Oil, particularly in the West, has become almost as necessary to our way of life as oxygen and water. It is quite the thought experiment to figure out how much we are dependant on the stuff–and what will happen when it starts to run out.
Peak Oil proponents hold that we have used around 50% of extractable oil and thus face a dwindling, increasingly expensive supply. (One proviso: OPEC do not reveal their reserve estimates but, as every driver knows, prices have been rising over recent years, indicating demand outstripping supply).
Cut out oil overnight and our social and commercial fabric would quickly collapse: supermarkets would be empty in a matter of days for example. But this will be a slower crisis and, if we are to overcome it, we need to act now.
One grassroots initiative that has taken off in recent years, particuarly in English-speaking countries, is called Transition Towns. You can learn more in an article I wrote for the Smarter Cities website recently:
Earlier this week I spoke on a Nevada Public Radio panel about the Irish debt crisis and its likenesses to the situation in Southern Nevada, which, like Ireland, experienced the abrupt collapse of a property bubble.
As I write, it remains to be seen whether Ireland will actually pay off the outrageous (banking) debt that has been settled upon us, courtesy of our inept, lame-duck government (itself the product of a rotten political system).
My main point in the discussion–besides pointing out that we are being penalized unfairly–was that civic reform is vital. The public space in Ireland is currently agog with initiatives, most at an early stage of gestation, testifying that a historical opportunity is upon us.
If we leave our public life unmended, darker forces, in my view, will seize the initiative. Besides emigration, political violence is another Irish “solution” to Irish problems.
Such is the electric opulence of Las Vegas, my erstwhile home, that one can forget how vast quantities of power and water are required to keep the city in its customary orgasmic brilliance.
Enter the Colorado River–which kisses the southern edge of the Silver State and keeps Las Vegas alive.
Of course, long ago, when the southwestern states divvied up river resources, little did they imagine that a city of 2 million high-maintenance souls would emerge in the pitiless Desert cauldron of the Las Vegas Valley.
But emerge that city did, replete with mod cons and then some. And then along came Global Warming in the shape of an ongoing drought.
Add to that trenchant opposition to water extraction from rural counties…and you end up with the present situation: a regional water system under severe stress, as evidenced by the dramatic “bath ring” in Lake Mead pictured above.
You can read an article I just wrote for the NRDC’s Smarter Cities website on this topic, as well as listen to a portion of an interview I conducted with Pat Mulroy, the Las Vegan charged with meeting the city’s water needs, by clicking the link below:
Video of the talk I gave the other night in Westport, at Ignite the West. Great fun, great people, and a really good forum to hatch new ideas. Thanks to the organizers, Steve and Dermot, for a great opportunity.
I just sent the following letter to my public representatives here in Ireland on the subject of the madness that is NAMA; if you’re in the same sinking ship I encourage you to do the same: you can find the addresses you need here. Those of you outside of Ireland should pause for a moment and consider the progress of a country determined to not only undo its achievements but also put paid to any future ambitions.
I am writing to you to express my deep concern as an Irish citizen about the establishment of NAMA and, in particular, the unorthodox methods being used to establish the value of properties concerned.
Perhaps all concerned are acting in good faith–but there is a great danger that the present and future treasure of our country, of our children and our grandchildren, will be squandered: all in a vain attempt to mitigate the losses of a reckless element.
The thinking of course is that those losses, when realized, represent a systemic risk. That may be so. But the creation of NAMA, like so many responses in this crisis, is ill-conceived and burdensome.
For one thing, why are stakeholders in our banks not absorbing the losses first?
For another, why are values being determined as though they will not fall further?
And, to stop only at three points where a dozen could be made: how immune is NAMA to the “stroke-pulling” that seems endemic to our public life?
I would appreciate you redoubling your efforts to stop NAMA; if you are in support of it, I beg you to reconsider.
As Facebook friends and Twitter followers already know, I’ve been commenting a lot on the appalling revelations contained in the Ryan Report into Irish Institutional Child Abuse (I prefer the word Persecution for what happened). The original injury, bestial in the depths of its depravity, was made even worse by the intransigence, to this day, of the Religious Orders who controlled the institutions in which the children suffered.
Irish blogger Damien Mulley has helpfully pulled some of the evidence produced by victims into a slideshow: this, mind you, is only the tip of the tip of the iceberg.
Whatever your political persuasion, beware the siren call of the Perfectionist.
Moral perfectionists of the Left (e.g. John Pilger, Noam Chomsky) or Right (e.g. George W. Bush, Silvio Berlosconi) are, however noble their motives, a blight on progress.
Viewed on the political spectrum, they are separated by a gulf that could not be wider. But measure their empathy for others’ positions and you will find them side-by-side, deaf to all complexity and compromise: the net result is that perfectionists make real-world negotiation and progress next to impossible.
Consider this preemptive strike against Obama by renowned reporter John Pilger in the December 11th, 2008 issue of New Statesman:
One of the cleverest films I have seen is Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray plays a TV weatherman who finds himself stuck in time. At first he deludes himself that the same day and the same people and the same circumstances offer new opportunities. Finally, his naivety and false hope desert him and he realises the truth of his predicament and escapes. Is this a parable for the age of Obama? … He will continue to make stirring, platitudinous speeches, but the tears will dry as people understand that President Obama is the latest manager of an ideological machine that transcends electoral power. Asked what his supporters would do when reality intruded, Stephen Walt, an Obama adviser, said: “They have nowhere else to go.â€
First of all let me say that I have nothing but admiration for John Pilger’s record of reporting from the Middle East and his commitment to journalistic truth: the man clearly knows more about the on-the-ground reality of suffering than I ever will.
My problem is with the conclusions he draws. For Pilger, America can do no right, ever.
Ever, ever, ever.
Even when Americans roundly reject Absolutism as comprehensively as they did in November and take a chance on a candidate who seems to be of fine character and who clearly has a highly developed moral sense. And who is not a perfectionist.
(Beyond that, Obama has lived for long periods outside the US, has studied alongside Muslims, and witnessed the anxiety of his mother, dying while beset with worries about her health insurance coverage.)
Barack may be the product of a debased two-party system…but that is the reality we have and, once in a while, it still manages to produce leaders who can do some good for their people and their world.
How, of all people, can we tar Pilger and Bush with the same brush?
Well, Dubya is clearly a perfectionist because he could not (in the words of Bob Scheer) let Iraqis themselves pursue their own history. Bush wanted a tidy and neighbourly oil-producing state, democratic if needs be, at the heart of a shocked-and-awed Middle East. He was readily seduced by the neo-conservative delusion that Saddam’s replacement by a civilized administration would set a stirring example to the civically moribund Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
John Pilger I see as perfectionist because he simply cannot accept that we have to work with the political realities of the one Superpower we have in the world. Messy and venal though the political and foreign policy workings of the USA are, it is still the best hope we have to stand as guarantor over lasting Middle East peace (remember that it already achieved a continental peace in PostWar Europe by tacitly guaranteeing French and German security from each other’s aggression).
Remember it was a perfectionist Pied Piper, in the shape of Ralph Nader, who made possible the Bush Nightmare in the first place. But for Nader’s determination to break the two party system we would have Al Gore for President, no “war on terror”, and no invasion of Iraq.
To end, a truism: Perfection is the Enemy of the Good.
Adapted from my contributions to a comments thread over at Ready Steady Book.
Like so many of its ilk, Dublin Airport has been remodelled in such a way that all traces of its actual location have been effaced: it is now one among thousands of such mediocre nodes to be found in the network of international space, all alike devoid of any indications betraying where you might be on the planet. The same books and magazines and coffee are sold. The same mix of nationalities mill about. The same escalators and monitors and security equipment. The same temperature. The same air.
In Dublin however I came across one exception. At the departure gate there was a large lightbox hung on the wall, bearing the following quote from Lady Gregory, taken from one of her reworkings of Celtic legend:
“It is sweet to people to be telling a lie, but it is bitter in the end.”
In a flourishing economy, the public sector should be as small as possible. But not so small that it cannot prepare and deliver contingency plans.
Does the hapless response of the Bush Administration to the financial crisis–the inability to grasp the scale of the problem, the sheer lack of preparedness and of ready resources to deal with contingencies–remind you of something?
Hurricane Katrina, perhaps? Or post-invasion Iraq?
In each case the government’s response has been essentially the same: a failure to grasp the scale of the disaster together with a dearth of contingency plans.
In the case of Iraq, the CIA’s major concern was ensuring enough US flags were in hand for the welcoming crowds to welcome their “liberators”.
When it came to Katrina, FEMA chief Mike Browne was showered with congratulations from President Bush while an American city was drowning.
Now, with the US investment banking system not only in trouble but actually destroyed, a victim of Wall Street greed condoned by government laissez-faire, we find the authorities flummoxed at the markets’ unwillingness to act on their assurances.
Contingency planning is something we expect of governments. It is one of their primary functions: to plan for the worst. Governments, not private firms, invest in defenses against chemical or nuclear attack or take steps to avert the consequences of climate change.
Unfortunately, the Republican Party discovered, through Ronald Reagan’s success, that attacking, belittling, and demoralising government had the perverse effect of ensuring power: from 1980, the GOP have been adepts of this strategy.
Small government is good, particularly for free-market economies: this truth was at the kernel of the “Reagan Revolution”.
But the public sector should not be shrunk to the extent that it cannot come to the rescue when needed. Nor should public funding be misdirected or cut to the point that there is no Plan B when the best-of-all-possible-outcomes fails to materialize.
For proof you no longer have to ask the people of Baghdad or New Orleans.
If there is one consequence (of the many) I am looking forward to that will flow from the coming Obama landslide, it is the putting-to-rest, for once and for all, of the subtly poisonous notion that Americans are so inherently racist they will never let an African-American become President.
Unfortunately many (blue-state) Americans and (Western) Europeans seem to take this notion as axiomatic, forgetting that in fact the United States is a remarkable and successful meritocracy, in which origins generally count less than performance.
It is true that poor people in the US suffer and that a large proportion of black people are poor. It is difficult to succeed if you are born in the underclass, far harder than it is for everyone else.
But let that reality not blind us to the emerging and meaningful fact that a black man is shortly to become leader of the country, an outcome inconceivable in any other majority-white democracy.
I have lived in three American states, two Democrat, one Republican. I have met citizens from all walks of life and of all income levels. Americans are race-conscious, yes: that is the natural legacy of American history.
Oil, particularly in the West, has become almost as necessary to our way of life as oxygen and water. It is quite the thought experiment to figure out how much we are dependant on the stuff–and what will happen when it starts to run out. 
Whatever your political persuasion, beware the siren call of the Perfectionist.
Like so many of its ilk, Dublin Airport has been remodelled in such a way that all traces of its actual location have been effaced: it is now one among thousands of such mediocre nodes to be found in the network of international space, all alike devoid of any indications betraying where you might be on the planet. The same books and magazines and coffee are sold. The same mix of nationalities mill about. The same escalators and monitors and security equipment. The same temperature. The same air. 
If there is one consequence (of the many) I am looking forward to that will flow from the coming Obama landslide, it is the putting-to-rest, for once and for all, of the subtly poisonous notion that Americans are so inherently racist they will never let an African-American become President.