Posted here without comment:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0413-28.htm

Less than a century ago our main transport was the horse. One of the major urban problems was the massive volume of manure and removal. A positive benefit to cities was the extensive planting of trees and civic fountains we still to an extent enjoy today which offsets the heat from concrete and asphalt. These weren't put there for our aesthetic pleasure, but for the horses. Very few civic planners worry about horse manure today. Both history and prehistory are replete with cultural binges of one resource or another, Pliestocene megafauna, forests, the great fish stocks, each other and now fossil fuels. We have adapted each time, from substituting short faced Cave Bears with Jupitor, Jesus and John From as dieties to technological placebos that merely increase the chasm between humanity and nature. Maybe the collapse of fossil fuel will finally wake us up to the limits of materialism versus the limitless options of being true caretakers of our world. The irony is a far more critical shortage is looming allready- water. Maybe Aron Ralston should give motivational speeches about that, having symbolically drunk what world 'leaders' are doing to their constituents <img src="/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

You should check out "The Coming Oil Crisis" by Colin J. Campbell. He's a PhD with over 40 years experience in the oil exploration business. The book is a much more in depth study along the same lines as the paper you posted. Scary stuff, for our children if not ouselves.
Ed

That is surely the most positive reaction I've read to this impending disaster, and I agree 100%. Although I'm not so sure it will be us humans who will be lucky enough to end up being the caretakers of the planet. Perhaps it will be the ants turn, as Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson conjecture in their eye-opening book Journey to the Ants in the following quote:

"If all humanity were to disappear, the remainder of life would spring back and flourish. The mass extinctions now under way would cease, the damaged ecosystems heal and expand outwards. If all the ants somehow disappeared, the effect would be exactly the opposite, and catastrophic. Species extinction would increase even more rapidly as the considerable services provided by these insects were pulled away."

(Of course, one other "positive" outcome for members of this forum would be the chance to finally break out those Altoid tin kits, and apply our survival skills to a real world situation... <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> )

Maybe the Amish are right after all.

Chris,

Care to elaborate on the nature of

?

/Neal

Certainly <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> On Salisbury Plain in England stands Stonehenge. Long before Oetzi began his final ascent into the mountains it stood as a very accurate timepiece created by multiple generations with increasingly complicated and varied functions. One of these is recording periodic lunar eclipses modern astonomy wasn't even fully aware of. It seems the observations to recognise this one phenomenon took a few generations just to figure it out! Some archaeologists get all constipated over the 'why' of some things. Was Stonehenge an agricultural calender, religous clock or ancient public works project to keep the economy robust? I don't care much. But I am fascinated by a society that could come together and do something like this instead of trashing the planet like some heir to his parent's fortune who just received the last $10,000 and runs back to the club to spend it. It seems to me we've pushed the Post Copernican mechanical model of creation about as far as our hubris can. Maybe humanity should 'goof off' for oh, a thousand years, let Nature recover while we build Stonehenges to talk to whales and the guys and gals on Alpha Centaurie: Throw the Ipods, Gameboys etc. into giant communal bonfires, sit down under the stars reappearing after the sick haze of artificial light finally dies and- talk to each other and tell stories <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I recently read a most inspiring article: Japan's sustainable society in the Edo period (1603-1867).

I have a tendency to polarity in my thinking on our path - either full-on consumer driven civilization or Chris Kavanaugh's Stonehenge/Whales/Alpha Centauri laid back 'goof off'. However, the above essay describes a large relatively modern society of 30 million people on a small island group living a sustainable manner for over 250 years. Granted this system was very hierarchical and backed by the Samurai's strictly enforced cultural standards - but what else is new - how is that different from today or any other example of social organization in human history?

So despite our considerable pride in our so-called accomplishments, and since we are running on borrowed time, I find it reassuring to see that there is a successful model of a large scale human society that was able to run self sufficiently for a quarter of a millennium.

If anyone feels ambitious and wishes to begin such a sustainable society, I would like to put my name in for Tinker in charge of Swiss Army Knife refurbishment...

<img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

(For those interested in reading more (though imho, the essay linked above provides the best summary of the ideas), there is a translation of the book upon which it was based, "The Edo Period had an Ecological Society? by Eisuke Ishikawa, hosted by the Japan for Sustainability website. Here are the direct links to Chapters 1-8 & Chapters 9-13.)

(...and one further recommendation: The best book I have read which summarizes the "end of oil" idea, but in the context of human history, and with suggested directions for the future is "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" by Thom Hartmann (check out some of the 69 Amazon reviews to get a taste of this remarkable book - and now also available in a 2004 revised edition.)

Humans seem to be instatiable in their need to improve their tools and their lives. From a strictly biological point of view, we are the most successful species.

Stonehenge was created, at considerable effort, by people, for *some* purpose, who were not goofing off. It was an investment in something, e.g., more efficient agriculture or after-life favors from higher being(s).

I just don't see the planet supporting a hunter/gatherer lifestyle for 7+ billion "wise tool makers."

I have to agree. Before we urbanized the planet and had our enormous population growth it would be no problem. However, now there's too many people and not enough nature to go around.