The Long Argument  

WorldChanging has unfortunately resurrected the Viridian vs Kunstlerite argument in "Apocaphilia, Peak Oil and Sustainability" - hopefully this is the last flogging this particular dead horse receives.

Of course, Jamais' point is still a good one to keep in mind if we put the divisiveness aspect to one side. Plus its hard to pass on excuse to use words "apocaphilia" and "terriblisma" again, let alone include an image from "Apocalypse Now".

Doomsaying is, ironically, self-defeating. Although some people will be discouraged by proclamations that our fate is sealed, many more will be alerted to the depths of the problems we face, and will muster the creativity and social will to bring about the necessary solutions. We saw this with Y2K, and while the peak oil scenario differs from Y2K in many fundamental ways, there's a core similarity: voices in the wilderness, telling us that it's too late, unintentionally acting as catalysts for action.

I should reiterate that not all peak oil aficionados see themselves as Cassandras, revealing our fated destruction. Some -- a growing number, in my observation -- are willing to think about what practical measures can be adopted to avoid disaster. One example, and the proximate trigger for this short essay, is a new post by "peakguy" at the indispensable peak oil website, The Oil Drum. "From Peak Oilers to Citizens for Sustainable Living." looks at what kinds of choices we can make as citizens (as well as consumers) in order to reduce our consumption of oil. Some are practical steps, some are more philosophical, and all should be familiar to WorldChanging readers.

It's interesting to see how the interests of those who wish to avoid an oil depletion-triggered collapse and those who wish to avoid a climate-disruption disaster coincide. At one level, such a correlation is obvious: oil consumption is one of the major causes of global warming, so efforts to reduce such consumption will have positive climate effects, regardless of the motivation. At another level, however, it points to one of the possible engines for greater political and social change: the need to move to a non-oil economy is so great, and covers so many arenas, that alliances are almost inevitable. There's little doubt that the political perspectives of many peak oilers will differ from those of hardcore sustainability advocates, but on this fundamental issue, they stand shoulder-to-shoulder.

Leading up to the release of the new book, Robinson has been talking about the impact of climate disruption and its utility as the kernel of a novel. His interview with the UK's Guardian newspaper is definitely worth reading, and pulls no punches; it will come as little surprise that he's no fan of the current US administration, and it's clear that this has influenced the nature of the fictional Washington DC of his current novels. But more interesting to me is a new short essay he's published entitled Imagining Abrupt Climate Change: Terraforming Earth.

Imagining Abrupt Climate Change is an "Amazon Short," meaning that it's a digital document available for purchase at a relatively low price (49¢, in this case). For that, you get an 18 page essay in PDF; as Robinson appears not to have a website of his own, I suppose this is a way to get short non-fiction pieces out and even make a little money on them.

The essay is interesting more for its discussion of how climatologists came to understand abrupt climate change than in its discussion of "terraforming Earth." There's a lot that can be said about the latter subject (and I've tried to say a bit of it in my own Terraforming Earth essay series), but Robinson uses it primarily as a jumping-off metaphor.