"Ye shall be as gods..."

Honestly, if it's going to be that bad, I suggest stockpiling ammunition. And considering that reality, a likely scenario is that faced with starvation & death, most people will decide that war is a good answer. Nations will fight for control of the resources (assuming no nuclear holocaust) and one will dominate the globe. The world will be like one of those sci-fi what ifs where you go back in time 2000 years with all the weapons and technology of today.

Rod, you beat me to the punch on Rieff's ideas in Charisma, but here's a particularly compelling quote from the book in light of your post:

To the first vanguard of our culture, the exodus out of Egypt is the rejection of earth magic. Egypt is the land of magic, of power constantly increasing. So long as a people understands its own limits, it rejects the supreme temptation, the quest for power. Societies seeking power, even over death, are all Egypts, at war with all Israels. Modern societies evidence many Egypts and no Israels. In the sociology of credal organizations, to be free of limits, even in the name of that organization, is to be faithless. Faith is the general term of obedience to particular interdictory contents, whatever
circumstances arise in the role of soul-making; only under this obedience are souls made. God is at the side of Israel only so far as Israel was faithful.

Kind of makes me think someone should write a companion book to Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome? called Are We Egypt?

If the Republic does fall, I doubt that peak oil, energy shortages, or food shortages will be the cause of it. IMHO, currently-available & emerging technologies would suffice to shift our economy away from petroleum energy via a combination of conservation & substitution of alternate energy sources. There may be a transition period where energy is more expensive, but I don't see that lasting. [If anyone's interested, I can go into detail regarding this; it's just that I've said it all before, and don't really feel like repeating myself.]

Regarding "limitlessness": The ability of a finite resource base to support human & economic expansion is a function not only of the size of said resource base, but also "resource efficiency", i.e., the efficiency with which resources are utilized to maintain a given standard of living. It seems to me that most "cornucopians" do not deny the existence of limits per se, but rather argue that Malthusians underestimate both the size of our potential resource base, and the degree to which "resource efficiency" may be increased.

It's worth noting that, if both our resource base & resource efficiency are both, in fact, already maxed out, then the case for population control (by coercive means if necessary) becomes much stronger. Austerity would only delay - not eliminate - the need for such measures.

Rod wrote: "What you're not understanding, Joel, is that the situation with oil is not a matter of ordinary business cycles."

What you are not understanding, Rod, is that the increasing price of oil is not "the collapse of our unsustainable, unnatural economic and social structure." The price of oil is going to increase faster than overall inflation from now on. Market forces will drive new technologies that will gradually wean us off oil.

This is not the end of the world. I repeat, don't panic.

To somewhat echo Helen’s point, I’d have to partially disagree with your contention that “if times got hard, [country dwellers would] be in a lot better shape than us city dwellers”. I can’t farm at my place in Toronto, but I can join a community garden, or buy locally (read: less than 100 miles) grown food at one of the farmers’ markets in town. I can take the subway or streetcar anywhere I can’t walk or bike to. And yes, I leave my windows open all the time, even when no one’s home (and a good thing I can too, since the humidity in July and August is insane). I recognize that not all urbanites have these advantages, but it seems to me that a well-planned city would be as good a place as any to ride out the apocalypse.

Some comments:

1) Great post

2) We are right around peak oil for quality, inexpenive crude, and anyone who knows anything about it is aware of this. We have lots of expensive, low quality oil left, but who cares? Think $20 gallon for gas or more. Oil is cheap right now. The economy will do fine, but there is a massive political problem when poor people can't afford to get around and yet the wealthy start raising the cost of city dwelling as they move back to town. This is the real risk.

3) Kunstler's "World Made By Hand": Kunstler is a loon, and he gets it completely wrong here. Think about the soaring cost of organic grain. The world won't be made by hand, we will simply shift our behavior; travel less, move closer, use communications more, become more careful about how we consume. Read a smart money guy like Simmons for an understanding of how the economics of high energy play out over the next decade or two.

4) I think life will be better for most people with high prices all around: Americans will start walking/bike riding (stay in better shape), eat less and better food, and live closer together and thus have to learn to get along.

5) Watch for a serious shift to more conservative political positions in the culture and religion. I see less toleration for liberal lifestyles that really are just a luxury (loose and strange sexual mores) and more respect a culture that produces and not consume as much. I think it's a very bright future, a wholesale rejection of baby-boomer culture, and a distaste for the the whole union-monopoly-I've-got-mine mindset that dominates today. You see this already with union folk against young folk in this election, and unions losing.

6) I also see a national health care plan, and gas rationing in America. I see America getting all the good things about Europe (less consumption, living in town), and keeping growing all the good things about America (religion, rugged individualism).

Market forces will drive new technologies that will gradually wean us off oil.

How do you know that? Market forces *might* do that. It would be unwise to assume that they won't. But it's a manifestation of confirmation bias (Taleb) to say that they *will*.

Understand, y'all, that I'm not predicting the End of the World, the Fall of the Republic, or any such thing. I'm saying that a radical shift in the way we live now seems increasingly possible, even likely, and that we should prepare for it.

Agreed that a city like Toronto (where I've been a couple of times -- wonderful place!) would in some respects be better off than some rural locales. I don't think Dallas is that kind of place, in part because Dallas's existence as a vast metropolis depends a lot on affordable air conditioning.

"I can't open the windows of my old house because they've been painted closed to prevent thieves from breaking in. I could have them opened, and put screens up, but there's no way I'd leave the windows open at night. You'd have to be crazy to do that. How about you readers -- how many of you live in a place where you could sleep easy at night, even though the windows of your house were all wide open to let in the breeze?"

I live in Chicago. Couple of years ago, Chi was the murder capital of the United States. In the summer, I almost always sleep with the windows open to conserve A/C consumption and because I enjoy the fresh air. I don't think there is anything "crazy" about it.

Forty thousand people a year die in auto accidents. Are you crazy for driving a car? More than 100,000 die of medical mistakes. Are you going to avoid the doctor's office if you get sick?

It's not a "running joke" that your thinking tends toward the apocalyptic. Your thinking DOES tend toward the apocalyptic.

There are many things in this post I agree with, at least as far as conservation is concerned. But, honestly, I get a bit queasy reading about your eagerness to abandon your country in the face of a crisis.

You're always talking about the "Benedict option" and dropping out of society and fleeing to the hills. You seem to enjoy all the fruits of American life, but are willing to shove it all aside if the going gets tough. There are many more sensible, practical and SUSTAINABLE solutions to our problems, Rod, than to start a beet farm or something in case the Evil Empire takes a big hit. I wonder what sort of man you would have been during the Civil War or the Great Depression.

(Incidentally, what are you going to do if your agrairian lifestyle experiences a drought or your crops are diseased or a post-apocalytic motorcycle gang tries to force you into indentured servitude? So-called "Black Swans" are not strictly an urban problem.)

I initially liked the idea of crunchy conservatism, even though it fed into the sterotype that most conservatives are wing-tipped materialists (and I'm a liberal). But more and more I feel as though "crunchy cons" are little more than rural tourists. Urban, conservative yuppies touched with liberalism who want to enjoy the "simple" life without bothering to understanding all the work and sacrifice the "simple" life entails.

Rod At what point do you -- do any of us -- accept that we can't keep living like we do, because the old order will not survive the shocks to come? And to really accept that, as opposed to endlessly contemplating it on blogs and in bar conversation, is to act on it.

Matt: But more and more I feel as though "crunchy cons" are little more than rural tourists.

I think a lot of (not just conservative) people have been "acting" on lifestyle change for years, and not in a "tourist" way.

1) homeschooling
2) the rise of the Costco buy-in-bulk culture even among the wealthy
3) the push to health food, return to natural

And I think this is why Rod's first Crunchy Con article received so much attention back in the day. It sure caught my eye; I remember sending it to my brother and reading it to my wife out loud and saying, hey, we're not alone! It's hard to see any shift in the culture because boomers dominate so much of the discourse, and they aren't part of the change. How many boomers homeschooled?

I know my family started to "act" on the "Benedict option" back in back in the late '90s (when gas was only $0.99/gal!, we took our cues from the culture, not economics). But after a decade we are still not where we want to be: very limited garden (lazy), no hand water pump hooked up (lazy). But it's mighty hard to get excited when gas and food are so cheap relative to wages and life is so easy.

I do disagree that things are going to be all that bad, and I wouldn't underestimate Americans and their ability to shift behavior quickly.

How odd that Wendell Berry touts farming as the opposite of the "We Shall Be as Gods" mentality.

Isn't Mr. Berry aware that much of the Old Testament is violently opposed to farming for the very same reasons he's violently opposed to much of modern American life?

Think about it- Cain was a farmer and Abel was a shepherd. When Cain offered his crops as a sacrifice, God angrily rejected them, while happily accepting Abel's sacrifice of a lamb. Get the (fully intended) message? God does not approve of farming! He regards farming as evil, as a presumptuous attempt by men to provide an abundance of food without relying on the Lord! The Old Testament indicates regularly that farming is bad, and that the only moral life is that of the nomadic herdsman.

Look at the kosher laws. They endorse eating animals compatible with the nomadic life of a herdman (sheep, cattle, goats) while banning the consumption of animals (like pigs) that must be fed with farmed crops.

To the ancient Israelites, NOBODY was more arrogant than a farmer. The nomadic herdsman produced nothing for himself, and had to rely on God to lead him to grass and water. Farming, if done properly, led to an abundance of food, which led to specialization of labor, which led to civilization, which led to cities, which led to idolatry!

Wendell Berry points to airplanes and roars that man has no business in the sky- that it just isn't NATURAL for men to fly. Okay, fair enough... but Moses would have roared that man has no business digging in the soil and trying to create foods, that it just isn't NATURAL for men to grow plants as if they were gods!

If Mr. Berry REALLY wants to live a "natural" life, he needs to get off his farm and go back to herding sheep or hunting and gathering. The life he endorses is no more "natural" than the cigarettes through which he's made a living most of his life.

Aside from the fact that there may be more oil under Montana according to the latest estimates than in all of Saudi Arabia, there are lots of other untapped sources of petroleum, like oil shale, that can keep us going for a long time.

We heard this crap back in the 1970s. It was nonsense then and it is nonsense now.

Aside from the fact that there may be more oil under Montana according to the latest estimates than in all of Saudi Arabia,

Do you have a source for this estimate? The stories (*) I've read put Montana shale oil at ~3.7e9 bbl - i.e., about one year's supply of US oil imports.

there are lots of other untapped sources of petroleum, like oil shale, that can keep us going for a long time.

The problem with oil shale & tar sands is EROEI (**); it takes lots more energy to produce these than conventional oil. This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, but it does suggest that (absent _really_ cheap non-petroleum energy) we might not be able to utilize such "unconventional oil" to the same degree as we currently utilize petroleum.

(*) uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN1141306520080411

See also pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3021/pdf/FS08-3021_508.pdf

for the USGS report in question. Stats on US oil consumption available here: www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html

(**) www.theoildrum.com/node/3810

www.theoildrum.com/node/3839

(You don't have to post this Rod, but please respond to the post by astorian. But if you'd like to post this entry, go ahead.) Wendell Berry has not made his primary living from tobacco cuttings, rather the forty-one books he's written. Secondly, Berry is a herder/hunter-gatherer as well; he owns goats and sheep, while being a local ecologist, who has a keen understanding of edible plants in his wood. Lastly, it is not NATURAL to drill holes in the ground for oil or sit and type incorrect facts about a person's life (libel) on a machine made from unnatural products (I am guilty of this too). Since we spent the greater part of the last 10,000 years as farmers, it is much more natural to undertake gardening or farming as a way in which to become more self-reliant for our families and communities. What is the harm in that astorian?

I take a backseat to no man in my love of "we're all gonna die!" books and movies. I re-read "Alas, Babylon" and "A Canticle for Leibowitz" just about every year

Have you read "Warday"? It's a post-limited-nuclear-war novel by Whitney Strieber & James Kunetka. Not sure how realistic some of it is, but it was well-written, and the authors do a great job of conveying a sense of "how far we have fallen".

ScurvyOaks, Enlighten me, mdavid, about the "low quality" of the remaining oil. Do you have some sources you could send me to? (No argument about it being expensive to produce).

I would recommend reading Matthew Simmons on peak oil - the guy has made a fortune in the oil business over the last 40 years, seen it all, and knows more about oil in his little pinky finger than I ever will. I've worked in a particular part of the industry, and yet I've never read anyone else who understands my part of the business better, and it's not even his area of expertise. Also, he was predicting exactly what we see today back when oil was $15/bbl.

Regarding quality: this is just common sense. Easy, high-quality oil gets grabbed first, and low quality, thick crude still sits underground, waiting for when it might be profitable to produce. I logged new wells that cost literally millions to drill in the 90s that were sitting right next to poor quality crude nobody would touch (discovered in the 70s). The time to go after this oil is getting nearer, but oil needs to be in the $300-$500/bbl range on the back side of the peak oil curve, unless we just stop drilling and find something else to play with.

I don't think the public has any idea of what is coming down the oil turnpike (the free nations don't produce squat anymore), but I also don't see any real GDP problem with paying $500/bbl, either. Europe/Oz with taxes pay $10/gal at the pump already, and they still get along fine. $120/bbl oil is still very, very cheap; we are still giving oil away.

Dale: thanks for the recommendation. There was a similar-sounding book I read eons ago when I was in junior high where the Earth went through a comet that shrouded the planet in a grainy substance that caused all the machinary to gum up and fail. I wish I could remember the title or author.

Again, I suspect that some of the yearning for a return to simpler ways wells up from a desire for physical challenges and the good feeling that comes from overcoming them. Perfectly natural, seems to me, and Rod, in this blog, has tapped into that sentiment. There is something to the old saw that there's nothing better for you spiritually than a good day's hard physical work (even better if you get to fight mutants, too!)

Thanks, mdavid. I agree with you about where oil prices are headed and the fact that it's still very cheap at $120/bbl. What do you think the prospects are for technological improvements bringing down the costs involved with really heavy crude? This isn't something I've followed at all recently. (By way of background, my dad's career was in the oil service business, with one of the major drill bit manufacturers, so I have a passing acquaintance with the issues, but not a lot of knowledge.)

Helen,

You're grossly overstating the self-sustainability of urban living, if by urban one means, in most cases, anything much larger than a small to medium-sized town.

Densely populated and walkable cities like the one in which you live are as much a product of fossil-fuel-based industrial transportation technologies as a city like Dallas is, in its own way.

The environmental cost of transporting food and other essential goods that cities of the kind you describe cannot produce for themselves *into* those cities is absolutely massive, even if that food and those goods are transported by horse-drawn, mule-drawn, or ox-drawn wagon, as they were in most places until just over a hundred years ago.

For (just) one thing (among many), the amount of manure produced by the number of animals it took to transport food and goods into cities of any great size in the later 19th century made most cities of any great size aesthetically unpleasant and ecologically toxic places for most people to be.

There was just as much discussion of the need to get *out* of the cities back then as there is discussion of the need to go *back* to them now.

Anyway, I'm not trying to pick a fight, but honestly, there's a good case to be made that the most environmentally efficient way for people to live might very well be in small to medium sized towns with farming conducting locally within 10 or 15 miles of town, with small-scale public transportation taking folks out to the fields and pastures from town every day.

There is not however much of a case to be made that contemporary urban living of the sort you describe is a lifestyle that could be maintained in the circumstances Rod describes -- that is, without changes for which many if not most city-dwellers are indeed less well-prepared than many if not most of those in rural areas are.

"This is not the end of the world. I repeat, don't panic."

Berry, Deneen & Dreher aren't panicking they're gloating. Like all apocalyptic's they can't wait for us to get our comeuppance. It's the only way they can force the rest of us to walk the Godly path.

I just wish these people had a realistic view of the world they so long for - but perhaps I can help.

2 words.

Antibiotics

and

Dentistry

How many of us live in a place where we can leave the windows open at night? (you ask).

I live in a small town in North Dakota, and we can still do that.

Mont D.: I've seen no signs that Rod is gloating about this (although Kunstler certainly is and Berry may be; I need to read more of him to reach a conclusion).

Astorian: Farmers have a better reputation in the New Testament, at least by implication, since there are several parables comparing God to a farmer (although of course Jesus is often compared to a shepherd). A complete amen to your second post, however.

"Rather, he sees it as returning us to our true nature: as creatures made to live within natural limits. Circumstances will force us to embrace an older definition of freedom and selfhood, says Berry: not freedom as self-discovery in the absence of restraint, but as self-discovery within a community, defined by your relationships to your traditions and to each other."

Your interpretation of Berry makes it clear that he can hardly wait for circumstances to force all of us to live as he thinks we should.

"Recall Philip Rieff's insight: either live within limits, or the evil within you, within each of us, turns us into terrorists."

You also seem on-board with the idea that those who don't accept limits (as you define them)are pretty bad people.

And finally:

"What they set themselves to achieve instead . . . was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. . . . This time, however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time . . ."

So those of us who don't retreat to this Utopian game preserve of morality and virtue should not consider our horrible end our just deserts?

The funny thing is you, of all of us, has the best opportunity to do this. 'Cause I don't think your wrong. And if I were you I'd move my life to my parents place and aim to create as self sufficient a life as I possibly could. I'd get my Dad to teach me everything he can and I'd make that land work, so when he died you and your sons could just keep on.

I seem to recall reading about designs for external-combustion engines (steam cars, for those of you in OSA), alcohol-burners and suchlike

Steam cars would still require some sort of liquid or gaseous fuel, although they might be more efficient than ICE's (*).

As for alcohol burners...whether you use ethanol or methanol, you're ultimately powering the cars either with oil & natural gas (converted via standard petrochemical processes), or biomass (i.e., burning food).

Alcohol production directly from CO2 & water is possible (see Green Freedom), but the thermodynamic efficiency - 20% for Green-Freedom-produced methanol, exclusive of car losses (**) - is not terribly impressive. Better than nothing for situations where liquid fuels are a sine qua non, but even then, tar sands or oil shale (with EROEI > 1) seem a better choice.

If we're going to convert entire US automotive fleet, we might as well do PHEV's: higher efficiency, and they make it easier to transition to all-electrics once batteries cheapen up. (Admittedly, of course, one could theoretically have an alcohol-powered, steam-engine-driven PHEV. If the cost & efficiency are there, fine.)

(*) www.greencarcongress.com/2006/04/updating_the_st.html

(**) Given 6.6 GWt nuclear-generated heat input, and 5000 tons/day methanol output. Numbers taken from slides 14 & 16 of F. Jeffrey Martin's 2/20/08 Green Freedom presentation (available upon request).

Thanks for the clarification, Rod. If you were predicting the wholesale collapse of civilization, I'd say we should all run for the hills. Since you're not, I say that, to weather these future challenges, we need today to be cultivating the habit of neighborliness. We can't foresee exactly what Black Swan is going to throw us all for a loop, but, whatever it is, we're going to need the help of our neighbors to get through it. So, starting now, we all should be doing the sorts of things that establish and strengthen the community life of our small towns and city neighborhoods. (I'm assuming that, in a post-Peak Oil world, life in the suburbs will become untenable, so if one lives there now, I think one should move either to the city or the country.) More than any material thing, this is what we should be storing up.

Beyond that, the rest seems to be simply practical. Get into the habit of living frugally. Lean how to do anything for yourself, whether that be growing and canning your own vegetables, baking your own bread, whatever. And such preparations don't need to be comprehensive, so long as we know that we can count on our neighbors to help (and that your neighbors know that they can count on you to help).

Berry's business model is truly sustainable since there will always be people addicted to tobacco. They will walk to his farm to buy it from him directly if they can no longer afford fossil fuel.

Solving problems before they become crises is unAmerican. Crisis management has the highest profit potential by far. :-(

Just Some Guy: And such preparations don't need to be comprehensive, so long as we know that we can count on our neighbors to help (and that your neighbors know that they can count on you to help).

Not being snarky here - genuinely concerned. What if your neighbors are, well, to put it nicely, dysfunctional? The kind of people that if you knew they were living there, you wouldn't have moved there? I agree with your thought in principle - but as society becomes more fractured, we can and will find ourselves living next to some ... interesting ... people.

How come positing limitless supplies of energy is hubris but positing that the earth's carrying capacity for humans is limitless is conservative?

Neither position is remotely conservative. This notion of "no limits" has become the position of many neo-libertarian, techno-utopian types. George Gilder, Keven Kelley, John Barlow, et al. Who are these conservatives you claim are positing that carrying capacity is limitless?

Rod is claiming that carrying capacity is limitless? Say it isn't so!! That's the most non-cruchy accusation I've ever heard leveled at Rod.

See also Wendell Berry's letters-page dustup with that Platonic panjandrum of publishing, Jason Epstein, in The New York Review of Books for May 15, over Epstein's review of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food:

nybooks.com/articles/21376

tip: Clark Stooksbury at @TAC

amconmag.com/blog/2008/04/28/berry-vs-epstein/