"> latest post</a> skewers the ruling elite more effectively than I can: <blockquote> The elites that mostly run today’s industrial societies, like their equivalents in every other human society, have a deeply conservative streak under whatever surface layer of fashionable radicalism may be popular at any given time. They have the positions of influence that they do because they have the educations, hold the opinions, and think the thoughts that their peers, and more particularly the immediately prior generation of their peers, considered suitable to their roles. In a society that’s more or less sustainable, this is a powerful source of stability; in one that’s stumbled into an unsustainable human ecology, these same pressures for elite conformity can make it next to impossible for anyone in charge to think about the world in any way other than the one that’s making disaster inevitable.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">2nd Edit: Ran's added a permalink for his Assange post so I've modified the link on his name above.<br /></div></blockquote>Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-67226556311167636942010-11-10T06:37:00.002+11:002010-11-10T06:51:32.284+11:00The moral issue of nowRan Prieur <a href="http://ranprieur.com/archives/032.html#election2010">has a post</a> which encapsulates the issue we in the industrial world face: the irrationality of our desires. He says…<blockquote>My favorite election commentary is by Sharon Astyk: <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2010/11/it_is_over_-_now_what_do_we_do.php">The election is over - Now what do we do with all the fear?</a> I agree: the voters are not really idiots -- they are cowards, and using their human brainpower to convince themselves of fantasies that defy both reason and observation: that the government can dispense benefits without collecting taxes; that an economy based on exponential growth can continue on a planet of fixed size; that we can have utopia merely by filling the slots in the present system with different people. What they're afraid of is reality: that the government, the economy, the planet, cannot continue to give more than they get, that all the stuff we've been getting, we're going to stop getting.</blockquote>If we expect Santa Claus (ie the great god of industrial civilisation) to bring us goodies endlessly while we have no appreciation of the costs, we will react with infantile rage when our desires are frustrated. And who will we blame? Refugees? Indians? Moslems? Jews?<blockquote>After they lose their toys, the people will be hungry for leaders who call for the sacrifice of others, and I mean sacrifice in the literal sense: the ritual mass-murder of scapegoats. When there are piles of bodies in the streets, only then, from the sane fringes, will new and better systems grow to fill the dead spots.</blockquote>And what will trigger this rage in Australia? My guess is a big collapse in real estate prices, brought on by a downturn in China which will slow our export bonanza. I hope it doesn't get as bad as Ran posits, but you never know.Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-71227373029799996372010-11-06T13:38:00.005+11:002010-11-23T09:55:13.731+11:00The True Faith<div style="text-align: justify;">I'm talking about Science of course, or really its wildly popular but mentally subnormal child, Scientism. The believers in Scientism are generally the same people who believe in humanity's ever-upward climb towards perfect happiness and power — ok, we have the odd World War or financial hiccup, but everything will <span style="font-style: italic;">eventually</span> get better and better, mkay?<br /></div><br />The more paranoid fringe of Scientismists (I've coined a nice clumsy new term!), the sort who believe that George Bush bombed the World Trade Center because the Arabs weren't smart enough to organise something like that, tend to see conspiracies everywhere, except where they really are. Scientismists know deep down they're as dumb as dogsh*t, but that there are two types of smart people in the world, scientists and those evil bastards in the tall buildings. Scientismists believe in science, not as a system of inquiry, but as a reliable faith and the fount of all good things like iPhones and Prozac and Jumbo jets. They also tend to think like Ayn Rand: that the world is run by an incredibly smart conspiracy of evildoers who grab the ideas from the scientists and do what they will with them. Anything that disadvantages the powerful will be hidden away in some vast underground bunker. Like this wonderful invention that could let cars run on <span style="font-style: italic;">next to nothing!</span> Watch this video!<br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6KVM1UAPCzc?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6KVM1UAPCzc?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br />What's worth noting is that no-one interviewing the guy asks <span style="font-style: italic;">where does the energy come from? </span>And of course the designer, who knows what it is that he's made, just assumes that they know. But one comes away with the impression that these knob-heads think the energy comes from the salt water. <span style="font-style: italic;">All it took was a lone genius to see this! Just point radio waves at salt water and kaboom! Now watch the big energy companies suppress it! </span><br /><br />Of course this is an American TV news spot and we know how ignorant a lot of those folk are. Not like Australia, where our ABC is rigorous in its scientific rectitude. But if you listen to people in this country talking and follow the political gossip you will soon realise that magical thinking and scientism is just as firmly embedded here — in control in fact — and that we are in no way especially intellectually privileged. For a start, who is talking about the fact that Australia imports 30% of its oil? We pay for it with our exports but how long can this go on? How do you think our economy will fair without that imported oil? Will electric cars magically appear? How about the parade of diesel trucks which carry the vast majority of our goods at some stage of their distribution? Will we get electric trucks too? And who supplies all this — Santa Claus? It is a dagger at the throat of our society, but <span style="font-style: italic;">no-one</span> is talking about it! Instead all the talk is about the distribution of the goodies we have. The banks are greedy! No, they're the pillars of our economic strength! Houses cost too much because everyone wants one, but if you're smart, get in now and buy one because they always go up in value and you too can become a millionaire without working for it!<br /><br />Most of us have very little understanding of how our lives really work. We're unaware of the vast investments in plant and institutions which so intricately underpin our daily life. All these complex arrangements are built and maintained by <span style="font-style: italic;">us,</span> but we are conscious of only the tiny area we work in. For the rest, we deal in a kind of shorthand knowledge — a pseudo language which fools us and those we talk to, because it works. Until it doesn't. So house prices and stock prices go up and down and the trick is to know when to buy and sell, because stocks and houses have become almost purely gambling chips, the key to a future of <span style="font-style: italic;">living without working</span>! Who knows what the stocks really represent? Because we all know we live in the best and luckiest country in the World and everything just gets better and better all the time because that's the <span style="font-style: italic;">Law of Nature</span>, or something.<br /><br />This spread of magical thinking has become the characteristic of our age, an age that began seriously in the nineteen-eighties. That's when somehow it seemed possible to spin something into nothing by talking the right talk. Young guys who had been nobodies only a few years previously suddenly had black clothes and cool haircuts and were driving new Porsches — rush hour to the eastern suburbs of Melbourne seemed to be jammed with them. The recession at the end of the eighties threw cold water on a lot of this for a few years, but it all popped up again in the mid-nineties and has powered on ever since. No-one <span style="font-style: italic;">makes</span> anything, that's all done mysteriously, in China. Instead, we all work in service industries and the coolest thing is to be a <span style="font-style: italic;">celebrity</span>, a chef or a footballer. And get a contract for a TV show. And spend enough on your credit card to get a free flight to Honkers and back. We just wish those dumb bastards in Afghanistan would see reason 'cause then they could <span style="font-style: italic;">live like us!</span><br /><br />How long will it all last? One could argue that it will die when it doesn't work any more as a pseudo-philosophy. Of course it has never <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> worked, but over a short human life span it's possible to think all kinds of bizarre things and never have reality find you out. Only a very great trauma changes people's thinking and then usually only in those young enough to be receptive. I think scientism and its adherents will be with us for a very long time: even when it's obviously shot its bolt, like the Black Knight in The Quest for the Holy Grail, with all limbs missing its acolytes will think the corner will soon be turned and we'll be soon be back to Business as Usual.<object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dhRUe-gz690?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dhRUe-gz690?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /></span>Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-38143454202776768512010-10-25T16:46:00.005+11:002010-10-26T10:07:36.575+11:00Blaming, scapegoating and assigning causesFirst, read Dmitri Orlov's latest post, <a href="http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-not-to-to-organize-community.html">How (not) to Organise a Community</a>. It's a ripper! Actually it's not great literature: it's a little too long and with a "put together" feel, but also what he's saying is a hard thing to listen to and to understand because it runs against what we <span style="font-style: italic;">want</span> to understand. We want to follow the grooves we know — we want to form committees, have meetings, produce agendas, tick boxes and then have some feel-good social functions under the guise of "networking", where we can slap each other on the back and congratulate ourselves for "doing something". 'Cause that's how civilised modern types like us solve problems, isn't it? But what Dmitri says is what I've been feeling deep down, but without being able to articulate as well as he does: that the reality of life is that it doesn't matter what you think or feel or believe. All that matters is what you do and what the situation <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> is. And right action can be for all the "wrong" reasons, via the "wrong" people in the "wrong" places.<br /><br />I'm plugging away at a number of projects at the moment, one of which is my novel, <a href="http://users.tpg.com.au/users/storcom/Alex.html">"Alex"</a> (I've been a bit slow cranking out the chapters but they will appear in due course!). I've been thinking that what is going to happen sometime in the next three to four decades is we are going to lose the federal government we have now. Instead we'll have a military government, which I'm calling the <span style="font-style: italic;">Military Commission</span> in the novel. It will come in as an emergency measure but then stay on for all kinds of reasons. The state governments may well carry on for much longer as they are, because we don't invest too much abstract value in them: their job is to keep the machinery of our lives running as well as possible and that's a management task. The federal government on the other hand has "spiritual" values attached to it: our picture of something we call "Australia", and we project onto it an ideal of our national selves. As this image of ourselves fails along with the tax revenues which support the federal government, so will the democratic institution itself. The quality of our politicians will fall and they will become paralysed by <span style="font-style: italic;">our</span> inability to realistically to map out an agreed role for them. We can see this already happening in relation to the war in Afghanistan. What we want the war to be like and what we want our role in it to be is completely at odds with the reality on the ground. Politicians at the highest levels spout the mindless platitudes we want to hear while the military are playing it for their own ends. The result is not likely to be good for the government's legitimacy.<br /><br />The other thing I'm thinking about a lot and which Dmitri covers as well is, how do we build a viable economic structure for the future? Do we do it with nice reasonable people sitting around boardroom tables playing the game by the rules? I don't think so and neither does Dmitri. The future will not be "managed". It will be an eruption, a tearing of the social and economic fabric, a <span style="font-style: italic;">giving up</span> rather than a <span style="font-style: italic;">trying harder</span>. Our current system, where small businesses carry something like 50% of the economy, where basically it's survival of the fittest within a set of legal and economic rules, will just get harder and harder to continue. The big players, the 50% of the economy run by corporations, will be able to tilt the board in their favour because they can control politics much more effectively than us little fish — but only for a time and while generating a great deal of bitterness and anger. But the problem will be <span style="font-style: italic;">the rules which we are all playing within are going to lose their agency. </span>If you stick to the rules you will be lucky to survive. For a start, credit, the lifeblood of business, is starting to dry up and will eventually be completely gone in its present form to be replaced by — nothing! And the desperation of the government for tax revenue, which up till now has been fine while the goods and services tax (the GST) has boomed along with the consumer economy, will mean small businesses will be squeezed very hard because the big boys will tilt the board their way. Couple this with a continuing drop in global trade and the outlook for the mass of Australian industrial style agricultural workers and self-employed people is not good.<br /><br />This means that the successful entrepreneurs of the future will most certainly be criminal at one level or another. They will be outside the tax system for a start. It may well be that marijuana will be legalised simply so the government can get some tax back on it, but other drugs will not be and the general level of misery will ensure steady sales, helping the financial underworld.<br /><br />Who will oppose the rise of this new class? Firstly the government at both state and federal levels due to the dropping tax revenue and the perception that an illegitimate power base is arising, threatening the carefully constructed system which has been evolving in Australia since Federation. Those classes dependent on state revenues for pay: public servants, the armed forces and teachers will see their living standards declining and tend to blame the decay on "moral delinquency". They will be joined by the mass of baby-boomer retirees who will be falling into much deeper poverty than they ever expected due to the losses on financial markets and the decline in tax revenues and hence pension payments. The teachers and other public payroll recipients will resent having higher taxes to fund the baby-boomers too, so the solidarity of the current system will be very shaky. Add to that the great mass of workers turned out of the building trade due to the impending popping of the Australian property bubble and we have a very volatile mix.<br /><br />An attempt will be made to pin the blame on particular groups. We may find ourselves in a major war simply because the population will be so maddened with rage, so confused at the mysterious loss of prosperity and so helpless in their personal situations, that having an identifiable enemy to fight will seem a blessed simplification. The Muslims have a definite target painted on them at the moment: perhaps some new twist in Middle-East politics will provide the trigger.<br /><br />But all these considerations must play out in our real lives: we have to avoid being thrown under the bus because we have a target painted on <span style="font-style: italic;">us, </span>but we must also find a way to survive in a much more uncertain and dangerous, poorer world. I've been thinking about all this in relation to where I live, in the poorest part of South Gippsland in southern Victoria, Australia. I can see how this area, which at the moment has a certain level of prosperity and happiness that it's never had before, could just slowly fail, with the clever and energetic people leaving for more promising prospects anywhere else and the social fabric fraying and falling apart in consequence. I've seen it in other areas of Australia and I can see how it could easily happen here. So I'm trying to hatch a plan to counter this. My idea currently revolves around the idea of a couple of business incubators, but of course it is more than that. What I'm really trying to do is build an alternative way of life: a true <span style="font-style: italic;">counter-culture</span>.<br /><br />Who would want to be a member of such a beast, in an area like this where if you have any talent you can still count on being whisked off to some brighter future in the city? My gut feeling is that it will be the bad boys and girls. We have a few of them around here! Anyway I'm vaguely negotiating to lease a large abandoned factory in a neighboring town which I'm feeling more and more could be the centre of some crazy social experiment. I'll keep you posted.Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-83831011762747264192010-09-23T08:04:00.007+10:002010-09-24T16:05:14.692+10:00How do we really know collapse is immanent?<a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/user/aeldric">Aeldric</a> has done <a href="http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6974#more"></a>a great post over at the Australia/New Zealand Oil Drum entitled <a href="http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6974#more">The Networking of Resource Production: Do the Networks Give us Warnings when They are About to Fail?</a> which goes straight to the heart of the problem I have: how can you tell in an unambiguous way that the system we are living in is approaching collapse? After all our human culture is full of legends of The End, replete with prophetic dreams, visions and revelations. If they line up with reality they get incorporated in legend and religious tradition. If they fail, which is vastly more frequent, they make page four in the newspaper under the "Quaint-goings-on-in-some-nutcase-cult" section: something a sharp student doing their Masters in psychology could use as a good subject for a thesis.<br /><br />As an ordinary member of Industrial Society, what information do I have leading me to say a crash is immanent? What does an ordinary person "see" in their day-to-day existence which allows them to make these kinds of judgments? All of us have networks flowing through our lives but no-one can easily "see" these networks from start to finish or how they may relate to one another. We may understand our little bit very well and have a clear idea what is right and wrong with it. Our appreciation of other people's part is necessarily vaguer and tends to be tinged with the natural human suspicion that "others" are not as competent or hard-working as we and our colleagues. To <a href="http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6974#comment-724029">quote from a comment</a> Aeldric added to the discussion of the above post: <blockquote>This is not helped by the fact that the problem is hidden by complexity. The people who say "We have plenty of resource X" are not just saying this to inflate the share price - they truly believe it. From their perspective, it is true.<br /><br />The reason that low-quality reserves of resource X will never be extracted is only obvious when you look at the overall system.<br /><br />Unfortunately, each entity only looks at their own area, the overall matrix in which we operate is treated as a "black box" that supplies our needs just as long as we continue to play our part. This faith in the system has worked thus far, but it is misplaced - we need to look at the overall system.</blockquote>Add to that the seemingly exponential increase in complexity when doing anything (My wife and I are building a house and the planning requirements have two extra levels to surmount from the time I built my first: bushfire rating and energy rating which is part of a large engineering bill I didn't have before) and you have a world where everything seems micro-managed for efficiency and effectiveness, yet is all too complex for the ordinary person to control or understand more than a tiny part of their own life.<br /><br />This situation is also governed by a time factor and a certain perception of "rightness". By "rightness" I mean that in Australia (at least for now!) there is a quite strong sense that we live in the best of all possible worlds, that everything is getting better and better incrementally, year on year, and the time factor means that even big changes often happen imperceptibly. So we have much better cars and sound systems, better roads, cheap international travel and the Internet which we can feel good about, while not noticing how much more difficult it is to buy a house and support a family than it was thirty years ago. We can be lulled by shiny novelties trickling into our lives while seeing our problems making our way in the world a lot of the time as "personal": that is, governed by our individual failings in a complex world where we are constantly struggling to find a role for ourselves. And strangely enough, this perception of struggle to be or at least appear competent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome"><span style="font-style: italic;">increases </span>amongst the more highly educated</a>! As Jim Kunstler remarked in some context I now forget, if you go into any room full of educated people you can bet 90% feel that they are frauds.<br /><br />Those of us who do want to understand the bigger picture must necessarily depend on abstract knowledge, of which we as a culture have a lot, but which in its sheer voluminousness and the difficulty in assessing its relevance poses yet another challenge. You can hardly blame the uneducated or moderately stupid for plunging headlong into dogma and cultishness which promise a shortcut to true knowledge, usually in the hands of a dubious leadership. Add to this the fact that certain professions such as economics suffer from alarming delusions and are just plain wrong in their very basis and it is little wonder that true knowledge of our real situation is limited to a very few. And even the knowledge of these few is very incomplete!<br /><br />This is another reason why a political solution is simply not possible. Without the goodwill of a large proportion of the population no political party can push through a program which can address what is coming down the line towards us. And if only the tiniest minority of the population understands what is happening, how can that support appear?<br /><br />Nevertheless there are people working on the problem in a rigorous and as far as possible, scientific way, so you can get reasonable quality information on what's happening. The problem is here that the phenomenon we are looking at is part of complex systems theory and therefore very difficult to quantify. So we depend on clever simplifications such as that posed by Aeldric in <a href="http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6974">the article on The Oil Drum</a>. But we still have to rely partly on less rigorous methods: "gut feelings" and intuitions which are very difficult to prove or even demonstrate to someone else. One of my favorite commenters on The Oil Drum is <a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/user/memmel">memmel</a> but he drives some of the other regulars crazy, because his writing style is dyslexic and his ideas while having the ring of truth sound like a shorthand grab from a much more rigorous theorem which he never gives footnotes for. Here's an excerpt from <a href="http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6974#comment-723981">his first comment</a>:<blockquote>I'd like to add what I came up with as the warning signal of collapse of a complex system in particular ours.<br />You have outline the overt signals but whats missing is what the system itself does to counteract the situation.<br />Indeed to the point that it obfuscates its real state.<br /><br />What I believe starts to happen is the system plays whats basically a grand game of musical chairs. Its no longer capable of any real growth yet its forced to fake it.<br /><br />A simple example is every job in Mexico or China results in the loss of a job in the US with a dramatic reduction in costs. No new job is created yet profit margins go up. For this to work obviously demand has to remain robust for the product of the job. Rising debt loads allow this to take place. In a real expanding economy wages would have risen rapidly in Mexico and China as they demanded they purchased the goods they where making. The wage arbitrage would have dissipated rapidly.<br /><br />The same of course works for resources as well as labor the economy shifts to increase profit margins as constraints arise. Its a complex system thus a tremendous amount of shifting around is possible.<br /><br />It becomes difficult to discern that its really just running around in circles and nothing is happening indeed only the explosion of debt really shows the underlying system has peaked.<br /><br />As you note eventually everything becomes correlated with money and thus the final signal is in the financial arena. And its pretty simple its debt.<br /><br />Next its worse than that really by the time the debt load grows to horrendous levels the system is well past its peak. This is because a lot of the debt was issued based on equity valuations supported by the previous debt expansion. Ever cheaper debt aka credit serves to support previous valuation rounds making new debt safe to issue.<br /><br />So given that eventually everything gets correlated with money the signal that the system is now unstable is easy to see its debt. To understand how the system can pull off such a situation you need to look into this game of musical chairs or circular economics which eventually results in trading partners allowing debt to balloon.<br />Everyone has to reap real benefits even as the debt bubble expands. If now it won't expand.<br />This is done by allowing gains to be made on each individual transaction. Eventually of course it ends with central banks forced to carry tremendous amounts of debt in one form or another. The profits are of course skimmed off and the debt load is socialized.<br /><br />On can actually construct a small variant of this. Consider a village where everyone works to build houses for each other. As each villager gets his house built by the village he owes the village for the house. Assume that resources are constrained and each house costs more than the last all paid for via credit back to the village which acts as the bank. Eventually the last house is built and its ten times the cost of the first house and the village owes itself immense sums of money as notational credit. Indeed many of the villagers that had their house built first are notational multimillionaires. Then what?</blockquote>Do you see what I mean? Personally I love his comments because his intuitions have for me a ring of truth but I can understand people finding them repellent. But if we try to be more rigorous, dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s we end up with this, quoted from an article <a href="http://deepeco.ucsd.edu/%7Egeorge/publications/09_critical_transitions.pdf">available here</a> (warning, it's a pdf): <blockquote>The theoretical basis of the work on early-warning signals in simple models is quite strong, and the first results from more elaborate models suggest that similar signals may arise in highly complex systems (23). Nonetheless, more work is needed to find out how robust these signals are in situations in which spatial complexity, chaos and stochastic perturbations govern the dynamics. Also, detection of the patterns in real data is challenging and may lead to false positive results as well as false negatives. False negatives are situations in which a sudden transition occurred but no early-warning signals could be detected in the behaviour before the shift. This can happen for different reasons. One possibility is that the sudden shift in the system was not preceded by a gradual approach to a threshold. For instance, it may have remained at the same distance from the bifurcation point, but been driven to another stable state by a rare extreme event. Also, a shift that is simply due to a fast and permanent change of external conditions (Box 1 Figure a) cannot be detected from early-warning signals.</blockquote> And so on for many more qualifying paragraphs. I think memmel is easier!<br /><br />In the end we have to make decisions about our lives based on hunches and intuitions as much as anything. It doesn't hurt to have some solid theoretical backup but that can be wrong too! I guess my gut feeling is that a collapse of the US economy is not far off: maybe one or two years. How that will play out in Australia is much more difficult to say as we are tied very closely to the Chinese and Japanese economies and how they will fair is open to question, seeing both are very export oriented at a time when the importing economies, namely the USA and the Eurozone are wobbling badly. And as at my public lecture in October 2008, I stated Australia was importing 1/3 of its oil needs and <a href="http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/">that proportion has remained the same</a> (choose Australia from the drop-down menu to display).<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6974#more"></a>Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-979968691381794549.post-36879221855844403342010-09-20T07:23:00.009+10:002010-09-20T15:47:06.089+10:00Right actions, right thoughtsWhat is <span style="font-style: italic;">right action</span> for us doom-and-gloomers? I'm caught up in our local <a href="http://transitioncornerinlet.blogspot.com/">Transition Town group</a>. Sure, it's what some people want and it gives us members mutual support, plus we may be getting a big community garden and orchard going at the bottom of the town. But I have mixed feelings about, it in the sense that I can't see it being The Whole Answer to the problems coming towards us and I'm still copping it as well from a few people, accused of being too negative in a more general sense.<br /><br />I guess <a href="http://southgippslandfutures.blogspot.com/2010/09/cruising-along-in-our-aussie-cloud-of.html">my last post on the Aussie housing bubble</a> was guaranteed to upset a lot of folk and was a typical snarky comment on things as they are now — I admit it was negative although I think it was a necessary corrective. But I think it's a good time to give a background on what I think is <span style="font-style: italic;">right action</span>, which must first of all spring from <span style="font-style: italic;">right thoughts</span>. And this implies a lot of what is going on amongst the chattering classes is <span style="font-style: italic;">wrong thoughts</span> leading to <span style="font-style: italic;">wrong actions</span>.<br /><br />Why can't we just save the world by recycling plastic, buying an electric car and growing our own vegies? Why can't we do all this while making politicians pass good laws restricting pollution, exploitation and simultaneously saving the whales, while working for strong international covenants to stop those developing economies making things worse by letting their big populations to buy in to the consumer dream?<br /><br />This is what I'd label the standard left-wing program save-the-world program.<br /><br />The standard right-wing save-the-world program is a little different but we need to mention it too. The world is fine as long as I and my significant others are doing well! Those pesky foreigners trying to grab our stuff? Nuke 'em! Drug addicts? Kill 'em all — except for my son of course, for whom I've just paid thousands to spring from a prison in India after he was caught trying to smuggle some ganga back to Australia. The Chinese are all sub-human — except for George, with whom I go to watch Collingwood playing each week. And all these pollution laws — an evil impost on business! Except for the ones which stop the spraying of pesticides in those areas where our honey producing subsidiary has seen profits cave in over the past few years.<br /><br />The right-wing is easy to mock: after all, these types always depend upon the left-wingers working for them to keep the show on the road. It's only on a few points that they can stick to their convictions. This also leads on to another not-much-mentioned paradox (to be discussed some other time): how come left-wingers and right-wingers end up building very similar societies?<br /><br />But I'm more interested in the illusions of the left because they underpin a lot of what goes on in politics. Why can't we legislate to fix our problems with Peak Oil/Climate Change? Surely if everyone made a big effort to conserve, we wouldn't have a problem — right? We could all drive a Toyota Prius and presto! This is where the explanation gets tricky because it's counter-intuitive. When we make more efficient use of a resource it simply makes it available to more people, so consumption rises rather than falls. This is known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_Paradox">Jevons Paradox</a>. This only applies to increases in technical efficiency of course — it's still possible to tax or otherwise restrict the availability of say, oil, in order to reduce its use. But can we restrict our use in Australia and tell the Chinese and the Indians they can't use it too? Of course you can run on and imagine some United Nations action that might force the nations of the world to restrict consumption if you put aside how utterly unlikely this is. But if it were possible, would this solve the problem of Peak Oil and carbon dioxide induced climate change? How could it, when at best, it might slow down (slightly), the rate of use of oil and coal, but the oil and coal would still get used anyway, just over a few more decades and it is still unrenewable and still adds CO2 to the atmosphere.<br /><br />The fact is, the toothpaste is out of the tube. We (by which I mean the human race) will go on using oil until we can't — same with coal. <span style="font-style: italic;">You</span> may swear off it (as far as you can, given that everything we use in day to day life has a fossil fuel component) but in the end<span style="font-style: italic;"> it will all get used up anyway, </span>irrespective of your decisions. So what if it takes fifty years longer to disappear, than if we continue to fly like mad moths around the planet? The effect will be virtually the same. Electric cars? Where does the electricity come from? From solar panels you say? How much embodied energy do <span style="font-style: italic;">they</span> contain? You see, <span style="font-style: italic;">there is no escape</span>. We can't have a complex industrial civilisation based on extracting <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/829/829-h/829-h.htm">sunshine from cucumbers</a> to quote Jonathan Swift . We may entertain fantasies of a world where doves alight on the shoulders of young people dancing round the maypole at harvest time in Kabul, as well as in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korumburra,_Victoria">Korumburra, </a>before everyone jumps on their bicycles to go back to the town hall for an election of councilors followed by a hoedown to a string band, but let's not confuse ourselves even further with these idle fantasies.<br /><br />Of course it — that is, industrial civilisation — will end, and maybe quite soon. Nature will impose upon us the discipline we can't impose on ourselves. Our problem is not to save the World, but to save ourselves. By all means aim for a low carbon lifestyle, because pretty soon we will be living one anyway whether our politics is anarcho-syndicalist or slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan. Our issues will revolve around dealing with the <span style="font-style: italic;">consequences</span> of a declining world industrial civilisation, not fixing its underpinnings.<br /><br />The Heroic Materialist project is over, for all kinds of reasons. For a start, capital in the form of debt is in the process of vanishing, which is rushing us towards an economic collapse after which large-scale capital intensive projects will simply be impossible. Want to solve the energy crisis by building a nuclear fusion power station? Sure, hold a few fundraisers in your town and build one at the end of your street. Because that is about the level of economic co-operation we can expect to see in the future. The only projects which get done will be on a small scale, except in countries which can't maintain security, where we can expect large scale marauding warlord lead armies who will swiftly reduce the territories they prey upon to sparsely populated wastelands in any case.<br /><br />I don't expect anything like that in Australia. We may have quite serious civil conflict if the industrial system's dispossessed citizens are victimised —always a possibility when a narrow, suspicious world-view amongst the elites replaces the boundless optimism of a time of growth. But a collapse of society I don't foresee. Instead I see the gloomy crumbling of individuals who are unprepared for the changes we are going to have to face, to be a followed by a new generation who accept the world they find as a given and get on with inventing their lives and their own goals and meanings. Some will be happy, some unhappy, but it was ever thus. Our task as the transitional generation is to smooth the way, cutting the suffering which will be inevitable while making the way clear for the next generation to find their own direction.<br /><br />This will mean letting go of inappropriate dreams and plans as much as anything — at a federal level, dreams such as turning Afghanistan into suburbia and building the high speed rail link down the eastern seaboard of Australia. At the state level, we need to stop pretending we can go on living in our cities as if consumables such as oil, water and electricity are in infinite supply. And at the personal level, fantasies of a leisured retirement with overseas cruises will be snatched away.<br /><br />On the other hand we will have a return of the natural world, which will no longer be under the extreme pressure industrial civilisation has been placing on it. We will eat more healthy food, get more exercise and use our wits to build viable communities rather than manipulate symbols on screens. Our lives will be in <span style="font-style: italic;">our</span> hands, not those of "experts". For a short period, until a new system solidifies (as they always do), the world will be ours to mould in the image we think best.Lloyd Morcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10480434159688352150noreply@blogger.com1