Civilization and Beyond
A Metaconscious Mosaic Outline
The peak oil myth assumes that energy is unavoidably costly to acquire for human use. Some energy is more costly to procure than others, but all energy sources come at a price, and their cost is always at least somewhat greater than the value of the energy thereby made available for human use. This is a perhaps clumsy and imprecise way of expressing the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, which state that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only shifted in form; and that every shift in form (e.g. of the energy in a waterfall, harnessed to a mill wheel) is accomplished at the "cost" of an irretrievable loss of energy (e.g. as "waste heat"). The name given to this inescapable energy loss is entropy. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that entropy increases in every energy exchange; or less formally, that "water always runs downhill." In reference to the mill wheel, this means that the wheel extracts only a fraction of the energy in the waterfall, and can in no way extract more energy than the waterfall can put into it. On this basis, an "over unity device," signifying an energy system which produces more energy than it consumes – the "Holy Grail" of the free energy myth – is believed to be fundamentally impossible.
For complex reasons to be found in the recent history of Taker culture, the chemically impounded solar energy1 stored in fossil fuels, such as coal and petroleum, has been regarded as the most efficient, and least costly energy source on the planet; with the consequence that over the course of the past century or two, the overwhelming bulk of steadily expanding human industry has come to be powered almost exclusively by fossil energy. The "down side" of fossil energy – or one of the many – is that it is nonrenewable. The first barrel of oil pumped out of the ground commenced the slide toward eventual "peak oil," and its consequent aftermath.
Richard Heinberg,2 among others, has a great deal of interest to say about the peak oil myth – my terminology, not his – with sobering implications about near- and long-term developments in the human predicament on planet Earth. The gist of the argument is that the global industrial economy is approaching peak petroleum production – after which "it's all downhill from here." "Peak oil," globally, is anticipated to be reached by approximately 2010. The U.S. reached "peak oil" nationally in the early '70s. After 1970 the U.S. had to import oil in order to meet its growing energy demand. After about 2010, the only available direction for global industry will be "downhill," i.e. to diminish, instead of continue expanding.
The likely economic consequences of the energy downturn are enormous [Heinberg writes]. All human activities require energy – which physicists define as "the capacity to do work." With less energy available, less work can be done – unless the efficiency of the process of converting energy to work is raised at the same rate as energy availability declines. It will therefore be essential, over the next few decades, for all economic processes to be made more energy-efficient. However, efforts to improve efficiency are subject to diminishing returns, and so eventually a point will be reached where reduced energy availability will translate to reduced economic activity. Given the fact that our national economy is based on the assumption that economic activity must grow perpetually, the result is likely to be a recession with no bottom and no end.3
Even if the free energy myth is 100% valid, and the supposed "hidden energy technologies" were to be publicly disclosed tomorrow morning, it is doubtful that the probable effects of "peak oil" could be entirely averted. Today, right now, "the world runs on oil." The infrastructure is in place, having accumulated and matured for the past century and more. Any free energy technologies – assuming they exist – are at best right now in the laboratory development stage. Maybe there are some prototype units somewhere that are able to "prove the concept." Between "proving the concept," however, and going into actual production to take up the slack left in the wake of "peak oil," there lies a formidable lead time. In the year 2000, Tom Bearden was advocating a crash "Manhattan Project" to get existing free energy prototypes into full-scale production and into the market by January 2004, in order to avert a catastrophic energy crisis by 2008.4 At that time, Bearden placed January 2004 as "the point of no return," beyond which a catastrophic energy crisis cannot be avoided, no matter what anyone tries to do about it. Bearden's "Manhattan Project" didn't happen, and doesn't appear to be on the horizon, and it remains to be seen what consequences unfold. Heinberg doesn't seem to be very optimistic either. Nevertheless,
There is much that individuals and communities can do to prepare for the energy crunch. Anything that promotes individual self-reliance (gardening, energy conservation, and voluntary simplicity) will help. But the strategy of individualist survivalism will offer only temporary and uncertain refuge during the energy down-slope. True individual and family security will come only with community solidarity and interdependence. Living in a community that is weathering the downslope well will enhance personal chances of surviving and prospering far more than will individual efforts at stockpiling tools or growing food.5
Yes! I believe what Heinberg is talking about, although I doubt this is exactly the construction he might put upon it, is walking away from civilization and joining or creating Leaver cultures; i.e. rebuilding the Leaver world. This we can do, not as isolated individuals, but rather as tribes in which, and among which we can deliberately, persistently foment metaconsciousness, and return the human race to the path of metaconscious brilliance whose progress was interrupted by the past ten thousand years of civilization.
If such recommendations were taken seriously, they could lead to a world a century from now with fewer people using less energy per capita, all of it from renewable sources, while enjoying a quality of life perhaps enviable by the typical industrial urbanite of today. Human inventiveness could be put to the task, not of making ways to use more resources, but of expanding artistic satisfaction, finding just and convivial social arrangements, and deepening the spiritual experience of being human. Living in smaller communities, people would enjoy having more control over their lives. Traveling less, they would have more of a sense of rootedness, and more of a feeling of being at home in the natural world. Renewable energy sources would provide some conveniences, but not nearly on the scale of fossil-fueled industrialism.6
Between the peak oil myth and the free energy myth, it seems likely that one or the other, or both, will be relevant to the circumstances under which the survivors, if any, of collapsed civilization undertake the rebuilding of the Leaver world.
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* Source: Original piece, written for A Metaconscious Mosaic.
1. This is one variant of the peak oil myth. An alternative variant argues that petroleum springs from "abiotic," or non-biological sources deep in the Earth's interior. See The "Abiotic Oil" Controversy by Richard Heinberg, MuseLetter No. 150 - August 2004 - Part 2, for a discussion of this controversy.
2. Richard Heinberg is the author of Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, and The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies. He is a Core Faculty member of New College of California in Santa Rosa.
3. Heinberg, Synopsis: The Party's Over.
4. The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How to Solve It Quickly by T. E. Bearden, LTC, U.S. Army (Retired), Final Draft, June 24, 2000.
5. Heinberg, Synopsis: The Party's Over, boldface emphasis added.
Civilization and Beyond copyright 2004, 2005 by J. Harmon Grahn. Copying and redistribution, in whole or in part, are permitted in any medium provided this notice is included.