Dear Internet,

I don’t know what’s going on. I can’t make sense what I know, and I know very little. No one can know enough to truly know what’s happening. And if you don’t know, you cannot make choices which depend upon you knowing. In which case, you are forced to fall back on one or both of two strategies: a) principles, or b) greed. Greed may be a principle, if you skew it right. Instead of “principles”, we could say “rules” or “logic”. Doesn’t matter which rules, necessarily, just pick some. Instead of “greed” would could say “instinct” or “intuition”. Most of us follow a combination, heavily biased towards some kind of gut feeling or other, made up of habits, feelings, wishes, and knee-jerk reactions. We’re not machines, after all.

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The United States has a new president, and lots of people are excited about it. I’m glad to see the end of the second Bush era in the U.S. I’m dreading the spectre raised by Bush Sr. of another Bush White House—this time with Jed. I am diametrically opposed to everything that has been spawned by that monster, George H. W. Bush. He may be the epitome of everything I despise in the world.

Obama is probably going to be a somewhat rerun of the Clinton years, hopped up on the Internet. I can foresee a lot energy and activity going into running websites and issuing updates and general communications frenzies, but I’m skeptical that all that information flying around between citizens and their government will have a significant impact on how the U.S. government actually operates.

The predicament in which the United States finds itself has a lot more to do with the attitudes of its people than with the actions of its government. Obama won by 4% of the popular vote. This is not “overwhelming”, except in the most cynical interpretation. I fully expect that in the mid-terms in two years, the American people will flip the balance back towards the Republicans, ensuring once again a paralysis in government and a stagnancy in political ideas.

What the United States needs is another revolution. I’d prefer a bloodless one, but even a civil war might be better for them, and the rest of the world, in the long run. But they certainly need less television, less fast food, less plastic, and fewer cars. They need an economy that runs on something other than conspicuous consumption (as does Canada and the rest of the world). Sadly, consumerism, capitalism and democracy are a kind of locked-in trinity of short-term thinking driven mostly by fear, uncertainty and doubt. It panders always and inevitably to one human quality: insecurity.

Change may come to the Insecure States of America, but I suspect it will be shallow, superficial, and cosmetic. Because that’s all the American consumer will tolerate. Don’t think that lipstick-smeared pigs are gone for anything but a short recess.

The problem with the act of writing, these days, for me, is of listening to my thoughts and determining which, if any, is clearly more emphatic and distinct than the rest. And isn’t about what I’m doing at work, since I can’t talk about that. (Unlike some Cocoa software developers, but like many other software developers, we keep our cards close to our chest. We emulate Apple in that regard.)

Outside of programming, the pre-eminent question in my mind is rather vague and abstract. How do we organize people to get them to do what’s best for everyone in the long run, instead of everyone doing what they think is best for them in the short term? How do we convince people that what they think is in their best interests probably isn’t? And who are “we”?

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Not a new observation, but gaining traction, though most people are still resolutely ignoring the reality of it: Peak Oil. Also see Life after the oil crash for the most succinct and convincing arguments about the looming energy crisis.

In brief, oil is finite, in fact, it’s running out. However, the world’s appetite for it is still growing—exponentially. The oil wells aren’t literally drying out, but their are emptying. The less they have in them, the harder it is to get it out. No major new oil finds have happened in decades, and the smaller finds are more expensive to tap.

Alternative energy sources combined can probably only provide between 10 and 25 per cent of the energy we currently derive from oil, but most of them will not even work for transportation, which is the leading consumer of energy. Even if we could convert our infrastructure and manufacturing and transportation to other forms of energy, there will still be other shortages: plastics and fertilizer, which come from petroleum, and minerals and metals used in alternative energy technology, and, finally, land. Many alternative technologies (wind, solar, bio-fuels) are land-use intensive. And then there’s coal.

Some people believe that the oil production peak has already happened. Others that it is as close as three years or as far as twenty-five. But it’s within your lifetime, probably, and your children’s, definitely. The world’s standard of living is going to drop (if you use contemporary industrial lifestyle as your measure of standard of living).

Personally, the great, sad realization is not the loss of refrigerators, the Internet, cheap holidays or the like, but the certain end of space exploration and the relegation of the human race to stagnation and decline on this single lump of rock to which we cling precariously. Knowledge and discovery will slow and finally stop, and we will enter a new “dark” age. The window hasn’t completely closed, but it’s closing fast. Only the most outrageous science fiction ideas can possibly save us: self-replicating robots loosed into the solar system that can assemble factories and equipment from the asteroid belt, slowly, and return raw materials back to earth orbit, coupled with draconian measures of resource conservation and a complete restructuring of the human economy: replacing our current free market, growth-based system with one that is static and heavily planned and controlled.

Personally, I’m happy to go back to reading books, limited rail travel, buying locally: in effect, a return to the eighteenth century, technologically speaking, for the bulk of daily life and work. It would be better than another world war being fought over oil and the freedom to waste it on Karaoke and Dodge Vipers.

Addendum: The one beacon of hope that I’ve found goes by a number of names, and is in fact a very old idea: concentrated solar power (CSP). Here is an article at The Oil Drum. Another nice thing about CSP is that it can counteract the greenhouse effect by capturing solar energy that would otherwise be absorbed by the ground and then radiate as infrared (heat), which is what is principally absorbed by the CO2 in the atmosphere. It could also possibly offset the loss of reflectivity due to melting polar ice (though there’s still the problem of the polar oceans absorbing heat directly).

However, the economy shake-up cannot be avoided by CSP alone; even if CSP could satisfy our energy hunger, it can’t give us the fuel we depend on for transportation, which gobbles up 70% of oil production. You can’t fly jets with batteries! If CSP can be utilized to produce hydrogen, we may be able to use that as a portable fuel, but there are still concerns, such as volatility and evaporation. Possibly we can forgo most jet travel and switch to dirigibles (blimps) and electric trains.

Yes, the world is going to change dramatically, but it will only turn out good if we actually make the decisions and follow up with effort. Don’t just wait for the scientists, corporations and governments to solve the problems that YOU helped to create. Demand that your governments fund alternative technology and plan for the long term, not just the next election. Make the next election depend upon the long term.

Do you believe that things will work out all right in the end? That God will sort it out? That the scientists will take care of it? That it’s all predestined? That there’s no point worrying about it? That it’s beyond your ability to make a difference? That you’ve got more important things to do? That you should live for the moment, and let tomorrow take care of itself? That love conquers all? That you have to look out for number one? That you should live and let live? That family is all that matters?

There are people in the world who depend on such clichés to ensure they don’t face much opposition except from competing members of their own parasitic kind. Those of us who want to be vigilant have the tools and the power to keep them in check, but we’re too busy laughing at Stephen Colbert. Do you really think making fun of something pulls its teeth?

Sheila Fraser is my hero.