by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 11, 2018 | The Problem: Civilization
Featured image: Police cam video of Daniel Shaver (pictured at right with his daughters) just before being killed by Mesa, Arizona Police Department officer Philip Brailsford. Brailsford was acquitted of second-degree murder in the case.
by Pray for Calamity
Cold air bites at the tip of my nose and the upper rim of my ears as I crunch across the driveway to the wood pile. Pulling from a rick consisting mostly of ash, I load my arms. We burned through the last rick of wood too quickly. Subzero temperatures moved in right after the winter solstice, and for weeks they held strong, the winds at night drawing the heat from our cabin through every crack and seam. Wool blankets cover the windows, and we trade light for heat. At night we nestle into our bed as a family, buried under our down comforter, which can effectively create an ecosystem all its own. Before sunrise though, I will feel my cheeks getting cold, and I will head to the kitchen to find the last embers of the fire on the verge of extinguishing. In the dark I will snap small sticks with my hands, then feed them into the steel belly of the woodstove, and layer split wood on top of that. I wait, watching, listening. When I am sure that the fire has taken, I head back towards bed with the orange flicker lighting the way.
—
The year has rolled over on the calendars of western humans, and the northern hemisphere has had its shortest day in this particular planetary revolution around the sun. It is a time of transitions and resolutions, reflections of the year passed and goals laid out for the year to come. Personally, I feel that we are in a time of exposure. Open secrets once whispered and acknowledge but never loudly spoken are no longer able to be contained. An obvious example of this is the so-called “me too” movement in which powerful men in politics and entertainment who used their status to sexually assault others were publicly exposed, which then blew open the door for women in a variety of industries and lifestyles to report on the bosses and colleagues who used their positions as leverage to seek and sometimes force sexual attention. Basically, a lot of men in a lot of places of power have been using that power to harass and assault women (and yes, sometimes other men) and a lot of dirty laundry has been aired all at once.
Open secrets are not uncommon in our society. Uncomfortable truths that we all come to know, but fear to speak about lest our murmurings disturb the delicate balance of our universe, and tip the whole order into disarray. One of these open secrets that is getting more and more attention is the fact that the police in the United States are arguably a bigger threat to many people than criminals. With nary a legal or civil consequence for their actions to be had, police killed another thousand or so Americans in 2017. The case of former Mesa, Arizona cop Philip Brailsford being acquitted of murdering Daniel Shaver attracted a lot of attention after the body cam video of the event was released, and the general public viewed what was essentially a snuff film with horror, aghast as Brailsford smugly derided the weeping father Shaver who begged for his life before being murdered. Most of the population now accepts that the police and justice systems by and large treat black Americans far differently, and far worse, than they treat white Americans.
Of course, when a nasty truth comes to light, especially a truth that cuts right through the heart of a person’s – or nation’s – identity, there are those who will flat refuse to believe it. In the case of the many exposed men who have been accused of sexual assault and rape, there are cadres of defenders who nit-pick each case looking to find where the accuser is either lying, or perhaps sought or deserved her treatment. It is just so with the issue of police in America. With each new horror show of a news story, even those complete with heartbreaking video as in the case of Daniel Shaver, there are defenders of the system, professional analyzers who find the moment the victim screwed up by not, in their moments of terror, following some command or by having made some innocuous and unconscious movement of the hand. Then they scream, “See! He deserved to die!”
To these reactionaries desperate to believe that everything is OK, women who are abused and harassed by their bosses and colleagues deserve it if they ever take a meeting with a man alone, and untrained and fearful civilians must act with professional precision while teams of academy graduates laden with military firearms and earning a government wage can ignore standards and statutes alike while engaging in murderous street justice.
However, if we believe all these stories of rape and assault, we then have to start examining our culture and try to understand their source. If we believe that the police are racist and unnecessarily violent and murderous, then we have to start examining our culture and try to understand why. Such digging leads to dangerous places for the egos and identities of many. Our lies are pillars that hold up entire institutions and ways of viewing ourselves and the world around us. We have cursed and damned so many people to live out their days in slums or cages, if we haven’t just flat out killed them. If these sentences of impoverishment, imprisonment, and death were all the extension of a society built on lies, then that would make us some pretty terrible people.
Yes, better to not look down that well.
—
I find myself in a bookstore fairly regularly, and I have noticed that over the past few years, there has been significant growth in the survival magazine market. Of course, there are the homestead magazines, the gardening magazines, the hunting magazines, and the straight up gun fetish magazines, but then the other day I noticed something new. It was a magazine that had on its cover a man, a boy, and a woman, all presumably a family. They carried packs, radios, and firearms. A setting sun painted their faces a golden hue, or who knows, maybe it was a distant nuclear blast, as they stood near a ruined vehicle in some scrubland. The father was handsome with chiseled cheek bones, and the lightest Hollywood smattering of dirt across his brow. In true marketing fashion, this was a magazine with a good looking family surviving a civilization-ending EMP blast, bug out bags in tow.
Seeing this I thought to myself that I think it is basically an open secret now that our society is fucked. We are fucked, and no one is coming to save us. Things are going to get steadily worse and worse until the entire façade of civil life breaks into a series of dysfunctional pieces, and deep down, everybody knows it.
A few weeks ago a friend came over to my house, and as she helped me truck firewood from the front of our land to the house, I made a comment about this to test my theory. I cannot now remember how I snuck it into the conversation, but at some point I said, “We’re fucked,” in regards to the future stability of our climate and the world of human comings and goings. She looked at me with a light, knowing smile, and very sincerely said, “Oh yeah.” I might as well have told her that the sun would set.
Of course, my friends are not exactly going to be a random sampling of the population, and they are all going to fall under an umbrella of social consciousness and ecological concern, to be sure, but the increase in television shows, magazines, and books that all orbit the topic of surviving the collapse of society, to me, is telling. For now, we can treat the topic with a bit of irony should we not find ourselves in like company, and laugh at the commercial selling dehydrated beef stroganoff that one can store in their closet for emergencies.
But the idea is out there. Years’ worth of promised solutions to energy and ecological woes have not been delivered. The fires are worse, the floods are more frequent, and still the powers that be are drilling and scraping for every last bit of hydrocarbon. I think most people assumed that somewhere, some group of serious people was laying out the roadmap of transition, and making sure that it would be implemented. The consequences are rolling in as expected, but the global solutions are nowhere to be found. A few companies absorb government subsidies and put out press releases to keep the investors chomping at the bit, but a look around does not show me a world much different than the one in which I walked as a child thirty years ago.
If it becomes understood that this society as it exists has no future, that would mean we have to ask ourselves serious questions about how, or if, we are going to survive. That is a deep, black well indeed.
—
With a night rain came warm air. Gray morning light expands through the wood revealing a half decayed carpet of leaves. Only islands of snow remain, and they are thin and vulnerable. I have eagerly awaited this warm front. The straw in duck and chicken houses needs tossing, and when out in the animal yards I begin to survey first the damage; a plastic rain collection barrel has burst at its base. Then I look to the work; scraping away the ground in front of every gate and door, as the heave of frozen Earth has made opening and closing most of them quite difficult, and no fix was to be had during zero range temperatures.
Animal gates and hen house doors that cannot be closed again once open are not a problem that can be ignored. Raccoons and foxes are particularly hungry this time of year, I can only imagine. A day or two above freezing are opportunities not to be squandered. Winter is only beginning.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 7, 2018 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
Featured image: The critically endangered North Atlantic right whale is a species of utmost concern should seismic airgun blasting be allowed off the Atlantic coast. Photo Credit: Moira Brown and New England Aquarium.
by Mike Gaworecki / Mongabay
The Trump Administration has unveiled its plan to open nearly all of the United States’ coastal waters to oil and gas drilling.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced the National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2019-2024 yesterday, which includes a proposal to open up more than 90 percent of the country’s continental shelf waters to future exploitation by oil and gas companies. The draft five-year plan also proposes the largest number of offshore oil and gas lease sales in U.S. history.
“Responsibly developing our energy resources on the Outer Continental Shelf in a safe and well-regulated way is important to our economy and energy security, and it provides billions of dollars to fund the conservation of our coastlines, public lands and parks,” said Secretary Zinke. “Today’s announcement lays out the options that are on the table and starts a lengthy and robust public comment period. Just like with mining, not all areas are appropriate for offshore drilling, and we will take that into consideration in the coming weeks.”
The Obama Administration blocked drilling on about 94 percent of the outer continental shelf, but, in April 2017, Trump issued an executive order that called for a review of the 2017-2022 Five Year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program finalized under Obama in favor of implementing Trump’s so-called “America-First Offshore Energy Strategy.”
The draft five-year plan that has just been released by the Trump Administration’s Interior Department would open up 25 of 26 outer continental shelf regions to drilling. The North Aleutian Basin, which lies off the northern shore of the Alaska Peninsula and extends into the Bering Sea, was the only region exempted from drilling in the new plan, the New York Times reports.
The Interior Department proposes to hold 47 lease sales in those 25 regions — including 19 off the coast of Alaska, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico, nine in the Atlantic Region, and seven in the Pacific Region. “This is the largest number of lease sales ever proposed for the National [Outer Continental Shelf] Program’s 5-year lease schedule,” the Interior Department said in a statement.
Earlier moves by the Trump Administration to open the U.S. Atlantic coast to drillinghave already drawn fierce opposition. An alliance of more than 41,000 businesses and 500,000 fishing families from Florida to Maine was joined by fishery management councils for the Mid-Atlantic, New England, and the South Atlantic regions in speaking out against oil exploration and development in the Atlantic. One of their chief concerns is the incredibly disruptive exploration technique known as seismic airgun blasting, which would need to be used to determine how much oil is actually underneath the floor of the Atlantic Ocean off the U.S. East Coast given that oil drilling has been banned there for decades.
Drilling in the Pacific Ocean off the U.S. West Coast has been banned since a 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Local officials there also vowed to fight the Trump Administration’s move to open their coastal waters to the oil and gas industry: “For more than 30 years, our shared coastline has been protected from further federal drilling and we’ll do whatever it takes to stop this reckless, short-sighted action,” California Governor Jerry Brown, Oregon Governor Kate Brown, and Washington Governor Jay Inslee said in a joint statement.
Continue reading at Mongabay
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 2, 2018 | Colonialism & Conquest
by Pam Tau Lee / Intercontinental Cry
The Lumad are Indigenous Peoples in the southern Mindanao region of the Philippines. The term Lumad is short for Katawhang Lumad (Literally: “indigenous people”), a description officially adopted by delegates of the Lumad Mindanao Peoples Federation founding assembly on June 26, 1986. This grew out of a political awakening among tribes during the martial law regime of President Marcos and reflects the collective identity of 18 Lumad ethnic groups. The assembly’s main objectives was to achieve self-determination and governance for their member-tribes within their ancestral domain in accordance with their culture and customary laws.
The Lumad have a traditional ancestral concept of land ownership which is communal private property. Community members have the right utilize any piece of unoccupied land within the communal territory. Lumad ancestral lands include rain forests, hunting grounds, cultivated and uncultivated land and valuable mineral resources (copper, nickel, gold, chromite, coal, gas, cement) below the land.
For decades the Lumad had been forced to physically defend their right to control their ancestral territories against corporate plunder and militarization. Unable to match up to the armed forces of the government and profiteers the Lumad have had to flee their communities; their land has been seized by multinational corporations and logging companies. Wealthy Filipino migrants and multinationals are planting and exporting palm oil, bananas, rubber and pineapple.
Unequipped to understand the modern land tenure system, the Lumad have established schools in their communities supplying knowledge to young adults and youth on how to protect their rights, property and culture. While these schools have always posed a threat, President Duterte has taken the unprecedented step of directing the Department of Education to close them down and has also encouraged the killing and arrest of Lumad teachers, which continues to go unpunished.
The history of violence and unwarranted (extrajudicial) killings of Lumad at the hands of military, paramilitary, and private security forces is in the hundreds, with the arrest and torture Lumad activists in the thousands. Fifty-six percent of Philippine military have been deployed to the Mindanao region. Today many of the Lumad have sought safety and shelter in evacuation centers where they and other victims of war are crowded into small spaces, lacking sanitary conditions and food, and endure harassment by local police including sexual harassment.
Bolstered by the recent visit of Trump to the Philippines who has promised and delivered increased in military funding to the Philippines, President Duterte has extended martial law on the whole island of Mindanao under the guise of war on terrorism and drugs and has launched a full-scale assault on social justice activists throughout the Philippines, including the Lumad people.
Where there is oppression there is resistance. The Lumad have organized protest actions against mining, extrajudicial killings, and the militarization of their communities, and have led “Manilakbayan” people’s caravans from Mindanao to Manila where they have built unity with Moro and peasant communities and other oppressed sectors in Mindanao and, together, have brought these people’s demands to the national capital. There are some young Lumad that say, because the repression suffered by their community is so bad, at times they consider joining the New Peoples Army. In fact, some Lumad do engage in armed resistance to defend their ancestral lands, as Lumad have done since time immemorial, from fending off logging corporations using spears and native weapons to taking up arms with the New Peoples Army as part of the decades long revolutionary struggle led by the Communist Party of the Philippines. The Lumad struggle continues to take many forms—and as state repression and encroachment on ancestral lands has worsened, Lumad resistance has continued to grow.
In October of 2016, the Lumad people sent messages of solidarity to the tribes and Water Protectors at Standing Rock as they clearly understood the universal common struggle of indigenous to protect the land.
In this moment of intense violence, the International Interfaith Humanitarian Mission 3.0 proposes the following recommendations for the victims of the military operations in Marawi City: Continue relief, medical services and psychosocial intervention for the victims; a just recovery and reparations for homes and properties destroyed; make the Duterte government accountable for the death, displacement of residents and destruction of Warawi City; put people over profit in the rehabilitation of Warawi so that the residents can return to their original communities not profit driven development.
Pam Tau Lee is Chair of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) – U.S.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 12, 2017 | Indigenous Autonomy
All images by Robin Llewellyn
by Robin Llewellyn / Intercontinental Cry
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos may have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but peace has not come to Colombia. Social leaders and members of indigenous communities have been targeted in a wave of assassinations that has swept through the countryside during this supposed “post-conflict” era–and the state has failed both to stem the killings and to curtail the spread of illegal mining and drug trafficking.
Indigenous guards are elected by their communities and mandated to protect Indigenous lives and territory without the use of arms. Throughout both the civil war and the undeclared battle for territory and resources that has followed it–and carrying only the staffs that serve as their mandate of office–Indigenous Guards have been killed by non-state armed groups of the left and the right, by the forces of the state, and by mafias unaligned to political ideologies. Yet they have also succeeded in arresting heavily armed opponents and submitting them to the justice systems of indigenous territories and the state.
Today new challenges arise as communities consider whether Indigenous Guards should be paid and become professionals, and whether or how they should integrate their function with that of the Colombian police.
No region of Colombia has been more affected by the newest wave of assassinations than the department of Cauca in the southwest. The reservation of Juan Tama lies on the border of Cauca and Huila departments, high up in the Sierra Central. Juan Tama contains a training ground where Indigenous Guards from Nasa, Misak, and Yanakona communities regularly meet to challenge each other and themselves.
Intercontinental Cry recently had the opportunity to visit Juan Tama during one of these spirited competitions.
Indigenous guards gather for the meeting that precedes the race.
Over the course of one single day, teams of indigenous guards must go through an obstacle course that has to be completed while racing against the clock. This particular event saw a competition between Nasa, Yanakona and Misak reservations from across Cauca and Huila.
“Guardia!” In advance of the race the indigenous guards come together, forming lines for each participating reservation, that meet in the center to form a star shape. The responsibilities and values of the Guardia are pronounced, and the aims of the competition clarified. This event saw a competition between reservations from across Cauca and Huila, including reservations of the Nasa, Yanakona and Misak peoples. All Photos by Robin Llewellyn
The obstacle sees regular competitions with indigenous guards from several reservations taking the opportunity to improve their teamwork and strength.
Guards practicing on the assault course before the competition.
Children play on the assault course as guards practice before the competition.
An Indigenous Guard takes his time completing an obstacle. When racing against the clock, it becomes much more difficult.
The life of an indigenous guard is not for the faint of heart. It comes with great personal risk and an even greater responsibility, as Fredy Chikangana, a poet and ‘Amauta’ (An Amauta is a Qechua word translated to mean, “messenger from the ancestral knowledge of the Yanakona People”) from the Yanakona reservation of Rioblanco, would tell us in a later interview.
Fredy Chikangana told us that, “[B]eing an indigenous guard is a great responsibility in terms of the community and the territory. It is not just a matter of carrying the staff of office without commitment: there is a mission and it has to do with culture, with maintaining harmony in the community and maintaining harmony with Mother Earth.”
“To be an indigenous guard is a question of knowing to accompany the good work of the indigenous authorities, but if an authority fails, one also has to remember one’s ultimate obligation.”
The first team that raced against the clock. This particular obstacle consists of barbed wire strung between posts.
“The ancestors had various names for the indigenous guards of their day,” Fredy explained. For instance, there is ‘Aukaruna’ which is the Qechua word for a warrior, and ‘Aukas’ who were the vigilant beings of the forests.”
“To be a good indigenous guard one needs to have physical and mental readiness. It’s not just strength, it’s also the capacity to solve problems for the wellbeing (“buen vivir”) of the community.
A good indigenous guard also understands their culture–and they “[know] how to look at different approaches to be able to help their community.”
“He or she who is an indigenous guard must above all have caution and respect for the other, but also decisiveness when one has to act to defend the territory and the community,” he continued. “There are male and female indigenous guards in the same way there is the moon and the sun. Everyone knows how to enter a dialogue with their own gender, but in defense of the land, culture, and Mother Earth all are equal and act as if woven together.”
“To be an indigenous guard is to narrate between generations, to protect the rights of all.”
Balance, athleticism, and dedication are developed throughout the course: this obstacle is only ruled completed when the guard lands and launches in one movement into a forward role through mud.
Belsi Rivera is an indigenous guard in the Nasa reservation of Nasa Kiwe. She took part in the struggle for control of the Cerro de Berlin Mountain in Toribio, Cauca, that was occupied by the army. She also works with children for the educational institute of Nasa Kiwe.
Belsi told us, “The Nasa People have a history of struggle and resistance that is based in love for Mother Earth; she is the fount of energy because according to our cosmogony we are part of her and we see her reflected in our authorities such as our governors and our indigenous guards, and more specifically in the staffs of office that are carved from chonta wood that symbolizes both territory and legitimate authority. The staffs are bound by three hoops, each symbolizing a realm within our world-view.”
“The first realm is that of above, where the ‘sxaw’, the great spirits, live. The second is the middle realm where the animals and trees share the territory of the Nasas (known as the people who are children of water and the stars). The third realm is that of below, where water lies hidden and where minerals exist and must remain.”
“There were times in the past when the people struggled against the colonists who had come to evict and assassinate us, and we took up arms to defend ourselves,” Belsi continued. “This negatively affected our ideas and our respect for life, so we renounced arms and looked again to restore equilibrium. The struggles continued with the great idea of protecting our Mother Earth, and gradually we developed the idea that there needed to be people solely dedicated to being protectors, even though all people can and should pursue such goals. The ‘kiwe thegnas’ or indigenous guards have the permanent responsibility of establishing control and protection of the territory and of defending life and our Mother Earth.”
Another team races to complete the exercise.
“The indigenous guard is very involved in protecting the community when it seeks to liberate Mother Earth from the mono-cultivation of sugar and pine plantations, and to return that land to the community which was stolen from our ancestors. When we speak of the Liberation of Mother Earth, many call us criminals, but they don’t understand the importance for us of these spaces, and that to have them appropriately used is necessary for our harmony and spirituality. These lands are today owned by non-community members who have enslaved the collective goods for their own profit, and spread contaminants in the pursuit of making capital.”
Members of the community watch the race. The crossing the bog on a pole proved the most popular spectator attraction.
Jesus Bacca Guijano is an indigenous guard in the Nasa reservation of Munchique los Tigres, who has sought to protect water sources from the impact of mining and an unauthorized waste dump, both controlled by businessmen of the Sadovnik family. When Bacca led opposition to mining as president of the local JAC (neighborhood action committees – Junta de Accion Comunal), one of the Sadovniks sought to paint him as a member of the ELN guerrilla group. Bacca was detained but found not guilty. Today, the current governor of Munchique los Tigres is enabling an institutional process that would ensure the continued operations of the Sadovniks’ mine and dump sites. Bacca has continued to speak out against the plans; last month, reservation authorities placed charges of calumny against him.
“As indigenous guards, the staff is a symbol of resistance and of the survival of all the community: of all who continue to live committed to the reservations and the territories. To me it’s symbolic of every member of the community of Munchique los Tigres, not just the indigenous guards,” Bacca told us.
After crossing the pole over the bog guards enter a mud-tunnel. Obstacles develop strength but also test competitors with mental challenges such as claustrophobia.
“Our Nasa reservations are guided by planes de vida (plans of life – multi-year strategies for self-government) that are agreed in open sessions of the community, and our plan de vida says that we were born of water. Our mandate as indigenous guards is to liberate land [members of Nasa communities are involved in a struggle for land with local sugar haciendas, as well as with owners of operations within reservations such as the initiatives of the Sadovnik family] together with the members of the community who don’t have land. We are also obliged to liberate the sources of water, and the people understand this well. People can’t be legally persecuted by the indigenous authorities for liberating the land when it’s our mandate.”
The latest charges against me haven’t been investigated in front of a communal assembly; they’re just another example of the attacks that are causing disharmony in the territory and in members of the community. Frequently, we who have denounced the rubbish dump have received death threats from the paramilitaries such as the Aguilas Negras and Clan del Golfo. The governor is the legal representative of the community, and the governor must consult with the community in an open assembly. We haven’t seen this which has caused disharmony.”
Competitors race towards the finish line.
“As indigenous guards we must not receive funding from the state because we’d lose our identity; however it would be a good idea to have projects that would assist not ourselves but our families, so that if there is little work available they could still feed themselves when we are away serving with the indigenous guard.
I believe in a concept of the territory as being open for those who come from outside, who come here and respect it and want to live amongst us as members of the community. All can be members of the community.”
As the day came to a close, the Indigenous guards formed in lines to hear their final times; but in the end, the scores didn’t matter. Everyone agreed that the value of teamwork was a lesson all competitors shared–and because of that shared learning, all competitors won.
Indigenous guards pose for group photos after completing the exercise.
Guards from a reservation in Huila gather for a group photo after completing the race.
Indigenous guards pose after completing the race.
A clean guard gets surprised by the muddied competitors.
Later on, the Guards debated about how to encourage greater participation of female guards in future competitions.
They also spoke about the importance of maintaining readiness so that they can respond swiftly and effectively to the violence that is now taking place.
Indigenous guards of a reservation in discussion after the competition.
“For Indigenous Guards”
A poem by Fredy Chikangana
I only understand how to be a Guardian of the heavens,
For which one needs to know to be calm in the storm,
To have the clouds as good counselors and the sun as
The father that illuminates the path and
accompanies one into the darkness.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 6, 2017 | Strategy & Analysis
The narrative being pushed today is that renewables, particularly wind and solar, will save us. By “save us” they mean allow us to continue our way of life unhindered into the future, despite a lower (and eventually zero, they tell us) reliance on oil. This view is so prevalent, it seems, that reactions of denial, or even confusion, are met with indignation and insistence.
I know the claims of this hope-filled crowd for what it is: fantasy. Part of me wants to go through every piece (wind, solar, hydro, nuclear) and point out their individual flaws. But I have a particular ability to see the heart, or essence, of the issue, and I am compelled to make this simple.
The push to “renewables” is very… overhyped, I suppose is the right word. Industrial civilization was built on an oil EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested) of 100 to 1. Nowadays we’re down to somewhere about 12 to 1. Conventional oil (the cheap, easy to access stuff) peaked back in 2005. This is not really argued against by anyone at this point. Unconventional oil has filled the gap. But – and here’s the huge but –
1) unconventional oil sources have been funded through increasing amounts of debt and many of these companies are going bankrupt (33% in 2016, a projected 33% more in 2017, leaving only 1/3rd of those companies standing by 2019) [link], and
2) the greatest source of unconventional has been shale oil and gas – the great majority of which is in the USA. Unfortunately, shale oil and gas both peaked in 2015 and are now declining.*
* Edit: In November 2017, shale production slightly exceeded this mark and production is set to increase a bit further into 2018. I am currently writing an article on shale explaining this which will be up soon. We can expect shale output to rise into next year, but then will decline. This is known and expected.
So, that leaves us with “renewables.” I put the word in quotes because it’s a misnomer – none of these sources are actually renewable. They are completely dependent on oil to build, maintain, and transport. All renewable technology and construction, as well as the infrastructure and transportation needed to get their product to consumers, is dependent entirely on oil (fossil fuels). Another giant problem is that these are all sources of producing electricity. The problem with this is twofold:
1) most of the energy we use isn’t electric – electricity production is only 18% of total world energy demand, and
2) all of the electricity we do produce employs fossil fuels.
It is important to note here too that transportation (big 18-wheelers, ships, planes, mining equipment trucks, etc) cannot transition to electricity to run them – the batteries are absurdly too heavy (in some cases 50,0000 times too heavy) and with current or projected technology this problem will not conceivably be fixed anytime soon. Transitioning the consumers to electric cars won’t fix the problem whatsoever.
”Peak oil” is primarily a liquid fuels transportation crisis because of this very issue.
Another point to make is that there is no national infrastructure currently that can replace any significant fraction of oil with renewable energy. Building such an infrastructure has been estimated by countless studies to cost literally trillions of dollars and take at least 20 years – and when we are currently facing a global economic slowdown we don’t have the money to invest in that. And we don’t have the time to wait because the crisis will hit before such an infrastructure would be built even if we did invest the money today, which we can’t. This brings us to the point: we will have to face a world-changingly profound loss of overall energy, even as demand and populations continue to increase.
But make no mistake – a greater dependence on renewables is inevitable. The problems occur when you realize that these renewables are themselves dependent on oil, which is being funded by debt that won’t last and is ending in bankruptcies and has an ever-lower EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested).
The outcome of all this is that, yes, we will become more and more heavily reliant on intermittently-available renewables. But (and this is the point that many miss) as we become more reliant on renewables on a small scale (personal use, business use, town use), we will be living with increasingly less and less overall energy on a large scale (geographically, nationally, globally). All the systems that are geographic (grid systems), national (the economy), and global (trade, imported goods, etc), will inevitably fail and we will have to make due with local solutions. Renewables will power a fraction of our current way of life at best – and they will not be sufficient to continue business as usual as we have known it. Wind and solar last for about 20 years before they need to be replaced – with energy outputs only available through oil. As John Michael Greer has said:
“The question isn’t whether or not sun and wind are useful power sources; the question is whether it’s possible to power industrial civilization with them, and the answer is no.”
All of the promises of the hope-addicted crowd of course also rest on the false premise that fossil fuels themselves will be cheap and easy to obtain for the next 35 years or so in order to pave a smooth road for this transition.
I’m afraid the result of all this is a staggeringly significant reduction in the standards of living for the vast majority of the world.
Eventually everything will even out and humanity will live a much more sustainable way of life – just like humanity has for ten thousand years before the industrial age. In the meantime, expect turbulence.
In closing, let’s end with a simple but profound thought: You can’t use fossil fuels to extract all the resources to make solar panels and wind turbines and then expect these less efficient means of energy production to save a society with ever-increasing energy needs.
