Oil Addiction: The World in Peril - 34
by Pierre Chomat (Universal Publishers, 2004)
translated from the French by Pamela Gilbert-Snyder
Part IV. Our Suicidal Quest for Energy
Chapter 34. The West is Out of Control
We have completely lost out heads over our dear little ergamines! With them, everything seemed possible. After a few faltering centuries, and despite some serious setbacks, science led the Northern hemisphere into the world of technology and progress. Unfortunately, we have not been content to use our drops of oil only for progress, good and bad; the power that they have given us also led us to exploit our planet in ways with which it cannot cope - nor can we. We have adopted a lifestyle that we will not be able to maintain, for it cannot be supported by the Earth's actual resources. We are living beyond the Earth's means. Ignoring this fact is a key component of corpocratic policy. But trying to stop the giant oil addicts in their determined and remorseless quest for ergamines is like trying to hold back Time.
The following chart illustrates the crucial dilemma facing the oil-addicted industrialized world. How can it maintain its mode of development when fossil energy, which largely supports it, becomes scarce?
{This chart, not included here, shows the Amount of Fossil Energy over time since 1800, with an exponentially rising curve of World Energy Dependence crossing an exponentially falling curve of the Earth's Energy Potential within a decade from now.}
Can we turn back the clock? Can we at least attempt to slow down? Now that we are in sight of the date of peak production - and, therefore, peak consumption - can we finally reexamine the behavior that started us down the path that led us to our fantastic Industrial Revolution? Now, more than ever, we must question our way of life if we want to have any control over our future. We cannot simply keep sending our armies to wherever we smell oil. Our supposedly "superior" intelligence should enable us to choose a nobler path than our present one.
To understand the energy problem facing us and its enormity, we must realize that our revolution has led us to where we probably should never have gone. In the name of Homo sapiens, we have laid claim to all the Earth; we have to admit this is not to our glory. We have also developed some very dangerous egosystems on our planet and in the air surrounding it. We have wrapped it in a non-removable blanket. We are devouring its resources, one by one, to manufacture ever more goods. With the help of science, we are plundering its biocenoses. We are overburdening it with an additional one billion human beings every fifteen years. And, as if all that were not enough, we claim to believe God wants it that way.
This is how things stand for Man at the beginning of the new millennium. Recognizing this would constitute a major step toward taking hold of our future. But, as we continue to move forward technologically by leaps and bounds, many of us still do not even know the Earth exists in the ecological sense - that it is anything more than rocks to be crushed, seas to be fished or, at best, land to be cultivated. We are even less aware that we are an integral part of egosystems that have supplanted natural ecosystems. We have yet to fully realize how blind our egocentricity has made us. And, all the while, our egosystems are swallowing everything around them, like black holes. Our credo as we created them was, "All for Man". We have gone too far. Our egosystems will be as ephemeral as the ergamines that fuel them.
How can we preserve human dignity, protect our Earth, and still satisfy the oil addicts? Do not forget how ferociously hungry they are!
All claims to the contrary aside, we are not even safeguarding our own survival. This is pure stupidity. We in the West are definitely out of control. When we stoop to launching missiles in order to usurp the destiny of certain other populations so we can meet our own superfluous desires and needs, we must admit that we have attained a level of folly of the most dangerous kind. Many have wondered, "Where is Western civilization heading?" Now we know.
The West is out of control. It is leading us to madness. The whole world is in peril.
The time when we could allow ourselves to be guided by our egosystems is over. They have revealed their limits. Insatiability is pushing humanity toward an impasse. The time for nationalism and empire is also gone. They justify war in order to subdue countries that possess resources. The greedy tentacles of industrial egosystems have reached around the globe and can go no further.
We are at a crossroads. Either we continue on our current path, defending our Western way of life no matter what the cost and heading straight for industrial implosion with unforeseen consequences, or we choose the path of responsibility and move toward a way of life that is sustainable for the Earth and for human beings. We must seize the opportunity to correct our course with decency. The choice is crucial! Insofar as the corporations that now govern the world leave us any choice ...
We, in partnership with our political leaders, must confront the real issues - in particular the problem of the monstrous amount of energy that we consume to support our lifestyles. If we do not, when the energy shortage arrives, we may be not only unprepared, but unable to change course. The ergamine trio of oil, coal, and natural gas constitutes nearly ninety percent of the energy consumed by the industrialized countries. We will not be replacing them with new miracle energies anytime soon. We have committed a colossal blunder by placing no restraints on our use of fossil materials, which exist only in finite supply. Now we must pay for our audacity! An audacity that is probably non-renewable itself.
Present Western society is unsustainable. It can function only so long as the Earth has new resources to offer. Without sufficient energy - the primary resource that enables us to exploit all the rest - the Western egosystem will implode. The energy situation is so drastic and its potential consequences so deadly that we may well lose control over our destiny for the very first time in human history.
According to the Bush administration, only the United States is capable, morally and militarily, of maintaining a satisfactory level of peace throughout the world. This means having an army big enough to be the world's policeman and having access to all the resources that the United States needs, energy first and foremost, to maintain its superiority. The United States has played the role of policeman since 1945, and the people of North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and other parts of the so-called developed world have not had much to complain about. Certain countries in Asia and the Third World, however, have had a different experience. Be that as it may, many would still accept the United States in this role if it had not behaved in such a blatantly imperialist fashion, with all the blindness, intolerance and, therefore, risk, that such behavior entails.
One of the risks we face on our current course is our refusal to check the harmful effects of human activities on the environment. A second risk, with even heavier consequences, is the unrestricted and immoral exploitation of the Third World. Under the corpocrats, the future of human society is left in the hands of corporations. Making money has been elevated to the status of a core value of Western civilization. Adherence to it means abandoning basic human values and declaring war on the poor in order to rob them of their present and future resources.
As we have seen, however, the United States has a severe handicap when it comes to accepting this reality. Why? Because of its dependency on hydrocarbons. Far from remedying the situation, its aggressive approach toward the Middle East in recent decades has only aggravated the problem. The rampant "Americolonization" of this region is deeply humiliating to its peoples. But the corpocrats have found only one way to satisfy their need for energy: they establish themselves on every hydrocarbon field in the world by military aggression!
This policy is extremely dangerous, especially when it is adopted by the most powerful "Empire" the world has ever known. An imperial nation cannot be both the policeman of the world and an instigator of wars. War will always discredit the policeman and cause other countries to turn to violence as an act of self-preservation, using any available weapon to settle scores, eliminate competitors or simply acquire more goods or resources.
We are currently on the road to implosion. The road to perpetual war also. If we continue thus, the consequences will be disastrous for all.
The United States will need to impose itself by force on every oil field in the Middle East in order to maintain its power. In the name of democracy - the corpocratic version. Iran will be the next to fall; it has, after all, already succumbed several times to the West.
For the countries thus subjugated to American authority, clandestine armed resistance will be the only means of regaining independence, dignity, and the right to exist - the same goals sought by the Free French Forces during the German occupation of France in World War II and by Algeria's National Liberation Front against the French in the 1950s.
Some might see the choice of preemptive war by the United States and its friends as sufficient justification for the attack on the World Trade Center, even retroactively. That's how absurd the situation has become!
Oil will continue to be mismanaged until the Global Reserves can no longer produce at their current rates; this will happen sometime between 2010 and 2020, if not sooner. Once energy really grows scarce, there will be upheaval throughout the world as more nations begin to fight openly for it, leading to perhaps another world war, undoubtedly the most horrific yet.
No effort will be made to preserve the environment for future generations; nothing will be done about the blanket of carbon dioxide engulfing us, which, although invisible, is very much there and is already closing in around the polar bears.
Clearly, the world will have to make a Herculean effort if it wants to avoid this catastrophic scenario. Most of us refuse to admit the absurdly powerful position energy now occupies in our societies. Because of this, it is difficult for us to curb our oil-addicted appetites and abandon this path for another.
The other alternative, the path of responsibility and peace, is one that will demand great courage of our political leaders, especially now, with the world's population growing at its fastest rate ever. It is not the path of least resistance. But neither is it "mission impossible".
Nevertheless, it has its own exigencies. Basic agreements have to be reached between nations. The first is to withdraw trade in petroleum products from the sphere of private enterprise, whose main objective is to increase consumption. This is a condition sine qua non of success. It will certainly be among the most difficult to meet because it is directly opposed to corpocratic interests. If the United States and the rest of the industrialized nations cannot be convinced that energy provided by Nature, not human labor, must be managed by socially responsible governments for the common good, we will be unable to avoid catastrophe.
The second is to allow the price of hydrocarbon fuels to rise. A significant increase will curb waste and promote the use of renewable resources, which would always be preferable, even if they never meet as great a proportion of our energy needs as we would like.
If we are able to adopt a path of responsibility, it will be an extraordinary achievement. We will then be able to gradually free ourselves from our dangerous oil addiction. Choosing this path will require unprecedented responsibility on the part of every nation. But if we want to avoid implosion and disaster, we really have no other choice. Corpocratic principles will not get us onto the right track. The policeman of the world has just shown his limitations in that regard. If we continue to pursue these blind objectives, we will lose our human dignity once and for all. And much, much more.
This is the task before the young - and the not so young, too! This is the solemn legacy that you are inheriting! It is a heavy burden. The generations that preceded you were out of control - they have led you to the edge of the abyss! It is critical to realize that their way of managing energy is incompatible with sustaining life on Earth. These are the vital challenges that you face.
I am convinced that you will be motivated enough to devise a more responsible behavior for Man and that, moreover, you will find great satisfaction in doing so. In the early 1970s, there was much talk about preserving the environment and zero growth in the United States. People were thinking, listening; they were reading "The Greening of America". {62} Those attitudes are a far cry from the mindset of today. And yet it was all so stimulating and inspiring.
You have your work cut out for you. You must find a way of life that respects the rights of the Third World, a way of moving forward as a species that spares the lives of the children of Baghdad, Tehran, Groznyy and Lagos. Even if you do not share these beliefs, you have to admit, if only for a moment, that those who are dying in rocket attacks today for the luxuries of the West were able to live only a short part of their natural lives and they will never have another.
Note
{62} Charles A Reich, The Greening of America (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1971).
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/
translated from the French by Pamela Gilbert-Snyder
Part IV. Our Suicidal Quest for Energy
Chapter 34. The West is Out of Control
We have completely lost out heads over our dear little ergamines! With them, everything seemed possible. After a few faltering centuries, and despite some serious setbacks, science led the Northern hemisphere into the world of technology and progress. Unfortunately, we have not been content to use our drops of oil only for progress, good and bad; the power that they have given us also led us to exploit our planet in ways with which it cannot cope - nor can we. We have adopted a lifestyle that we will not be able to maintain, for it cannot be supported by the Earth's actual resources. We are living beyond the Earth's means. Ignoring this fact is a key component of corpocratic policy. But trying to stop the giant oil addicts in their determined and remorseless quest for ergamines is like trying to hold back Time.
The following chart illustrates the crucial dilemma facing the oil-addicted industrialized world. How can it maintain its mode of development when fossil energy, which largely supports it, becomes scarce?
{This chart, not included here, shows the Amount of Fossil Energy over time since 1800, with an exponentially rising curve of World Energy Dependence crossing an exponentially falling curve of the Earth's Energy Potential within a decade from now.}
Can we turn back the clock? Can we at least attempt to slow down? Now that we are in sight of the date of peak production - and, therefore, peak consumption - can we finally reexamine the behavior that started us down the path that led us to our fantastic Industrial Revolution? Now, more than ever, we must question our way of life if we want to have any control over our future. We cannot simply keep sending our armies to wherever we smell oil. Our supposedly "superior" intelligence should enable us to choose a nobler path than our present one.
To understand the energy problem facing us and its enormity, we must realize that our revolution has led us to where we probably should never have gone. In the name of Homo sapiens, we have laid claim to all the Earth; we have to admit this is not to our glory. We have also developed some very dangerous egosystems on our planet and in the air surrounding it. We have wrapped it in a non-removable blanket. We are devouring its resources, one by one, to manufacture ever more goods. With the help of science, we are plundering its biocenoses. We are overburdening it with an additional one billion human beings every fifteen years. And, as if all that were not enough, we claim to believe God wants it that way.
This is how things stand for Man at the beginning of the new millennium. Recognizing this would constitute a major step toward taking hold of our future. But, as we continue to move forward technologically by leaps and bounds, many of us still do not even know the Earth exists in the ecological sense - that it is anything more than rocks to be crushed, seas to be fished or, at best, land to be cultivated. We are even less aware that we are an integral part of egosystems that have supplanted natural ecosystems. We have yet to fully realize how blind our egocentricity has made us. And, all the while, our egosystems are swallowing everything around them, like black holes. Our credo as we created them was, "All for Man". We have gone too far. Our egosystems will be as ephemeral as the ergamines that fuel them.
How can we preserve human dignity, protect our Earth, and still satisfy the oil addicts? Do not forget how ferociously hungry they are!
All claims to the contrary aside, we are not even safeguarding our own survival. This is pure stupidity. We in the West are definitely out of control. When we stoop to launching missiles in order to usurp the destiny of certain other populations so we can meet our own superfluous desires and needs, we must admit that we have attained a level of folly of the most dangerous kind. Many have wondered, "Where is Western civilization heading?" Now we know.
The West is out of control. It is leading us to madness. The whole world is in peril.
The time when we could allow ourselves to be guided by our egosystems is over. They have revealed their limits. Insatiability is pushing humanity toward an impasse. The time for nationalism and empire is also gone. They justify war in order to subdue countries that possess resources. The greedy tentacles of industrial egosystems have reached around the globe and can go no further.
We are at a crossroads. Either we continue on our current path, defending our Western way of life no matter what the cost and heading straight for industrial implosion with unforeseen consequences, or we choose the path of responsibility and move toward a way of life that is sustainable for the Earth and for human beings. We must seize the opportunity to correct our course with decency. The choice is crucial! Insofar as the corporations that now govern the world leave us any choice ...
We, in partnership with our political leaders, must confront the real issues - in particular the problem of the monstrous amount of energy that we consume to support our lifestyles. If we do not, when the energy shortage arrives, we may be not only unprepared, but unable to change course. The ergamine trio of oil, coal, and natural gas constitutes nearly ninety percent of the energy consumed by the industrialized countries. We will not be replacing them with new miracle energies anytime soon. We have committed a colossal blunder by placing no restraints on our use of fossil materials, which exist only in finite supply. Now we must pay for our audacity! An audacity that is probably non-renewable itself.
Present Western society is unsustainable. It can function only so long as the Earth has new resources to offer. Without sufficient energy - the primary resource that enables us to exploit all the rest - the Western egosystem will implode. The energy situation is so drastic and its potential consequences so deadly that we may well lose control over our destiny for the very first time in human history.
According to the Bush administration, only the United States is capable, morally and militarily, of maintaining a satisfactory level of peace throughout the world. This means having an army big enough to be the world's policeman and having access to all the resources that the United States needs, energy first and foremost, to maintain its superiority. The United States has played the role of policeman since 1945, and the people of North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and other parts of the so-called developed world have not had much to complain about. Certain countries in Asia and the Third World, however, have had a different experience. Be that as it may, many would still accept the United States in this role if it had not behaved in such a blatantly imperialist fashion, with all the blindness, intolerance and, therefore, risk, that such behavior entails.
One of the risks we face on our current course is our refusal to check the harmful effects of human activities on the environment. A second risk, with even heavier consequences, is the unrestricted and immoral exploitation of the Third World. Under the corpocrats, the future of human society is left in the hands of corporations. Making money has been elevated to the status of a core value of Western civilization. Adherence to it means abandoning basic human values and declaring war on the poor in order to rob them of their present and future resources.
As we have seen, however, the United States has a severe handicap when it comes to accepting this reality. Why? Because of its dependency on hydrocarbons. Far from remedying the situation, its aggressive approach toward the Middle East in recent decades has only aggravated the problem. The rampant "Americolonization" of this region is deeply humiliating to its peoples. But the corpocrats have found only one way to satisfy their need for energy: they establish themselves on every hydrocarbon field in the world by military aggression!
This policy is extremely dangerous, especially when it is adopted by the most powerful "Empire" the world has ever known. An imperial nation cannot be both the policeman of the world and an instigator of wars. War will always discredit the policeman and cause other countries to turn to violence as an act of self-preservation, using any available weapon to settle scores, eliminate competitors or simply acquire more goods or resources.
We are currently on the road to implosion. The road to perpetual war also. If we continue thus, the consequences will be disastrous for all.
The United States will need to impose itself by force on every oil field in the Middle East in order to maintain its power. In the name of democracy - the corpocratic version. Iran will be the next to fall; it has, after all, already succumbed several times to the West.
For the countries thus subjugated to American authority, clandestine armed resistance will be the only means of regaining independence, dignity, and the right to exist - the same goals sought by the Free French Forces during the German occupation of France in World War II and by Algeria's National Liberation Front against the French in the 1950s.
Some might see the choice of preemptive war by the United States and its friends as sufficient justification for the attack on the World Trade Center, even retroactively. That's how absurd the situation has become!
Oil will continue to be mismanaged until the Global Reserves can no longer produce at their current rates; this will happen sometime between 2010 and 2020, if not sooner. Once energy really grows scarce, there will be upheaval throughout the world as more nations begin to fight openly for it, leading to perhaps another world war, undoubtedly the most horrific yet.
No effort will be made to preserve the environment for future generations; nothing will be done about the blanket of carbon dioxide engulfing us, which, although invisible, is very much there and is already closing in around the polar bears.
Clearly, the world will have to make a Herculean effort if it wants to avoid this catastrophic scenario. Most of us refuse to admit the absurdly powerful position energy now occupies in our societies. Because of this, it is difficult for us to curb our oil-addicted appetites and abandon this path for another.
The other alternative, the path of responsibility and peace, is one that will demand great courage of our political leaders, especially now, with the world's population growing at its fastest rate ever. It is not the path of least resistance. But neither is it "mission impossible".
Nevertheless, it has its own exigencies. Basic agreements have to be reached between nations. The first is to withdraw trade in petroleum products from the sphere of private enterprise, whose main objective is to increase consumption. This is a condition sine qua non of success. It will certainly be among the most difficult to meet because it is directly opposed to corpocratic interests. If the United States and the rest of the industrialized nations cannot be convinced that energy provided by Nature, not human labor, must be managed by socially responsible governments for the common good, we will be unable to avoid catastrophe.
The second is to allow the price of hydrocarbon fuels to rise. A significant increase will curb waste and promote the use of renewable resources, which would always be preferable, even if they never meet as great a proportion of our energy needs as we would like.
If we are able to adopt a path of responsibility, it will be an extraordinary achievement. We will then be able to gradually free ourselves from our dangerous oil addiction. Choosing this path will require unprecedented responsibility on the part of every nation. But if we want to avoid implosion and disaster, we really have no other choice. Corpocratic principles will not get us onto the right track. The policeman of the world has just shown his limitations in that regard. If we continue to pursue these blind objectives, we will lose our human dignity once and for all. And much, much more.
This is the task before the young - and the not so young, too! This is the solemn legacy that you are inheriting! It is a heavy burden. The generations that preceded you were out of control - they have led you to the edge of the abyss! It is critical to realize that their way of managing energy is incompatible with sustaining life on Earth. These are the vital challenges that you face.
I am convinced that you will be motivated enough to devise a more responsible behavior for Man and that, moreover, you will find great satisfaction in doing so. In the early 1970s, there was much talk about preserving the environment and zero growth in the United States. People were thinking, listening; they were reading "The Greening of America". {62} Those attitudes are a far cry from the mindset of today. And yet it was all so stimulating and inspiring.
You have your work cut out for you. You must find a way of life that respects the rights of the Third World, a way of moving forward as a species that spares the lives of the children of Baghdad, Tehran, Groznyy and Lagos. Even if you do not share these beliefs, you have to admit, if only for a moment, that those who are dying in rocket attacks today for the luxuries of the West were able to live only a short part of their natural lives and they will never have another.
Note
{62} Charles A Reich, The Greening of America (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1971).
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/
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