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The Curmudgeon and the Archdruid - 2014, August 4 / IDEAS


A great discussion between you damned kids get off my lawn Jim Kunstler and the Archdruid, John Michael Greer. Topics cover the ah hell listen to it yourself and find out. If you're sad, and need cheering up, skip this post!

INTERVIEW: KunstlerCast 256
JHK’s conversation with the excellent John Michael Greer, author and blogger about where we are now on the arc of collapse and what the mood of the culture is. Greer’s many books include The Long Descent, Green Wizardry, After Oil, The Wealth of Nature, and Not the Future We Ordered. His newest, Star’s Reach, is a novel set 400 years ahead in America’s neo-medieval future. He blogs weekly at TheArchdruidReport.Blogspot.com.
I've been following Greer's writing for about a decade, and he has an uncanny knack for making predictions. Another one of the prominent figures in the Peak Oil scene is Richard Heinberg. Here, writing in 2004, about oil and energy scarcity:
...we're likely to see prices go even higher very soon because spare production capacity, globally, is just evaporating. And, probably within the next couple of years, we will see oil production globally hit its all-time peak and start its long-term decline, which means as demand continues to go up, supply will increasingly diverge from it, and that means we will be competing more and more for what's left, unless we find a way to power down. Now, in the book, I describe the real problem as being not only geological but also political because right now, we have political systems around the world that, and especially in this country, that are set up on the basis of the assumption that industrial growth, economic growth will continue into the future. And no country in the world, currently, has much of a Plan B. ...

...what we see is the outworking of what I call the strategy of “last one standing” In other words, as we reach this historic watershed of a decrease availability of oil globally. Countries are going to start fighting for what's left, and the U.S. has already declared its intentions in this regard with its invasion of Iraq, and I think this is really only the beginning of this strategy which ultimately, I'm afraid, will lead to, as our Vice President has said, war for the remainder of our lifetimes...

...It's going to increasingly involve nations, not only like Iraq and Iran and Syria, but also China and Russia, and as the competition gets to that stage, I think things could get very, very nasty indeed...

...The “last one standing” strategy is laughably futile, and yet it's the path of least resistance for politicians, because they don't have to stand up in front of the American people or the British people and say, “Hey, look, sorry, we misled you. We enabled you to become more and more dependent on this non-renewable resource that's now running out and becoming expensive.” They don't have to do that. Instead, all they have to do is say, “Well, the problem is these nasty people, or these terrorists, or people in foreign countries who speak different languages who are preventing us from getting the resources that we need.”

And because this post deals with peak oil and resource depletion and the future and being depressing and negative and whatnot, for French speakers - I was recently interviewed about my short film 'There's No Tomorrow' - the French language version is doing quite well, pleased to say. Close to 500,000 views:



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