I can recall reading it, way back then, and being suitable “shocked” by it.
Click this link to see the Wikipedia entry on the book.
The old issues that the book discusses are very much dated now. However, we now have a whole new spectrum of 21-st century issues that could serve as equally good examples for an updated version of that book.
Just for fun, let’s make up a short list of some of them.
Peak Oil
Climate change.
All the latest tech gadgets and innovations.
The runaway consumer society.
The imminent collapse of the global financial system.
The accelerating gap between the small number of extremely wealthy people and the growing number of the poor.
That will do for now. There are plenty more that we could add to the list, but that’s enough to make the point.
The point being, just as it was explained in that old book, so long ago now: the vast majority of people just cannot keep up with what’s actually happening in this global society of ours, let alone even begin to understand even a small percentage of the implications of what it all means for the future of our society, and our civilization.
So, there is this time-lag syndrome, where just about everybody is living in the past, unable to keep up, and not even trying. Everybody is living their lives as if things were still the way they were at some time in the past. Making decisions in today, with out-of-date data, for reasons, and with reasoning, that is out-of-date, that no longer applies to how things are today.
I believe that this is one reason for many people to describe themselves as being “conservative”. They are not comfortable with the constant change, and especially, they are very uncomfortable with the accelerating pace of chance. So, they cling to the past, and they wear their “conservative” label-badge like it was a badge of honor.
As far as everyday mundane life goes, this might not matter all that much.
But, our leaders, our governments, are very much exhibiting this syndrome.
For example: building more and more hugely expensive motorways, when the looming peak oil crunch means that by the time all the motorways are completed, they will not be needed.
Example: refusing to acknowledge that the universal government-funded superannuation (pension), for all New Zealanders, as of automatic right, from the day they turn 65 years old, is unsustainable in the longer term.
Example: that continuing to promote economic growth as the panacea for most of our economic problems is not only unsustainable, but also is the main mechanism that is causing many of the distortions and inequities that are slowly bringing disaster.
This current blog is not about any of these three issues in detail, let’s leave that for another time. However, let’s have a brief look at one of these issues. Let’s have a quick look at peak oil.
Nobody is denying it now, We are almost there, if not already there. The best estimates, from the world-leading experts who study this issue, is that total world oil production will peak in 2014. No, not 2020, not 2025 or 2030, but 2014.
That’s barely three years from now!
That’s the bad news. It gets worse, though.
Because the total world demand will almost certainly continue to grow at a very fast rate, beyond 2014, there will be an ever-increasing gap between lessening total production and total demand.
The facts speak for themselves. Every year, China adds another four million cars to their roads. That’s just China. Most other Asian countries are increasing their energy demands at a similar rate. There are still many oil-fired and gas-fired power stations being built today, all over the world.
We all expect cheap air-travel for the masses to continue on indefinitely. Relatively cheap air travel has become almost like a “God-given basic human right” to many people. They could not imagine getting by without it.
Every day, millions of people travel long distances, by air, or by car, to attend things like football matches, rock concerts, weddings, business meetings, social gathering of all kinds, and so on. They expect to be able to continue to keep doing this indefinitely.
As Vice-President Cheyney famously said “The lifestyle of the American people is not negotiable”.
We keep building more and more highways, and we keep on encouraging bigger and bigger trucks to ply their trade on those highways, carrying for us an every-increasing deluge of cheap consumer goods, to satisfy our consumerism addiction.
Like the out-of-control addicts that we are, we just have to have our fixes of the latest technology. Bigger and bigger flat-screen TVs. Louder and louder sub-woofers. Fancier and fancier home-theatre systems. A deluge of i-pods, i-phones, i-pads, i-whatever’s, smart-phones, smart-whatevers, video cameras, netbooks, etc, etc.
Most of it destined for the trash within the next five years, to be replaced with the very latest upgraded models, loaded with even more features that we never use.
It’s plainly madness.
Yet, it’s one way that many of us attempt to keep up with Future Shock. As if having the very latest technology somehow makes us “hip” or “cool”, or “modern”.
Anyway, let’s get back to the issue of peak oil.
Have you seen those two documentary movies “The End of Suburbia” and “Escape from Suburbia”?
This blog is not a review of these movies, but if you want to find out about some of the implications of what peak oil will mean for all of us, within a few years, I strongly suggest that you hire those videos. Hear in NZ, you can get them from Fatso.com, or your local video hire store should have them.
Click this link to go to the movie website
Basically, as per the title of the movie, peak oil will eventually bring in, literally “the end of suburbia as we currently know it”.
No more sprawling suburbs, miles out of the town centre, with no local shops, no local services, no public transport: just street after street of houses.
Yet, we are still building such suburbs, thousands of new houses in such places, every year, here in New Zealand, and most other parts of the world. As if such places are sustainable.
It’s actually already happening, to a very limited degree, not because of peak oil, but as a consequence of the global financial crisis. For example, in parts of Florida, areas of suburbia that are in the process of being abandoned. This is just a foretaste of what is to come.
There is a book that I recently read about this. “The Long Emergency”, by James Howard Kunstler. Most libraries should have a copy. It’s illuminating, and chilling, reading.
Click this link to go to Kunstler's Blog.
The “long emergency” being the future emergency that never ends, it just goes on and on, for ever. As global oil supplies dwindle and dwindle, the world economy stalls, suburbia become uninhabitable, with all the likely consequences that all this will bring.
Yet, most of us continue on, oblivious to the impending disaster. The “Titanic-society” steams on a full-speed, into iceberg territory, and our captain, officers, and most of us passengers are oblivious to what’s really happening.
It’s now time for some of us to wake up.
What can be done about it? Let’s leave that for a future blog.
To be continued shortly…..
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