[tt] [NSG] Energy and Culture

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from Steve Witham <sw at tiac.net> -----

From: Steve Witham <sw at tiac.net>
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 01:05:57 -0400
To: Nanotechnology Study Group <nsg at marshome.org>
Subject: Re: [NSG] Energy and Culture
Reply-To: Nanotechnology Study Group <nsg at marshome.org>

Fred said,

>As we all know, lots of people out there think

...in a world of natural and professional worriers...

>think that the civilization as
>we know it, including not just what we do but such qualities as
>optimism,
>confidence, the sense of progress, of movement, is wedded to cheap
>energy, and that if cheap energy goes away, for whatever reason, all
>that will change to the root.

This is analogous to the argument David Friedman sort of drives over
on the way to something else at the beginning of
    http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Future_Imperfect.html

"...At some point, perhaps a century or so in the future, someone
would put his key in his car's ignition, turn it, and nothing
would happen-because there would be no more gasoline."

Besides ignoring the gradualness of change and the adaptation of
markets, Friedman says, this assumes we'll be getting around in
gasoline-powered cars in a hundred years.

So by analogy: we look at current "engines of progress" and see
some of them powered by cheap energy.  But it's silly to imagine
the engines of progress built to cheap-energy specs by the time
energy becomes expensive.

We are using cheap energy now because it's cheap now, not because
it's necessary in some deeper sense.  There is "dependence" in the
sense that the designs of factories, transportation, infrastructure,
lifestyle, zoning take a while to change, but that's temporary.

I guess I'm saying you'd need a really strong argument to convince
me that the relationship between progress and energy were
necessary rather than contingent.

The same goes for the historical curve of energy (really power) use
per capita: we have ramped it up steadily because it has been there.
If it stops being there, we won't ramp it.  Or if it doesn't stop
being cheap we'll probably keep ramping.  It's not as if the ramp
were a force of nature.  It's just an opportunity that happens to
have been there.

>In this view, expensive energy means more than just riding bicycles and
>growing our own tofu and learning to live with long underwear.

The problem with these is that "people adapt" as a story doesn't quite
have poignancy, it's anticlimactic.  How can we fix that?

>It means living with a sense of limits, with a new sense of what we
>shouldn't waste time dreaming about.

If you want to sell worry to those damned optimists, those happy-go-
lucky SUV drivers, maybe suggest that their optimism itself is in
danger.  That story is called, "You'll Be Sorry."

 --Steve
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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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