Frankly, I think there isn’t enough energy available on the planet to support such a development unless a dramatic revision of physics occurs. Regardless it is an interesting concept to debate. Kurzweil pops a tremendous number of pills and is likely to suffer greatly as the comforts provided by technology evaporate to all but the super-rich in the decade ahead. I don’t spend much time on the Singularity because I think it is a highly unlikely path our future will take However, its not impossible and is certainly entertaining.

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Post tags: humanity, singularity, technology, video

Perhaps Jane and I might do a short WWOOF tour of BC after I finish with grad school.

For the numbers of unemployed youth milling about the US and Europe, there’s no better way to see the world on the cheap than WWOOFing.

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This is the tale of a man who obtains efficiency and in doing so loses his humanity. An allegory for our current civilization? Of course! Like the Tin Man, perhaps we’ve forgotten why we even started on this project called modern civilization. Or at least our control systems have.

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We watched through the film which began by detailing the issue of peak oil. The point here was that Cuba has faced an artificially imposed peak oil so it provides a good case study for how peak oil may impact the rest of us. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 80s and early 90s, Cuba’s currency was devalued over 90% and the nation faced an almost overnight drop in oil imports from 14 metric tons per year to 4 metric tons per year. Suddenly everything changed: doctors had to ride bicycles to the hospital, cars were worthless, agriculture needed oxen instead of tractors. Because the US said that any company trading with Cuba could no longer trade with the US globalization was not an option. The government realized its people were going to starve without oil and the numerous imported food goods so it said to all its citizens, grow food on your land or we take it from you and give it to someone who will. Cuba’s people banded together in communities and survived the scarcity by depending on each other. The government found people familiar with raising oxen and sent them around the country to teach people how to raise oxen and to train others how to. Australian permaculture experts were flown in and taught the people how to garden with nature instead of against nature.

At the end of the film we started a discussion and one student pointed out that while the film did a good job of detailing some of the successes of Cuba, she thought it was overly optimistic. While Cuba was surviving, it wasn’t doing much more. Her experience there in 2005 had her surprised at how little food there was and how long it took to get anywhere because of one hour or longer waits for transit. I asked the professor if he thought that developed nations like Canada and the US would face similar success when faced with scarcity. He answered that Cuba faced these conditions because of a rare intersection of circumstances and that Cuba valued communal survival which led to their ability to transition.

This is the key point: Cuba faced an unprecedented set of circumstances in the 1990s but developed nations now face a high probability of these circumstances over the next decade. In the US, massive levels of public debt and over 60 trillion dollars of committed future expenditures make hyperinflation or planned currency devaluation highly likely’ oil has already begun to decrease in price dramatically over the last few years and market based actions will not be able to account for the fact that the entire infrastructure of globalization is built on easy to obtain (cheap) oil and that oil has no substitutes. The current global financial unraveling is just the first round of returning towards a primarily tertiary economy over the next 100 years.

After watching the film, I’m convinced that the same successes Cuba had in transition will not be matched in the US or Canada. Cuba is a small nation with deeply communal values. The US is geographically and regionally disperse, held together in common identity primarily by media and currency. Canada is in a similar situation but with fewer people. The US is also filled with guns and people that aren’t afraid to use them. The outrage against health care reform is only a taste of what could easily happen in a real catastrophe induced by the realities of peak oil. I recall when gas supplies in Charlotte, NC ran low in late 2008 and everyone freaked out… I could only imagine if a real shortage occurred. But ultimately, a country that thinks expanding Medicaid from 50 million to 65 million is socialism would not be receptive to the necessary actions Cuba’s government undertook in the 90s.

So no, I don’t think the US could survive peak oil in the same way Cuba has but small, tight-knit communities might be able to mimic this model with some success. Canada stands a slightly better chance but would likely still face the same problems although with probably much less violence.

Regardless of what you think may occur, the movie is definitely worth spending an hour with. Enjoy!

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Post tags: documentaries, peak oil, transition

Here’s a short 5 min. excerpt which I’ve watched,

And here’s the full thing (52 mins) which I have yet to watch,

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As independent journalist Michael Ruppert sits in a chair, in a dark room, smoking and saying alarming things my remote desire for business as usual went up in the smoke from the end of his cigarette. I’ve seen Chris Martenson’s Crash Course a few times. I’ve seen the 45 minute version of it too. I’ve read and heard many things by Jim Kunstler, Albert Bates, Richard Heinberg, Rex Weyler, Dr. William Rees of UBC; the list goes on and on. However, until my face was melted by the 83 minutes of Collapse I hadn’t seen it all put together in one blazing and succinct package.

This is an intellectual horror movie first and foremost. If Ruppert’s claims have any validity, the relatively easy way of life enjoyed by Americans, Canadians and other beneficiaries of the current economic order is about to receive a major shock.

This is the most accessible and important introduction to the concepts and consequences of peak oil that I’ve yet to encounter. Subjecting friends to 3.5 hours of data filled powerpoint slides narrated by a former Fortune 500 VP of Finance (see The Crash Course linked above) was never really the best way to get other people to recognize the same problems I’m concerned about. I didn’t hear anything new from Collapse, but Ruppert is the kind of guy who takes multiple sources and can weave them into a relevant complex narrative, this ability is amplified by Director Chris Smith’s interviewing that was the basis of the film.

Ruppert recaps the basic information behind the Hubbert model of oil extraction, net energy, the problems with the Gwar field in Saudi Arabia and the role of cheap oil in everything from toothbrushes to food. I felt the balance between information overload and dangling a hook to seekers was just about right. I tried to play the mental role of the peak oil skeptic for most of the movie, what was Ruppert saying that could convince me if I was a tried and true Chicago school economist? Smith played the role of the audience in several scenes, calling into question Ruppert’s credentials and key aspects of his theories. The movie needed about 5 more minutes of scenes like this, I think it is important to portray Ruppert for who he really is but I left without learning how he planned to prepare for the coming transition. Also, I was curious to how the director felt about the issue of peak oil before and after making Collapse.

If Ruppert’s picture of peak oil missed anything, it was the possibility for demagogues to control a disheartened populace in a collapsing world. He spoke of the anger, the unrest, the revolution but didn’t get into a lot of indicators on how that anger could be channeled by nefarious influences. Nor, did Collapse tackle many specifics, especially in the way of infrastructure issues (see Reinventing Collapse by Dimitri Orlov for that piece)

Ultimately, Ruppert calls for a human revolution. The same conclusion anyone giving a serious look to the coming transition must reach. What does a human revolution mean? Collapse skirted around the issue but mainly for lack of time. I think that revolution means focusing on low scale, low energy technologies for the external world and focusing on the internal world through human technologies like meditation and entheogens. Ruppert calls out solar and wind energy as the only two alternative energy sources that can have immediate impact… and that’s encouraging because I’m going to grad school to build solar cells.

This is a movie without a mainstream audience, too intellectual for any regular movie goer and too alarmist for most academics. I don’t see it doing too well in theatres (although I hope the world can prove me wrong) but I do see it becoming a hit when it is released to DVD. I know I’ll be passing it along as a recommendation to anyone that is even remotely skeptical in the stability of our modern civilization.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Post tags: economic crisis, humanity, peak oil