…WORRY ABOUT GLOBAL DEPRESSION

I reiterate, “Am I the only one who’s noticed that the world’s bastard-twin little monster problems, i.e. global warming and oil depletion, seem to be somewhat self-canceling, i.e. the depletion of oil will reduce global warming, hopefully just-in-time?” This is not a rhetorical question. I’d really like to know. Maybe I’m just naïve, simplistic, or an idiot, or maybe this is an honest approach to a complex problem. It’s not like a want a free-fore-all forum here or something, but I’d really like to know. Believe it or not, I’ve actually researched all this quite a bit, gracias a la Internet. But nowhere have I seen anyone mention this. Naturally you don’t want people to get complacent and buy multiple SUV’s, but then you don’t want them to commit suicide, either. My main concern right here right now is honesty and articulation, straightforward discussion without smokescreens and pretexts. It’s like all the rap and America-bashing over the budget deficit, exchange rates, and foreign debt. It can all be solved, more or less, by the simple two words that no one wants to say: raise taxes. How many times have they predicted the collapse of Social Security, and how do they resolve the problem every time? Raise taxes. Again, you don’t want to get carried away and watch your precious democracy become reduced to bureaucracy, but you don’t want it to become an unhealthy and uneducated, but lowly taxed, land of slums and slumlords, the few filthy rich lording it over the remaining filthy poor. It’s government’s responsibility to take responsibility where individuals are unwilling or unable to do so, while consciously maintaining a level playing field for all. Government should take from the rich and give to the poor, especially when that means taking from windfall oil profits to encourage alternative energies. For those who cry foul, I assure you it’s usually the other way around, tax breaks for unearned wealth and bailouts for predatory and irresponsible corporations. Considering that our next best energy hope, hydrogen fuel cell technology, is at least forty years away, best guess, this could get really hairy.

But that’s not the real problem. After all we’ll probably survive as a species, but as a technologically advanced culture I’m not so sure. The Dark Ages happened before, and could happen again, Western civilization and its accumulated knowledge stagnant or misplaced for a millennium. Fortunately, last time other cultures transmitted the knowledge onward, Islamic Aristotelians, Syrian Christians and Spanish Jews, so all was not lost. Now, though, who would be up to the task? Internet heads? Yeah, right. Cultures are so intertwined these days that they would probably all fall together, if they fall at all. Who then would transmit nuclear technology on to the next generations? Hmmm, maybe better not… Or what about advanced weaponry? Hmmm once again… Okay, well what about rocket science? I haven’t seen the complete movie about Billy Bob Thornton building his own space rocket, but the prospect is pretty unlikely. A break in a mere generation since the Apollo spaceships to the moon meant that scientists basically had to start over for the next round, presumably to include Mars. All the German scientists who developed the Saturn rockets are long gone and nobody thought to save the plans. Can you believe that? This may be more essential to survival of the species than surviving global warming. After all we may be able to curb auto emissions, but we’ll never control volcanoes. This has been the cause of most major climate changes on the Earth, that and continental drift, and maybe a meteor strike or two. The climate has previously surged far higher than anything imagined from global warming, all within the period of biological florescence, including dinosaurs. What killed the dinosaurs may very well have been post-impact cooling, in fact, not warming.

On the other hand it’s now generally thought that the Earth was a snowball not long before the Cambrian ‘explosion’ of Earth’s first large-scale biological diversity, a period which cyanobacteria apparently survived handily, despite extreme conditions. In short there is no normal Earth temperature, only an average. The fact that we are here having this conversation is a miracle beyond anything that could be imagined given the improbable starting point. Intelligent design? Probably more like brilliant mistake(s). The possibility of intelligent life forming on this or any other planet is infinitesimally low, somewhat supported by the evidence that this planet has itself seen billions of species, but few of them smart enough to induce global warming, much less smart enough to cure it. That remains to be seen. Life out there, yeah, they’ll find that sooner or later, probably not so much different from non-life. Computers and rockets, even stick shifts and turntables, are another thing. Simple single-cell life existed on this planet before the advent of complex organisms longer than the non-life period preceding. We don’t need rocket science to find the others ‘out there,’ we need it to survive the next extinction event, whenever that comes, something like Noah’s ark, maybe Barack’s Boat. Global warming? What a joke! Global warming probably couldn’t extinguish even half the current species extant in the world, about the same as a healthy super volcano like Yellowstone in a good year, no big deal.

Seriously, though, the problem will be survival’s after-glow. Will technology die out for lack of fuel? Will capitalist economic expansion die out? Will we become de facto communists simply for lack of resources and better alternatives? Or will technology save the day and create new fuel sources without limits nor rings around the bathtub, nor artificially red sunsets? The initial phase, starting about right now, will be one of withdrawal, something like a gasoline maintenance program of increasingly smaller doses up to some indefinite vanishing point in the future, which will never be reached but will hopefully become meaningless. Tell that to the policy makers. Even those in countries touting their ‘greenness’ are building new airports as the fuel runs out. Welcome to Thailand (this is a Thai blog after all). A tentative shift to ‘bio-fuel’ will probably accomplish not much more than driving up the price of food. Considering their margins, it’s not likely they will ever come down again. Believe it or not, the price of oil actually could. Will high prices of oil and gas push us into economic depression? No way, though shortages could. They won’t. At that point, production will increase and prices will stabilize at least, maybe even fall. Oil-rich Arab states aren’t about to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. They’ll play it for all it’s worth, insh’allah.

Don’t laugh; it all happened before. The sharp price hikes of the late 70’s and early 80’s gave way to dirt cheap oil again in the late 80’s and 90’s. The price of a barrel of oil ten years ago was twelve dollars. All it takes is the discovery of a major new source and stagnant demand. They’re looking deeper than ever in the oceans now, and looking to take a layer off Saskatchewan in Canada just like is happening to Alberta to process ‘oil sands.’ Remember ‘oil shale?’ Maybe the Russians are right and oil is a renewable resource if only you look deep enough. Don’t worry; one way or another they’ll find and use every last drop (that’s the conspiratorial ‘they’; read “us,” the editorial “we”). I’ll be glad; if there’s life beyond oil, then let’s get on with it while our elders can still remember life before oil. You don’t have to cut down the last redwood to realize they’re irreplaceable. Look for more nuclear power and more electric cars and charging stations and better battery technology, still pathetically inefficient. “Still won’t be enough,” you moan? You’re right. It’ll take changes in lifestyle, also. Got bio-fuel? Get a horse! That’s how we got here, on their backs. It’s in our genes. Take comfort in the fact that the Golden Ages of both Art and Science occurred in the early 1900’s, long before the Auto-Age of self-indulgence. Since then we’ve only done more more bigger bigger, dumbing ourselves down in the process with our fancy toys. Still depressed that the party may be over? Boredom’s tough to deal with. The depression will be more psychological than economic. Is meditation not your style? There’s always Second Life, the on-line alternative reality. I hear land’s cheap. Watch your back. Eventually the meek will inherit the earth. That’s the part I like.