The Dematerialist’s Journal

Table of Contents

July 30, 2007.  Carbon dioxide emissions during production of solar cells

July 27, 2007.  Communism and Some Idle Thoughts on the Excesses of Capitalism

July 19, 2007.  Fifth Addendum to “Photovoltaic for Australia”

July 12, 2007.  Fourth Addendum to “Photovoltaic for Australia”

July 9, 2007.  Hanson’s Last Stand

July 4, 2007.  Third Addendum to “Photovoltaic for Australia” 

July 2, 2007.  Second Addendum to “Photovoltaic for Australia”

July 1, 2007.  Addendum to Photovoltaic for Australia

June 27, 2007.   Photovoltaic for Australia

June 16, 2007.  Jay Hanson’s War Socialism is a point on the path to the Dematerialist’s Natural Economy

March 29, 2007.  A newly-revised version of “Energy in a Natural Economy”

March 12, 2007.  A Report on My Recent Investigations of Solar Energy Harvested by Photosynthesis in a Controlled Environment

January 29, 2007.  Four new essays

December 25, 2006.  To save the world from Dieoff

October 17, 2006.  My solution in a nutshell (from the entry for June 1, 2006)

September 6, 2006.  The two greatest problems of humanity

October 20, 2006.  Latest version of “Energy in a Mark II Economy”

October 16, 2006.  A New version of “Energy in a Mark II Economy” is available with only two missing modules.

October 13, 2006.  EROI and emergy

September 24, 2006.  “What’s New” becomes part of this journal

June 2, 2006.  A correction to remarks about ER/EI*

June 1, 2006.  My Solution in a Nutshell

February 5, 2006.  Dematerialism Is NOT Inconsistent with Human Nature

January 14, 2006.  Materialism Causes Overshoot

December 21, 2005.  Rational Speech Contra Pleistocene Adaptations

December 6, 2005.  A Direct Approach to Dematerialism for First-Time Visitors

September 6, 2006.  Old entries in What’s New

May 12, 2005.  On the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario

April 16, 2005.  More Work on the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario

March 7, 2005.  Letter to John Kaminsky concerning Peak Abiotic Oil

Reprise

Data

Calculation of Peak Abiotic Oil

March 1, 2005.  Spreadsheet calculations for the Apollo Alliance Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario

February 12, 2005.  Theology

January 31, 2005.  More on Windpower

January 30, 2005.  On Meeting the Apollo Alliance Ten-Point-Program Goals with Windpower

January 29, 2005.  On the Conservation-with-Capitalism Scenario

Introduction

Energy and Population in 2050

Ground Rules

Energy Supply

Energy Demand

Conclusions

Epilogue

January 10-14, 2005.  More on Literary Taste

January 8, 2005.  On Literary Taste

January 1, 2005, State of the World and the Former United States

Population

Energy

Avoiding Die-Off

With Fossil Fuels

Without Fossil Fuels

Are Market Economies Sustainable?

December 29, 2004, Revision of Prior Computation of Time to Reduce Population to One Half

December 26, 2004, Some Handy Conversion Factors

December 23, 2004, On Population Dynamics

December 19, 2004, What’s Coming (taken from “Living Under Fascism” by Davidson Loehr, http://www.uua.org/news/2004/voting/sermon_loehr.html)

December 16, 2004, Petroleum and Population

December 13, 2004, The Proposition that Conservation Is a Bad Thing as an Example of Reductio ad Absurdum

October 26, 2004, A New War on Communism

October 26, 2004, Markets Ignore the Facts of Life

September 30, 2004.  And now, a word from the loyal opposition

September 10, 2004,  Energy in a Natural Economy

September 9, 2004, Reminder about Energy Use in the United States and Terrorism

September 7, 2004, Yahoo Group:  Peak Oil Politics (Politics in the Wake of Peak Oil)

August 24, 2004, What I Didn’t Say on KPFT (Pacifica in Houston) on August 23, 2004, 10-11 PM:

 

July 30, 2007.  Carbon dioxide emissions during production of solar cells

On June 27th, I wrote my first letter to Running on Empty Oz on photovoltaic solar energy for Australia.  I published the letter in the June 27th edition of The Dematerialist’s Journal.  I plan to broaden the analysis to include estimates of green house gas emissions associated with each of the start-up scenarios with various conservation profiles.  Today, July 29th, I wrote the following:

I found the following data for 2003 on the internet:

            207.6 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per quad of electricity generated from coal in US

            6.6 billion metric tons of carbon from greenhouse gases (GHG), which amounts to 5.335E13 carbon dioxide   emitted into the atmosphere in the US

I added two more columns to Scenario 1b on Sheet 1 of pv070711.xls and Scenario 4 on Sheet 1of pv.xls for yearly GHG deficits corresponding to the energy deficits and for the cumulative GHG deficits.  I computed:

            4.668E10 pounds of carbon dioxide deficit in the first year of Scenario 1b, which was the maximum cumulative deficit too

            1.097E12 pounds of CO2 for the maximum cumulative deficit for Scenario 4, which comes in the eighteenth year    of the project and is 23.5 times the maximum deficit for Scenario 1b

Not all electricity is generated from coal, which corresponds to the worst case; and, not all of the energy invested in the production of photovoltaic solar cells is electrical, but electrical generators are responsible for more carbon dioxide than other energy sources because of inefficiencies; therefore, the numbers computed by me represent absolute upper bounds on greenhouse gas production.  Since neither of the above maximum deficits is appreciable compared to annual US GHG emissions, there is no compelling reason why Australia may not replace all of its fossil fuel consumption with renewable solar energy according to one or the other startup scenario depending upon conditions on the ground.  As I have stated repeatedly, energy and GHG deficits should be made up by conservation and “normal” demand reduction.  Of course, the real reason why this scheme or another scheme to replace fossil fuels will probably not be implemented is political intransigence.

July 27, 2007.  Communism* and Some Idle Thoughts on the Excesses of Capitalism

 Communism* v. Capitalism and Marxism v. Demateralism

Let us review the steps whereby capitalism was defeated by communism in logical argument:

I don’t know if any of the latest statements about deaths and ruined lives under so-called communist rule are true or merely another salvo in an endless war against Communism waged by both branches of the American Capitalist Party; but, this much is certain: Communism is sustainable and Capitalism, because it requires perpetual economic growth in a finite world, is not.  Capitalism requires growth to retire debt incurred by fractional reserve banking, to justify economic inequality by telling the poor they will not grow poorer as the rich grow richer, to provide new jobs for workers displaced by improvements in productivity due to technological progress, and to finance industry in a stock market that would collapse if it did not grow.  None of these is necessary in a communist economy despite the undeniable fact that many regimes that call themselves communist whether they are or not have encouraged economic growth.  (Of course, many (undeveloped) nations should grow economically, but new growth in the poor nations must be accompanied by even greater shrinkage in the rich nations to more than compensate for it.)

It is necessary to divide the community dividend equally among the members of the community for a number of reasons:

1.         Whatever advantages of intelligence, strength, ability, character, appearance, breeding, or connections one is able to exploit to acquire wealth, they are accidents of birth that are normally disallowed as justifications for worldly success.

2.         It is impossible to evaluate a person’s contribution to the community until hundreds of years after that person’s death, if then.

3.         Suppose that one potato in the Mark I Economy  represents the amount of emergy that is required to keep one person alive for one day.  The ability of the earth to provide emergy for consumption is already so limited that people are starving to death because we do not share wealth. 

Thus, wealth sharing is reasonable, beautiful, and practical.  However, without wealth sharing society is vulnerable to very serious problems:

1.         Differences in wealth create covetousness, envy, resentment, anger, and, finally, revolution if they grow sufficiently steep or if they are perceived as patently unfair.

2.         If there are differences in wealth, we have materialism with all of the horrible things people do to acquire greater wealth because of greed, because of fear of losing what they have, or to remedy personal poverty.  In Chapter 9 of On the Preservation of Species, I showed that materialism is Pandora’s Box.

Materialism is the perfect transition from the debate between communism and capitalism to the debate between Dematerialism and Marxism:

Let us examine the reasons why Dematerialism has supplanted Marxism:

Marxism was supposed to have remedied the problems caused by differences in wealth; but, inasmuch as it requires people to work to earn a living, it still permits competition for wealth.  Also, it does not address competition for power except by preventing huge concentrations of wealth that make fair competition unnecessary for many aspirants to political power.  Even supposing a meritocracy in the distribution of jobs, political positions, and incomes, almost all of the problems of materialism will arise. 

1.         Dematerialism requires each person to have an equal share of the community dividend regardless of what he does or doesn’t do, which prevents all of the evils of materialism discussed in Appendix II of On the Preservation of Species.

2.         It is important that people who do not work be compensated the same as those who do because most of the workforce will have to be furloughed to reduce the energy budget to that which can be supplied by renewable energy technologies only.  Please see the three energy papers hyperlinked to http://dematerialism.net/ where this is explained and proved.

3.         Dematerialism avoids punishment of misbehavior as well as punishment of sloth.  People will do something interesting and/or useful because they need to be effective to be happy.  Since Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment 150 years ago, we have suspected that punishment exacerbates anti-social behavior.  Dematerialism lets go of punishment and revenge as well as other irrational and maladaptive behavior peculiar to Western culture or learned during out Era of Evolutionary Adaptedness.

Indeed, Marx, apparently, was not familiar with the Sermon on the Mount and the many fine sentiments expressed there by Jesus.  We could say that Dematerialism is the New Testament of Communism and Marxism is the Old Testament. 

Houston, Texas

July 26, 2007

 

* In this paper,  the word “communism” refers to any system of wealth distribution that does not depend  upon (i) dog-eat-dog competition or (ii) the hazards of a marketplace in labor , or (iii) any system that favors economic inequality whether dynamic or static and, if dynamic, whether unbounded or not.  By “communism” I mean some system of sharing the community dividend.  I could replace the term “communism” by “wealth sharing” without the loss of very much except the opportunity to show respect for the great communist writers, thinkers, and leaders of the past.  Normally, I think of “communism” as referring to equal or nearly equal wealth sharing.  Varieties of communism are sometimes termed “socialism”, “syndicalism”, “dematerialism”, etc.

 

And now for something completely different:

What they didn’t know:

1.        Conservation within Capitalism could make the Die Off much worse if it postpones it while the population grows.

2.         People who don't want a state- or consumer-planned economy (with equal shares of emergy for all) probably consider themselves superior to most other people and don't want to jeopardize their eminence and other advantages.  A physics professor confessed, "I'm afraid you'll take away my money."  This is part of the authoritarian or Type Z personality.  This characterization does not apply to the many losers in the Money Game who are hopeless victims of authoritarian propaganda, such as the anti-abortion zealots who are convinced that communism is the same as abortion.

3.         Capitalism is like Rock and Roll.  The vast majority would reject both unless they had been subjected to merciless brainwashing.  If you are susceptible to Rock, Country, Rap, or any of the other popular products that masquerade as music, you are probably vulnerable to anti-communist propaganda - especially if you have not yet recognized that every school curriculum, every major sporting event, and every television program - not just the commercials - is anti-communist propaganda.

4.        It's too early to plan on what to do to save yourself and your loved ones from the coming Crash, Ochlarchy, and Die Off as in "Children of Men", which was based on a different etiology but the same prognosis.  You must know where the bomb will land before you know which way to run.

5.         We should all support the Bolivarian Revolution until we have a chance to go a little further along the path to a Natural Economy.  Hugo Chavez will not oppose this process, the name of which is dematerialism – not to be confounded with the Ideal represented by the Natural Economy.

What he said about me:

Tom Wayburn has unsubscribed himself from the_dieoff_QA, saving myself the trouble of having to boot his commie ass off this list!  <g>

Idle speculation about the inventors of monotheism:

Many scientists believe that our love of natural beauty has evolved because of the ecological importance of leaving Nature undisturbed; however, the two major monotheistic religions come from a part of the world that is hard to live in.  Perhaps it’s hard to appreciate its natural beauty too.  This might account for their choices of religions that do not encourage respect for the environment nearly so much as the religions they replaced, namely, pantheism and paganism.  After all, if there is a god living in every stream and every tree, it might be harder to despoil it for one’s own purpose than if there were one abstract god who, regardless of what is taught, is always thought of as being somewhere else.  One might conclude, then, that environmental destruction is more an artifact of one’s tribal religion than an innate characteristic of human nature.  If, in fact, monotheism is the only religion that permits man to ignore the local gods of Nature, then it is no wonder that Capitalism became an artifact of monotheism, as no other political economy could leave Nature less undisturbed.

It is the spoliation of Nature, of course, that has made possible all of the miracles of technology that we, the affluent of the developed nations, enjoy daily.  Today, for example, is a day that I have enjoyed as much as any I can remember.  I recorded music from the cable, converted stereo phonograph records to 5.1 digital, and achieved a great deal on the World Wide Web.  As I have said previously, no one is more dependent upon the capitalist mode of production than am I.  I might do poorly in a Natural Economy; nevertheless, I try to be objective and realistic in my scientific and literary work.

July 19, 2007.  Fifth Addendum to “Photovoltaic for Australia”

This journal entry continues the discussion of my latest efforts to solve the problem of ramping up a new energy technology with a low Energy Returned over Energy Invested ratio.  Most of these technologies require a large investment of energy at the beginning that is recovered only after a rather long time; but, they are absolutely essential to the remediation of the worst effects of Peak Oil.  Therefore, a scheme must be worked out to introduce them in opposition to nornal market practice.

I have fixed a number of mistakes in “Photovoltaic for Australia” and its spreadsheets, in particular one mistake that was distinctly unfair to Dave Kimble.  The URLs are http://dematerialism.net/pv.htm and http://dematerialism.net/eroi3.htm, which are copies one of the other since both URLs have been given out.  The two copies of the spreadsheet at http://dematerialism.net/pv.xls and http://dematerialism.net/eroi3.xls are the same too.  Earlier work was done on http://dematerialism.net/pv070711.xls as discussed in the text.  This has been a huge effort and the only justification I have for doing it is that I wished to discourage the attitude that such a project cannot be carried out.  It can be done; and, what’s more, I think it will be done – or something very much like it.

July 12, 2007.  Fourth Addendum to “Photovoltaic for Australia”

I have prepared one additional spreadsheet scenario that applies equally well to any alternative energy technology that delivers electricity with a low EROI of 3.0 and a 24-year working lifetime.  The computation at http://dematerialism.net/eroi3.xls is exceptionally brief and carries only two charts.  Chart 1 shows the delivered energy per year in quads from a slow beginning to a steady-state production equal to Australia’s 2003 energy budget.  It generates 262.4 billion kWh/y of electricity and the rest in liquid fuels that are produced at a great disadvantage, as discussed in the paper at http://dematerialism.net/eroi3.htm.  Chart 2 shows the rapid ramp-up of productivity until the steady state is reached.

In this scenario, as shown on Sheet 1, which is liberally covered with explanatory notes attached to yellow boxes, production grows at about 9.44% per year until it assumes a moving average of the past N years beginning in 2057 with N = 1 and increasing by 1 in each successive year.  This results in smooth changes in production and attains the target output earlier than in previous schemes.  As I said previously, the exact scheme employed will depend upon conditions on the ground and other circumstances at the time of execution.  No matter what alternative energy is selected to replace oil, the ramp-up is bound to be slow, painful, and expensive.  Nevertheless, it is not too early to get started.

July 9, 2007.  Hanson’s Last Stand

Here is the last letter Jay Hanson addressed to me before I unsubscribed from The Church of the Killer Ape of Peak Oil:

Re: Is Dematerialism possible?

In killer_ape-peak_oil@yahoogroups.com, Tom Wayburn wrote:

Jay and Ron too, 

If Dematerialism is impossible, so is War Socialism.

It probably is.  It was meant as a body of ideas which, if adopted by the powers-that-be (e.g., WW2), could reduce consumption of natural resources up to 90%.  Any parts of it will help and could be adopted incrementally if some sort of new systems politics were invented.  On the other hand Tom, your program is nothing but updated Marxism.  [http://dematerialism.wikispaces.com/ ]

Your program is fundamentally different than mine.

#1.  You call for "Equality of political power."  I do not.  My program (or some version of it) would have to be willingly adopted and administered by the existing powers-that-be.  The closest analogy would be US government rationing in WW2.

#2.  You call for "nearly equal distribution of wealth."  I do not.  I call for rationing of those commodities which are required to prevent human suffering.  Existing "wealth" can stay where it is.

#3.  You call for "mandating worker ownership of the means of production."  I do not.  I don't care who owns the means of production.

BOTTOM LINE: Given the choice of "death by business as usual" or death by "Neo-Bolsheviks raging through the country on a new cultural revolution," then I will choose former.

Tom, peddle your political bullshit somewhere else.  You are no longer welcome here.  [For those of you who feel my response is a bit harsh, Tom said on the_dieoff_QA he didn't care about how words were defined, which of course, means he IS NOT qualified for membership on any of my lists.

My answer:

As any careful reader of Jay’s list knows, I said that Jay could define a word any way he wanted and I would employ his definition in discussions with him.  As any intelligent reader of Jay’s list knows, Jay’s version of War Socialism will NOT save 90% of the energy because it permits the market to continue to function, albeit under some constraint, but with the myriad activities and occupations that are bleeding the earth to death daily.  Instead, he is calling for a systems-engineering dictatorship.  (Earlier, he called for a military dictatorship.)  Jay turns out to be a fool as well as a self-deluded tyrant.  Like the neo-conservatives, his preferred method of attack is to accuse his adversaries of the very faults of which he himself is guilty.  For example, he will claim that I hold on to my views with irrational religious fervor, which charge applies, instead, to him, which accounts for his inability to deal rationally with opposition to his doomsday message.  The same comments apply to Ron Patterson who is cast from the same mold.  Make no mistake; these are bad asses; and, when running scared – and Jay is definite running scared – they will commit all sorts of abominations.

Every good student of human nature, unlike Ron and Jay, knows that the bully, and this goes for the “intellectual” bully too, lives in stark terror of someone calling his bluff.  I have been dealing effectively with bullies all my life.  When you stand up to them, they turn tail and run like the cowards they are.  Many of us know that Jay will quit a group or simply walk away from a discussion.  What very few know is that Jay, subsequently, is plunged frequently into the depths of depression.  How sad!

It seems that every half-baked pseudo-intellectual bad-ass who reads Pinker or Dawkins grabs onto evolutionary psychology to justify every sort of bad behavior!  Just because you have inherited a gene for a mal-adaptive, atavistic trait like barnyard aggressiveness, does not excuse the incorrigible behavior that results from lack of self-control in people of goodwill and voluptuary pleasure in evil for the rest.

I have tried very hard to stop Jay in his tracks, make him think for a change, and, finally, give him a chance to become a decent person and do the right thing.  The reason people flock to Jay’s banner, of course, is they are clutching at a straw of certainty in a sea of doubt due to the flood of events in a very uncertain world.  For such people it is better to trust in error than face the impenetrable mystery that surrounds us all.

Finally, I have this to say to the people I leave behind having done the best I can do for them.  Things are not what you think they are, namely:

1.    Conservation within Capitalism could make the Die Off much worse if it postpones it while the population grows.

2.   People who don't want a state-planned or consumer-planned economy (with equal shares of emergy for all) probably consider themselves superior to some other people and don't want to jeopardize their eminence and other advantages.  A physics professor confessed, "I'm afraid you'll take away my money."  This is part of the authoritarian or Type Z personality.  This characterization does not apply to the many losers in the Money Game who are hopeless victims of authoritarian propaganda, such as the anti-abortion zealots who are convinced that communism is the same as abortion.

3.   Capitalism is like Rock and Roll.  The vast majority would reject both unless they had been subjected to merciless brainwashing.  If you are susceptible to Rock, Country, Rap, or any of the other popular products that masquerade as music, you are probably vulnerable to anti-communist propaganda - especially if you have not yet recognized that every school curriculum, every major sporting event, and every television program – not just the commercials – is anti-communist propaganda.

 4.  It's too early to plan on what to do to save yourself and your loved ones from the coming Crash, Ochlarchy, and Die Off as in "Children of Men", which was based on a different etiology but the same prognosis.  You must know where the bomb will land before you know which way to run.

5.   We should all support the Bolivarian Revolution until we have a chance to go a little further along the path to a Natural Economy.  Hugo Chavez will not oppose this process, the name of which is Dematerialism – not to be confounded with the Ideal represented by the Natural Economy.

For some of my friends, I would like to call your attention to the work of Roy Bhaskar.  Please see http://www.criticalrealism.demon.co.uk/iacr/.  And, do yourself a favor; take a gander at http://energybulletin.net/23259.html.

July 4, 2007.  Third Addendum to “Photovoltaic for Australia”

Dave Kimble answered my last post to ROEOZ privately.  I will not print his letter, as he probably did not want you to see it; however, suffice it to say that he made it abundantly clear that he was prepared to treat my efforts toward the understanding of the problem he posed with utter contempt.  He even asked me if I was on cocaine!  That said, I am prepared to explain why Dave kept insisting that the energy barrier to supplying Australia’s energy needs with photovoltaic solar power was too formidable to ever be overcome.  I made a slight adjustment to his idea, which involved changing the datum in only one cell, Cell AH2 of Sheet 1 of the spreadsheet, to obtain an entirely feasible plan, albeit a plan that will require a good deal of political push.  It does not require, however, a change in political economy.  This plan, which I have called Wayburn’s Idea in the titles to charts on the spreadsheet – as opposed to Kimble’s Plan, can be embarked upon without suggesting anything about what needs to happen in 70 years to forestall further Overshoot.

The spreadsheet has become just a little bit complicated lately, principally because it is so much fun to work on; therefore, it seems advisable to provide the serious student of energy with a table of contents to the various worksheets:

Sheet 1 of http://dematerialism.net/pv.xls consists of three separate computations, two of which have been used to reconcile more than one method with more than one set of data:

1.      Columns A – S:  This is a long calculation using Wayburn’s Idea to obtain a positive energy profit in the second year so as to begin servicing the energy debt incurred in the first year to get the operation started.  After approximately 90 years, the 2003 Australian energy budget is attained.  In the meantime, Australian’s will supplement solar energy with the shrinking supply of more conventional technologies, the growing supply of wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and biological renewable technologies, the diversion of exports, and strict conservation measures.

2.      Columns T – AD:  This is a short implementation of Kimble’s Idea using Dave’s data but Tom’s initial energy subsidy in such a way that it can be reconciled with either the first computation or a subsequent computation to be discussed next using Dave’s normalized energy units.  Wayburn’s method for reporting the cumulative energy profit is employed.  These numbers are greater than those obtained by Dave by the amount of the subsidy.  It is assumed that no energy is returned during the first year.  The energy invested is applied to the production of solar cells that are not put into service until the following year.  The discrepancy resulted in Dave giving the cells a lifespan of only 24 years instead of 25 on his spreadsheet which is reproduced on Sheet 4 with the mistake corrected in Cell AA8.

3.      Columns AG – AR:  This is a computation with both methods for computing energy profits employed to facilitate reconciliation with Dave’s original spreadsheet and with the computations described in Items 1 and 2.  Cell AH2 can be altered so as to toggle back and forth quickly between Kimble’s Idea and Wayburn’s Idea.  (To simulate a steady-state economy or not, a few additional cells in Columns AH and AJ will have to be changed.)  Kimble’s Idea was to employ exponential growth of the energy invested from the beginning and throughout the calculation.  Wayburn’s Idea was to invest in the second year only the energy returned by the cells produced during the first year.  In the third year, exponential growth was commenced.  It was retained for as long as was necessary to approach the final target value for the energy delivered (ER - EI) yearly.  This had the effect ensuring that the original energy subsidy is the largest deficit ever to occur.  Yearly energy profit is positive beginning in the second year!  In case an energy steady state is desired, depending upon the rate of exponential growth and the target energy, a year is chosen to begin assigning to the yearly production of cells a moving average of the N previous years with N = 1 in the first year and increasing by one in each succeeding year so that the first year in the moving average remains always the same.  Perhaps with further experimentation, I might find an averaging method that will result in a somewhat smoother transition in productivity.  This could be important if it is useful or desirable to maintain a stable work force.

Sheet 2 contains only Lawrence-Livermore’s clever chart of energy flows in the US economy.  The unit of energy is the quad, which is absolutely the best choice because of extensive tables maintained by the US DOE with conversion factors to quads for nearly every energy technology for every country and for  every year.  See, for example, Tables c8 – c11 at http://www.dematerialism.net/usefulhyperlinks.htm.

Sheet 4 contains Dave Kimble’s original spreadsheet, which was published on the internet.

Chart 1 (Wayburn’s Idea):  EI and ER for first 30 years

Chart 2 (Wayburn’s Idea):  ER - EI

Chart 3 (Wayburn’s Idea):  Yearly cell Production

Chart 4 (Kimble’s Idea):  Cumulative profit for the first 35 years

Chart 5 (Wayburn’s Idea):  Energy surplus for the first 24 years.

Chart 6 (Wayburn’s Idea):  Cumulative profit for the first seven years in Kimble’s normalized energy units

I commend these worksheets to your careful inspection.  Cells highlighted in yellow generally contain important messages, but occasionally may mark important variable changes for the programmers use.  The paper describing this work earlier is at http://dematerialism.net/pv.htm.

July 2, 2007.  Second Addendum to “Photovoltaic for Australia”

I have contrived an entirely new model under the assumption that Australia will adopt a sustainable steady-state political economy in time to prevent the worst effects of Peak Oil; therefore, the new spreadsheet holds the energy delivered constant after an assumed  requirement of 7.00 quads of renewable, non-fossil energy is attained.  Strangely, both Dave Kimble and I missed the most obvious defect in his model.  By supplying 5% of Australia’s 2003 energy budget as an initial infusion of borrowed energy to jump start the process, the energy returned is greater than the energy invested after only one year.  After only 14 years, the cumulative energy returned is greater than the cumulative energy invested; and, the one-time subsidy is paid back in only twenty years.  That’s better than the average mortgage.  The new scheme is presented in a completely revised version of “Photovoltaic for Australia” and the spreadsheet is at http://dematerialism.net/pv.xls

Also, I am working on a version of the spreadsheet with a quicker approach to the energy consumed in Australia in 2003, which, according to http://www.cslforum.org/australia.htm, amounted to 5.14 quads out of a total of 10.26 quads produced.  Please note that this leaves 5.12 quads for export, 0.257 quads of which, might not be missed.  This is enough to bootstrap a robust photovoltaic solar energy program.  This work has been stored on Sheet 1 of  http://dematerialism.net/pv.xls along with Dave Kimble’s spreadsheet for 10% growth on Sheet 4 and my version of it on Sheet 3.  Also, the Lawrence-Livermore diagram of US energy flows in quads appears on Sheet 2.

July 1, 2007.  Addendum to “Photovoltaic for Australia”

Despite the political improbability, I  offer a spreadsheet that explores the no-growth scenario for an economy that is already committed to sustainability through radical political change in a major way.  The strange downward spikes in Chart 2 correspond to rows inserted after the sheet was prepared identifying the columns at least once every page.  The graphing program interprets non-numeric values as zeroes.  See http://dematerialism.net/pv-x.xls.  Finally, a few minutes ago, I finished a spreadsheet that smoothes out the oscillations in pv-x.xls by writing the yearly production of solar cells as a moving average of an increasing time period after an initial period of exponential growth.  See http://dematerialism.net/pv-avg.xls.

June 27, 2007.  Photovoltaic for Australia

Today I completed a computational study of a possible scenario whereby Australia could replace all her current energy budget by 2069 after a 60 year period of austerity.  Subsequently, the energy supply could grow at a robust rate for many years, but not forever!  Actually, it’s a shame that she has the capacity to do so much destruction even without burning fossil fuels, but the capacity is there for better or worse.  See http://dematerialism.net/pv.htm

June 16, 2007.  Jay Hanson’s War Socialism is a point on the path to the Dematerialist’s Natural Economy

War Socialism might be a safe position for a society that is not very fussy about freedom until the process of unwinding materialism proceeds further along the path from Fascism to a Natural Economy.  But, unless War Socialism is adjusted to conform to the fundamental principles of Dematerialism, it is not sustainable and is guaranteed to fail.  A good plausibility argument for this is presented in “War Socialism Is a Step toward a Natural Economy”.

March 29, 2007.  A newly-revised version of “Energy in a Natural Economy

I understand that one cannot adopt the sort of give-away economy I have in mind throughout a large community instantaneously.  However, within a small intentional community (either concentrated geographically or distributed throughout a larger community) enough responsible people might be found to institute an economy based completely on trust with no accounting practices of any type and with the sort of resource sharing that one expects within a nuclear family - especially at the dinner table, where no one expects the mashed potatoes to be apportioned according to contribution to the household economy during the preceding week.

Nevertheless, the social, economic, and thermodynamic advantages of what I call a "natural economy" are described in a newly revised version of "Energy in a Natural Economy" that I completed only two days ago.  I would appreciate a critical read-through for any remaining errors, inconsistencies, omissions, inadvertencies, and infelicitous renderings.  My choice of the term "natural economy" is best explained with a story such as The Parable of the Shipwrecked Brothers.

March 12, 2007.  A Report on My Recent Investigations of Solar Energy Harvested by Photosynthesis in a Controlled Environment

This research report was prepared for the Global Villages group to provide computational evidence for the capabilities of the proprietary SolaRoof technology described in part at http://www.solaroof.com/.  It is part of an ongoing effort to get the best values possible for the capabilities that can be expected from renewable energy technologies in the United States.

March 1, 2007.  Two wikis

Yesterday I started a wiki at http://dematerialism.wikispaces.com where I will practice writing a Wikipedia article about dematerialism.  Also, at http://www.ourculture.info/wiki.cgi?TomWayburn, some friends and I all of whom feel strongly about reforming capitalism on the one hand or replacing capitalism with some sort of wealth sharing on the other.  I encourage anyone who wishes to enter the debate.  The wiki is open, and everything in it belongs to the ethical public domain.

January 29, 2007.  Four new essays

I hope my friends will review and criticize an article called “Emergy and Population in a Natural Economy” that I wrote this morning.  It is supposed to show how Dematerialism handles over-consumption by emergy accounting and over-population by sanctions if necessary.

Three other short papers are the following:

1.  “Availability Balance on Earth Redux” that originated as a letter to Dave Bowman, a physicist with whom I collaborated on the original availability balance around the Earth.

2.  “On Emergy”, which originated as my contribution to a paper on which I was to collaborate with Sholto Maud and Dino Cevolatti.

3.  “On ‘Entrepreneurship and Social Progress’ by Lew Rockwell”, which originated as a post to the Energy Resources Yahoo group.  This paper disproves a standard conservative position.

These are rough drafts that may never be finished.

January 4, 2007.  Two new essays

Today I wrote “On Designing Community Currencies” and finished preparing “A Short Talk on Dematerialism” for the web.

December 25, 2006.  To save the world from Dieoff

I found the best proof of the unsustainability of capitalism after I completed the current version of On the Preservation of Species.  It follows from David Delaney’s nice proof that capitalism requires economic growth in Addendum 2 of “On Capitalism” that follows my own feeble efforts along that line in this early essay.  The rest of the argument follows from the absurdity of infinite growth in a finite world and the immorality and infeasibility of expansion into space; but, in “On the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario”, which was summarized in “The Demise of Business as Usual”, I placed this contention on a quantitative basis.

It remains only to note that conservation is limited by Carnot efficiency in many cases and one-hundred percent efficiency in every case whereas the production of sustainable energy is bounded ultimately by the total land area of the earth.  Technology cannot possibly harvest more energy than that which reaches the earth from the Sun in real time, the gravitational energy imparted to the tides by a moon that moves slowly away from the earth, and the nuclear energy from radioactive substances in the earth’s core.  Although this is an enormous amount, it must be consumed principally by the weather and geological movements without which life on the planet must cease.

Anti-egalitarian and pro-authoritarian propagandists are not likely to bring up the unsustainability of capitalism.  On the other hand, they generally accuse previous attempts to distribute wealth equitably with the very faults that invariably accompany every instance of materialism in the world, the principal instantiation of which is capitalism itself.  The common indictment is that communism has been proved unworkable.  People who make this wild claim generally have no idea what constitutes a proof.  Let’s examine what they mean by “unworkable”.

First, they say that every attempt to equilibrate wealth must end in a dictatorship.  Provided, of course, that wealth is distributed equally and a democratic constitution is in place, there is no way for power to become concentrated into the hands of the wealthy as has occurred in the United States and the United kingdom and in other Western nations.  If the recommendations offered by dematerialism to prevent the ascent to dictatorial power of so-called natural leaders are adopted, power is guaranteed to be distributed perfectly, that is, no one will have any power over anyone else other than the power of persuasion, which will not stand up to scrutiny unless it is based upon genuine political wisdom.  This is discussed in On the Preservation of Species, especially in the section of Chapter 11 entitled The Solution to the Problem of Natural Leaders.  One of things we need to live is our personal autonomy.

Second, they say that people will become dissatisfied if they cannot improve their economic well-being essentially without limit.  Earlier I used the thought experiment involving a Mark I Economy to show that, in a resource limited world such as our world, unlimited accumulation of wealth amounts to the murder of those who go without.  Under the circumstances that obtain in our world today, inequality of wealth amounts to murder.  But, moral considerations aside, the discoveries of psychologists regarding the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation show that the exact opposite is true; namely, that people are concerned with resource dominance are guaranteed to be unhappy while people who are actually happy are concerned only with what is interesting to do.  This echoes dramatically the advice of the hero of the biblical New Testament and the advice of Bertrand Russell on happiness in Part V of On Ethics, Sex, and Marriage, published by Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York.

If neither of these objections to sharing wealth is valid, we begin to suspect that anti-communist propaganda, which is anti-egalitarian / pro-authoritarian propaganda and is generally endorsed by religious fundamentalists and other personal salvationists, is precisely what is keeping us from initiating the very strategies we need to prevent Dieoff and save the world.  It doesn't matter if the form it takes is the cloaking of an incorrect analysis of human nature in pseudo-scientific terms or as dire warnings about aspects of state capitalism that are shared by corporate capitalism in the societies in which we live and could not arise in a libertarian communist society or whatever one calls it to avoid inflammatory terms.  Dematerialism is a gradual path from present-day fascism to democratic libertarian communism, the only true democracy.  Libertarian capitalism is a contradiction in terms.  Perhaps a word about the so-called free market is worth repeating: 

In “Energy in a Natural Economy”, I began the study of the huge portion of our energy budget that is consumed by the free market.  The adjective free refers to unfettered activity by those adept at accumulating material wealth with slavery for nearly everyone else.  I do not mean chattel slavery but a much more insidious form of slavery whereby the slave imagines he is still free because he can quit one job to look for another under practically the same conditions.  This is just as arbitrary as permitting those who are physically stronger or who have mastered the use of the sword to impose upon everyone else.  No reasonable person imagines that the rich do not impose upon every one of limited means.  This is discussed in the book.  It is interesting that the "unintended consequences" of utopian economic schemes always amount to the very evils that characterize every capitalist society and always will.  Thus, anti-communist propaganda describes our utopian society in terms that best describe the society we live in now.

Men can compete for anything they want so long as it is not the very things we need to live.  That's unnecessarily savage.

October 17, 2006.  My solution in a nutshell (from the entry for June 1, 2006)

Here is my solution:

Let us suppose for a moment that you cannot foment a revolution in the US.  Your best chance to save yourself, your loved ones, and others of similar inclination is to start an intentional community with the following features:

1.  Workers own economic enterprises in the sense of custodianship.  Decisions are made by direct vote – one worker, one vote.  (Note (10-17-06).  It is important that worker ownership not extend beyond the premises of the plant where the work is done.  Decentralization not incorporation.)

2.  A give-away economy with no monetary system is in place wherein each consumer notifies directly the enterprises that supply his genuine needs which in turn tell him when the item or items can be picked up or will be delivered in the case of flows.  These enterprises also report the emergy values of the item or items to each consumer and to a public servant if the community deems this necessary until people have learned the lesson of minimizing their consumption.  Thus, the economy is consumer-planned subject only to the consumer's responsibility (a) to use no more than 1/Nth of the total sustainable dividend of the economy (measured in emergy units) where N is the number of consumers and (b) to reproduce himself only, to pass on his reproductive rights to another, or not to reproduce.

3.  Each enterprise integrates the plans of its consumers into a total economic plan for the enterprise, which must notify its suppliers what things it has need of.

4.  Public servants are chosen quasi-randomly, somewhat as jurors are chosen, for limited terms that cannot be followed by another such appointment.  Recall is by direct vote of all members of the community whom I call citizens for lack of a better term.  The term fractal government denotes a system of small communities wherein every citizen belongs to a local parliament that is tied in a loose federation with other such communities in similar parliaments that are tied in loose federations to other parliaments of parliaments.  This is similar to fractal structures, except that a loose federation of the world, convened to share resources according to the Fundamental Principle of Neighborliness (FPN), can have only a finite number of sub-levels as does every representation of a fractal in the real world.  (The FPN says that, if wealth is transferred from one community to another, it is transferred always from the richer community to the poorer if at all.)  Notice that the only permanent members of the government are the people themselves at the community level who share political power in the sense of one-person-one-vote.  Naturally some people will have more influence than others if they are widely respected, for example; but, they cannot convert this influence to greater wealth.

5.  Defense is by citizen militias if necessary.  The decision to bear arms is up to the citizens.

6.  Please see On the Preservation of Species  – especially the Preface and Chapter 11.  A system of morals to be encoded into a social contract is discussed in Chapter 3.

It is recognized that the federal government is likely to suppress any effort to form an intentional community (or reform an existing community) along egalitarian lines, i. e., with a Natural Economy, as discussed in my earlier post unless collapse has already commenced, in which case the federal government will no longer be able to function because the most powerful people in government will have given up in despair and will be trying to save themselves - at least Dmitry Orlov has made a good case for this in a nice talk about the relationship between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the very likely collapse of the United States American Empire:

Anyone who thinks this solution is inconsistent with human nature should read http://www.dematerialism.net/perfect.htm as well as the journal entry for February 5, 2006, below.

Finally, perhaps the best way to effect widespread change is to demonstrate a superior system locally as Ted Trainer, for example, is doing.

September 6, 2006.  The two greatest problems of humanity

This material was taken from a letter in which I tried to identify the problems of the greatest importance to humanity.  The letter was written because I hoped to avoid discussing the future of humanity with people who will never accept my solutions to these two problems:

The problem with allowing different income to different people based on abilities, contributions to the community, etc. – in short, anything related to the people themselves – is the devil itself because it is the cause of Overshoot.

There is no way to permit any such thing without arriving at what we have now.  As soon as you open that door, you have allowed the profit motive – and, with it, greed and fear – to enter.  This has been my principal discovery, namely, that artificial economic contingency (AEC) is Pandora's Box.  With it, every evil; without it, none.

At this point, I must point out that my understanding of human nature is much more realistic than that of my liberal friends who would allow some differences in wealth and income and don't want to “rob the rich".  And, by the way, it's not just robbing the rich, it's neutralizing them forever.  We must take them out of the game.  Retire them.  Prevent them from becoming involved in the economic life of the world until they understand this:  Human nature is good enough to live without AEC if there are no institutions (such as buying and selling or finance) whereby they can improve their position (or worsen it or the position of others); but, human nature is not good enough to live with a little AEC and not make it a part of our propensity to establish pecking orders.

This is crucial.  It is fine if people establish a better reputation for excellence or virtue or establish reproductive advantages by making themselves the ones whom members of the opposite sex want to have children with or if they receive reproductive tokens from those who have them to give; but, if they can establish resource dominance, every evil will become manifest once again no matter how you equilibrate wealth at the outset. This is the one point upon which there can be no compromise.  Please see Chapter 9 and Appendix II of On the Preservation of Species in which I call AEC "materialism".  My claim is that, if you do not eliminate AEC, any changes made will be either irrelevant or temporary.

My course is clear.  To go on establishing this as one of the fundamental principles of the universe by means of my writing but not by arguing with hostile people.  Almost any person I speak to on the street at random is quick to agree with me (and not just because they think I am crazy), but "activists" who are committed to their own ideas always give me a hard time.  When I hear a good idea like eMergy or homotopy, I am quick to adopt it.  "Talent recognizes genius instantly; mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself."

By the way, the Mark II Economy proves that differences in wealth (in the form of higher salaries) are energetically costly *per se* but not as costly as commerce - the method by which great differences in wealth are established, which is unsustainable in the US because of Maximum Renewables.  [The Mark I Economy established that to have more than others is murder in a world of scarcity like this one.]

Do you agree that artificial economic contingency (AEC) must be eliminated?  That no economic system that includes AEC is sustainable?  Will people who have the ability to do so try to improve their positions only a little or will some of them try to get all of the property and money they can?

The second important topic is preventing the rise of natural leaders in the sense of G. B. Shaw (Preface to The Millionairess).  Elsewhere Shaw wrote:

Lord Acton’s dictum that power corrupts gives no idea of the extent to which flattery, deference, power, and apparently unlimited money, can upset and demoralize simpletons who in their proper places are good fellows enough.  To them the exercise of authority is not a heavy and responsible job which strains their mental capacity and industry to the utmost, but a delightful sport to be indulged for its own sake, and asserted and reasserted by cruelty and monstrosity.  – George Bernard Shaw, Preface to Geneva.

In any case, something must be done to prevent the rise of powerful people because the benevolent despot is never found outside of the covers of a romantic novel or a falsified history.

October 20, 2006.  Latest version of “Energy in a Mark II Economy”

The latest version of Energy in a Mark II Economy has a number of corrections and improvements.  The tables of macros in “Experiments in Mark II Economy” are up-to-date and almost complete.

October 16, 2006.  A New version of “Energy in a Mark II Economy” is available with only two missing modules.

After one marathon session I have completed another draft of  “Energy in a Mark II Economy”.  Probably, I will not write a section on Methods; however, Chart 1 from the spreadsheets or from “Apology and the Principal Conclusions” should go into a section on “The Effect of Political Economy on Total Energy Budget and EROI”.  In Experiment 4,  with the conservation factor, ψ, at 0.522300, the total energy budget for the capitalist economy as represented by the Base Case is just equal to Pimentel's figure for Maximum Renewables whereas the Natural Economy as represented by the No-Commerce-No-Managers Case has an energy budget of 38.884% of that modest figure, an energy budget that could be met by private local efforts.   With the switch to renewables reducing the basic EROI to 3.0, the Natural economy is at Maximum Renewables with ψ = 0.662664; but, the capitalist economy is still consuming 207.69% of Maximum Renewables.

Also, an executive summary is in order; but, the main results are in http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Apology.html  and under Exercise 1a in http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Money.html which validates the idea of getting a good approximation to the energy invested from the total cash invested from the inception of the project until the last vestiges have been cleaned up after the life cycle of the installation has come to a close.  One often sees a figure for the money to be invested and almost never a figure for the energy to be invested.  Hopefully, that will change due to our efforts and the efforts of many others.

The link in “On EROI and Emergy” to “Balance Equations for Energy Extraction and Conversion” does not apply especially to the Mark II Economy; however, I think all of us will find it interesting; and, some of us will find it wrong.  I put a lot of effort into a very short exposition; so, I hope some of you will read it; and, dare I hope, check the math.  Also, please look at the tables of EROI on the spreadsheets, which are completely explained in http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-EROI.html#_Toc148738711.

Finally, I wish to add that Dale Allen Pfeiffer whose new journal The Mountain Sentinel is discussed in the journal entry for September 24th has generously offered “Energy Depletion & the US Descent into Fascism” at no cost.  He would like to have us all read it.

October 13, 2006.  EROI and emergy

Over the last few weeks I have been occupied principally with the determination of ER/EI, which I have decided to call EROI, following Charlie Hall, because it is so much easier to say than “EROEI”.  The new approach to EROI got started when I encountered results for Energy Invested (EI) that exceeded the total energy budget in the Mark II Economy.  Instead of trying to fix the bug in the older routine, I wrote an entirely new and more transparent routine for computing EI.  Also, at the suggestion of Sholto Maud, I developed energy, entropy, availability, and emergy balances for extraction processes and conversion processes.  This led to revising my definition of emergy in terms of availability and transformity.  All of these results will be discussed in the new modular version of http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy.html, which currently contains only a brief Apology for the delay and the outline for the new paper.  Also, I will provide an “executive summary” for the typical reader who is interested only in conclusions.  Those who wish to operate, validate, or repudiate the Mark II Economy will want to read the full paper and, perhaps, some of the earlier drafts one of which is at http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Master.html.  The two spreadsheets discussed in the entry for September 24th are now available.  Examples of the charts on separate worksheets appear in http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy.html.  (Note for Chart 1.  Percent furloughed can be interpreted as the percent by which working hours can be reduced for everyone.  In the spreadsheets, hours worked per week are shown instead.)

September 24, 2006.  “What’s New” becomes part of this journal

There are now two versions of the spreadsheet for the Mark II Economy:

http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy.xls in which the fractions retained for salaries are the same for each sector.  In the first version of this spreadsheet, the fractions of the population that are on active duty were determined by the requirement that production per capita remain constant.  In the latest version of this spreadsheet, no one is furloughed in the non-commercial sectors; however, the production per capita is reduced to shorten the work week.  Either all of the commercial sector is on active duty or none of it is.  The spreadsheets and how to use them will be explained in http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy.html as soon as the revisions are complete.

http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy-CSP.xls in which the populations of each sector remain constant throughout the exercise.  I have solved all of the nonlinear equations simultaneously using Newton's method directly on Sheets 2 and 3 of the spreadsheet.  Also, see my first Excel charts each on a separate sheet.  One sees from Chart 1 that as the economy becomes more progressive, moving from (BC) capitalism to (NM) market communism to (NC) communism with a commissar class to (NCNM) pure anarcho-communism, the population works less and consumes less energy whilst retaining the same standard of living.  How much less?  Enough less that a looming catastrophe becomes a sustainable economy.  

Be sure to Enable Macros when you download any of these spreadsheets.  I can promise that they are safe.  I wrote them all.  The macros are discussed in http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy.html.

Dale Allen Pfeiffer, who has done so much to make people aware of Peak Oil and what must be done to prevent Dieoff and who edited and provided the motivation to write "On the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario" and "The Demise of Business as Usual", has begun publishing The Mountain Sentinel, a new journal with a Peak Oil orientation.  Dale writes, " Upcoming issues will feature articles on tar sands, coal & uranium mining deregulation, more criticism of hydrogen fuel cells, global dimming, linking energy depletion efforts with the global warming movement, and in depth looks at permaculture, ecovillages, personal efforts to achieve self-sufficiency, and various sustainability and relocalization organizations."  A link to the journal's webpage can be found under Peak Oil Hyperlinks below.  It is http://www.mountainsentinel.com/.

The rest of the entries in What’s New are not so new anymore; therefore, I have decided to place them in a journal entry for September 6, 2006, and further relegate that entry to the Journal Archives.  A new entry for September 6 appears below.  The hyperlinks mentioned in the earlier entries to “What’s New” can be found under Ancillary Essays below.  See http://www.justpassinthru.com/wayburn/ and http://faithfact.com/tom/ for backup of this website except for the latest changes

June 2, 2006.  A correction to remarks about ER/EI*

Perhaps, I should reformulate the exercise discussed in the entry for June 1 in terms of a balance inequality for each experiment such that the energy produced is either less or greater than the energy required by the economy, which includes the energy required by the energy technology under investigation (ETUI).  It is easy to avoid recursion because, for an experiment wherein more energy is produced than consumed, one may assume that scaling back production will not increase the overhead.  Thus, sustainability will have been established.  It is not possible to avoid iterations as I discussed in Chapter 2 of http://dematerialism.net/POS.html.  These iterations always converge because the world is finite and the economy perforce bounded.

I should have said (and I say now) that the purpose of the analysis I have in mind (to replace standard ER/EI) is to evaluate not just the ETUI or slate of ETUIs but the combination of a hypothetical system to produce energy and a hypothetical economy.  In this way, we can discover which combinations are sustainable and which are not.  One cannot calculate EI under any circumstances without knowing what sort of economy it is supposed to serve.  For example, in a US American commuter economy, the energy cannot be produced without an investment of energy for commuting; but, in a Natural Economy on an Earth as a Garden, the energy invested will be much, much less.

June 1, 2006.  My Solution in a Nutshell

The elephant in the living room is the enormous amount of energy we waste on monetary systems and markets.  I did the arithmetic in http://dematerialism.net/CwC.html using MS Excel.  My latest post on Energy Returned over Energy Invested (ER/EI) follows:

It seems to me that all of the confusion about ER/EI can be eliminated by taking the Energy Invested (EI) to be the entire energy budget of the economy under investigation including the energy required by the energy technology under investigation (ETUI), which is assumed to be supplied by the ETUI as was done in the principal thought experiment in http://dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy.html.  If you wish, we can call the entire energy budget of the economy under investigation EI*  to distinguish it from the energy required by the ETUI, which we might call plain EI.  Then, EI* includes EI.  The Energy Returned (ER) is easily calculated by assuming that all of the primary energy in the economy is produced by the ETUI or ETUIs.  Now, if ER/EI* is less than one, the ETUI (or the matched slate of ETUIs) is infeasible for the economy under investigation.  Until one finally gets to the experiment wherein the matching problem has been solved (optimized) for an entire slate of ETUIs, we are not investigating a realistic economy.  We optimize the matching technology using standard mathematical optimization.  In a previous post to Energy Resources I wrote the following:

Let me consider once again the Mark II economy.  This is an economy where money has a fixed value independent of time probably because there are no banks or treasury to mess with the generalized currency units (XDs).  The economy is simple enough that we can choose various boundary conditions, e. g., with and without commerce, with and without a higher paid manager class, and observe what happens to the energy budget.  The Main Theorem is very encouraging.  I must have done something right.  But, no one wants to work his way through a crude, messy, homemade model like mine.  What we need is a computer whiz who can turn the Mark II economy into a scintillating computer game complete with fancy graphical user interface, animation, etc.  In short, make it fun and easy to use and understand.  Now, if I had the resources and the 'energy' to do it, I could apply similar techniques to much more realistic models.  

Nevertheless, someone should produce a simplified model economy that looks much more like a real economy with many more sectors than four and sub-sectors and banking and profit taking and government and perpetual war etc.  Then, we would have an idea what is required of a primary energy source, e. g., alcohol from switch grass or bio-diesel from algae in aquaculture, if the entire economy (including perpetual war and everything else useful or not) ran on that one primary energy source.  We would be able to tell if that could be done, i.e., if the Energy Returned could power the entire economy all the energy costs of which would be included in the Energy Invested whether they contributed to producing energy or not.  That's the most important single fact, isn't it?  Is such an economy sustainable or not? 

Then we could cut out a few of the frivolous expenses, then more frivolous expenses, and eventually get rid of parasitical businessmen and see if that results in a sustainable economy.  When we were done with that stage of the experiment, we would have a good idea about what sort of economy is sustainable with that primary energy source and what sort is not.  We might then repeat the same exercise with a second primary energy technology.  Etc.

Finally, we would introduce multiple energy sources and solve the matching problem for a realistic economy.  This would all be based on the kinds of experiments I did with the Mark-II-Economy.  I nearly ruined my health with that and that's a simple economy.  Clearly, I need help.  And, when I was done, I could not be certain that anyone would take the work seriously for all the reasons people find NOT to do the right thing.

I can do what I can do, but I can't do everything.  I hope you can see why I don't like the standard ERoEI one finds in the reviewed literature.  [snip]

If we do this experiment, we will see that it is impossible to produce enough sustainable energy to support monetary systems and markets.  Also, in a sustainable eco-community, who wants to waste valuable time accounting for who spent what on what?  The members of the community will be pretty busy with gardens and other things they need to live.  The butcher, baker, and candlestick maker will be busy enough without collecting bills, keeping books, or maintaining a cash register.  (How many times have you found what you wanted in a store in five minutes but took a half hour to pay for it?  Only yesterday, I walked into Home Depot knowing that I wanted 10 sheets of plywood for hurricane shutters but spent nearly an hour paying.)

Even if we don’t do the above experiment, my conclusion that the economy cannot afford markets and monetary systems has been validated by the numerical experiments in http://dematerialism.net/CwC.html that were summarized in http://dematerialism.net/demise.htm.

Here is my solution:

Let us suppose for a moment that you cannot foment a revolution in the US.  Your best chance to save yourself, your loved ones, and others of similar inclination is to start an intentional community with the following features:

1.  Workers own economic enterprises in the sense of custodianship.  Decisions are made by direct vote – one worker, one vote.

2.  A give-away economy with no monetary system is in place wherein each consumer notifies directly the enterprises that supply his genuine needs which in turn tell him when the item or items can be picked up or will be delivered in the case of flows.  These enterprises also report the emergy values of the item or items to each consumer and to a public servant if the community deems this necessary until people have learned the lesson of minimizing their consumption.  Thus, the economy is consumer-planned subject only to the consumer's responsibility (a) to use no more than 1/Nth of the total sustainable dividend of the economy (measured in emergy units) where N is the number of consumers and (b) to reproduce himself only, to pass on his reproductive rights to another, or not to reproduce.

3.  Each enterprise integrates the plans of its consumers into a total economic plan for the enterprise, which must notify its suppliers what things it has need of.

4.  Public servants are chosen at random for limited terms and are not permitted to parlay one such appointment into another.  Recall is by direct vote of all members of the community whom I call citizens for lack of a better term.

5.  The fundamental principle of neighborliness is practiced regarding neighboring communities, namely, that wealth flows always from richer communities to poorer communities or not at all.  Defense is by citizen militias if necessary.  The decision to bear arms is up to the citizens.

6.  Please see http://dematerialism.net/POS.html for the complete story - especially the Preface and Chapter 11.  A system of morals to be encoded into a social contract is discussed in Chapter 3.

It is recognized that the federal government is likely to suppress any effort to form an intentional community (or reform an existing community) along egalitarian lines, i. e., with a Natural Economy, as discussed in my earlier post unless collapse has already commenced, in which case the federal government will no longer be able to function because the most powerful people in government will have given up in despair and will be trying to save themselves - at least Dmitry Orlov has made a good case for this.   Here is a URL for Dmitry Orlov's nice talk about the relationship between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the very likely collapse of the United States American Empire:

http://www.cluborlov.com/ClubOrlov/ConfSlides/index.html

Anyone who thinks this solution is inconsistent with human nature should read http://dematerialism.net/perfect.htm as well as the journal entry for February 5, 2006, below.

February 5, 2006.  Dematerialism Is NOT Inconsistent with Human Nature

Opponents of dematerialism should argue that, without materialism, society must degenerate to a state that cannot provide the driving force necessary to prevent further degeneration to unacceptable levels of infant mortality and early death for all but the most dominant individuals and their slaves.  The argument then shifts to whether or not this is inevitable and whether or not a Natural Economy with a Rational Social Contract can be established.  In "Why Dematerialism Is NOT Inconsistent with Human Nature", the first draft of which can be viewed for editing at http://dematerialism.net/onhumannature.htm, I have argued that the rational mind can overcome the mal-adaptive propensities of human nature by means of political and cultural change.  This would not have been possible without language.  Language distinguishes us from other animals.

January 14, 2006.  Materialism Causes Overshoot

Materialism is the cause of over-population and over-consumption, therefore it is the cause of Overshoot.  For all practical purposes, in Twenty-First Century America, it is the sole cause of Overshoot because, in a non-materialistic economy, if it is not possible to prevent excessive over-consumption and over-population, which are inconsistent with a social contract that is the basis for a non-materialistic society, then it will be because society has degenerated to the point where under-population and under-consumption are the problem.  If materialism is restored, over-consumption and over-population will proceed.  If, on the other hand, society is informed by a Rational Social Contract, people will understand that excessive procreation and excessive consumption impose upon the guaranteed freedom of other people and their posterity as shown in Chapter 3 of On the Preservation of Species.  See “On Materialism” for an analysis of how materialism causes Overshoot.  The entire case for the thesis that materialism is the cause of all of society’s problems is made in Chapter 9 of On the Preservation of Species.  Don’t expect to see a complete case presented without some symbolic logic.

Go to the entry for February 5th above.

December 21, 2005.  Rational Speech Contra Pleistocene Adaptations

If I know that my Stone-Age mind, which evolved during the Pleistocene Era, comes equipped with an innate “loss-avoidance mechanism” that might be maladaptive in the extreme in a commodity trading context, I will consciously defeat such maladaptive tendencies through rational thought.  In fact, the very name “loss avoidance” is the key to the solution.  Similarly, if I were driven to accumulate wealth and to dominate other men or to pursue fame in the hope of profiting thereby, I would not make the mistake of striving for a succedaneum for reproductive advantages when I can obtain what I really want directly without destroying the planet and trivializing my own life.  Evolutionary psychology has given me a name for maladaptive status seeking; and, in this case, to know the name of the ‘demon’ is to defeat it.

December 6, 2005.  A Direct Approach to Dematerialism for First-Time Visitors

This homemade website has been re-organized today to make it less massive and forbidding and to make the introduction to dematerialism straight-forward.  The principal idea is encapsulated in the epigraph, and a short introduction appears in the next section.

September 6, 2006.  Old entries in What’s New

●     The very newest item on this website is a new version of the spreadsheet for a Mark II Economy at http://dematerialism.net/Mark-II-BetterCases.xls.  I have solved all of the nonlinear equations simultaneously using Newton's method directly on Sheets 2 and 3 of the spreadsheet.  Also, see my first Excel charts each on a separate sheet.  One sees from Chart 1 that as the economy becomes more progressive, moving from (BC) capitalism to (NM) market communism to (NC) communism with a commissar class to (NCNM) pure anarcho-communism, the population works less and consumes less energy whilst retaining the same standard of living.  How much less?  Enough less that a looming catastrophe becomes a sustainable economy.  

 The fraction of the population associated with each sector is held constant as one changes cases and parameters within each case. Whenever the fraction of the cash input that must be withdrawn for salaries for the furloughed employees of a particular sector becomes a negative number, it is probably necessary to move part of the population into that sector to retain decent numbers.  Be sure to Enable Macros when you download it.  I can promise that they are safe.  I wrote them all.  Speaking of which, I intended to rename this spreadsheet Mark-II-Experiment9.xls because I intend to discuss this work in detail in a section entitled Experiment 9 in http://dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy.html; but, apparently, Excel associates macros with the name of the spreadsheet and they are not transferred when one saves the spreadsheet with a new name.  I don't know how to get around this, so I have retained the working title Mark-II-BetterCases.xls.  Chart 2 examines the effect of decreasing ER/EI* on the total energy production for the Base Case.  Energy production approaches infinity as ER/EI* approaches 1.0.

 

●    Lately, my time is occupied with the Mark II Economy, which I have modified to indicate the two approaches to ER/EI discussed in the journal entries (below) for June 1 and June 2.  The Mark-II-Economy spreadsheet cannot be used to study the energy balance equation approach to the determination of feasibility because, on the spreadsheet, the total production of energy units is exactly balanced by the total energy budget of the economy.  It is easy, though, to demonstrate impracticality as the ER/EI ratio approaches 1.0 (from above).  Well before the energy budget becomes unbounded the production required in each sector becomes greater than consumption by a large factor, which can be imagined to make employment unendurable.  The following is taken from the essay "The Mark II Economy" which is now available at http://dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy.html.  The spreadsheet is at http://dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy.xls.  Be sure to Enable Macros when you download it.  I can promise that they are safe.  I wrote them all.

The Mark-II-Economy spreadsheet can be used to show:

1.    how to get the increase in the energy budget associated with a diversified monetary investment by multiplying the capital, operating, and other costs of the investment by the E/GDP ratio,

2.   the difference between the standard peer-reviewed ER/EI that should be independent of the political economy in which it is embedded and a much more realistic ER/EI that includes the expenses associated with the political economy in which the energy technology is embedded such as the energy costs of doing business, of market overhead, of governmental regulation, and of private profit.

3.   the unbounded increase in the energy budget (as well as increased burdensomeness of employment) as ER/EI approaches one,

4.   why an energy technology with a given ER/EI is infeasible in a market economy but not in a planned economy (without commerce),

 5.  energy savings due to abandoning markets,

 6.  energy savings due to abandoning a manager class composed of 10% of the population with five times the income of workers,

 7.  that paying idle workers can render a society more sustainable (much lower energy budget - even if ER/EI is less too) than making everyone work for a living.

In a Mark II Economy, every converged solution balances Energy Returned with Total Energy Budget; therefore, I have not attempted to model feasibility by computing an energy budget that is less than the energy produced by an alternative energy technology under consideration.  However,

8.   impracticality occurs at a much higher ER/EI than does strict infeasibility.

Strict feasibility is not as important in the real world as I had imagined previously.

●     I just finished a new essay entitled “The Perfectibility of Man” to answer the usual objections about Dematerialism being inconsistent with Human Nature.  The essay can be found at http://dematerialism.net/perfect.htm.  Thus, Dematerialism is a much more profound theory than I have formerly taken credit for.  It is supposed to send Man on a path toward perfection by eliminating every significant human imperfection.  “Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”  The material regarding the Minimal Proper Religion in Chapter 1 of On the Preservation of Species is perhaps more religious and less secular in nature than I thought it was when I wrote it.  Next, read the journal entry for today, June 1, 2006, below.

 May 28, 2006.  Old entries in What’s New

●    The journal entry for February 5th describes a new essay on human nature that has already sparked a good deal of criticism.  My critics believe that evolutionary psychology provides irrefragable evidence that, regardless of any moral consideration, our propensity to acquire resources in as great excess as possible - which is a hard-wired adaptation that arose during the Pleistocene, our Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, due to its usefulness for survival - cannot be suppressed in any manner whatever.  I believe that it can be transcended through persuasion, education, indoctrination, diversion, and/or coercion.  It would not be important except that the fate of the human race (extinction or not) depends upon who is right.

●    The basic ideas of dematerialism can be appreciated most easily if the reader thinks of materialism simply as buying and selling.  (Most people do not appreciate philosophical rigor.)  Buying and selling began ‘recently’ during Man’s evolution.  Animals do not buy and sell although chimps can be taught to buy and sell just as we are taught to do so.  Clearly trade is consistent with other cognitive adaptations.  Nevertheless, none of David Delaney’s four ‘causes’ of Overshoot can occur if buying and selling are excluded from the economy by laws enacted democratically.  Delaney’s four reasons why economies need to expand constitute Addendum 2 of my essay “On Capitalism”.

●    Lately, I have tried to sharpen the dialectic in the ongoing debate between Peakers and Doomers.  Peakers are those who see the necessity for political change in the wake of Peak Oil, which is something that they believe in, to avoid a massive Dieoff of a large proportion of the human race.  Peakers who are not Doomers believe that the probability of such a change varies between infinitesimally close to zero and certainty.  (A number that is infinitesimally close to zero can be a small as you please, but it cannot be zero itself.)  Doomers believe that the probability of such political change as will prevent Dieoff is precisely zero; therefore, Dieoff is inevitable.

This led to an argument with Ron Patterson, which, with his permission, is available at http://dematerialism.net/mythofsustainability.htm; and, in addition, in the files section at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_dieoff_QA/.  To supplement this verbatim transcription, I have gathered some material from my usually quiet blog at http://dematerialism.blogspot.com in http://dematerialism.net/MaterialismCausesOvershoot.htm that concludes with some remarks concerning the ability of Pleistocene Man to initiate political change that subverts the maladaptive tendencies in his evolved psychology, which we refer to as Human Nature, a large slate of characteristics that all men share in common.  This compendium is also available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_dieoff_QA/.  Also, please see The Dematerialist’s Journal below.

   The domain http://dematerialism.net/ has been up and running for a few days now.  Visitors to http://web.wt.net/~twayburn/ will be re-directed automatically to the new domain.  I will continue to enjoy back-up at http://www.justpassinthru.com/wayburn/ and http://faithfact.com/tom/ courtesy of Steve King and Jay Hanson.  If a hyperlink tries to send you back to web.wt.net, please replace the “web.wt.net/~twayburn” portion of the broken URL with “dematerialism.net” before pasting the URL into your browser’s address window.

Also, if anyone else is willing to host the book, I would be most appreciative.  I made only a feeble attempt to publish the book through regular channels a year or so ago.  I do not believe any possible advantages of such publication could outweigh the disadvantages of the copyright as well as the normal difficulties of publishing a first book, but I could be wrong.

May 12, 2005.  On the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario

Currently, this paper is under review.

April 16, 2005.  More Work on the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario

My current work on population and energy that resulted from various responses to the off-hand remarks I made on January 29-31, 2005 (below) is a continuation of the work I had been doing on March 1, 2005 (below).  I shall produce the results on this page whenever they are ready.  Perhaps it is worth saying now that (clearly) a positive rate of growth (in energy consumption per capita and population) sufficiently close to zero can be sustained until any given future time.  That is, if you give me a time in the future (a million years, say), I can find a positive rate of growth sufficiently small that it can be sustained until that time other factors not intervening (ten to the minus 23rd power fractional increase per year, say).  On the other hand, no matter how short a period of time is given, a rate of growth can be found that will make further growth infeasible – whether or not such a rate of growth is attainable.  These are simple facts of arithmetic and are not open to political debate.

March 7, 2005.  Letter to John Kaminsky concerning Peak Abiotic Oil

Reprise

Yesterday, you wrote:  "Gentlemen:  I'd be interested in your feedback on Dave MacGowan's new piece.  http://www.rense.com/general63/staline.htm.  Best wishes, John Kaminsky,"  to which I replied:

I have never been comfortable with the idea that so-called fossil-fuel actually came from dead organisms.  I call it fossil-fuel because most people know what I'm talking about when I use the term.  If you remember, I was prefacing it always with "so-called" for awhile; but, though more accurate, it seemed a little too much.  I have no idea where [oil] comes from. 

In any case, it is not the case that it is not finite.  Even if it is being generated continuously deep within Earth, it is being generated from Earth, which is of known size and weight - both somewhat less than infinity, regardless of the units of measurement employed:-)

 A number of circumstances might obtain:

 1. It is generated rapidly and the process by which it is generated is hastened by the removal of product, in which case we had better start worrying about the absence of something that we are leaving behind.  In Chapter 2 of my book, I discuss some of the ramifications of what I called "the horrifying plentiful-energy scenario".

 2.  It is generated slowly, but there is a deep storehouse that is very large.

 In either of the above cases diffusion from a large, deep storehouse might be the rate-controlling step.  The deep storehouse might be forever inaccessible - except under its own terms - sort of like geothermal.

3.      It is generated slowly and the storehouse is not much bigger than Western analysts expect, in which case we are back at Peak Oil.

I must confess I expect this is the most likely case; however, in any case, I can take a stab at estimating the arrival of Peak Abiotic Oil.  (Frankly, I like the locution Peak Oil to represent finiteness in a supply the rate of consumption of which is most likely to follow a bell-shaped curve, whereas I employ the term Maximum Wind to indicate that wind power is limited by the finiteness of the surface area of Earth and the maximum rate at which energy is dissipated by the weather.)

I made copious notes in the margin of the paper and I looked up a paper by Kenney http://www.gasresources.net/ThrmcCnstrnts.htm, so I have a lot to say …

 Data

Total mass of carbon in Earth:  7.5E19 kg

http://encarta.msn.com/text_761577017_1/carbon.html

Average fraction carbon in crude oil:  0.45   (Computed from (encarta.msn.com) fact that hydrocarbon molecules in crude oil have 5-25 carbon atoms, n, where carbon fraction is n/(2n+2).) 

Number of kgs of coal formed for each kg of crude oil according to Kenney theory:  8 kgs coal per kg oil

http://www.gasresources.net/ThrmcCnstrnts.htm

Density of crude oil:  0.0073 barrels/kg

Rate of increase of crude oil demand: 0.019

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/oea/index.html  Table A20

World oil production 2003:  79.37 bbls/day

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/oea/index.html  Table A20

Calculation of Peak Abiotic Oil

Maximum volume of abiotic oil, R, assuming all carbon that can be converted to oil will be converted to oil on demand (or faster):

R = 0.0073 bbls/kg oil*7.5E19 kg carbon * (1/8.45) kg oil/kg carbon = 64.793E15 barrels of oil

Time before Peak Abiotic Oil, T (far-fetched maximum):

79.37 bbls/day *365.25 days/yr *(1/0.019 per year)[exp(0.019T) - 1] = 0.5 * 64.793E15 bbls, thus

T = (1/0.019) years * LN[(0.019*0.5*64.793E15)/(79.37*365.25)] = 1251.5 years.

Thus, Peak Abiotic Oil will come at the latest by 3255 AD as the DOE datum is for 2003.

To put this in historical (not geological nor, Heaven forbid, astronomical) context, 1251 years ago it was 754 AD during which year Pepin was the King of the Franks.  Pope Stephen II sanctified him both as a king and as king of the Frankish Church.  Pepin founded the Carolingian Dynasty.  Also, in the same year with the death of Abu al-Abbas, al-Mansur became his successor.  Al-Mansur swiftly eliminated all threats to his rule and extended the power of the Abbasid Caliphate.

 The human family today is not much different from what it was then; moreover, in one and a quarter more millennia, it is doubtful that the character of man will have changed much from what it is now.  Therefore, it is not too early to begin a rational power-down from a consumption and growth society based upon fear and greed as suggested by me in numerous essays at http://dematerialism.net/ and by many others more worthy and distinguished than me.

I believe I will hold additional remarks in abatement as I await the participation of others in this stimulating discussion among friends, allies, colleagues, comrades, and, perhaps, a detractor or two.

 March 1, 2005.  Spreadsheet calculations for the Apollo Alliance Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario

Lately, I have been trying to make an accurate and refined version of the journal entries for January 29-31, 2005 (below), which have way too many minor errors that, at least, do not alter the outcome.  This project has taken me almost the entire month of February; however, I have gained a new appreciation for the power of spreadsheets, which are beginning to play an increasing role in my work ever since I received the population calculations from Peter D. Johnson of the US Census Bureau, International Programs Center, hyperlinked to the January 1, 2005, journal entry.  I will provide a detailed technical version of these Conservation-within-Capitalism calculations quite soon (for technical review); and, a little later, I will do my best to make a ‘popularized’ version for non-technical people who may wish to understand my conclusions assuming I have made no fatal mistakes.

I have produced a rather large number of case studies.  The latest version <http://dematerialism.net/CwC> includes a number of refinements and some concessions to oil imports, for example; and I can massage it further.  I had better save my explanations for the write-up.  When all questions have been resolved – and I am certain that I have been as fair as possible to the very progressive Apollo Alliance humanistic socialists (sic) –  then I will take my best shot at a popularization of it.  Please notice the bottom line:  22,887 nuclear power installations (NPI) of 1000 MW(e) each, which, taken together, would cover 10,728 square miles of US land area exclusive of mountains, earthquake zones, etc.  This redounds to a whopping 510.67 square miles for NYC alone, i.e., a square 22.6 miles on a side!

I would like to suggest that wind and solar have very limited prospects, cf., Pimentel, Weisz, and Trainer:  I am using the Pimentel et al. figure of 45.7 quads (coal equivalents) for Maximum Renewable.  (I use the term emquad for one quad of coal equivalent eMergy.)  The power densities for wind, solar, and nuclear (resp.) are 0.000045193, 0.0011, and 0.012245 emquads/square kilometer (resp).  You can see from the spreadsheet that even nuclear will be very hard pressed to keep up with demand in capitalist Amerika.  Also, you can see how pitiful Maximum Renewables is.  Yet, it will take a huge effort to reach even that; so, it makes sense to encourage those who are making every effort to promote Renewables - especially if we are hoping for a soft-energy, Earth-as-a-garden, anarcho-communist future for spiritually re-born Americans (living in decentralized eco-communities without borders in the Former United States (FUS)).

February 12, 2005.  Theology

In the beginning was the word and the word was God.  Logic begins with the word and the word begins with logic.  Thus, logic is what is meant by ‘the word’.  Not the word uttered by a parrot in imitation of a reasoning man, but the word as a tool of rational thought, especially as an investigative tool in a universe larger and more wonderful than the Universe we call The World.  I refer to another world, the world of Platonic Ideals, the world in which logic resides as does every perfect thing that exists.  Thus, God is in his Heaven and all is well.  The World in which man walks, talks, and breathes may be ‘a vale of misery and woe’, but the world of the Ideals is perfect, and it is the world behind everything that we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, taste, smell, and touch.

Materialism is a very bad thing, by which I mean it is something of which I do not approve and of which all of us are ashamed at least in some parts of our beings.  But, the congruence of  the beautiful, the practical, and the reasonable is perfect.  The logic of the relationships between materialism, tyranny, geophagy, and falsity is perfect.  The concrete is horrible, but the abstract is sublime.

I am old.  I often contemplate death and the day of my own death.  Some day soon, I would like to discuss what I think happens on the last day.

January 31, 2005.  More on Windpower

It is only a matter of time before a proponent of wind energy argues that placing a limit upon the contribution of wind energy to the 2050 energy budget is absurd and that the ramp-up rate can be very large as wind power tripled in five years.  Let us grant that the ramp-up rate can be as large as 22%.  Further, let us suppose that we could harvest 0.8 TW from the wind.  This amount of wind power is worth 2.4 TW of coal power.  According to Ted Trainer of the University of New South Wales, a wind power installation of 1000 MW with a capacity factor of 0.8 requires 1570 square kilometers (km2).  Thus, to generate 0.8 TW, we would need about 1.57 million square kilometers – about 17% of the land area of the United States, which is about 9.16 million km2.  See http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D89.RE.Ch.4.Wind.html.

Perhaps, the short fall could be made up with other forms of renewable energy such as bio-diesel and passive solar, which will certainly play a role, but I have already staked my reputation within the Green Party Peak-Oil Study Group of Harris County on the proposition that it cannot be.

January 30, 2005.  On Meeting the Apollo Alliance Ten-Point-Program Goals with Windpower

Let us see how much windpower we would need to produce 2.4 terawatts of renewable energy.  From the Danish Windpower study referred to in the ancillary essays hyperlinked below, we find that an average of 60 kilowatts power can be obtained in a windpower installation (WPI) that costs 600,000 USD.  Thus, the installation cost is 10,000 USD/kilowatt, the total cost is 24 trillion USD, and we will need to construct 40 million WPIs over a 45 year period at a cost of more than one-half trillion USD/year, which is about 5% of the US GDP and approximately equal to our defense budget.  Moreover, we shall need an average of about seven WPIs per square mile.  Not all areas of the country are suitable for windpower, therefore we would have a large number of  high intensity wind farms.  This is not expected to be feasible.  Nevertheless, much more research should be done.

January 29, 2005.  On the Conservation-with-Capitalism Scenario

Introduction

On Friday, January 21, 2005,  Charles Mauch of the Green Party Peak-Oil Study Group (GPPOSG) wrote, “We [the GPPOSG]  need to be aware of the Apollo Alliance – a group with widely diversified membership that has developed a plan to achieve energy independence within a decade.  Their statement of purpose, 10 primary goals, list of organizers and supporters, etc can be found at:  http://www.apolloalliance.org/ .”

Here is the Ten-Point Plan offered by the Apollo Alliance:

1. Promote Advanced Technology & Hybrid Cars: Begin today to provide incentives for converting domestic assembly lines to manufacture highly efficient cars, transitioning the fleet to American made advanced technology vehicles, increasing consumer choice and strengthening the US auto industry.

2. Invest In More Efficient Factories: Make innovative use of the tax code and economic development systems to promote more efficient and profitable manufacturing while saving energy through environmental retrofits, improved boiler operations, and industrial cogeneration of electricity, retaining jobs by investing in plants and workers.

3. Encourage High Performance Building: Increase investment in construction of “green buildings” and energy efficient homes and offices through innovative financing and incentives, improved building operations, and updated codes and standards, helping working families, businesses, and government realize substantial cost savings.

4. Increase Use of Energy Efficient Appliances: Drive a new generation of highly efficient manufactured goods into widespread use, without driving jobs overseas, by linking higher energy standards to consumer and manufacturing incentives that increase demand for new durable goods and increase investment in US factories.

5. Modernize Electrical Infrastructure: Deploy the best available technology like scrubbers to existing plants, protecting jobs and the environment; research new technology to capture and sequester carbon and improve transmission for distributed renewable generation.

6. Expand Renewable Energy Development: Diversify energy sources by promoting existing technologies in solar, biomass and wind while setting ambitious but achievable goals for increasing renewable generation, and promoting state and local policy innovations that link clean energy and jobs.

7. Improve Transportation Options: Increase mobility, job access, and transportation choice by investing in effective multimodal networks including bicycle, local bus and rail transit, regional high-speed rail and  magnetic levitation rail projects.

8.  Reinvest In Smart Urban Growth: Revitalize urban centers to promote strong cities and good jobs, by rebuilding and upgrading local infrastructure including road maintenance, bridge repair, and water and waste water systems, and by expanding redevelopment of idled urban “brownfield” lands, and by improving metropolitan planning and governance.

9. Plan for A Hydrogen Future: Invest in long term research & development of hydrogen fuel cell technology, and deploy the infrastructure to support hydrogen powered cars and distributed electricity generation using stationary fuel cells, to create jobs in the industries of the future.

10. Preserve Regulatory Protections: Encourage balanced growth and investment through regulation that ensures energy diversity and system reliability, that protects workers and the environment, that rewards consumers, and that establishes a fair framework for emerging technologies.

This is quite typical of what I have chosen to call the conservation-with-capitalism scenario.  On the RunningOnEmpty2 list server, a number of  participants have pointed out that such a scenario could be harmful in the long run because it would allow the human population to grow even further beyond the natural carrying capacity of Earth than it has done already during the Industrial Era thus leading to a much greater Die-Off by perhaps billions of people.  For my part it occurred to me that the Ten Point Plan and other such plans offer an opportunity to show a contradiction in Capitalism itself by the well-known logical process, reductio ad absurdum.  A first pass at this was done in the posting “Reductio ad Absurdum”.  [The following section is taken from “The Proposition that Conservation Is a Bad Thing as an Example of  Reductio ad Absurdum”.

Note (12-23-04).  Assuming that we continue with an American-style capitalist economy with markets for everything and business as usual, conservation measures within that framework will allow circumstances to get worse for a larger population such that the Die-Off will be more catastrophic when it does come than if we had made no effort whatsoever to conserve and, therefore, precipitated a collapse earlier.  Thus, conservation is the greater evil.

This counter-intuitive deduction, i.e., that conservation is a bad thing, is a classic example of reductio ad absurdum.  But, what was the false premise that has been disproved?  It is simply what I and many others on this forum have been trying to get the rest of you not to believe, namely, that society can continue to support capitalist-style market economies.  Let me say it again:  Since the conclusion that conservation is harmful is absurd, the (tacit) premise that we can continue to support capitalism and market-style economies is false.  This is discussed in my book On the Preservation of Species where all such economies are treated simultaneously under the rubric materialism.

Materialism is responsible for (1) environmental destruction, including overpopulation, urbanization, and industrialism, (2) tyranny, and (3) authoritarian falsity such as the 60-year-old mass propaganda attack upon communism and anarchy that has most of us still believing that we cannot replace the failed status quo with libertarian communism – even though revolutions have been achieved frequently in the past with much less provocation and much poorer alternatives offered by the revolutionaries.  In my book, totalitarian communism is just as unacceptable as libertarian capitalism.

I claimed that the unspoken premise that logically precedes this deduction is that materialism as defined by me (and others, I hope) continues indefinitely into the post-Peak-Oil future.  Currently, materialism manifests itself in American-style capitalism.  Bruce Stephenson presented us with two realistic cases:  The first was the no-conservation case.  That ended in disaster.  The second case was essentially the conservation-within-capitalism model wherein population continues to grow for materialistic reasons as outlined in a new draft of Chapter 9 of On the Preservation of Species.  Let me excise the relevant portion of that chapter and post it below.  Thus, the retention of materialism led to disaster in either case.  The following section is excised from Chapter 9 of On the Preservation of Species:

Violations of the are termed simply tyranny.  Even excessive procreation, i.e., more than one child per person, is taken to be a form of tyranny (T) because in Chapter 3 we proved that usurping an unfair share of the carrying capacity of the earth with one’s own progeny imposes upon the freedom of human social links that do not increase the population unfairly; but the term is supposed to refer primarily to man's domination of man.

Five motives for excessive procreation are (i) narcissism, (ii) fear that not all will live, (iii) cheap labor to promote family wealth, (iv) hope for support in old age, and (v) to spread rapidly a racial plurality, a religion, ideology, culture, or general system of “family values”, often superstitions and myths, to which the violator of the Token Theorem is committed, dedicated, or enthralled – or at least wishes others to be committed, dedicated, or enthralled.  Accidental pregnancies will be treated as though they were simply another form of inadvertent environmental destruction.  Presumably, inadvertent pregnancies can be eliminated by a combination of education, indoctrination, and science all unfettered by superstition.  [Note.  When a beloved child dies the parent’s grief is not diminished by the survival of another child, therefore the motive for having more children to ensure against such a tragedy may be assumed to be narcissistic.]

A good case can be made that multiple pregnancies in women can be traced to the traditional domination of women by men that gave rise to the Feminist Movement.  This is precisely the sort of domination that would not have arisen in a non-materialistic world, however many people will claim that materialism follows from competition for desirable sex partners rather than the reverse.  Even though women very recently began to play more prominent roles in the societies of “developed” countries, this should not be construed as the triumph of Feminism in its earlier manifestations.  It is easy to see that the roles played by dominant women nowadays are indicative of exactly the same trends toward materialism that (true) Feminism opposed.  Likewise, many of the excess pregnancies, including accidental pregnancies, identified as geophagy and tyranny above may still be laid at the feet of man’s traditional domination of women and, in turn, materialism.  Although, in some cases, women themselves may be convinced of the advisability of multiple pregnancies, the incentive to so convince them against their best interests could not exist and be effective outside of  a materialistic setting.  This can be discussed on a case-by-case basis.  [End of material from Chapter 9 of On the Preservation of Species.]

Note.  In a non-materialistic world, women who do not wish to enjoy more than one pregnancy cannot be forced or cajoled into multiple pregnancies.  Since materialism is truly the only thing preventing women from being free, especially free from economic constraints, women's liberation can be achieved only by dematerialism – no matter what else it's called. 

Narcissism and superstition play a role that they would not play except for the intrusion of vast energetically-costly, technologically-sophisticated systems of propaganda machinery, supported by tyranny, the purpose of which is to inculcate the general acceptance of domination and hierarchy in the minds of almost all people.  This sort of manufactured consent could not exist without materialism nor would it be necessary.  None of the other causes of excessive procreation would be necessary in a non-materialistic world nor could they be effective.

Since our difficulties have come from consuming resources faster than they can be renewed, the notion that conservation is bad is patently absurd.  [Admittedly, this is the only sentence that addresses Bruce Stephenson’s complaint directly, but I wish to resolve my personal doubts as to whether the tacit premise was indeed continued materialism; and, presumably, if I can show that, in a non-materialistic setting, conservation, along with appropriate educational propaganda concerning childbirth, can achieve a soft landing, the absurdity of the notion that conservation is bad will have been corroborated.]  Bruce’s two cases bear that out.  But, is it possible to negotiate a soft landing in the dematerialist scenario  http://dematerialism.net/Chapter 11.html?

[End of section taken from Reductio Ad Absurdum]

The answer to that question in the affirmative may be found in “Energy in a Natural Economy”.  To be honest, it should be admitted that between the Ten-Point Plan and the complete abandonment of market systems and the adoption of libertarian communism through dematerialism there is much middle ground.  Nevertheless, the Apollo Alliance has provided us with concrete measures from which we can make a projection into the future.  Mr. Mauch claims that complete energy independence is to be achieved in ten years.  I did not see that claim on the Apollo Alliance website, therefore I will make computations for the more realistic period of 45 years.

Energy and Population in 2050

Ground Rules

Certainly, we need research to determine if solar and bio-mass are net energy providers or net energy consumers.  Windpower is a net energy provider as far as we can tell, although excellent arguments can be given to argue the opposite case.  Suppose, however, that, with suitable investment, energy from renewables can be ramped up to its maximum limit (and it has a maximum limit) at the rate of 3% per year.  The maximum limit of renewables might be the ratio of the area of the US to the land area of the globe times 13 terawatts., where 10 terawatts is more realistic.

 Probably, the Apollo Alliance people are unaware of limits on renewables.  See Chapter 2 of On the Preservation of Species at  http://dematerialism.net/Chapter%202.html.  Let us suppose that we are at Peak Oil now and our petroleum from all sources will diminish at the rate of 3% per year. Now, we are to reduce dependence on foreign oil and make ourselves safer with respect to foreign reprisals to American predatory foreign policies.  Therefore, we must reduce the fraction of the world energy budget that we appropriate unto ourselves.  The fundamental principle of good neighborliness is to make certain that wealth flows always from richer toward poorer – not the reverse.

 Further, since we claim that we shall reduce our environmental impact, probably we should reduce our use of coal.  Let us suppose instead that we develop carbon sequestration technologies quickly, and we are able to increase coal production sufficiently to offset the additional energetic costs of sequestration.  We might bury our coal-to-electrical power plants and bring out of the ground electrical power for ‘high-temperature’ super-conduction to remote facilities and carbon dioxide ready to pipeline cheaply to oil production facilities for enhanced recovery and sequestration.  Therefore, let us suppose we can retain without undue environmental impact the share of our energy budget currently supplied by coal.

Nothing is said in the Ten Points about reducing the fertility rate or slowing immigration;  and, with the supposed improved working conditions and more jobs, we can expect immigration to increase.  Thus, our population will continue to increase.  We must make energetically expensive capital investments in order to install conservation without shrinkage in the quality of life.  Far from being less expensive, homes with windmills and/or solar panels will be much more expensive - as The Alliance is not contemplating people living in earth homes, underground homes, adobe homes, caves or other departures from middle-class values.

 Further, we are to build more housing in this “conservation + capitalism” model, which shows that we shall do nothing about the immigration rate or the total fertility rate.  (New housing starts are driven by such things.)  The current situation in the US is expressed in the journal entries of 9-9-04, 9-10-04, and 1-1-05.  Let us project a few numbers into the future.  Population estimates for 2050 are taken from the US Census Bureau, International Population Center at http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html.  The US population in 2050 is projected to be 420 million, an increase of 125 million, or 42.4%.

Energy Supply

For the complete breakdown of our current energy budget, see http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/pages/sec1.pdf .

Coal:  22.31 quads assuming we can reduce the environmental impact of coal sufficiently as discussed above.

Gas:  none due to exhaustion.

NGPL: none

Nuclear:  7.97 exp{0.01 times 45} = 12.50 quads

Other: 4.82 quads (unchanged.  It includes hydroelectric, geothermal, etc.)

Petroleum (domestic only to avoid war): 12.15 exp{-0.03 times 45} = 3.15 quads

Renewable (tentative):  6.15 exp{0.03 times 45} = 23.72 quads or 0.81 terawatts (TW), whereas

Peak renewable:  [5.678555 million square miles /  (0.30 habitable fraction times 196.935 million sq. miles)] times 13 TW = 1.25 TW, which is greater than energy from renewables ramped up at the rate of 3% per year.  To make things interesting, let's use the peak-renewables figure, which corresponds to a slightly faster ramp-up rate, however imagine what these calculations would look like for the year 2100 if nothing were done to slow population growth until the US had 10% of the world's population.  Thus, the new figure for renewables is:

Renewables (final):  36.75 quads or 1.25 TW:

The total energy available in 2050, then,  is

Coal: 22.31

Nuclear: 12.50

Other: 4.82

Oil: 3.15

Renewables: 36.75

----------------------

Total energy supply (2050):  79.53 quads or 2.704 TW or 6.44 kilowatts/capita

Energy Demand

To calculate the additional energy consumption associated with the operation of green industrial facilities to be constructed in the United States to manufacture goods that are currently imported, I shall make use of a simple device:  In 2003, the energy budget of China was 49.49 quads, whilst the GDP was 1.4099 trillion USD, which gives (0.034 trillion watt-years/quad times 49.49 quads) divided by 1.4099 trillion USD = 1.194 watt-years/USD; whereas the comparable figures for the US, namely, 98.16 quads and 10.8816 trillion USD, give 0.307 watt-years/USD.  Since goods made in China incorporate much more energy per USD, we should expect US prices to exceed the price of comparable goods manufactured in China by a factor of 3.9.  Let us compare the price of a piece of rolling luggage ($87) imported from China to the cost of an American-made piece of luggage ($400) of approximately the same intrinsic value.  The American price exceeds the price of the import by a factor of  4.6, which tends to validate our calculations for estimates like this where accuracy is neither expected nor desired.

Currently, China accounts for about 13.35% of our total imports of 1.517 trillion USD; therefore the addition to the US energy budget associated with these imports would be 7.11 quads.  It is understood, then, that the low prices of imports from China do not reflect low embodied energy.  Rather they reflect cheap labor that allows a large part of the revenue from these goods to be used to pay for energy, which in the case of coal, for example, is mined efficiently by hazardous and environmentally destructive methodologies.  Sometimes it’s a good idea to see “what’s on the other end of the fork”.

If we do this calculation for our top fifteen trading partners and add the results, we compute 18.07 quads.  The average ratio of terawatt-years to USD for these fifteen trading partners who account for 75.39% of our imports is 0.537.  Suppose we account for the remaining 24.61% of 1.517 trillion USD by employing this average value of terawatt-years/USD.  We get 5.90 quads for a total of 23.97 quads, which we may multiply by 0.5 to take credit for incredibly green industrial practice, assuming, for the sake of this argument, that such savings in energy consumption are possible.  However, it must be multiplied, also, by 420 million/295 million to account for the increase in the population.  The result is (420/295) times 0.5 times 23.97 = 17.06 quads.

  Let us suppose further that existing domestic industrial facilities (32.52 quads) can be retrofitted so as to consume only 0.8 times 32.52 quads equals 28.42 quads, however the expansion associated with increased population, namely, 125/295 times 32.52 quads (equals 15.05 quads) can be implemented to use only half so much energy, namely, 7.53 quads.  Finally, for 2005, we have:

Industrial:  17.06 + 28.42 + 7.53 = 53.01 quads.

Residential:  0.80 times 21.63 quads + 0.5 times [125 million new souls / 295 million souls] times 21.63 quads = 21.88 quads assuming old homes can be retrofitted to use 80% of current energy and new homes will use only half as much energy.  We see that immigration and childbirth increase residential energy use even with radical conservation measures short of living in primitive housing.

Transportation: 0.5 times (420/295) times 26.86 = 19.12 quads, since nearly all transportation will have had to be replaced with green transportation and we are assuming a fantastic savings of 50% even though the increased population might have to commute longer distances per capita and an enormous energetic cost of conversion will have to be amortized somehow.

Commercial:  0.8 times (420/295) times 17.55 = 20.00 quads as commerce is carried on without melting steel or running pumps, compressors, and powerful engines other than those used for transportation, which are accounted for above.

Total:  53.01 + 21.88 + 19.12 + 20.00 = 114.01 quads or 3.88 TW or 9.24 kilowatts/capita.

 Conclusions

Thus, we need 9.24 kilowatts/capita, which amounts to a savings of 16% from our current per capita budget; however, the Earth can supply only 6.44 kilowatts/capita because it is finite and 48% of that will disappear eventually.  Clearly, then, the Apollo Alliance scenario is infeasible, since it requires more energy than the world can supply, QED.

See "Energy in a Natural Economy" at http://dematerialism.net/ne.htm where I have estimated roughly how much energy can be saved by abandoning market economics through dematerialism, which is described in Chapter 11 of my book, On the Preservation of Species.  Other essays hyperlinked to my website show additional compelling computations concerning reduction of the population through one live birth per female, restricting certain forms of immigration (predatory immigrants) especially by ameliorating our foreign policy, however world migration is truly only harmful in a materialistic world with finite energy supplies.  (The website below, trans4mind.com, seems to have the right idea; namely, territorial boundaries are and have been obsolete, hence my referral to the Former United States, abbrev. FUS.  See Chapter 11 http://web.wt.net/~twayburn/POS.html for more on Prof. Jorge Gabitto's great idea about how national boundaries have been drawn in precisely the ecologically wrong places, namely, at rivers rather than mountain tops.) 

 [Note: I have encountered a useful website during this exercise, namely, http://www.trans4mind.com/global/rightway.html .  Another useful website is http://www.english.agava.ru/country/usa-econ.htm from Russia where economic planning is not exactly a new idea

One more quick calculation:  Our shortfall in energy is 34.48 quads.  Suppose we make it up with renewables for a total of  71.23 quads or 2.4 TW.  That would require a ramp-up rate of 5.43% – greater than the 3% generally conceded to be the best we can do.  Moreover,  it exceeds Peak Renewable (computed by Wolf Hafele, see Chapter 2) by a factor of about 2.  Suppose the world could produce energy from renewables proportional to land area.  Then the world would have over 25 terawatts of renewable energy,  whereas the energy captured by photosynthesis is only 100 TW approximately.  Do you suppose we could harvest 25% of the solar radiation captured by photosynthesis without exterminating many, many animal species?  My book is called On the Preservation of Species for a reason – not On the Preservation of Just the Human Race, which is truly impossible.  On the other hand, suppose we made up the shortfall with imported oil.  We would need to import 37.63 quads or 1.28 TW out of a world supply that is likely to be 6.047exp{-0.03 times 45} = 1.57 TW, i.e., 81.5% of the world's oil, which looks like what we are trying to do.  But, that's a prescription for The Last Man Standing.

Epilogue

The 10-point plan will not work.  It could even be a plan to spread disinformation and thereby prolong the hopeless growth economy.  Or, it could be a plan to make money for its sponsors.  I don't need to question motives since I know it cannot possibly succeed (to achieve energy independence in a growth scenario) even though some of the points, e.g., renewable energy research, will allow certain improvements and should be carried out probably.

I have used the population equation, P2 = P1 times e, the Naperian base to the natural logarithms (<inv> <ln> on my calculator) raised to the power r, yearly rate, times t, time in years; i.e., P2 = P1 exp{rt} = P1 inverse_ln{rt}..  This is also the compound interest formula for interest compounded continuously.  It is simply amazing how accurately compounding continuously approximates compounding daily.  One can use this formula for many things, so it wouldn't hurt to learn it.  See

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/edu/dees/V1003/lectures/population/ or http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html .

Also, I toss in for nothing this article on King George (Bush):  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7817.htm by Uri Avnery - from Israel, I think.

January 10-14, 2005.  More on Literary Taste

I think it might be amusing to print some of the less complimentary replies to my postings.  Paul Mill responded to the posting of January 8th (below) with the following:

You might send that letter to your publisher before he peruses your next manuscript.  Thus humbled, he'll then publish whatever you send him without benefit of editing.

Yeah, right.

Intellectual hubris is not enough to inspire respect, whether from your publisher or your potential readers.  Toadyism will not make a mediocre book great.  Your gentle readers are well-equipped to judge for themselves whether an author has put his idea in coherent form, and whether that idea is valid in itself.  They are not disciples looking for a messiah to lead them.  Your missive and Bennett's tome were aimed at the uncritical, the intellectually lazy, and toadies-in-waiting.

Irish revolutionary James Connolly said, “The great only appear great because we are on our knees.  Stand up.”  True genius is the ability to take a good idea and put it into usable form.  Einstein is more famous than Bennett not only for the quality of his work, but also because he could take a concept from the boffin’s blackboard and translate it into the language of the people, whose responsibility as citizens is to be informed about relevant concepts.

Paul in southern Oregon

Prospector, poet, raconteur

I replied as follows:

Thanks for your reply.  Did you check out the two links?  I don't think one can compare Einstein to Bennett and Lamb easily, but what I am talking about is ‘suspending disbelief’.  We all know how comforting it is to believe one is in ‘good hands’ while actually reading a book; therefore, when I read you, I give you the same respect I would give Einstein, Bennett, or Lamb – for the period during which I am reading, after which, of course, my critical faculties may render a judgment.

Let me relate an experience:  I was listening to an unknown jazz saxophone player.  I was put off by what he was playing initially; but, as an experiment, I said to myself, “Why not assume he is a genius?”  As soon as I did that, I began to understand what he was doing; and, before he had finished his solo, I thought that he was, indeed, a genius.  The main point is not whether he was a genius or not but that I truly ‘got something’ out of his playing:  If nothing else, enjoyment.  Now, I do that always.

No one aspires to poetry unless he, himself, believes he (or she) is a ‘great person’.  Send me something to read – the URL at least.

Also, I wondered if I were a toady because I think so much of Bennett and Lamb or if I seem to expect my readers to be toadies.  I don’t see what is to be gained by ‘sucking up’ to dead poets, and I have never addressed myself to anyone but equals.  I hope I do not talk down to readers.  On the contrary, I have rather high expectations of them.  [I do not see personal comments like these on most websites.  Do you think they should be excluded?]

Paul’s reply to my reply is funny and true probably:

Have you ever read the Patriot Act?  Patriot Act II?  Did you approach it "in the position of the mental inferior, aware of mental inferiority, humbly stripping off all conceit, anxious to rise out of that inferiority.  Recollect that we always regard as quite hopeless the mental inferior who does not suspect his own inferiority.  Our attitude towards (the Neo-Cons) must be: “(Dick Cheney is) a greater man than I am, cleverer, sharper, subtler, finer, intellectually more powerful, and with keener eyes for beauty.  I must brace myself to follow his lead.”  I’m sure the Neo-Cons would appreciate such an attitude from us share-croppers.  Would you allow yourself to become a government-supremacist as a result?  Or would you let legitimately-acquired suspicion warn you away?

You warned me away from Bennett and Lamb by instructing me to prostrate myself in the position of a mental inferior as I read it.  That’s what I would have to do to watch a full 30 minutes of Jerry Springer.  If you had said to have my mind revved up to full horsepower, then I might have been challenged.

There is a joke about a newly-deceased who suddenly finds himself standing before God on his throne.  He immediately prostrates himself, babbling all the hosannas and praises he can think of.  The hand of Creation moves to the ‘reject’ lever, the floor opens beneath the supplicant and he plunges into the lake of fire.  Then the all-powerful voice of God booms, “What’s a fellow got to do to get some intelligent conversation around here?”

Probably not on topic, but your description of conversation with mental inferiors reminded me of something I’ve observed.  I haven’t reduced it to prose yet, so you are my premier audience.  Imagine a person so limited and narrow of scope that he can converse only with those who agree completely with him.  He will not speak with anyone who is different in education or experience.  He will brook no idea that conflicts with opinions handed him by his mental peers, from which he dare not deviate on pain of ostracism and ridicule.

A. This person is mentally inferior, or...

B. This person is a highly-respected member of the scientific peer-review establishment.

C. Could be either.

From your earlier mention of locking horns with the scientific community, I would imagine that you've had experience with B. above.

To which I replied:

Well, Paul, you've got me there.  I believe I shall retract my previous posting and re-issue it in a few days in an altered form after I have given the matter thorough consideration instead of shooting off the first thing that jumps into my head.  Now, let me say quite definitely, "You were right and I was wrong."  Thank you for making me think.

Now for the matter of ‘suspending disbelief’ in the theatre (or at a movie):  I think you will agree that it will not do to say, “I don't believe that guy is Norman Bates, a psychopathic killer.  That's Anthony Perkins, a pretty darn good actor.  He wouldn't hurt a fly, although I don't think I shall be going mountain climbing with him any time soon.”  That's what I mean by ‘suspending disbelief’, and it would not apply to reading the Patriot Act.

I won't go on to discuss what else it might apply to, but I think you should check out "Dream Children, A Reverie" by Charles Lamb.  It takes about 3 minutes to read and, probably, you'll recognize Lamb's greatness.

The question remains whether or not to issue a retraction.  I need to calm people's fears about the putative Trojan Horse virus, which is completely harmless; and I need to post your funny rebuttal on my website.  I think I will post a retraction on the website too.  I was wrong, but Bennett is not, I still think.  Try The Card by Arnold Bennett, which is really a very long shaggy-dog story.

January 8, 2005.  On Literary Taste

Suppose that we are reading Arnold Bennett’s famous book Literary Taste, which may be found on-line at http://www.readbookonline.net/title/209/.  In Chapter V, How To Read a Classic, Bennett wishes to introduce us to Charles Lamb thusly:  ‘At this point, kindly put my book down, and read “Dream Children: A Reverie”.  Do not say to yourself that you will read it later, but read it now.  When you have read it, you may proceed to my next paragraph.’  Let us suppose that, obeying Bennett’s command we have just read Charles Lamb’s essay, “Dream Children: A Reverie”, at http://www.angelfire.com/nv/mf/elia1/dream.htm, which we have enjoyed immensely.  In Chapter VII, Wrestling with an Author, we are asked by Bennett what would happen if we should purchase Lamb’s complete works and, after reading for a few hours, find ourselves a little disappointed and bored.  He refers to this as ‘a gulf’ and suggests that

[t]o cross it needs time and needs trouble.  The following considerations may aid.  In the first place, we have to remember that, in coming into the society of the classics in general and of Charles Lamb in particular, we are coming into the society of a mental superior.  What happens usually in such a case?  We can judge by recalling what happens when we are in the society of a mental inferior.  We say things of which he misses the import; we joke, and he does not smile; what makes him laugh loudly seems to us horseplay or childish; he is blind to beauties which ravish us; he is ecstatic over what strikes us as crude; and his profound truths are for us trite commonplaces.  His perceptions are relatively coarse; our perceptions are relatively subtle.  We try to make him understand, to make him see, and if he is aware of his inferiority we may have some success.  But if he is not aware of his inferiority, we soon hold our tongues and leave him alone in his self-satisfaction, convinced that there is nothing to be done with him.  Every one of us has been through this experience with a mental inferior, for there is always a mental inferior handy, just as there is always a being more unhappy than we are. In approaching a classic, the true wisdom is to place ourselves in the position of the mental inferior, aware of mental inferiority, humbly stripping off all conceit, anxious to rise out of that inferiority.  Recollect that we always regard as quite hopeless the mental inferior who does not suspect his own inferiority.  Our attitude towards Lamb must be: “Charles Lamb was a greater man than I am, cleverer, sharper, subtler, finer, intellectually more powerful, and with keener eyes for beauty.  I must brace myself to follow his lead.”  Our attitude must resemble that of one who cocks his ear and listens with all his soul for a distant sound.

Now, what is interesting about this is that, many years ago on the first reading of Bennett’s book, I did not obey him in Chapter V because I had not read Chapter VII.  The reason I searched for Bennett’s words is that I remembered them and thought that they might be good advice to you, mutatis mutandis.  When I encountered Bennett’s command this morning, I obeyed it.  If I had not assumed Arnold Bennett was great, I would not have discovered that Charles Lamb was great.

When I read any book or essay, not just the classics, I assume, for the occasion, that the author is ‘a great person’.  Absolutely, I extend this courtesy to you.  The results are immediate.  By reading you under Bennett’s Strictures always, I find merit in what you write always.  I would appreciate the same consideration when you read me.  Clearly, I am not interested in temporal rewards for my efforts.  If my book is not a classic, it is nothing.  Do not assume that someone you know personally as a mortal man cannot write something great.  Don’t sell yourself short.  [The objection that Bennett’s remarks are not intended for ‘such as we’ is easily answered.]

January 1, 2005, State of the World and the Former United States

Population

According to the International Programs Center, U.S. Bureau of the Census, the total population of the World, projected to 1/2/05 at 10:13:45 GMT (1/2/05 at 5:13:45 AM EST) is 6,410,052,489

According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the resident population of the United States, projected to 1/2/2005 at 5:11:25 AM EST is 295,168,501

In journal entries for December 13, 16 and 23, I reported high results for the time required to reduce the population to one half of its present size if (miraculously) every woman agreed to have no more than one live birth during her lifetime, i.e., if the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) were reduced to one.  Better results were reported by Peter D. Johnson of the US Census Bureau, International Programs Center, who did a simulation using the International Data Base program of which he is an author.  He writes, “This shows the U.S. population dropping to half the 2005 population by about 2128 if the TFR drops to 1.0 immediately or by 2142 if the TFR drops to 1.0 by 2025.  In contrast, the world population would be halved by 2079 if the TFR were immediately cut to 1.0 or by 2094 if the TFR dropped to 1.0 by 2025.  The reason the U.S. takes longer is because of the assumed migration which offsets some of the losses due to the fertility declines.”  He sent figures and data in Excel files.  Four of the figures are reproduced in Johnson Charts.

Note (1-6-05).  Today I used Excel to simulate the US population under the following assumptions: (i) no migration, (ii) from now on everyone dies precisely on his or her 100th birthday, (iii) every woman has her only child in her fifteenth year, which accounts for all childbirth from now on, and (iv) precisely half the people are female (not 51%).  I found the population reduced to just below one-half of today’s population of 295.733 million in 2093.  The longevity and early childbirth conditions give an upper bound on the rationality condition of one live birth per woman and the humanitarian condition of zero infant mortality.  After 25 years, the population reaches 321.517 million due to the low death rates initially; but, after 50 years, the population has diminished to 276.823 million as one child per female begins to be felt and the 95-99-year-old cohort approaches parity with younger cohorts.

Note.  In a non-materialistic world, women who do not wish to enjoy more than one pregnancy cannot be forced or cajoled into multiple pregnancies.  Since materialism is truly the only thing preventing women from being free, especially free from economic constraints, women's liberation can be achieved only by dematerialism – no matter what else it's called.  Other causes of excessive (genocidal) procreation are discussed in Chapter 9 of On the Preservation of Species.

Energy

In governmental circles, energy is often measured in units of a quadrillion British Thermal Units or quads.  In this essay, I shall let the unit quad refer to a rate of energy flow equal to one-quadrillion BTUs per year.  The conversion to units of one-trillion Watts or one terawatt (TW) is achieved by multiplying figures in quads by 0.033 TW / quad.  (Incidentally, the reader may find it useful to convert one million barrels per day of petroleum flow to 0.073 trillion watts or 0.073 terawatts (TW).)  [from “Energy in a Natural Economy”]

For 1998, world use of energy was estimated to be 386.72 quads:  http://www.me.washington.edu/~malte/engr341/class_notes/ch06_add.htmlThis is 386.72 quadrillion BTUs/yr or 12.926 TW.  According to the Annual Energy Review 2003, published by the Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy, the total energy budget for the United States was 98.16 quads, which converts to energy expenditure at the rate of 3.24 TW.  See Energy Diagram.  Thus, world use is not very much more than might be supplied by renewable.  (See Chapter 2 of On the Preservation of Species.)  The big problem is the United States, which, with a population of about 0.295 billion, uses 3.24 TW, i.e., 11.0 kilowatts/capita.  The population of the world is about 6.4 billion.  (See http://www.prb.org/pdf04/worldpophighlights_eng.pdf), which gives a world figure of  2.02 kilowatts/capita.  Even this figure may not be able to be maintained in the wake of Peak Oil.  But, the US figure is five to ten times greater than what is likely to be harvested sustainably – even if the infrastructure were in place, which it is not.

Avoiding Die-Off

With Fossil Fuels

I shall assume that oil production will decrease by 3% per year after Peak Oil.  This is a figure that I have encountered frequently in the literature.  Furthermore, I shall assume that consumption in the United States must decrease proportionately.  I shall neglect Peak Coal, Peak Gas, and Peak Nuclear in this calculation.  Therefore, we may count on 53.19 quads or 1.76 TW from coal, gas, and nuclear during the short term while petroleum dwindles rapidly.  US petroleum production can be expected to follow the law of exponential decay:

Eoil(t) = Eoil(1-1-2005)e-0.03t               Equation 1

where t is time in years, e is the Napierian base to the natural logarithms, Eoil(1.1.2005) is the current US expenditure of energy from petroleum (39.07 quads or 1.29 TW), and Eoil(t) is the post-Peak-Oil consumption as a function of time.  The half-life of petroleum then is the natural log of 0.5 divided by -0.03, which equals 23.1 years.

From Energy Diagram we see that, in the United States, current energy production from renewables is 6.15 quads or 0.203 TW.  We may assume, that renewable energy production will increase at 10% per year (at least until Peak Renewables is reached), which is an estimate from the president of Exxon-Mobil reported in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty2 recently (and he is probably not on our side).  However, based upon the discussion in Chapter 2 of On the Preservation of Species, we should not count on more than 13.0 TW globally from renewables.

Let’s suppose that the US share will not exceed 1.3 TW, i.e., twice our fair share, because renewable energy depends upon the supply of non-renewable energy necessary to create its infrastructure but also upon geography and other factors that are proportional to the size of the country in question.  But, the supply can be ramped up no faster that at the rate of 10% per year.  It is currently 0.203 TW, therefore we will need about 18.6 years to ramp up to 1.3 TW, by which time we cannot expect the US population to be reduced significantly even with a sudden change of heart nationally.  After 18.6 years, we can expect to have about 0.74 TW from petroleum, 1.76 TW from coal, gas, and nuclear, and 1.3 TW from renewables.  Thus, we may expect to have as much as 3.8 TW / 0.295 billion = 12.9 kilowatts/capita up from our current use of about 11 kilowatts/capita.  Even if we attained only 0.65 TW renewable over the next 18.6 years, we might still be able to retain our lavish wasteful lifestyles at 10.7 kilowatts/capita.

If we apply Equation 1 (above) to coal and gas beginning in 2030, after another twenty-five years we would have at most 0.70 TW from coal and gas and 0.29 TW from petroleum, while nuclear might persist at 0.26 TW and perhaps double to 0.52 TW.  By 2055, the population of the US will be about 270 million provided the TFR can be reduced to 1.0, miraculously.  Thus, under a typical green party agenda, Americans might consume as much as (0.70 + 0.29 + 0.52 + 1.3) TW / 0.270 billion = 10.4 kilowatt-hours/capita, which is still quite manageable.  If green policies are not implemented, the population might exceed 400 million by 2055 and per capita energy consumption might have to be reduced to 1.91 TW / 0.4 billion = 4.8 kilowatts/capita, which assumes that renewable energy will grow to 0.4 TW under any circumstances.  We should not expect the burden of this reduction to be shared equally.

Without Fossil Fuels

On the other hand, suppose that in fifty years, say, we have passed Peak Coal and Peak Gas; and, for whatever reasons, we may no longer use fossil fuels.  In this case, we would need to reduce our consumption from our current 11 kilowatts/capita to only 1.82 TW / 0.27 billion = 6.7 kilowatts/capita in a green society.  Otherwise, if population expands predictably, even if nuclear and renewables double, per capita energy would shrink to 0.92 TW / 0.4 billion = 2.3 kilowatts.  Is it reasonable to expect an American-style economy to function on this sort of an energy budget?

Are Market Economies Sustainable?

I have begun to answer this question in the negative in “Energy in a Natural Economy”, but my New Year’s Resolution is to answer it definitively and convincingly during the coming year.

December 29, 2004, Revision of Prior Computation of Time to Reduce Population to One Half

In entries (below) on December 16 and 23, I reported incorrect results for the time required to reduce the population to one half of its present size if (miraculously) every woman agreed to have no more than one live birth during her lifetime.  This was a case of not seeing the forest for the trees.  The correct results were reported by Peter D. Johnson of the US Census Bureau, International Programs Center, who did a simulation using the International Data Base program of which he is an author.  He writes, “This shows the U.S. population dropping to half the 2005 population by about 2128 if the TFR drops to 1.0 immediately or by 2142 if the TFR drops to 1.0 by 2025.  In contrast, the world population would be halved by 2079 if the TFR were immediately cut to 1.0 or by 2094 if the TFR dropped to 1.0 by 2025.  The reason the U.S. takes longer is because of the assumed migration which offsets some of the losses due to the fertility declines.”  He sent figures and data in Excel files.  Four of the figures are reproduced in “On Population Dynamics”.

December 26, 2004, Some Handy Conversion Factors

In governmental circles, energy is often measured in units of a quadrillion British Thermal Units or quads.  In this essay, I shall let the unit quad refer to a rate of energy flow equal to one-quadrillion BTUs per year.  The conversion to units of one-trillion Watts or one terawatt (TW) is achieved by multiplying figures in quads by 0.0336 TW / quad.  (Incidentally, the reader may find it useful to convert one million barrel per day of petroleum flow to 0.073 trillion watts or 0.073 terawatts (TW).)  [from “Energy in a Natural Economy”]

December 23, 2004, On Population Dynamics

In this posting, I re-calculate the half-life of the population of the United States assuming only one live birth per female.  The methodology is explained and it can be used in conjunction with http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/~imiyares/fertility.htm, http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html, http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/edu/dees/V1003/lectures/population/, and http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html.  As usual, Word 2000 produces HTML with equations misaligned vertically.  Someone please explain how to fix this.

December 19, 2004, What’s Coming (taken from “Living Under Fascism” by Davidson Loehr, http://www.uua.org/news/2004/voting/sermon_loehr.html)

When all fascisms exhibit the same social and political agendas (the 14 points listed by Dr. Lawrence Britt), then it is not hard to predict where a new fascist uprising will lead.  And it is not hard.  The actions of fascists and the social and political effects of fascism and fundamentalism are clear and sobering.  Here is some of what’s coming, what will be happening in our country in the next few years:

The theft of all social security funds, to be transferred to those who control money, and the increasing destitution of all those dependent on social security and social welfare programs. 

Rising numbers of uninsured people in this country that already has the highest percentage of citizens without health insurance in the developed world. 

Increased loss of funding for public education combined with increased support for vouchers, urging Americans to entrust their children’s education to Christian schools. 

More restrictions on civil liberties as America is turned into the police state necessary for fascism to work 

Withdrawal of virtually all funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System.  At their best, these media sometimes encourage critical questioning, so they are correctly seen as enemies of the state’s official stories. 

The reinstatement of a draft, from which the children of privileged parents will again be mostly exempt, leaving our poorest children to fight and die in wars of imperialism and greed that could never benefit them anyway.  (That was my one-sentence Veterans’ Day sermon for this year.)   

More imperialistic invasions: of Iran and others, and the construction of a huge permanent embassy in Iraq. 

More restrictions on speech, under the flag of national security. 

Control of the Internet to remove or cripple it as an instrument of free communication that is exempt from government control.  This will be presented as a necessary anti-terrorist measure.

Efforts to remove the tax-exempt status of churches like this one, and to characterize them as anti-American.

Tighter control of the editorial bias of almost all media, and demonization of the few media they are unable to control – the New York Times, for instance. 

Continued outsourcing of jobs, including more white-collar jobs, to produce greater profits for those who control the money and direct the society, while simultaneously reducing America’s workers to a more desperate and powerless status. 

Moves in the banking industry to make it impossible for an increasing number of Americans to own their homes.  As they did in the 1930s, those who control the money know that it is to their advantage and profit to keep others renting rather than owning.

Criminalization of those who protest, as un-American, with arrests, detentions, and harassment increasing.  We already have a higher percentage of our citizens in prison than any other country in the world.  That percentage will increase. 

In the near future, it will be illegal or at least dangerous to say the things I have said here this morning.  In the fascist story, these things are un-American.  In the real history of a democratic America, they were seen as profoundly patriotic, as the kind of critical questions that kept the American spirit alive — the kind of questions, incidentally, that our media were supposed to be pressing.

December 16, 2004, Petroleum and Population

This entry is composed of two successive posts to RunningOnEmpty2 : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty2.  Each deals with population reduction concurrently with a decrease in oil production and an increase in renewable energy production.  They are principally best-case scenarios.  The URL is missing currently.

December 13, 2004, The Proposition that Conservation Is a Bad Thing as an Example of Reductio ad Absurdum

Today, December 13, 2004, I finished a summary of some remarks and calculations I made in recent postings to RunningOnEmpty2, a Yahoo group.  They are entitled “The Proposition that Conservation Is a Bad Thing as an Example of Reductio ad Absurdum”.  The URL is:  http://dematerialism.net/ReductioAdAbsurdum.html.  It is a response to some postings that showed that saving energy within a capitalist-style market economy would lead to even more misery and death in the long run than quickly exhausting all of our resources without any effort whatever to conserve, which seems to be what the neo-cons, for example, have in mind.  The URLs for the birth and death statistics are available upon request.

October 26, 2004, A New War on Communism

 Rich people want to keep their wealth and their lavish lifestyles.  They will do anything since, after all, it is for their wives and children.  Communists want to eliminate poverty and other social evils.  Libertarian communists, whatever else they are called, want to end poverty, war, and other social problems – including tyranny, whether it masquerades as leadership, representational democracy, bosses, priests, or something else.

 Let us suppose that everyone who receives this letter knows about Peak Oil and understands (1) that oil is a finite resource the availability of which is certain to dwindle and (2) that oil is absolutely necessary to the American, Japanese, Chinese, and British economies, but especially indispensable to the U.S.  In my essays (hyperlinked at my homemade website, which I promise to reorganize soon, but which is accessible enough for now) I have tried to explain that the people will be driven to the point of a violent revolution by a Die-Off in the wake of Peak Oil unless a libertarian communist society can be established non-violently after a change in public sentiment followed by a change in public policy that will reduce the amount of energy needed to sustainable quantities by eliminating the waste due to the gigantic overhead of competing for wealth (business*, sales, marketing, advertising, police, prisons, warfare, “manufacturing consent”, etc.) and by eliminating the waste due to the mammoth government that is required to regulate and enforce an unnatural tyranny.

 To forestall a violent revolution and even a non-violent change in public sentiment, American leaders have decided to postpone the Die-Off inside the "Homeland" by capturing Middle-East oil by means of a War in Iraq and instituting a so-called War on Terror in the "Homeland" to tighten the stranglehold they already enjoy over (subversive) independent thought in the U.S.

 Thus, the War in Iraq is related to the War on Terror just as W says:  They are both another War on Communism.  Capitalism has failed.  The future is communism, but what type of communism will it be?

*Business is responsible for urbanization, which is, in turn, responsible for the suburbs and the automobile culture.

October 26, 2004, Markets Ignore the Facts of Life

This [the stock market] is not a great interest of mine, but I can easily imagine a scenario where oil prices trigger a recession that leads to more unemployment and much less demand for oil as the unemployed don't use much especially when they become homeless as many will do who live from hand to mouth and are deeply in debt.  (Look for laws that make it easier to take people's homes to pay credit card debt.)  If demand shrinks sufficiently, the price of oil will drop while supplies dwindle.  Moreover, the stock market likes unemployment and will rise again on cheap oil and increased prosperity for the rich who will be a smaller percentage of the population in keeping with "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".  Capitalism is a nasty institution.  It thrives on human misery – until, of course, people rebel if they ever do.

September 30, 2004.  And now, a word from the loyal opposition

“The problem here  is that unlimited oil reserves do exist inside planet earth, and the Russians long ago developed the advanced technology necessary to recover these unlimited oil reserves in an efficient and timely manner”, wrote Joe Vialls.  His message in its entirety can be found at http://joevialls.altermedia.info/wecontrolamerica/peakoil.html.  Let us assume that new oil is not being created from nothing.  It does not appear supernaturally, therefore a very generous upper bound is the volume of the Earth,  1.1·1021 cubic meters, times the density of diamond, 3510   kg/m3, divided by 159 kg/barrel of oil to get 24.3·1021 barrels of oil.  That’s nearly 25,000 billion  billion barrels of oil.  And I was counting on at most one billionth of that quantity.  Therefore, I could revise my estimate of Peak Oil to at least ten billion years, say, which is beginning to look like the time when the world ends for other reasons.  Even this apparently astronomical number, even if it were even remotely likely, should not put us off our guard.  It's going to take a lot of time and a lot of oil to save the earth from our past folly.  Remember, my book does not depend upon Peak Oil Now – only finite oil.  (Actually, I gave plenty of reasons why we need dematerialism even if there were unlimited supplies of “energy” – especially if there were unlimited supplies of “energy”.)

Here is the text of a letter written by Jerry Russell recently forwarded to me by the honorable John Kaminsky (who didn’t have to broadcast a view opposed to his own, but he did): 

John,

As you know, I've been an enthusiastic promoter of the "abiotic oil" theory.  But some of the material in the Vialls article doesn't ring true.  Joe Vialls is self-admittedly a "former" British intelligence agent, according to this web page:  http://www.shootersnews.addr.com/snpajoevialls.html.  As far as I know – other, more reputable sources have never said anything about any Russian experience with extraordinarily expensive "ultra deep oil wells", or about an "under-reaming" process for re-starting a depleted oil well.  Unless a more reliable source for this "information" can be found, I would be very careful about repeating these claims.

September 10, 2004,  Energy in a Natural Economy

Today, September 10, 2004, the eve of the third anniversary of Nine Eleven, I wish to present a case for dematerialism based not upon man’s noble nature but rather upon the cold hard facts of Peak Oil.  The essay “Energy in a Natural Economy” can be found at  http://dematerialism.net/ne.htm.

September 9, 2004, Reminder about Energy Use in the United States and Terrorism

 For 1998, world use of energy was estimated to be 386.72 quads:  http://www.me.washington.edu/~malte/engr341/class_notes/ch06_add.html.  This is 386.72 quadrillion BTUs/yr, which is 2.93 × 10-4   ×  386.72 × 1015 = 113.31 × 1012 kWhrs = 113.31 trillion kWhrs =  trillion watt-hours, which quantity divided by 8766 hours per average year gives 12.926 trillion watt-years/year in 1998, which I shall round off to 13 trillion watt-years/year or 13 TW.  Thus, world use is not very much more than might be supplied by renewable.  (See Chapter 2.)  The big problem is the United States, which, with a population of about 0.294 billion, uses 3.14 TW, i.e., 10.7 kW per capita.  The population of the world is about 6.4 billion.  (See http://www.prb.org/pdf04/worldpophighlights_eng.pdf), which gives a world figure of  2.02 kW per capita.  Even this figure may not be able to be maintained in the wake of Peak Oil.  But, the US figure is five to ten times greater than what is likely to be harvested sustainably – even if the infrastructure were in place, which it is not.  This is old news, but we all need to consider it from time to time.  We should completely abandon any ideas of maintaining anything like the American Dream after Peak Oil for this reason and many other equally compelling reasons.  In particular, I am hoping that many intelligent people will see the wisdom in abandoning capitalism.

[Note.  I expect that some people will claim that every alternative to capitalism has failed or even that every alternative to capitalism is guaranteed to lead to totalitarianism.  People who have no idea what constitutes a mathematical or even a scientific proof claim that this has been proved.  One wonders when such detractors will realize that in the United States totalitarianism has been realized in a form so cleverly crafted that many people still imagine they are free even though they never tire of whining about how bad things are.  Some people point to South Korea as a marked success compared to North Korea; however, in the wake of Peak Oil, North Koreans have a much better chance to survive than do South Koreans.  People are already traveling to Cuba to study such low-energy technology as is in place.  On the other hand, China is building a huge dam that will displace many small cities that even a government-vetted travel guide will admit are self-sufficient – clearly a step in the wrong direction and one more sign that within the Communist Party of China communism is no longer embraced.  (Market communism is just as absurd as libertarian capitalism.  Under capitalism the rich rule and liberty is nowhere.)]

September 7, 2004, Yahoo Group:  Peak Oil Politics (Politics in the Wake of Peak Oil)

With apologies to RunningOnEmpty2 (RoE2), my inspiration and valuable resource, I have taken the liberty of creating yet another group.  I hope that those who elect to join this conversation will continue to read the postings at RoE2.

What can be done to prevent widespread misery in the wake of Peak Oil?  If we are not satisfied simply to be one of the few survivors of Peak Oil, what should we do?  What policies should we advocate?  Should we support social/economic/political change?  If so, what changes?  How are they to be initiated?  And by whom?  What sort of society do we hope for after the petroleum era has ended?  Let us consider and debate the big issues – as opposed to what sort of bread to bake.

Our homepage is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmptyPolitics

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August 24, 2004, What I Didn’t Say on KPFT (Pacifica in Houston) on August 23, 2004, 10-11 PM:

I wished to use “Future Primitive” by John Zerzan to introduce dematerialism as a way to get back to the attractions of the life of the hunter-gatherer as discussed by Zerzan.  Obviously, we can’t retrace history, but we can contrive to avoid the worst defects of agricultural society.  I wish to thank the gentleman who asked the excellent question about my hopes for mankind to achieve sustainable happiness for as many souls as possible through scientific communism and rational anarchy.  Please read “Social Problems and Solutions” and, if at all possible, On the Preservation of Species, which was given that title because Peak Oil and other factors could mean the extinction of the human race as well as many other species more deserving than homo sapiens.  The first five chapters might answer your questions.  Chapter 11 describes some possibilities for sustainable communities.

To the intelligent skeptic, I must admit that, without introducing into the argument the population explosion and Peak Oil (and that which follows from Peak Oil), most propaganda advocating communism and anarchy can be defeated by a conservative who is not very fussy about personal liberty.  [Here is a hyperlink to an excerpt from Chapter 2 that describes something of what I mean by “that which follows from Peak Oil”.]

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