[p2p-research] good summary of anti-transition hypothesis

[Kevin Carson]

On 9/18/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't agree, but it's a good summary of the radically pessimistic peak
> oilers: http://www.integralworld.net/markus3.html

> The vast majority of people – public, mass media, political and economic
> elites – are not aware how serious the human predicament is. There is a
> widespread hope that either oil reserves are huge, or we can develop
> alternative energy sources, just on time «to leave oil before oil leaves
> us». New American president Barack Obama's program for «clean energy» and
> «clean technologies» has very wide support and popularity inside and outside
> the USA. So called transition towns in New Zealand, USA and several other
> countries are part of these wishes and programs. But this is a big illusion
> and a symptom of faith in technological miracles, very often a phenomenon in
> industrial society. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as «alternatives».

> «Alternative» forms of energy simply can't replace 30 billion annual barrels
> of oil (the problem of «net energy»).

It's interesting how the worst Peak Oil doomers and apologists for the
current model of industrial capitalism share the same mirror-image
assumption:  high rates of fossil fuel consumption are necessary  for
our current material standard of living, and there is no way of
producing materially the same level of consumption outputs with lower
levels of energy input.  Prosperity and "progress" are DEFINED in
terms of how much energy is consumed.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html