Alice's Musings on ASPO Pisa

All of Dennis Meadows talk today was excellent, here are just a few of the points he made:

1) The Club of Rome finally convinced people there was a problem, but had no solutions to offer. He recommended that ASPO be prepared to switch to a mode of offering specific, local solutions lest they too become irrelevant when people are seeking answers to how to cope with the new realities brought on by peak oil

2) Politics and the market are structurally incapable of dealing with hard problems like those we face now (overshoot of carrying capacity from depletion of fisheries, forests, water, soil, peak oil, increasing pollution, etc). The models all show that collapse is the most likely outcome, and this is one of the reasons collapse is more likely than a sustainable society.

3) As an aside, he tossed out that the models showed collapse in 2020 to 2030 but that real world events were moving forward faster than their model.

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Charlie Hall's latest research shows the EROI of existing oil and gas is about 25 to one, but that NEW oil is approaching 1 to 1, which means that the discovery of new oil may be irrelevant after 2015 to 2020.

When asked about how the future might unfold, he mentioned that he thought that people will not be willing to make the capital investments needed to build solar, wind, and so on when oil was costing them $10 per gallon or more.

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Colin Campbell
- we were the first species to use EXTERNAL energy, beyond what our own muscle power could provide. Agriculture used animals and slaves to produce food.
- It's significant that slavery came to an end when oil provided energy.
- Now there's a slavery of DEBT.
- Will peak oil eventually lead to the end of the nation state? Will power return to local regions and new local currencies be developed?

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Kjell Alekett (President of ASPO)
- Why are we addicted to oil? Because it's so powerful. Consider this: the oil you use to fill up your car could lift 50 cars to the top of the Eiffel Tower

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Richard Heinberg explained the depletion protocol developed by Colin Campbell and Kjell Alekett. For me, this was the most important presentation of the meeting, because it answered many of the objections and questions I had about how this could possibly work. It is our best chance of avoiding world war over the remaining resources. He also had many original and brilliant practical ideas on how all of us can cope as individuals with declining energy. This is a must buy book for all of you who care about how the future unfolds. The principles are easy to understand and communicate to your political leaders and business community. Societies and businesses that plan for less energy in the future and cut their consumption at or below the rate of depletion will be better off in the future than those that delay making the transition.

Alice Friedemann from Oakland, CA