No Power to the People (or the President)
Remember “Change we can believe in”?
Those were heady days for the progressives. So much promise. And from a smart presidential candidate. I was cautiously optimistic. When Obama got elected I started a series of posts which I called “the acid test”. Here is that series:
- 01/2009: This is the acid test
- 02/2009: The acid test revisited
- 02/2009: Is Obama passing the acid test?
- 02/2009: Acid test results - a postmortem
OK, so I said I wouldn't say 'I told you so', but man did I nail it or what?
The whole point is that Obama could not really ‘change things’. He has no power. Either he is remaining blissfully ignorant of reality (energy constraints and the economy) or he is unable to tell the truth because of his beholding to the powers that actually govern our world. Either way he is powerless and since this is the executive branch of a “government of, for, and by the people” then so are we the people powerless. So much for democracy in the 21st century.
At least part of that beholding has to do with getting Democrats elected in the mid-terms and himself re-elected in 2012. The powers that pull the campaign financing strings have written the script and if he wants to keep his job he has to read it as written. There is no ad libbing in this theater.
When there was a bit of tongue-in-cheek kidding about me being a write-in candidate in 2012, after I picked myself up off the floor and got control of the laughter, I did start to think a bit about what we do really need from a president to trigger change we might not relish, but what we need to survive the coming energy crunch. So here are some thoughts about what a courageous individual should do if they were by some miracle to be elected president.
Political and Possibly Personal Suicide
Can you imagine what would happen if the president were to address the nation, and the world, telling all that the end of business as usual, indeed modern technological civilization was at hand? Can you picture what sort of reaction s/he would get from the public, from the media, from corporations, from the rest of the political spectrum? I can already hear the shock, the outrage, the fury. I can also hear the subtle but very real fear.
Because the current economic situation is so drastically different from all previous downturns, no matter how deep, and the scale is global with regional variations difficult to explain, people do already sense that there is something fundamentally wrong. They can't put their fingers on what it is, though the talking heads and Tea Partiers are pointing fingers at various scapegoats that sound plausible on the surface. They can't verbalize what they sense beyond repeating the sound bites they hear. But they do sense that there is something deeper and more sinister than just something like the banksters' faults. How could they not. Even so, once the truth is revealed, they will, no doubt, revile it. They will deny it. They will kill the messenger.
At the best that president would only hold office for one term. Any number of politician will be out there claiming the then current president has gone off his/her rocker. They will promise prosperity and ‘hope’ and that, of course, will be what the electorate wants to hear. And I'm pretty sure the populace will buy the promise.
Subtle Truth
What could a president do to bring the message out into the open in a way that would educate people rather than shock them? Is it even possible given the nature of the message and the reality it is about? Those are open questions. I suppose it is feasible that the president could be subtle about how s/he springs the bad news on the country. A real estate broker I once knew always told me that the secret in getting trust is to imply flexibility when there really isn't any. You don't have to lie, you just carefully maneuver the truth out.
But in the end the truth must be told. Our only hope in this world comes from facing the truth and mobilizing our cleverness, not to fix the unfixable, but to adapt and minimize the harm as much as possible. As energy flow diminishes there will be contraction in the economy that will last until our population and wealth production come into alignment with whatever energy production resources we can muster will provide. The evidence now tells us that that will never be as much energy (and hence as much wealth) as we have gotten from fossil fuels. Hence the current generation, and likely many generations, will have to sacrifice and live greatly reduced consumptive lives if we hope to have some civilization in the future.
The only way we can avoid all out panic and self-destruction is for a leader to lay out for everyone what we face, along with a plan for how to face it.
The president of the United States may not have the power to change things directly, but s/he does have the attention of everyone in the world. If s/he were capable of bringing out the true situation, gradually and carefully, I imagine that this would be a far better approach than trying to push bills through a quagmire congress. Eventually, in the next ten years, people are going to realize that we are in a downward spiral just by the continuing erosion of economic wealth. It will hurt. There will be massive dislocations and pain. People of the world will be giving up their aspirations for a future that was better than the past and they will despair. Unless they understand why this is happening. Without understanding they will go berserk and destroy any possible hope for powering down gracefully and retaining our human dignity.
Hope
I suppose there is still time that Obama could miraculously see the light and start the process of explaining the truth to the people. He will still have two years after the mid-term elections to change his modus operandi from trying to assuage left and right, pushing legislation that ends up watered down beyond any value. He could adopt the ‘tell-the-truth-carefully’ approach, letting Congress continue to self destruct while fillerbustering, stalling, and just plain being stupid. But this would require that he actually know the truth. So far I don't see the evidence that he does. Nor does the evidence of his intentions bode well in this regard. He is a classic politician in the end. He will (I predict) say what is necessary to preserve what he thinks is his power. He is not willing to make the sacrifice himself in order to exercise the only real power he truly has. Telling the truth.
And, quite honestly, this goes for any politician who seeks to be elected in 2012. They are all saddled with the same constraints and mind set. On top of that every single national figure that is conceivably in the running is largely ignorant about most of reality. This, I have to admit, is what reinforces my cynicism the most. Our national figures, would-be leaders, are pretty ignorant when it comes to understanding biophysical reality. How many of them have anything more than a law degree or a political science degree? This is the fundamental flaw in our democratic system. We can be led by any ignoramus who has charisma or promises magic happiness. Of course this is possible because the electorate is largely ignorant too. It is easy for the one-eyed man to lead the blind.
What would it take to find a candidate who is both educated and wise and get that person elected? For one thing, it would take a lot of people who get a simple message, say, “I cannot make promises to you because I have not yet seen just how problematic the situation in Washington is. But I do swear I will tell you the truth once I have a chance to see for myself.” Would such a message be enough? It is about all any candidate can truthfully promise (no promises!) Yet would there be people who would find such a message compelling?
Then there is the practical problem of how do you get that message (or another one that is equally truthful but more compelling) to those people? Political offices are bought with lots of cash. Advertising and television time aren't cheap. Right now that is the way the game is played and I see no way to change that. There can be no campaign by anyone who would be truly qualified to lead the nation, that is the paradox of our situation.
Realistic Hope
My best guess is that something truly drastic, even worse than Katrina or the Great Recession, but not catastrophic enough to plunge us into chaos, will need to occur sometime soon in order to wake up enough voters to the mockery that our political system has become. That is so sad, but realistic in the current political climate. People are dream walking into oblivion and only a really major jolt is likely to wake them up and cause them to think. The candidate events are numerous, but most of them might be dangerously close to tipping us to chaos if they occur. Something like a major, but temporary, food shortage would do it. The problem is that it might not be temporary enough (especially in some regions) and many people will die of starvation as a result. It would get everyone else's attention, but at what cost?
And such an event would have to be followed rapidly by exposure of the underlying causes by some potential real leader. That person would need to be in a position to explain the situation and make it make sense. The only problem is, they might not tell the truth.
If this sounds familiar then those who know any history will recognize the scenario. It is what brought Adolf Hitler to power. It is what, in fact, generally brought every historical dictator to power. Only a few of those dictators proved to be mildly benevolent. The rest proved to be brutal as they attempted to power over the challenge. Fortunately for the world there is a difference between those dictators of the past and anyone who attempted to rise to power today in a similar manner. They had increasing availability of energy sources to fuel their expansion and power over others. Anyone who tries this tactic tomorrow will be looking at contracting energy sources with concomitant failure to exercise the instruments of power that we have grown used to, mobile armies. While I have no doubt someone or several will start down this road, they will ultimately fail because they will not be able to acquire enough fossil fuel to carry out their conquests.
Leaving us exactly where? If Obama flubs the next two years and no truly qualified candidate appears out of the blue in that time, I am almost tempted to vote for Ms. Palin (assuming she runs and wins the nomination — remember I said the electorate were ignorant!) in order to get the pain over with as soon as possible. Why extend the suffering? I am confident that she will be instrumental in screwing things up even more than George W. Bush did. Otherwise we can look forward to several decades of increasing agony and suffering as more and more people drop into poverty and starvation. It will make the Great Depression look like a cake walk. The most reasonable potential president would still tackle the problems in Washington in the traditional presidential way. And that guarantees us that they will never get solved.
More likely, of course, given a choice between Palin and Obama, I'd just fail to vote at all. It would make no difference.
Keep your eyes out for a true leader. There must be someone. If you are politically active and have a qualified candidate (meaning they do not want to run for office) see if you can promote that person to the grass roots. It is about the only hope we have at this point.
I agree,George and the USA is not alone in the West in this bind.
I am an Australian and although the immediate situation in my country is not too bad the writing is on the wall.But only a few can see it let alone read it.The complacency is quite awe inspiring,even to someone of my experience and not a little acquired cynicism.
You are correct that a melt down is probably the only way to destroy the current paradigm.There will be a lot of collateral damage and no guarantee of a good outcome,even in the long term.
But if we don't go there we will never know.
Posted by: Podargus | October 10, 2010 at 01:57 PM
I am not exactly sure we would even want to have democracy. Democracy would only work if the people were, as you like to say it, "wise". If they aren't, it becomes quite a destructive force, because a vast majority that doesn't "get it" will always block any meaningful steps forward by the tiny minority that does. Which is exactly what's happening right now.
I am not even sure that democracy isn't working as it's supposed to. We like to frame things in a "elites vs the people" fashion, but the more I think about, the more I get convinced that a world without some sort of secret cabal ruling over the world where things are driven by basic human instincts (the urge to hog as much resources for yourself and your progeny as possible being the most important in this case) will look just as the world we live in right now; i.e. there is no need to invoke some conspiracy theory to explain the situation - the politicians would behave the way they simply as a result of the influence of industry interests acting in relatively unorganized way. In this sense, there is no separation between elites and regular people, sure, the former have the money and the power, but there is no material difference in the thinking of the two groups or their understanding of the situation; what's different is the scale at which they do things (people like to complain how corrupt the ruling class is, but the reality is that if you pick a random person from the street and you put him in office, he will behave exactly the same way at least 9 out of 10 times).
Democracy is what we want to have, but only after we have achieved the level of development of each person in a society that would make it work. Until that's the case, a mechanism that will make sure that the minority that "gets it" can make things happen is needed. Of course, this is mostly pointless pondering over these questions, since neither do I see a realistic mechanism, nor is there time or opportunity to implement it, but I am making the general point.
True. Which is why we need a different socio-political system as I said before.
However, regarding why a president wouldn't come out and say it as it is, as I have said before, there may be a very compelling reason not to want to do that, even if the president and the people around him were completely aware of the situation (and by being completely aware, I mean not just the raw facts about energy availability in the future, but the whole ecological predicament of humanity, its roots causes, etc.). It is pretty much impossible to communicate everything that a person needs to know about the subject to people who don't have some minimum background in a broad range of disciplines, a condition that the vast majority of the population doesn't meet. Without that, the only part of the message that people will get is that growth has ended, there will be severe shortages, etc.; how we can peacefully transition will not be given much thought. The likely result is that things will fall apart very quickly as people scramble to assure that they get as much of the shrinking pie as possible. If you're in power, you would probably want to avoid getting yourself in that mess.
Of course, given how grossly inadequate the actions of the current administration have been so far, I am more and more convinced that the president doesn't get it at all, even though there are people around him who, based on their background, almost certainly do. If I was the president, I would probably do exactly as you said, even being perfectly aware of the potential consequences. But even then, there would be almost no way to change things. Even a dictatorship of the "wise" can't do it because there is no force on this planet strong enough to contain the biological instincts of billions who have no clue about the real situation, even less so in a world with declining availability of key resources as you pointed out...
Posted by: Georgi Marinov | October 10, 2010 at 02:15 PM
Yes to ALL of the above. Alas.
Posted by: Molly Radke | October 10, 2010 at 07:39 PM
I completely share your pessimism, George, however, I would hope that my generation (current college students) is able to mitigate the pain somewhat. Though we are hardly perfect (and hardly a homogeneous group), we seem to be more interested on environmental and ecological issues than previous generations. And we seem to recognize that some sacrifice may be necessary to get there. But though I would like to be optimistic about hte contribution my generation can make, I question whether we are willing to make a sufficient level of sacrifices in order to significantly smooth our energy transition.
After all, we live in a society where the prevailing culture is one of instant gratification based on readily available energy, and college students seem eager to gratify themselves more than most. We can consume on demand by driving to the store and buying what we need on borrowed energy. We can go online and instantly share details of our own lives and read the stories of others through Twitter and Facebook (made available often by fossil electricity as well as rare metals for electronic components that are energy-intensive to extract). And we can visit one of the millions of websites offering services to satisfy our carnal desires. We have a plethora of media and entertainment where all can be catered to, and where truth is a relative concept. How can a message of self-sacrifice and work for the common good be heard amongst this droning?
But I also wouldn't blame the ignorance of the American people entirely on the media or on politicians. Sure the hard-rightists have won big victories in recent years, and granted, Americans are spending a lot more time than before in front of the computer or television screen instead of getting to know their neighbors and being involved in civic issues (A good book here is Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam). People are living increasingly stressful and busy lives. They're working longer hours for less pay and being informed about public affairs just isn't on their radar screens when they're working 10 hours a day and shuttling kids to/from piano lessons and soccer practice. The inability to be involved in community, to be aware of what's going on around you is what is killing our democracy.
Furthermore, when you're absorbed in your own life, worrying about day-to-day matters and listening to BAU messages in the media, it's nearly impossible to imagine a radically different life could be at hand in the not-so-distant future. Getting through the next day or week is the challenge, not the next decade or two.
A resources shock combined with the powerful messaging that did bring millions to their feet to support Obama is what is needed. It takes courage to stand up and say something profound but unpopular. But given the cynicism most of us have about politics these days, I honestly believe that a forthright politician has the potential to inspire. I can still hope, right?
Part of the problem is that having a democracy with 300 million people, with lots of entry points for influence is a recipe for lethargy. Although I am a Pacific Northwest native, countries like Australia and New Zealand are looking more attractive all the time. Even Canada would be better. That's not to say these countries don't have their own problems or pathologies--they absolutely do--but their politics is more civilized and streamlined, and in the case of Canada and New Zealand, are environments where an abundance of resources and/or a relative paucity of people will make an energy transition easier. It wouldn't surprise me if those who are seriously concerned about peak oil make a break for another, smaller, resource-rich country before TSHTF, because I don't see things getting better in the United States.
Posted by: Sam | October 10, 2010 at 11:46 PM
I dont have much time to post these days George but I'm still reading.
Quality journalism in this post...sorry dont take that as any slur but these kind of discussions are futile.
Discussing or arguing about these -------- wont make any difference to the longer term future. What we have here is another small example of the accumulating crisis of our society, the slow crumbling of our civilisation.
Not only is this inevitable but in some ways it is a part of the story of evolution; any reversals in decline will be localised, temporary and empheral. The crisis in ecology, politics, finance, community, education, medicine, technology, religion, culture and meaning will continue to escalate, they are interelated and have their roots in the increasing separation of humans from nature and their sense of self.
I occ post on a 'life' section in a UK cycling forum where so many discussions revolve around the political and social stagnation and.... to save a lot of time typing I think I cut n paste this on to threads about -------
!:-)
Posted by: GaryA | October 11, 2010 at 01:01 AM
Methinks a crucial step for making U.S. politics more sane is introducing a third party. For that to work the voting process needs to be reformed, so that smaller parties get some chance.
The coming elections will be very interesting. The Tea Palinist candidates are nutjobs far beyond the pale - perhaps the electorate will sense this self-destruction of the once GOP?
I'm looking at all this from Germany. The stupid I see is amazing, e.g. GOP senate candidate Christine O’Donnell. Or e.g. Virginia attorey general (grand inquisitor) Ken Cuccinelli.
So, the GOP has truly devolved into a lunatic asylum. Perhaps the electorate will one day note that? Scientists can help in this process. Actually they have an obligation to speak out against liars and reality denialists.
Posted by: Florifulgurator | October 11, 2010 at 04:28 AM
That's probably correct. It will make it more sane. But is such a thing measuring up to the magnitude of the real task? Not at all.
Posted by: Georgi Marinov | October 11, 2010 at 10:51 AM
Methinks no kind of tinkering with the (failed) sacred cow system called democracy will save anything.
In fact I'm certain.
We live in a global corporate plutocracy, the politicians are their obedient puppets; if that wasnt obvious before the 2008 crisis it damn well is now.
What sticks in my craw is that supporters of democracy do not simply claim political legitimacy, they also claim ethical legitimacy, a claim to moral authority. This is where it is culturally taboo to even criticise democracy never mind think about overthrowing it. The Catholic church has their infallibility claims of the pope and we get the cult of democracy where the word 'undemocratic' is used as a euphemism for 'criminal' 'hostile' or 'elitist.' It is used to suggest an attack on society, a form of terrorism.
This suits the masters of the asylum very well.
Posted by: GaryA | October 12, 2010 at 01:18 AM
A good way for Obama to stave off our approaching "drop off the edge" of a larger scale self-reinforcing decline, is detailed in the model presidential order he could issue, as a matter of natural global emergency. If you ask questions I can fill in all the gaps and enrich the context. http://www.synapse9.com/issues/reset$.htm
Lincoln, after all, had no idea he was going to emancipate the slaves, and accepted the idea was unthinkable, until circumstances force his hand and saw it as the one way to save the nation. Lincoln demonstrated the ability of leaders to change when they have not other choice, but either change of fail completely.
I don't think Obama has that ability, though I once hoped he would.
Posted by: Phil Henshaw | October 12, 2010 at 05:53 AM
George,
You were right; I tossed away my vote on BO in 2008, in part because I hoped he would actually be different. He turned out to be just another politician from Chicago.
In my lifetime I think Jimmy Carter was the only president that tried to tell Americans that things were not all good. He was dumped!
As Bill Clinton once said, "No one ever got elected in the U.S. by promising people less." Americans don't want to hear the truth if it disagrees with their perception of how things should be. For example, they don't want to hear about anything that might destroy their happy motoring world. I've seen nor heard not a peep in the mainstream meeting about the ASPO meeting in DC last week. Taboo, big time! Don't mention global warming--it is just a hoax. Don't mention the huge shift in national income that is going to the richest 1 %.
The conspiracy between the financial community and politicians will continue until something dreadful happens. We are moving toward becoming a banana republic in which the income and wealth are controlled by a small minority and the nation is operated for their benefit.
Posted by: Gary Peters | October 12, 2010 at 08:23 AM
One of the reasons I admire Thatcher is because she was clever, curious and well-informed. I think you need to get over your class analysis of this situation. I also think the idea of a conservative who has no time for the concept of the 'better' is a contradiction of terms.
Posted by: Buy Online Rx | October 12, 2010 at 08:44 AM
That's also because the objective of socio-political systems has been long forgotten (if it was ever seriously not many people's minds to begin with). That objective is (or should be) to maximize the long term well being of the people in that society. If that includes a maximization of individual freedom to the extent this is possible, then that's even better. But we have, as you pointed out, reached a point where we have elevated "democracy" to the status of unquestionable religion and the system is never to be revised. That's very bad in a case that such a revision is actually needed.
Posted by: Georgi Marinov | October 12, 2010 at 11:10 AM
Jerry Brown is running for governor of California. His ads come close to what seems to be required.
Posted by: Curtis Fromke | October 12, 2010 at 02:34 PM
I agree with the general pessimism voiced above, though importantly because only one person took your question at face value. I offered a practical response that a president could make to our observably desperate situation.
Scientists from an increasing range of viewpoints seem to be realizing that mankind is most likely to exhaust itself trying to maintain an endless growth economy, instead of using those same resources to transition to a sustainable one. The main confounding reason, in my view, is the prevalent confusion of "sustainability" with promoting growth. Using the theme of sustainability has the world policy community trying to stabilize the economy by making growth more efficient, as if that would correct our accelerating resource depletion that directly causes... It's surely "rather funny" but no joke at all either, of course.
I think it would be good to develop a common language for connecting that shared impression to concrete observables, so anyone can tell someone else, and they can tell others, and still have the message tied to the same reality. Wouldn't that be the practical approach?
Posted by: Phil Henshaw | October 12, 2010 at 02:37 PM
All,
My apologies for taking so much time to respond to your comments. The work load is significant with lots of problems to solve on our campus.
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Podargus,
I doubt that we will have any choices. If we were to act now in some meaningful way we might lessen the pain somewhat. But we will experience the pain.
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Georgi,
Thanks for the thoughts. It seems you see the same basic problem I do. It could be that by telling the truth (and keeping it simple, like: Oh god oh god we're all going to die! ;^) s/he would start a panic that would hasten the end. In some perspectives that might be a good thing.
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Sam,
Absolutely. You know how I think this could work? If we could find and organize the young but highly sapient people in the world. This is tricky. Young people have not gathered a lifetime of experience through their sapience to give evidence of their wisdom. They only mostly have the potential. But assuming we could tell, perhaps by the mere fact that they are open to listening and grasping the message, we need to provide them with a way to assure a future for themselves even as we abandoned the masses of foolish (low sapient) people. What do you think? The fact that you are here and participating gives me hope!
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GaryA,
See Sam's comment. I strongly believe there are (even if only a few) highly sapient beings out there who can find ways to get through the bottleneck. All you say may be true, but evolution can select for certain qualities and not just against. At least, as I told Sam, that is my hope.
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Flor,
Got to go with Georgi and GaryA on that. Frankly I think politics in the US is moribund. It just keeps going on the ventilator of corporate money, but it is dead in all other ways. No third party, playing by essentially the same rules, is going to really fix what is wrong here.
The basic problem remains that we are too low in sapience for our cleverness. We have created an overly complex civilization and now we have no way of understanding how to govern it. The electorate are now schizophrenic. And they seem to favor whacko politicians. And believe me, after watching Pelosi and Reid operate I can tell you they are just as bad in their own way as John Boehner and his clueless bunch on the Hill.
So, not only is the political process broken, so is the fundamental governance of the country broken. Look at the Supreme Court decision on campaign finance. It is broken beyond repair.
What I do look for is a new kind of political force emerging from the ashes of our burned out system. Call it the Phoenix Movement! Young people like Sam (above) who have a strong interest in salvaging a world that is possible to live in could redefine governance itself (a sapient governance). What I then see happening is as the old system crumbles and takes the foolish folk with it, the Phoenix Movement will rise to take over. No revolution, just succession.
I can dream can't I?
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Phil,
I read your proposal and found it interesting. But I do wonder how some of the mechanisms could be realized if we don't start with some real basis of value (such as emergy) to calibrate any kind of resetting.
Then as you say, it probably doesn't matter because while Obama might be in a position to take some kind of action, it is nearly certain he won't. Other than, of course, to bail out the banks and Wall Street.
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Gary P.
I sometimes wonder how many people might be out there who do want to know the truth, even if it is scary. I work in an environment where knowledge of reality is certainly given a premium, at least in lip service. I have not had too much trouble delivering the message about peak net energy and its role in the economy. In fact I am having a bit of an effect on some of the thinking among the senior administrators and the search committee for the UW's new president. I am calling for a person who is an adaptive strategic thinker more than the classic politician who can schmooze the legislators and business folk. I get the sense that they would like to hear the truth and if the POTUS were to lay it on the line they would listen and take it to heart.
I wonder just how representative of the general population are the Tea Partiers. I realize that there is an overall lack of wisdom in the crowd, but there should be no lack of basic biological desire to survive. And if people sense that there is something fundamentally wrong that could be a threat to that survival, wouldn't they be open to the truth?
Ponder, ponder, ponder!
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Curtis,
Haven't seen his ads for this go-around. I lived in Cal. when he was Gov. before. Had some interesting interactions with some of the energy "experts" he had on his staff.
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Phil,
I've wrestled long and hard with the question of how do you convince the masses to get them thinking. I've reached the conclusion that you can't really. I think they will need to be really scared before they start listening. The people I referred to in my comment to Gary Peters are already edgy and sense that something is different. That doesn't mean they will act out of understanding -- more likely survival.
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George
Posted by: George Mobus | October 16, 2010 at 02:12 PM
George, you say that resetting the level of debt would work, to erase the effect of the 30 year bubble in over-inflating the values of borrowed money people now owe beyond what is physically possible to pay, but should just wait for you and others to agree on a better unit of measure than money.
I think there's a simple solution to that, already spelled out in my proposal, that to act in time someone has to guess. All those who would like to help the guess to be better can study the problem and offer their way to bias the data from the default straight line assumption.
Even that process could get bogged down in relatively pointless debate, like nearly everything does these days, and get nowhere at all... To me the best option is readily at hand. I'd suggest you consider my various studies that seems to show that a quite good estimate of "emergy" is readily available, once you learn how to calculate the emergy content in money.
In my Wind EROI paper I show that with a proper accounting for the energy content of all the business services a Wind Farm uses to bring its product to market the total is 500% of the energy used by the principle technologies used alone (the world standard measure of business energy use) but only 15% more than the world average energy intensity per $ of costs. Do you see what that means??
It means that we need to completely rethink our way of accounting for embodied energy, at least, and that money is clearly a far better measure of energy use than energy use data is. That would seem to have a few other implications too, wouldn't it? It should be a shock to anyone reading the words, and I think will be once people hear it spoken as if it were possibly true.
Posted by: Phil Henshaw | October 18, 2010 at 05:10 AM
I REALLY appreciate what you mentioned about your role in the search for the next UW president. MAY YOUR VOICE BE HEARD. I'm still old-fashioned enough to believe that our schools and universities are our most important institutions and the places where we are most likely to find an rare measure of real wisdom. Keep knocking on their doors, George.
Posted by: Molly Radke | October 22, 2010 at 07:56 PM
Phil,
Did I actually say that it would work? I think it is an interesting idea, but I put a proviso on what would be a necessary (not sufficient) condition before it could work IF it could work.
Have you read any of Howard Odum's analyses of emergy, emdollars, etc.? I think there is a solid basis in his work on the relationship between money and energy. So really good guesses are certainly possible. But that isn't the problem. The problem is with the minds that have to be convinced of it, recognizing that their own political (and economic) interests are not served by changing the system, say to emergy accounting. Odum and his wife wrote a very good book called "A Prosperous Way Down" in which they outline these kinds of policies back in 2000. But the words fall on deaf ears, I'm afraid.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | October 23, 2010 at 12:09 PM
Hi MOlly.
As you might guess, I couldn't agree more about the value of education. I have an on-going conversation with members of the search committee (as well as the search committee for our own campus' chancellor!) that feel productive. We'll have to see.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | October 23, 2010 at 12:14 PM
GGeorge, I have read some of Odum's analyses and "A Prosperous Way Down", but not sure which in particular you refer to. I think "emergy" refers to the usefulness of particular forms of embodied energy, right? To my mind, though, Odum makes a quite common but basic error in thinking about environmental systems. He interprets nature as working by his logical reformulation of the data available to him, as most scientists in all fields actually do. It results in fascinating but large misreadings of cause and effect to my mind.
The relation between money (our universal resource) and energy (nature's) is quite real of course, but driven by money being used as our way of communicating our decisions about physical processes we want others to do for us. Anything you buy takes large communities of other people putting together energy uses in many different forms.
From my systems science view the critical understanding for how that works is that you can't derived it from first principles. How complex systems work always exceeds our imaginations. So what you can learn is usually found by a scientific search for something that a real system does simply, and using that as a way to explore and expose the things that connect to it.
To me that starts with having a scientific method for identifying systems that work as whole units of organization in the environment. I think I find a good way to explain and demonstrate in studying how businesses work as complex environmental systems. My paper for Charlie's next EROI collection seems to do a nice job of demonstrating that, fyi. http://www.synapse9.com/drafts/WindEROI_SEA.pdf
Why so much of this falls on completely deaf ears, despite such very large communities of professionals and the public saying it's their main interest... is the twist I find curious. ;-)
phil
Posted by: Phil Henshaw | October 25, 2010 at 08:52 AM