Post-fossil fuel world: Where there is no vision, the people perish.

[txlibdem]

Where there is no vision, the people perish — Part 1
Bill Becker, April 29, 2009

Rob Hopkins writes in The Transition Handbook that we have not yet begun to tap the power of positive vision. “It is one thing to campaign against climate change,” Hopkins notes, “and quite another to paint a compelling and engaging vision of a post-carbon world in such a way as to enthuse others to embark on a journey towards it.” According to an article in the most recent New York Times Magazine, Hopkins’ vision of “transition communities” in which citizens have mobilized and transformed their towns to survive the triple crises of peak oil, economic collapse and climate change – a movement he started in the UK – is inspiring some American communities to begin future-planning, more evidence that the moment for visioning has come.

In fact, one of the revelations as I organized last week’s meeting in New York is that a number of groups already are working on visioning exercises of one sort or another. A good example is a project titled America 2050 in which the Regional Plan Association in New York is convening stakeholders to create new ideas for transportation in 11 U.S. mega-regions. This work is timely and important for several reasons. Transportation is one of the big three sources of carbon emissions, it is the principal reason we are addicted to oil, and Congress plans to review our obsolete car-centered federal transportation policy later this year. Among other engaging exercises, RPA is creating “journeys” – virtual everyday trips in which people have a variety of mobility options and make choices between driving, biking and riding mass transit.

New real-life examples are appearing to show what cities and buildings might be like in a livable post-carbon society. Pioneering architects such as Bob Berkebile, one of the fathers of the U.S. green building movement, have designed “living buildings”. Greensburg, Kansas, leveled by a tornado a few years ago, is hard at work rebuilding as a green community. Arup, the British-based engineering company, has designed a zero-carbon city called Dongtan to provide sustainable living outside Shanghai, China, for more than 500,000 people. (Unfortunately, the project has been put on a five-year hold due to leadership changes in China.) Another zero-carbon development called Masdar City is being built in Abu Dhabi. I’m guessing that several of the major corporations investing in green technologies today – among them Toyota, General Electric, IBM and some of America’s more progressive electric utilities – have their own concepts of what a new energy economy will be like.

In these efforts, we see the future emerging from the bottom up and the top down. We need creativity from both directions, with policies, tools, research and technical help from the national level empowering homeowners, businesses and neighborhoods to design the post-carbon futures that best fit their culture, tastes, challenges, aspirations and assets.

http://www.futurewewant.org/uncategorized/hello-world/
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tv/greensburg/

Far from enacting a vision of a post-carbon future, the world is still throwing subsidies, tax breaks, almost free access to public lands, etc., to the fossil fuels industries:

Why We Still Don't Know How Much Money Goes to Fossil Energy
February 16, 2011

The (International Energy Agency) estimates that direct subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption by artificially lowering end-user prices for fossil fuels amounted to $312 billion in 2009. In addition, a number of mechanisms can be identified, also in advanced economies, which effectively support fossil-fuel production or consumption, such as tax expenditures, under-priced access to scarce resources under government control (e.g., land) and the transfer of risks to governments (e.g., via concessional loans or guarantees). These subsidies are more difficult to identify and estimate compared with direct consumer subsidies.

As we pointed out in a recent post, these subsidies aren’t just reckless and stupid, they aren’t even what people want. In fact, only 8 percent of Americans prefer their tax money be given to highly profitable, mature industries such as ExxonMobil and Massey Energy.

Shouldn’t there be a definitive count of energy subsidies? As we’re looking at cutting waste from our federal (and states’) budgets, shouldn’t there be a credible accounting of all the ways we pay to grease the way for these mature, highly profitable industries? We’re not talking about one done by dirty energy lobbyists or their hired “experts,” by the way, but a real inventory done by those who wouldn’t profit by a lower or incomplete count. Such an accounting should include:

... read more at the link...

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/02/top-eia-energy-trends-watcher-no-definitive-count-on-dirty-energy-welfare

What would happen if we removed the subsidies to dirty, poisonous fuel sources and gave it, instead, to clean energy companies?

We need leaders with vision to move us away from our dependence on fossil fuels and toward a sustainable civilization.

[txlibdem]

1. kick - plus a rant

It's a simple idea: how do we know where we are heading if we don't know where we want to end up.

Every airplane that takes off knows exactly how much fuel they will use to get to the destination, the exact route has been decided, etc. The same goes for your family vacation (most of the time). You know where you're going to go and have probably decided on the stops along the way, points of interest or national parks or viewing areas, etc.

The same has to be applied to our effort to release ourselves from the stranglehold that Coal, Oil and Natural Gas have on our economy and national security. We need to have at least a general plan of the end goal and the milestones we need to meet in order to reach that goal on time (ie., before fossil fuels have already destroyed the planet and set the stage for the death of us all).

So, although the article sounds very lofty and scholarly, it's really a down-to-Earth approach to mapping out the steps we need to take and where best to locate our zero-carbon generation plants. How much should be on rooftops on homes and commercial buildings is a question that comes to mind. These answers really need to be sorted out.

The "market" is quite inept in making the best use of resources, as we've seen over the past 30 years. Boom and bust cycles go back to the 1800s where they used to happen every 6 years. The human toll of all that destruction is incalculable. We need to go back to the drawing board and devise a better society, one whose first ideal is that all resources belong equally to all humans and that each person is endowed with certain inalienable rights; that among these is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nowhere in any of our founding documents can you find that Capitalism is our chosen economic system. Nowhere will you find that the top few percent get all the benefits and the rest get the "freedom" to choose which master they will become a wage slave to.

[GliderGuider]

2. Devise a better society?

According to whose standards? Yours? Mine? Ted Kaczynski's? Dick Cheney's? Salvador Dali's? Mahatma Gandhi's? (OK, he might have had some good ideas...)

There are 7 billion people in the world, with 7 billion different visions of an ideal society. The society we have is the outcome of several hundred year of dynamic interplay between all those people and the planet with all its independent life and natural resources

Humanity has never planned successfully toward a known social end-state, or even established a coherent, pre-planned set of social principles - at least not one that lasted unchanged for much over 200 years. I believe such an dream is impossible in the face of human nature, and would not choose to live in such a planned society, whether it had egalitarian claims or not.

Utopias (which is what your talking about) have a long history of failure in the face of human diversity. Even Technocracy never took off.

[txlibdem]

5. Planned society? That's what you live in now... except YOU're not part of the plan, nor am I

I understand your views on Social Darwinism and survival of the fittest but in our technological society where one man with a giant digger can flatten a mountain all of that survival of the fittest goes out the window. Yeah, I wish that college degrees were awarded to those with the best potential to do good or to study hard and graduate and later better mankind -- today, it's mostly whose mommy or daddy has enough cash to keep their cocaine addled little shrub out of jail long enough to make a run for the Governorship. You love the society we have today so much? Honestly? Or is it that you feel physically and/or mentally superior and are sure you'd end up on top should society collapse into chaos? One snake bite or a fall down a rocky slope can end your physical and mental advantage in two seconds flat... then what will you think of your hopes for chaos and survival of the fittest -- when you are no longer the fittest at all.

And a little tip for you, "we" didn't design this civilization at all. It may have evolved a bit and deviated slightly from the plan but the same people are ruling and profiting from the labor of the 99% as they were during the 1500s, maybe far earlier. Obama is George W. Bush's 9th cousin. What does that tell you about "several hundred years of dynamic interplay" affecting who's on top and who's doing the work.

Your 3rd paragraph is countered by the dominance of China in trade and so many other areas. Everything is planned from the top down. And had Ronnie Raygun not bankrupted the western world to bring down the USSR then we'd have two examples, although the Soviets really blew their chance to have an egalitarian society as have the Chinese. But the fact that only Quwait and the Western Socialist Democracies like Norway come close to what I describe does not change the fact that it IS possible to plan something and then carry out that plan to fruition.

Utopia? You mean any society where the rich aren't slave masters to the lower 99%??? You've got it all wrong. Oligarchies have a long history of failure, as do monarchies, totalitarian dictatorships and Apartheid-like social discrimination.

[GliderGuider]

6. Actually, all human societies have a long history of failure, regardless of their social philosophy

When I look back through history, what I see is that virtually every society for the last 10,000 years has been afflicted with the 99% syndrome in one form or another. Until we figure out why every attempt we've made to organize our social relationships has ended up in as a power-consolidating hierarchy we will not succeed in planning our way out of the current version.

My objection to planned societies (yes, including the one were living in, as you point out) is rooted in my deep aversion to authority of any sort. I much prefer chaos to imposed order. I prefer to see planners fail - preferably spectacularly - at their task. Philosophically, I'm an anarchist. But hey, that's just me.

It's not that I'm happy or unhappy with the society I live in - it just happens to be the one I live in. Parts of it I'm OK with, parts I'm not.

I'm under no illusions about being fitter in any Darwinian sense. If the shit does hit the fan in the next 10-15 years as I expect, then my life expectancy will probably be shortened quite drastically. That's fine with me, I plan on living every moment until I die anyway. I find I'm becoming less and less attached to the world as time goes on. Not because I dislike it or want to leave; on the contrary, I love this life and this world with a deep passion. But I find less and less that I think it's worth getting outraged about, or clinging to. It's probably has something to do with my Buddhist/Advaita spiritual practices. But hey, again that's just me.

And I don't think you actually grok my views. If you did, you'd fall all over yourself laughing at the very idea that you used the phrase "Social Darwinism" to describe them.

[txlibdem]

8. On the contrary, the more I of your posts I read the more I am convinced that is right

The only people wishing for chaos are those who feel either superior (and shackled by the laws against mayhem and thievery in society) possibly with a maniacal thirst for power and an ego that says that *they* will be the cruel leader and not the oppressed, or the suicidal who are so disappointed with their achievements that they want the entire world to die along with them. This may not describe you but the psychological type of people who crave chaos and loss of societal order are of one of those types.

Then there are the people obsessed with the movie Mad Max and want to act out fantasy road warrior scenarios, fighting for a few gallons of gas while using and wasting hundreds of gallons to do so.

Personally, if I thought my actions (or lack of action) were causing the world to slip into chaos then I would be morally bound to undo the damage or die trying. I could not leave that worthless kind of world for my children and grandchildren.

[GliderGuider]

9. It might help to distinguish between the words "prefer" and "crave"

I used the word "prefer". As in, "I prefer Butter Pecan ice cream, but if you don't have it I'll take whatever you have." The word "crave" on the other hand, is redolent of clinging, attachment and desperation. As in, "I crave my next heroin fix, and if I don't get it I'm going to do something violent." Your use the word "crave" clearly shows that you aren't seeing my actual position, rather the projection of your own inner state onto it.

I think the world has worth no matter what state it happens to be in at the moment - just like our own lives. It's impossible to create a worthless world, just one we personally dislike. I don't think my actions (or anyone else's for that matter) are causing the world to slip into chaos. In fact, I think we're already there - and have been since the beginning of time.

(Caution: Psychobabble ahead)

In fact, I think the perception of order in the world is a psychological illusion. It seems to be a defense mechanism we developed in very early childhood to protect ourselves from the fear that arose when we realized our infantile powerlessness. This mechanism is a well-accepted part of reaction formation theory. Once one pierces that fear and accepts the inherent uncontrollability of the universe, the illusion is revealed and one is freed to move beyond it. That freedom opens the possibility to love life "as it is" rather than "as we need to interpret it in order to feel safe".

I still work to change things I don't prefer about my life, but I do that in the full knowledge that the universe always has the last word, that events are inherently uncontrollable, and that the outcome may not be what I was aiming for.

[txlibdem]

13. Psycho-babble is always appreciated

But your post does little to convince me that you do not fit into one of the categories I outlined in the earlier post.

You also failed to answer the question: what if you get caught up in a rock slide and receive a permanent disability perhaps both mental and physical. What happens to you then in your "preferred" world of chaos.

Lord of War...

[GliderGuider]

14. It's not essential that I convince you.

I just put my thoughts and opinions out there on the net, like anybody else. If someone is determined not to accept my honest statement of who I am, there's precious little I can do about it, and in the end we both have to live our real lives to the best of our ability. Trying to argue someone into agreeing with you on the internet is a fool's errand.



If I got caught in a rock slide as you suggest, the very same thing happens to me as to anybody else whether they be a beggar or a king. And I think the world is already chaotic, so here we are.

[txlibdem]

17. So true

And just exactly how did you get that rendering of me?!?
:bounce:

[The2ndWheel]

3. That's a small percentage getting the benefits

"We need to go back to the drawing board and devise a better society, one whose first ideal is that all resources belong equally to all humans"

"Nowhere will you find that the top few percent get all the benefits and the rest get the "freedom" to choose which master they will become a wage slave to."

We rail against corporations. We rail against capitalism. Yet here we are, an unelected elite, proclaiming that the first ideal is that all resources belong to a small percentage of life on this planet. Perhaps we should praise the corporation and capitalism, especially of the unregulated sort, as that's exactly how we act on the planetary scale.

[GliderGuider]

4. If we consider the plants and animals that share the planet as "life" instead of "resources"

The picture of what "equitable distribution" looks like can change pretty dramatically.

One of humanity's hardest struggles is going to be against our own anthropocentrism.

[GliderGuider]

7. Since we're in planning mode, here's a suggestion that would make me happier.

Change one sentence in your post to read like this:

We need to go back to the drawing board and devise a better society, one whose first ideal is that all resources belong equally to all life and that each creature is endowed with certain inalienable rights; that among these is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If you were to plan towards that, I just might help. As long as anyone is permitted to look on other creatures as "resources", though, I will have no part of it.

[txlibdem]

10. As a long term goal, yes. As step #1... not logical nor feasible

I don't disagree with you: the news is a continuous stream of warnings about tainted food, the most recent is some kind of beef (which I do not eat) and prior to that it was killer cantaloupes (which I love in salads, as a side, or in smoothies). I would think that the goal of solving the riddle of matter transmutation would be a noble one. What would be required is either a machine that can take molecules of each of the required type and fit them together in proper order to fashion a salad or a "leather" sofa or whatever. Phase 2 of such a machine would be able to be fed any matter, break it down into its constituite electrons, neutrons and protons, then fashion those into whatever molecules would be necessary.

Just as the German nuclear scientists purposefully botched tests and otherwise delayed Hitler's plan to get the nuclear bomb thus allowing America to be first with that dubious honor, there may be some of this same sort of foot dragging on the nanotechnology front. Perhaps once Capitalism is destroyed and its rotting corpse buried there may be renewed efforts in earnest on this front.

But I believe that the first steps taken must be to provide every human being with a safe, comfortable and pest-free domicile, fresh and clean food, air and water, adequate amounts of renewable energy so that they can grow up and achieve their fullest potential.

I cannot help but wonder how many Einsteins have died of starvation or disease in Africa or Asia in the past decade alone. Meanwhile, the fat cats are on a mad shopping binge purchasing the finest jewelry, fastest or most desirable vehicles, and of course yachts. This is the picture that troubles me most. There are so many injustices in the world and we need every human being to grow up in a healthy and supportive environment if we ever hope to solve all of the problems that face us now and those we will face in the future.

Human death must end first. The lack of human health and development must be solved first. Then we will have a brain trust that is dozens of times larger than that of today. We can do this. We must.

[GliderGuider]

11. The difference between our positions could not be made more clear. /nt

[txlibdem]

12. I hope that's untrue: each day 24,000 children die of preventable causes

source: http://www.unicef.org/media/media_54057.html

I hope you are not saying that this news does not touch your heart or affect you (in a psycho babble kind of way).

My question is how many of those children could have grown up to be the next Einstein had they been lucky enough to be born in Norway, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, or any of the 22 - 27 nations that regularly defeat us in math and science. The US is #33 in reading, behind Turkey among others.

How many of those 24,000 children might have had the potential to be an engineer, an inventor, a doctor, a scientist, a wonderful artist, etc.? We'll never know because *they're all dead* instead.

[GliderGuider]

15. You realize that at the bottom of that slope is a pro-life picket line, right?

The argument that "The next Einstein might have died of starvation in Sudan" is pretty much the same as "The next Einstein might have died under an abortionist's knife in Des Moines." Both are emotionally manipulative arguments, and both are equally fallacious. That dead infant could just as easily have turned out to be another Pol Pot, Stalin or Charles Koch. We live in the world that is, not the world of "might have been". We deal with the world we actually live in as best we can, each in our own way.

BTW, I donate 0.7% of my gross income to the Stephen Lewis Foundation every year. My compassion for the children of Africa actually runs pretty deep.

[txlibdem]

16. I'm heartened by your donation to the African children

I used to donate to the children of South and Central America until I learned about the CIA-trained death squads employed by our puppet regimes there. Now I donate to Asian charities (Asia is a big area with LOTS of poor people... probably more poor folk than in S. America). Anyway, we're not playing dueling charities so that'll be that.

Now to my rebuttal to your comment: fiddle-faddle.

The environment in which a child grows from gestation to about 4 years old determines his or her personality. What you wrote may be true *today* but it will not be true 20 years after the end of Capitalism, the monetary system, etc., and the ushering in of a new era for humankind: the age of plenty and an equitable civilization.

In Sudan (I believe) the gang initiation rite for each young boy is to kill his parents. We're talking about 7+ years old little kids. The gangs use the children soldiers to get more money. That is not a system that deserves to survive. Each child's torture is just another log on the fire that will consume Capitalism and end its evil influences.

[txlibdem]

18. pro-life picket line?

That came from waaaay out in RIGHT field and I categorically reject your argument on those grounds. Preventable has a distinct meaning, very different from "by choice" (which I fully support a woman's right to choose).

See my other reply for additional rebuttal.

[GliderGuider]

19. Sorry, my clumsy choice of comparisons seems to have distracted you from the point.

To be clear, my point was simply that if a human being dies any time between conception and adolescence, it's impossible to say what their ultimate potential for good or evil might have been, regardless of the proximate cause of their death.

I'm sorry my choice of words triggered you.

[txlibdem]

20. Apology accepted, attempts to burn your avatar with my evil eye will cease immediately ;-)

Just kidding about the evil eye part... :hi:

I see your point about the probability of any child ending up a bad person or a good person seems about equal. But since the top 1% are the true psychopaths I have to disagree on the grounds that good far outnumbers evil (if it didn't then we'd all be dead... or we'd live in a world where chaos reigns, which we do not IMO). I'll be generous and say that the top 10% are card carrying psychopaths; that still means that we outnumber them 10 to 1.

My point is that these psychopaths escape identification and treatment because we do not have universal health care (which includes routine mental screening). They rise to the top not because they "work hard" but because they have no conscience, no empathy, no remorse for the crimes they commit as they scratch and claw and lie their way to the top.

Without Capitalism and without the monetary system there will be no reward for psychopathic behavior. Individuals suffering from The Koch Brothers Syndrome will be identified and removed from society until such time as they are cured of the affliction. Unlike today where we put these criminal nutjobs up on a pedestal and hold them up as the paragon of society.

So, as I've posted multiple times, Capitalism must die and the banks and monetary system must be wiped from the face of the planet. It has killed almost all of the golden gooses, the only ones left are the Social Security fund and maybe Medicare. That is why I've predicted that Capitalism will destroy itself within 20 years anyway, even without overt action by any outside groups. I believe we should help it along so that our collective suffering will be minimized during the death throws of that terminally ill system.

I guess I need to start writing my book on this topic. Perhaps it will give a tiny push, serve as the straw that broke the back of this cancer-riddled, rotting corpse that modern Capitalism has become.

PS, I misread your earlier post and thought you were okay with 24,000 African kids dying each day, just as long as they're not "like me." But I see that I was wrong and want to apologize for jumping to that conclusion. I see too much of that bigotry and / or "it aint in my back yard so I don't care" attitude here on DU and elsewhere online that it drives me batty sometimes. I am sorry to have jumped to that conclusion erroneously.

[GliderGuider]

21. It would be interesting to see a study on whether psychopathy correlates with being in "the 1%".

I bet it does, along with having an authoritarian personality type.
OK, I think we're even in this round! :fistbump:

[txlibdem]

22. Rent the movie titled "The Corporation"

It goes through all the official psychiatric definitions of psychopathy and shows examples of how a corporation fits exactly with the definition of a psychopath.

As for the rich, I'll never be able to be convinced that one can become in the top 1% without being a psychopath.

20 Signs That You Are A Psychopath
Judith Aquino | Jul. 29, 2011, 3:14 PM

The way that capitalism is structured really is a physical manifestation of the brain anomaly known as psychopathy...

"Basically, high-scoring psychopaths can be brilliant bosses but only ever for short term...they always want to make a killing and move on."

Armed with psychologist Robert Hare's widely used psycho diagnostic tool, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), Ronson explored the world of mental health and criminal profiling to understand what makes some people psychopaths.

About four percent of leaders with substantial decision-making power can be classified as psychopaths, according to Hare.

http://www.businessinsider.com/signs-that-youre-a-psyopath-2011-8

I was being overly generous it seems in thinking that only the top 1% are psychos, Ronson says it's the top 4%. :woohoo: