My head hurts

I’ve put a couple of recent sermons up on my other blog (link to the left) – a short funeral address, and today’s Remembrance Day sermon, which seemed to be well received.

Life is incredibly busy at the moment (with lots of good things as well as work!), but I can see a glimmer of space in the middle of this week coming up when I should be able to engage with various questions that I’ve left hanging. Believe it when you see it though…

Short thoughts 2 – responding to Orlov’s pessimism on Peak Oil

Dmitri Orlov has written an excellent article here, which I’d recommend reading, the gist of which is that the ‘descent’ of oil production will be much steeper than the standard Peak Oil analysis expects. I have no dispute with his analysis, so far as it goes. I agree that reserves are overstated (and we have front-loaded the extraction); that the Export-Land problem is very serious; that EROEI will exponentially reduce the available of energy as such oil as is extracted; and that there will be systemic break-downs of the infrastructure needed to extract oil. All of which makes me think that, taken together, we (average Westerners) are looking at severe oil scarcity within about ten years (possibly sooner) and that, if we haven’t as a society shifted away from oil-dependency, then our future is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

So why do I think his pessimism is overdone? Two principal reasons, one specific, one (flowing from the first) more abstract.

The specific reason why I believe the pessimism is overdone is that our culture is massively wasteful of energy. Take transportation: most cars in most morning commutes carry a single occupant, when they were designed to take four. Setting up car-sharing agreements is technologically straightforward and would have all sorts of wider social benefits in addition to the reduction in petrol consumption. In other words, this is an ‘easy win’ – and it is an easy win that can be adopted rapidly, which means that it buys time to deal with the more fundamental issues, which is the most crucial point. There are other easy wins (like home insulation, CHP) along with some other not-so-easy-but-very-likely-to-happen ‘wins’ like: we’ll be colder in the winter and have to wear more jumpers rather than turning up the thermostat. My ‘wild-assed-guess’ is that we (the UK) could face a 50% reduction in the availability of oil and just about keep the show on the road – not without a great deal of hardship, and not without having to rely on a very great deal of social solidarity and rationing etc – but I think we could do it.

Now this is just a temporary fix – it will give us, I would guess, ten to fifteen years of time ‘coping’ with Peak Oil – which leads to my more abstract grounds for optimism, which is that the Western way of life is dynamic, not static. The greatest problems facing our civilisation are not technical, they are social, political and spiritual, and the biggest problem of all is a refusal to face up to the reality of our predicament. If my first point is anywhere near true, then the one certain thing that will flow from it is that people will realise the nature of our crisis and, in typical human fashion, respond rapidly and adaptably. When motivated, we are able to do all sorts of ingenious things, the best example of which is probably the retooling of our factories in order to fight WW2.

To my mind, the issue is not whether the world as we know it is coming to an end (it is, we will see [DV] the end of a society based around the assumption of perpetual economic growth), nor whether civilisation of some sort will continue on afterwards (I have no doubt that it will). What I ponder is what sort of civilisation will there be to succeed our present one, what values and achievements will we be able to salvage from the wreck of Modern Industrial Civilisation? I am optimistic that we will be able to save a lot – but that is undoubtedly a moot point.

Short thoughts 1 – on the Tea Party

Partly by way of a response to Graham

So far as I can tell, whilst it has its fair share of nutters and cranks, the Tea Party is motivated by fiscal conservatism & a desire for small government – which is pretty mainstream in US politics (some 17% of tea partiers are registered Democrats; only 57% are registered Republicans). They can be as antagonistic to establishment Republicanism (eg the CBC) as to Obama, and seem to mainly want to get the US government to rein back on spending. Which is also pretty reasonable.

The only question might be a prudential one – is now the right time to cut back on state spending, in the midst of recession etc (same question as in UK politics)? My perspective is that this question assumes that the recession is temporary, and relies on the return of growth to escape the consequences of more indebtedness. If you don’t believe that we will ever go back to having growth in the same way again – as I don’t – then continuing to build up huge debt is a really really bad idea. We can still debate about where and how to cut the spending, but that spending does need to be cut, and cut significantly, that seems straightforward to me.

Some links

I’ve had a bit of a hectic first week back at work, and my brain is melting down a bit (so Deanery Synod tonight might not be the best idea…) Anyhow, I’ve been reading a few things – here are some items of interest:

How to cope with your mid-life crisis

Strongly disagreed with this article – I suspect mandatory paternity testing is a good idea…

Third Nolan Batman film will be in 2D (hooray! I hate 3D)

Peak Oil is history – and why it’ll be worse than expected (good article, at some point I might write a response explaining why he’s too pessimistic)

Catholicism, Conservatism and Capital Punishment. Hmmm.

The crisis of the humanities (read part 2 as well)
and related – so you want to do a humanities PhD? and pushing back on mediocre professors

Giving up football – something I think about a fair deal as well, I’ve given up Sky football as a start

“liberalism cannot defend corporate religious freedom”

Peter Hacker (one of my fave philosophers) on neuroscience

Overconfidence in the IPCC

Homophobia is itself an abomination