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#peakoil

2 posts2 participants0 posts today

Twenty years ago, my buddy Greg Green made this banger of a documentary called The End of Suburbia. For those who don’t know, at one point—don’t ask me if this is still true—it was the best-selling documentary DVD in Canada. That’s partly because the Post Carbon Institute used it in a grassroots campaign to fundraise, and they moved a ton of copies.

This doc hit me hard. It made me hyper-aware of how fucked we are when it comes to our dependence on oil. At the time, it was groundbreaking, and it resonated with me because it was made in the DIY, independent media spirit that I love.

Greg recently sent me a clip where they reflect on the predictions made in the film—what they got right, what they missed. I’m stoked to see how they unpack this 20 years later.

If you haven’t watched The End of Suburbia, I highly recommend it. Still relevant as hell today.

youtube.com/watch?v=1f8iLZh4dM

Continued thread

@_ppmv as a once smart person always used to say: "it doesn't have to be this way." most of these hard limits are indisputable. there will be #climatechange and #peakoil and #limitstogrowth.

what is happening right now DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

4 years down the road, whatever the world will be like then: what did you do to stop it?

and i know, most of my deep green ex-comrades, the answer right now is: "nil." to:"i waited for this burn it down."

Continued thread

THIS @_ppmv

#peakoil = geological determinism
#senecacliff = energetic determinism
#climatechange = economic determinism

they were all wrong and all right at the same time. all these systems limits are reached at the same time. they are all happening or prone to happen in the next century.

yet still, currently it looks pretty much like the #collapse of western civilization is initiated by confused people electing a physical & mental orange as POTUS .

now that should make y'all "go hmmm..."

"Drill, baby, drill"? What for? Looks like the #oilmarket is saturated and demand will be decreasing. Yes, it's #PeakOil demand, thanks to #electrification and #ClimateChange policies. According to @Grist: "The Gulf [of Mexico] accounts for 97 percent of all offshore oil and gas production in the U.S. Nearly 12 million acres are under active leases in the Gulf, but only about 2.4 million acres are being used to produce oil and gas"
grist.org/energy/trump-wants-m
Graph from the #JRCGECO report.

John Scales Avery (1933-2024) was an American theoretical chemist. In his book "Civilization's Crisis" he argues that civilization as a whole faces a set of linked challenges. #ClimateChange is caused by consumption of non-renewable #FossilFuels but it is just one aspect of a bigger crisis. Other aspects are #Deforestation, #OceanAcidification, #NuclearWaste and #pollution in general. #ResourceDepletion and #VanishingResources in combination with #OverPopulation will eventually lead to a #collapse of #civilization in this century according to #systemdynamics and classic #limitstogrowth models. The turning point is #PeakOil or the #HubbertPeak which we are reaching now.
worldscientific.com/worldscibo

More articles from John can be found here
johnavery.info/

anyway, i have been talking about #peakoil as a mathematical model of #collapse / systems failure / "how things go down", but there have been other ideas about that. peak oil was developed in the context of geophysics. hubbert looked a the behavior of oil wells over time & concluded: if the wells in a field all behave a certain way, then the entire field will grow, peak & decline in the same way & so we can extrapolate how world production will behave.

yesterday i said no one of my ex comrades is reflecting on their misinterpretations in the past. yeah, that's not exactly right and maybe was unfair. but it would only be helpful to learn something from that for the events today and they aren't. geological determinism has just become economic determinism, or geopolitical determinism or whatever the form of determinism is called that makes people think AI will end the world.

thoughts, @_ppmv ?

Continued thread

no matter what we thought would be "the big one" - it wasn't. #peakoil wasn't it. 2008 wasn't it. #complexity didn't collapse in on itself but build up. #covid wasn't it. the russian war wasn't it. the system is very resilient, more than anyone anticipated thinking about these things. you call it a "#superorganism" - well if it is then it wants to live. living things want to stay alive. they might be drinking & smoking, but the want to stay alive.

#collapse
#talkcollapse
#collapseology