Book smart vs. earth smart
James Howard Kunstler, author, architectural critic and Peak Oil gadfly, is on tour to promote his latest book, The Long Emergency.
On one stop of the tour, he was asked to give a talk at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA. I’ll let you read that for yourself.
Now, Google generally hires really smart people - but as in all industries everyone sees things through their own particular lens - to a man with a hammer, everything is a nail, etc - and while their knowledge may be deep it is not necessarily broad. And the number of Ph.Ds on your team means nothing if they subscribe to a fundamentally flawed view of economics and reality. You can choose not to believe in geology, but it’s going to affect you anyway, and geology trumps technology pretty much every time.
We, in reality, have at most a 20 to 30 year window to transition to a low-energy economy.
And yet we’re building suburbs and highway infrastructure as if we have a 100-year supply of oil.
Why hasn’t anyone asked the Government why we’re still pursuing a dream of endless growth if the energy simply isn’t there?
June 14, 2005 4:02 PM
Comments
He did mention Peak Oil recently in a speech — I’m just disappointed there hasn’t been more awareness here in Canada. Certainly it’s not on the news, and I don’t think the NDP want to alienate their old farm-roots base in the West by dissing the big moneymaker. Ultimately, though, agriculture is especially vulnerable to oil shocks… I think we are complacent about the issue because of the Alberta tar sands, but that takes more energy to extract than we get out of it…
the sensible thing to do is reduce our demand for energy now, while we still can — theoretically just having every household in America put in one compact-fluorescent bulb would save an ANWR of energy - doing things like mandating corporate average fuel economy (CAFE), funding transit instead of highways, and local density and local business vs. drive-in McFunCentres….
wrote aj on June 15, 2005 3:42 AM
We’ve taken the “One Tonne Challenge” and have reduced the amount of energy we use, continued our recycling efforts, and neither of us drive.
I’ve only cheated recently by running my air conditioner 24 hours until the heat wave broke. Sue me. :)
wrote Paolo on June 15, 2005 11:08 AM
Do you really think no one has asked the goverment this very question. Dr. David Suzuki would probably have something to say about that. :)
wrote Paolo on June 14, 2005 9:28 PM