Jay Hanson: On human nature, energy, and collapse

And I looked, and behold peak oil: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

If you were born after 1960, you will probably die of violence, starvation or disease. Although it's news to you, your generation is challenged with a technically-insoluble problem – a political problem – which will ultimately kill five out of six worldwide – or perhaps all. You can not solve this problem because that carbon-based, selfish-gene rational computer on your neck isn't logical!

- Jay Hanson is the author of dieoff.org. You might call him the grandfather of peak-oil doomerism - a peakoiler before peakoilers were called peakoilers, a doomer before doomers were called doomers. From that particular point of view, we are all doomed because we are doomed to be doomed. It doesn't matter even if we believe that we are not doomed, because we are all doomed anyway.

Wonderful. The economists/cornucopians will have none of this, of course. The moderates sit somewhere in the middle. If there is a doomerosity scale of 1 to 10, Jay Hanson would rate a 10. Or 11. Maybe. I'm at 6. What about you? Are you a doomer, a moderate ... or an economist?

Comments:

I am 7 on the doomer scale.

But "tks" to SimonTay I am sliding up to the 8-9 ranks...

Posted by Sleepless on February 16, 2007 at 10:14 PM SGT #

Some third world countries are living this hell now. Jay's proposition is that when population exceeds the carrying capacity the land provides then hell ensues. That's happening now.

He further contends that humans are genetically wired to not know themselves well or to regulate their population. I.E smart people know to limit their population. Stupid people keep having more babies. That could mean the world gets filled up with people who are genetically prepositioned to be stupid, I.E. have more children than they children's future can support. But what it really means, I think, is that suitable land winds up in the control of the rich and the rich have lots of children while impoverished children die. Or impoverished young men kill the rich.

He also thinks that population can draw down the carrying capacity of the land to the point that such land cannot support even smaller populations.

I think I'm a 3 or 4. Real risk is ahead. Fortunately government is talking about it now. Jay contends that our government is a stealth plutocracy, really a stealth kleptocracy.

Posted by Ammond on February 20, 2007 at 11:03 PM SGT #