Great mind opener. It's nice to see an expert calmly discussing the powering down of society which is of course inevitable as we deplete the world supply of petroleum.
excelent, what a visionary and gentle, positive man. I am working on developing the same discourse in spanish, and planning to make this kind of expository video for the spanish speaking community in the world....this is an ideal model. thank you.
i love how he describes it... there if there is a lot of energy available, a species will mass together around that source and block out compeditors. As it changes to a lower energy system, symbiosis occurs.
Robert Anton Wilson pointed out that resources are conceptual. Material doesn't become a resource until someone imagines that they can be used. To think that we can run out of resources is like saying that we can run out of ideas. Recent history is full of people freaking out about an impending loss of resources, and most of these projected events never came about, not so much because the resources were plentiful, but because the old ideas were supplanted by completely different new ones.
well i have to disagree with your comment, 'cause there possibilities to supply over 15 billion people with good and clean food, without any use of oil, coal or whatsoever. Take a look into Masanobu Fukuoka system of natural farming and his approach of national organisation.
You have to also remember that using the internal combustion engine spreads pollutants over a much wider area than a power plant, where emissions can be trapped. There are also differences such as chemical additives in petrol which make it more toxic, and the engine needs far more maintenance due to the excess of moving parts compared to electric. Plus, even now the grid is being supplied with nuclear energy, feed in from domestic micro-energy sources, and a small amount of renewable power.
I'd qualify my agreement by saying 'in part'. :) I think so many aspects come together in the catch all, 'short sightedness'. More often than not the tail of demand comes to wag the dog of that created it & an inescapable cycle of wilful blindness as it rushes headlong into obvious disaster ahead.
#PLANTMORETREES #INVESTinBIODiversity "Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money." Cree Indian Prophecy There's a Japanese legend that says, "if you feel like you're losing everything, remember, trees lose their leaves every year, yet they still stand tall and wait for better days to come.”
I'd say 'Lack of resources' can equally be the inability to create new solutions to wicked problems as a civilization's infrastructure fails to keep up with the logistics of its expansion, not necessarily because it uses up all it's resources like Easter Island. It usually happens long before that, resources would include it's population & skills. These things usually lead to the internal schisms that history seems to focus on?
Those work because LED lights need very little current. Most household appliances consume much more power. You couldn't shake long and hard enough to keep them going. Imagine life without a refrigerator or freezer. These are luxury items that we may not have the power to operate in ten years. Without these, what foods will you grow and eat? What will you store and how?
Yeah, at the current system, but in the documentary, they showed how they wanted to develope infrastructure of solar recharging stations...let alone, wind, solar, and tidal power is still a huge possible market,if we can direct all/ or most of those subsidies away from fossil fuels...then how awesome would it be?? Plus you can have SkyTran and or Mag Lev trains...
@FKLampton Yes, there are plenty of acres of land on Earth. But how much of that is arable land? How much land has sufficient topsoil to support crops after being subjected to modern monoculture and depletion of water supply? Or, alternately, how many decades or centuries will we need to restore our soil and water to a degree that supports such a large human population?
Well, did they switch to fish? Did they then exhaust that food supply as well? What exactly were the ramifications of the collapse of their pastoral system?
Without infinitely increasing quantities of energy, we can't have infinite growth. Without infinite growth, we have hard limits. Corporations can't give us infinite consumption until the mass of humans collapses us into a black hole. They say Malthus was wrong when he argued that an increasing food supply, leads to an increase in human populations, and a decreasing supply leads to a decrease in population. I'm still waiting for an example to prove their case.
If you think Holmgren is not optimistic, you aren't too familiar with reality as it is. Listen to some Richard Heinberg or Jay Hanson or Michael Klare or James Hansen or Sir David King. Colin Duncan, James Howard Kunstler, Peter Ward, Robert Jensen, Derrick Jensen, Jonathan Overpeck, James Speth. Just a list of some scientists, historians, activists, philosophers and social theorists who make Holmgren look like the figure of hope for humanity.
That example occurred centuries ago, and if their cattle-based food system failed because they didn't conceptualize that fish could be a resource, doesn't that serve as a perfect example of what I'm saying?
With an ultra productive polyculture system you can feed 10 people an acre. There are 36,794,240,000 acres of land on earth. There are between 7 billion and 8 billion people on the planet. Thoughts?
For all practical purposes I would count Haiti as the most recent resource base collapse. Haiti only exists at this point because of outside intervention...which is very likely what caused their collapse in the first place...
Well, how about the Anasazi in the U.S. desert southwest? Or the classical lowland Maya. Or the Greenland Norse. I think you mentioned Easter Island. In the modern world we could keep an eye on Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burundi, Haiti, Indonesia, Iraq, Madagascar, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Rwanda, the Solomon Islands, and Somalia; and anywhere there has ever been cannibalism there was resource collapse driving it.
The Greenland Norse starved to death when they couldn't perpetuate their pastoralism based on dairy cattle and sheep, even though they were surrounded by delicious fish so thick in their fjords you could probably walk across on their backs. It was taboo to eat fish in their culture. So obviously there can be a lack of ideas that causes collapse. And if we subscribe to the idea that resources are purely conceptual I think we can expect the same.
A more business side and explanation that ties peak oil and economy together, google "crash course". It's a problem of ever expanding growth beyond what fixed fuels and minerals can support. You can always cry and whine that they hide the oil, coal, fuel, resources, but the fact is exponential growth of populations cannot continue. He has a good and noble goal, if we all operated out of love and co-operated. Competition = expansion. Good intentioned evolutions = pie in sky dreams.
Having guns alone does snot prevent you from being shot dead. Knowing how to use them and being better prepared than your attacker most likely will. Rather than type on, I'll just assume you were joking when you said the best way to survive peak oil would be to live in a big city, which in reality, is one of the most isolating things of all.
I appreciate your post is 2 years old & you've no doubt forgot all about it. I love RAW's work, but the thought's not new, history is full of civilisations who assumed the same right up to the point they ran out of new ideas & collapsed.
And don't get me wrong, I believe in Permaculture. I just don't don't believe it can keep us going as a growing consumer based culture. We're in overshoot now. And we are genetically wired to keep increasing our population. Most of our society just wants more stuff. Right now, we have billions too many people to sustain. And if we find more food, we'll grow until we bust the new limits, then crash. We can't grow to an infinite population on a finite planet.
Aparently araniga needs to "Go to school, get educated, and then talk"... Or try to really "Use academic research tools such as academic research papers" , and not just trust government propaganda & oil industry comercials.... All you happy system-believers, go on believing that this powerful system will save you....we'll see
In theory, population growth is not genetic. But in practice it seems that there is always population growth, when the food supply allows. it. This is a bit like the theory that abstinence works, if people use it. But not enough do, and evolution selects those that don't. During periods of famine, evolution favors those with enough control to decide when to have children. During times of plenty, evolution favors those with no self control. Not everyone is capable of choosing not to have kids.
You're assuming there's something wrong with those points of view. Anarchism is a very misunderstood philosophy (people equate it with terrorism, which is nonsense). Luddites are misrepresented as people who fear technology; but really they wanted to avoid starving to death when their jobs were threatened. It's our current situation which is dangerous, not people with fresh insights.
As you didn't cite sources or figures, and asked for me to post all of the world's production figures, at this point, it is clear you're just trolling. Your arguments lead to the notion of infinite growth on a finite planet, with only unfilled imagined theories solving our problems. Some problems have no solutions.
You mean like I pointed out? But if your resource base is a straight line from pigs to cattle to fish to shit, you're still running out of resources...
But "the problem is the solution." The decline and eventual collapse of our current false economy (based on the combustion of fossil fuels) wil finally get us off this accelerating treadmill of bigger - more - faster - faster. In a slowed-down economy, we will actuaaly have time to plant and tend gardens, learn about edible and useful wild plants (maybe they aren't just weeds), spend more time with our families instead of dropping the kids off a day care, and stop fighting with our neighbors.
lolahiroshima must be totally clueless (hey, that kind of childish rhetoric IS fun!). Decentralised zero-emission energy, eh? Name one example that even comes close? (And do us the favour of not ignoring the manufacturing of solar panels or wind turbines.)
Great mind opener. It's nice to see an expert calmly discussing the powering down of society which is of course inevitable as we deplete the world supply of petroleum.
Thank you David, you are a ray of hope.
Thanks for that. Good to see that some people can express some clear thoughts on how we could get out of this mess.
14:30 - the correlation with nature is extremely insightful.
excelent, what a visionary and gentle, positive man. I am working on developing the same discourse in spanish, and planning to make this kind of expository video for the spanish speaking community in the world....this is an ideal model. thank you.
i love how he describes it... there if there is a lot of energy available, a species will mass together around that source and block out compeditors. As it changes to a lower energy system, symbiosis occurs.
Really interesting interview! thanks.
Nice interview. Good points on sustainability and permaculture.
Robert Anton Wilson pointed out that resources are conceptual. Material doesn't become a resource until someone imagines that they can be used.
To think that we can run out of resources is like saying that we can run out of ideas.
Recent history is full of people freaking out about an impending loss of resources, and most of these projected events never came about, not so much because the resources were plentiful, but because the old ideas were supplanted by completely different new ones.
Excellent interview.
well i have to disagree with your comment, 'cause there possibilities to supply over 15 billion people with good and clean food, without any use of oil, coal or whatsoever. Take a look into Masanobu Fukuoka system of natural farming and his approach of national organisation.
You have to also remember that using the internal combustion engine spreads pollutants over a much wider area than a power plant, where emissions can be trapped. There are also differences such as chemical additives in petrol which make it more toxic, and the engine needs far more maintenance due to the excess of moving parts compared to electric. Plus, even now the grid is being supplied with nuclear energy, feed in from domestic micro-energy sources, and a small amount of renewable power.
I'd qualify my agreement by saying 'in part'. :) I think so many aspects come together in the catch all, 'short sightedness'. More often than not the tail of demand comes to wag the dog of that created it & an inescapable cycle of wilful blindness as it rushes headlong into obvious disaster ahead.
Excellent interview|
Im interested in permaculture. I need to choose a career would agriculture or horticulture be any good?
#PLANTMORETREES
#INVESTinBIODiversity
"Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money."
Cree Indian Prophecy
There's a Japanese legend that says, "if you feel like you're losing everything, remember, trees lose their leaves every year, yet they still stand tall and wait for better days to come.”
I'd say 'Lack of resources' can equally be the inability to create new solutions to wicked problems as a civilization's infrastructure fails to keep up with the logistics of its expansion, not necessarily because it uses up all it's resources like Easter Island. It usually happens long before that, resources would include it's population & skills. These things usually lead to the internal schisms that history seems to focus on?
It will take much hard work. The time is now to start.
Great stuff.
He'll sound much more sensible to you in a few years.
Wait and see.
Those work because LED lights need very little current. Most household appliances consume much more power. You couldn't shake long and hard enough to keep them going.
Imagine life without a refrigerator or freezer. These are luxury items that we may not have the power to operate in ten years.
Without these, what foods will you grow and eat? What will you store and how?
Yeah, at the current system, but in the documentary, they showed how they wanted to develope infrastructure of solar recharging stations...let alone, wind, solar, and tidal power is still a huge possible market,if we can direct all/ or most of those subsidies away from fossil fuels...then how awesome would it be?? Plus you can have SkyTran and or Mag Lev trains...
Could anyone direct me to a downloadable mp3 of this segment?
Oil is concentrated soil which is organic matter created to store the carbon in the atmosphere in the ground for a healthy and diverse ecosystem.
Which figures do you wish to hear about? World Oil Production?
Natural Gas?
The Zero Solar Power used by a brewery?
@FKLampton Yes, there are plenty of acres of land on Earth. But how much of that is arable land? How much land has sufficient topsoil to support crops after being subjected to modern monoculture and depletion of water supply? Or, alternately, how many decades or centuries will we need to restore our soil and water to a degree that supports such a large human population?
Well, did they switch to fish? Did they then exhaust that food supply as well?
What exactly were the ramifications of the collapse of their pastoral system?
But what was the last one?
yep and we can start with you!
What was the last one?
Without infinitely increasing quantities of energy, we can't have infinite growth.
Without infinite growth, we have hard limits.
Corporations can't give us infinite consumption until the mass of humans collapses us into a black hole.
They say Malthus was wrong when he argued that an increasing food supply, leads to an increase in human populations, and a decreasing supply leads to a decrease in population. I'm still waiting for an example to prove their case.
If you think Holmgren is not optimistic, you aren't too familiar with reality as it is. Listen to some Richard Heinberg or Jay Hanson or Michael Klare or James Hansen or Sir David King. Colin Duncan, James Howard Kunstler, Peter Ward, Robert Jensen, Derrick Jensen, Jonathan Overpeck, James Speth. Just a list of some scientists, historians, activists, philosophers and social theorists who make Holmgren look like the figure of hope for humanity.
That example occurred centuries ago, and if their cattle-based food system failed because they didn't conceptualize that fish could be a resource, doesn't that serve as a perfect example of what I'm saying?
With an ultra productive polyculture system you can feed 10 people an acre. There are 36,794,240,000 acres of land on earth. There are between 7 billion and 8 billion people on the planet. Thoughts?
@pinkandizyan why is that?
excellent
For all practical purposes I would count Haiti as the most recent resource base collapse. Haiti only exists at this point because of outside intervention...which is very likely what caused their collapse in the first place...
Well, how about the Anasazi in the U.S. desert southwest? Or the classical lowland Maya. Or the Greenland Norse. I think you mentioned Easter Island. In the modern world we could keep an eye on Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burundi, Haiti, Indonesia, Iraq, Madagascar, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Rwanda, the Solomon Islands, and Somalia; and anywhere there has ever been cannibalism there was resource collapse driving it.
See if you can get TH-cam to give us more than 500 chars and HTML markups.
At first oil/gas will be used to help that gradual shift. Though it can happen, and everyone can be fine.
@MrEnergyCzar The planet can support well over 12 billion people.
The Greenland Norse starved to death when they couldn't perpetuate their pastoralism based on dairy cattle and sheep, even though they were surrounded by delicious fish so thick in their fjords you could probably walk across on their backs. It was taboo to eat fish in their culture. So obviously there can be a lack of ideas that causes collapse.
And if we subscribe to the idea that resources are purely conceptual I think we can expect the same.
A more business side and explanation that ties peak oil and economy together, google "crash course".
It's a problem of ever expanding growth beyond what fixed fuels and minerals can support. You can always cry and whine that they hide the oil, coal, fuel, resources, but the fact is exponential growth of populations cannot continue.
He has a good and noble goal, if we all operated out of love and co-operated. Competition = expansion. Good intentioned evolutions = pie in sky dreams.
dead on!exactly!
Having guns alone does snot prevent you from being shot dead. Knowing how to use them and being better prepared than your attacker most likely will. Rather than type on, I'll just assume you were joking when you said the best way to survive peak oil would be to live in a big city, which in reality, is one of the most isolating things of all.
I appreciate your post is 2 years old & you've no doubt forgot all about it. I love RAW's work, but the thought's not new, history is full of civilisations who assumed the same right up to the point they ran out of new ideas & collapsed.
And don't get me wrong, I believe in Permaculture.
I just don't don't believe it can keep us going as a growing consumer based culture.
We're in overshoot now. And we are genetically wired to keep increasing our population. Most of our society just wants more stuff.
Right now, we have billions too many people to sustain. And if we find more food, we'll grow until we bust the new limits, then crash.
We can't grow to an infinite population on a finite planet.
I can't think of any civilizations the collapsed due to running out of resources.
Aparently araniga needs to "Go to school, get educated, and then talk"...
Or try to really "Use academic research tools such as academic research papers" , and not just trust government propaganda & oil industry comercials....
All you happy system-believers, go on believing that this powerful system will save you....we'll see
Sorry, I was going to explain one of the last 15 or so civilizational collapses to you, but then I got interested in what David was saying again...
start teaching permaculture now and no one will starve!
What percentage of Americans do you think would live in rural areas if we converted to permaculture?
In theory, population growth is not genetic.
But in practice it seems that there is always population growth, when the food supply allows. it.
This is a bit like the theory that abstinence works, if people use it. But not enough do, and evolution selects those that don't.
During periods of famine, evolution favors those with enough control to decide when to have children. During times of plenty, evolution favors those with no self control.
Not everyone is capable of choosing not to have kids.
Yes. Well over.
You're assuming there's something wrong with those points of view. Anarchism is a very misunderstood philosophy (people equate it with terrorism, which is nonsense). Luddites are misrepresented as people who fear technology; but really they wanted to avoid starving to death when their jobs were threatened. It's our current situation which is dangerous, not people with fresh insights.
How many housecats have you eaten recently?
As you didn't cite sources or figures, and asked for me to post all of the world's production figures, at this point, it is clear you're just trolling.
Your arguments lead to the notion of infinite growth on a finite planet, with only unfilled imagined theories solving our problems.
Some problems have no solutions.
LOL! In 500 chars with no hyperlinks?
The internet is a great research tool. You should learn to use it.
You mean like I pointed out?
But if your resource base is a straight line from pigs to cattle to fish to shit, you're still running out of resources...
Aside from Easter Island.
@jerthemessiah
Creepy.
and plant some fruit trees! ;)
But "the problem is the solution." The decline and eventual collapse of our current false economy (based on the combustion of fossil fuels) wil finally get us off this accelerating treadmill of bigger - more - faster - faster. In a slowed-down economy, we will actuaaly have time to plant and tend gardens, learn about edible and useful wild plants (maybe they aren't just weeds), spend more time with our families instead of dropping the kids off a day care, and stop fighting with our neighbors.
It dosent matter if its sometimes lol
If its once... its enough ;-)
*pokes Nutzername36 hhhmmm seems ripe..... HARVEST TIME!!!!!*
I here they're quite tasty.
Also: LOL.
lolahiroshima must be totally clueless (hey, that kind of childish rhetoric IS fun!). Decentralised zero-emission energy, eh? Name one example that even comes close? (And do us the favour of not ignoring the manufacturing of solar panels or wind turbines.)
sometimes xD
it will! go vegan!
He has some interesting ideas, but so much of it just sounds like eco-anarchism with a dash of Ludditism.
@seth553 These guys lose credibility to me because they don't credit Sepp Holzer, who is the originator of permaculture back in Germany in 1962.
Guns? What?
Eat vegans they are corn fed!! ;-)