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<DIV><FONT face=Verdana color=#000080 size=2><SPAN class=334344003-01032006>I've
always appreciated George Monbiot's work, and just came across an important
speech that I missed. The whole thing (at a conference for environmental
journalists) is at:</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Verdana color=#000080 size=2><SPAN class=334344003-01032006><A
href="http://www.energybulletin.net/2721.html">http://www.energybulletin.net/2721.html</A></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana color=#000080 size=2><SPAN
class=334344003-01032006></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana color=#000080 size=2><SPAN
class=334344003-01032006>...and it's all worth a read. This last part in
particular is one of the best expressions I've found of sentiments that most of
us may already hold - but here they are in one coherent
stream:</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
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class=334344003-01032006></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana color=#000080 size=2><SPAN
class=334344003-01032006> </SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana color=#000080 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=334344003-01032006>"...</SPAN>Let me mention some of the
founding myths of industrial society. These myths are dominant in both
capitalist and communist thought.<BR><BR>The <STRONG>first</STRONG> one is that
there is no limit to human potential. We can be anything we want to be, we can
do anything we want to do. Our potential awaits only further economic and
technological development. One day everyone will be able to run a four-minute
mile. One day everyone will live to be 200. One day, if we choose, we could all
abandon the planet we live on and move to another one. As economies and
technologies develop, we can expect to see the welfare of everyone on earth
improve: what the neoliberal economists call the rising tide which lifts all
boats.<BR><BR>This leads to the <STRONG>second</STRONG> myth: the confusion of
progress with progressivity. In other words, the assumption that industrial and
post-industrial development will automatically distribute wealth, rather than
concentrating it.<BR><BR>Both these myths are entirely dependent on a
<STRONG>third</STRONG> one: that the resources required to bring this utopia
about are infinite. The world can keep providing for its people, however many
there are, and however much they want to consume. In the capitalist mythology,
the market will magically cause new resources to materialise when the old ones
run out. In the communist mythology, the free development of each leading to
free development of all will mystically discharge the same function. They are
both variants of a far older belief: we might have messed up our chances of
survival, but the Lord, or the gods, or the spirits will nevertheless provide.
Today we say: technology will provide, the market will provide. We place our
faith in them just as we once placed our faith in God. The industrial worldview,
in either of its dominant forms, is entirely incapable of engaging with the
problem of finity.<BR><BR>All these beliefs are plainly irrational, and bear no
relation to what is actually happening on earth. They overlook some basic facts
of material existence. Let me list a few.<BR><BR><STRONG>Basic Fact Number
One:<BR></STRONG><BR>At any rate of use, <EM>non-renewable</EM> resources are,
by definition, depleted. They will not come back. As soon as you begin to use
one, the clock starts ticking towards the day on which it becomes exhausted.
This applies even to the non-renewable resource on which the entire modern
economy is built: namely petroleum. Global oil production will soon reach its
peak and then decline, at which point the Age of Growth will give way to the Age
of Entropy.<BR><BR>Not immediately, of course, but unless another source of
energy, just as cheap, with just as high a ratio of “energy return on energy
invested” is discovered or developed, there will be a gradual decline in our
ability to generate the growth required to keep the debt-based financial system
from collapsing.<BR><BR>Those of us who are alive today have been lucky enough
to have been brought up in an age of energy surplus. This is a remarkable
historical and biological anomaly. A supply of oil that exceeds demand has
permitted us to do what all species strive to do – expand the ecological space
we occupy – but without encountering direct competition for the limiting
resource. The surplus has led us to believe in the possibility of universal
peace and universal comfort, for a global population of 6 billion, or 9 or 10.
If kindness and comfort are, as I suspect, the results of an energy surplus,
then, as the supply contracts, we could be expected to start fighting once again
like cats in a sack. In the presence of entropy, virtue might be
impossible.<BR><BR><STRONG>Basic Fact Number Two:</STRONG><BR><BR>Beyond a
certain rate of use, <EM>renewable</EM> resources are depleted. There is no
clearer example of the limits of human action than the paradoxical fact that the
global resources which are running out first are not the non-renewable ones, but
the renewable ones. Fisheries, forests, fresh water, soil. Their decline is our
momento mori, our reminder of the limits of finity, of the fact that we and the
resources on which we depend are mortal: a fact which all of us would prefer to
ignore.<BR><BR><STRONG>Basic Fact Number Three:<BR></STRONG><BR>Beyond a certain
rate of exploitation, renewable resources become non-renewable resources. If you
hit them too hard, you destroy the ecosystem which permits them to regenerate.
This we have seen already in certain fisheries and forests and hydrological
systems.<BR><BR><STRONG>Basic Fact Number Four:<BR></STRONG><BR>The earth’s
capacity to absorb pollution is limited. This applies to the atmosphere as much
as it does to our rivers. Beyond a certain level of carbon dioxide emissions,
human life becomes impossible. The upper limit for temperature rises this
century predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is six
degrees centigrade. The last time there was a global temperature rise of six
degrees was at the end of the Permian period, 250 million years ago. The result
was an almost complete collapse of biological productivity: the total mass of
biological matter. Around 90% of the earth’s species were wiped out. No animal
bigger than a medium-sized pig survived.<BR><BR>But already several eminent
climatologists are challenging the Intergovernmental Panel’s figures: on the
grounds that they are too low. Some are predicting an upper range of 7 or 10 or
12 degrees of climate change this century.<BR><BR><STRONG>Basic Fact Number
Five:<BR></STRONG><BR>The system which governs our economic lives, which we call
capitalism, is itself is a limited resource. Capitalism is a pyramid scheme. Let
me try to explain this.<BR><BR>It is a built on a system called fractional
reserve banking. Almost the entire money supply – generally, depending on where
you live, between 90 and 95% of it – is issued not by the state, but the
commercial banks. It is issued not in the form of notes and coins, but in the
form of loans. Between 90 and 95% of the money supply, in other words, is
debt.<BR><BR>To pay off the debt that is issued today, the banks must issue more
debt tomorrow, and so on and so forth. In a world which is not based on material
realities, the world which might exist, for an example, in a computer model, it
could expand for ever. But in the real world, the supply of money is linked to
material realities called collateral: the real wealth which gives the loans
meaning, and without which the whole scheme would be exposed as a fraud.
Eventually the amount of lending must inevitably exceed the availability of
meaningful collateral, for the simple reason that the material world is finite
while the possible issue of credit is not. That is the point at which the whole
structure comes tumbling down.<BR><BR><STRONG>Basic Fact Number
Six:<BR></STRONG><BR>The people who get hit first and hit hardest by any one of
these realities are not the rich but the poor. The depletion of resources is
inherently regressive: it might enrich the wealthy, but it makes the lives of
those who are already poor still harder.<BR><BR>These are the realities, but the
three great myths of the industrial era still prevail. Almost everyone on earth,
to one degree or another, accepts them. Despite everything I know to be true,
sometimes I catch myself believing them.<BR><BR>And this, I believe, is the
result of an even deeper problem, an inherent human characteristic which long
pre-dates the industrial era.<BR><BR>It is as follows. We do not live in a world
of reason. We live in a dreamworld. With a small, rational part of the brain, we
recognise that our existence is governed by material realities. We recognise
that as those realities change, so will our lives. But underlying this awareness
is a deep semi-consciousness. This absorbs the moment in which we live, then
generalises it, projecting our future lives as repeated instances of the
present. This, not the superficial world of our reason, is our true
reality.<SPAN class=334344003-01032006>"</SPAN></DIV>
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<DIV><SPAN class=334344003-01032006><FONT face=Verdana color=#000080
size=2>--</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
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<P> </P>
<P>Sandy Pollard<BR></FONT></P></FONT></SPAN></DIV></BODY></HTML>