Systemic Solutions

Current political responses to both Peak Oil and global warming have a few commonalities.

For Peak Oil, the myth is that we can both find a replacement energy source that is clean and renewable, and scale it to current energy consumption levels to sustain materialist consumer society. Global warming responses rest on faith that we’ll be presented with a techno-miracle that will both continue economic growth and mitigate greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere. In both cases protecting the economy is taken to be more important than protecting either people or the planet. Any suggested response to either crisis that doesn’t maintain economic growth is taken off the table.

Politicians, of course, love these fantasies. They can continue to promise bread and circuses, not based on any scientific evidence, but on economic models that ignore the science or rest on rather tenuous assumptions. The results of this mode of thinking are self-evident in the world today through mounting environmental degradation and looming economic collapse.

Peak Oil is a geological reality. It is not an environmentalist conspiracy to ruin the economy, instill self-hatred in humans, and return us to a paleolithic lifestyle of chopping our own wood and carrying water. However, neither is it a diabolical plan by Big Energy to further control us by creating false scarcity.
Although, one would have to be brain-dead to not be aware that they’re taking advantage of the situation to engage in price gouging.

The scientific consensus on anthropogenic (human caused) global warming is also very clear. The contribution from solar activity, clouds, and natural cycles is relatively miniscule compared to the contribution directly attributed to the Industrial Growth Society. The only real debate among scientists whose salary isn’t tied to denial is in how quickly and how devastating the full effects of global warming are going to slam into us and turn our tightly ordered world upside down.

This all leads to the inescapable conclusion that affluent lifestyles based on a sense of entitlement must be seriously, and quickly, rethought. But politicians are afraid if they tell people the truth, they’ll lose their jobs. Doing what’s necessary to actually mitigate global crises is thought to be politically unfeasible. What it really means, though, is that it doesn’t make their financial masters happy, not that the people wouldn’t like to see some true leadership exhibited.

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