[R-P] Diez zonceras sobre la energía

[Néstor Gorojovsky]

[Un artículo que sería gracioso si no fuera ominoso. El "nosotros" es,
en este caso, el pueblo estadounidense: por eso es ominoso, ya que más
allá del conservadurismo de clase media que lo impregna, refleja en su
crítica romántica hasta dónde llega la "hybris" imperial. Traduzco a
la ligera un pedacito. El resto, completo y en inglés, al pie.
Gentileza de la A-List.]

Diez zonceras de los adictos a la energía
por Jan Lundberg

1) Ahora que llegamos al pico de extracción, la oferta de petróleo
bajará de a poco

2) Nuestro consumo de petróleo se puede reemplazar con combustibles
alternativos y recursos renovables

3) La infraestructura petrolera puede perdurar, o reacondicionarse
para energías renovables.

 4) Tecnología equivale a energía, y energía es energía (cualquiera da igual).

 5) En el momento en que eventualmente desaparezca la comida producida
y distribuida con petróleo y agua bombeada con petróleo, la actual
población de consumidores tendrá una red de contención

6) El gobierno y los científicos pueden ver cómo sacarnos del
problema, y salvarnos.

 7) La salvación de nuestro tejido social, que se está deshilachando,
y del ecosistema, que se está destruyendo, está en "el mercado" y en
la "innovación empresaria".

 8) El cambio climático será gradual, y se reflejará correctamente en
los promedios numéricos.

 9) La población estadounidense puede enfrentar cualquier cosa y
estará en ventaja sobre la de los demás países, especialmente cuando
crezcan la escasez y la adversidad.

 10) Se puede ganar las "guerras" de Iraq y Afganistán, o al menos las
elecciones pueden hacer que se las olvide; se puede absorber el
despilfarro de vidas y riqueza que generan.

 Pibe, aquí expongo en orden los hechos que derrumban esas zonceras:

1. Ni la actividad petrolera, ni el mercado petrolero, están
preparados para contraerse (al igual que el conjunto de la economía
global bajo control de las corporaciones). Pasado cierto límite, la
escasez hundirá todo el barco.

 2. No hay sustitutos del petróleo: ni para todas sus aplicaciones ni
para la baratura de los tiempos idos en que la oferta crecía. El
crecimiento y la abundancia que supimos conocer fueron producto del
petróleo "ilimitado". Las alternativas principales están en torno a la
electricidad, y su rendimiento energético es muy pero muy inferior al
del petróleo barato, fácil de extraer, de antaño.

 3. La infraestructura del petróleo está atada con alambres, y se está
desintegrando a gran velocidad. Si se hubiera querido evitar el
colapso económico, se debería haber creado una alternativa o reemplazo
hace muchas décadas.

 4. La energía tiene un costo físico (entropía), y se la ha venido
explotando según la conveniencia inmediata. En el deseo permanente por
una fuente de potencia sin costo alguno nuestro consumo interminable
puede producir tecnología súper-espectacular, pero la cadena de
abastecimiento (metales, petróleo, uranio) tiene demasiados eslabones
flojos. Las «externalidades», como por ejemplo la degradación
ambiental, se nos meten de vuelta en casa con, por ejemplo, la
epidemia de cánceres.

 5. La agricultura moderna, que se ha industrializado y ha
incrementado su escala porque solo busca rendir ganancias, hace que el
pueblo, en lo esencial, esté comiendo petróleo. Para producir cada
unidad de energía alimenticia (caloría alimentaria) se hacen
necesarias hoy diez unidades (calorías) de energía fósil... y esto no
incluye el costo de transporte ni la cocción. En los EEUU, cada hogaza
de pan recorre, en promedio, 2400 kilómetros desde su punto de origen
hasta la mesa donde la comen.

 6. En realidad, el gobierno no controla los sistemas gigantescos y
complejos que desató para sus votantes del Big Business. Prevalecen
allí la corrupción, la incompetencia y la ignorancia: reflejan la
cultura dominante (materialismo y riqueza privada) contra todo
espíritu de cooperación entre ciudadanos a la búsqueda del bien común.
Solo los voluntarios de base e individuales aliviaron en parte el
sufrimiento provocado por los h uracanes Katrina y Rita.

 7. La obtención de ganancias y la confianza en el avance tecnológico
permanente son el cimiento del consumismo verde, y además de la
promesa de que habrá una "nueva economía" que en realidad solo es más
de lo mismo: una economía desvinculada de la ecología.

 8. El calentamiento global ya está fuera de control: los ciclos de
realimentación positiva ya entraron a la cancha. No podremos eludir
los puntos de inflexión, que vendrán acompañadas de extinciones
masivas como la que ya está en marcha. En el tiempo geológico,
consistirán de repentinos papirotazos que producirán estados
completamente nuevos, quizás distintos a lo que se ha venido viendo en
la Tierra en los últimos 55 millones de años. La Madre Naturaleza, se
sabe, no acepta límites.

 9. El ciudadano promedio de los EEUU se ha vuelto más blando que
nuestros duros antepasados, que trabajaban la tierra y eran capaces de
crear y reparar cualquier cosa que necesitaran para vivir. Con la
comunidad, se han perdido habilidades esenciales. Se ha dicho que la
mayor parte de los demás países están empobrecidos, pero aún después
de haber sido devastados por la manipulación corporativa y
gubernamental [de los EEUU, N. del T.], si se los compara con los
americanos del Norte se percibe que siguen cerca de la tierra, y que
su pueblo mantiene los vínculos de familia.

 10. Solo la guerra de Iraq está costando cerca de un billón de
dólares. Se supone que a largo plazo terminará costando tres billones.
Mucho más significativa es la muerte y la destrucción que, trágicas e
incalculables ya, persistirán además por varias generaciones. Al usar
uranio empobrecido se está llevando a cabo una guerra nuclear que el
ciudadano promedio de los EEUU desconoce, como si a uno no lo afectase
de este lado del mundo.

 Podríamos hacer una lista de mucho más de diez zonceras.

 [Versión completa, en inglés

[A-List] Ten unfortunate assumptions of energy addicts
by Jan Lundberg

Culture Change Letter #186 (May 24 2008)

 This is a message on record crude and gasoline prices to oil addicts
(Hello!). I include their close cousins the green energy addicts
(Ciao!). This is prompted by the shallow, momentary news analyses of
the oil market, as well as by the slightly less-shallow boosterism of
a green-energy Utopia. Lend me your ears before I say, "Have a global
warming day" and we go our separate ways. I'd like to think I'm moving
to the country or the high seas.

 I want to say "Hey" to the endangered American gas guzzler and all
manner of major oil burner, and, "Hail ye plastic-consuming,
tax-funding supporters of never-ending war! You've been driving up a
storm, whether Operation Desert Storm or the next Katrina." The few
who aren't driving are marginalized like Cassandras-usually considered
losers. Our hearts go out to one and all, for the (c)rude awakening
has barely begun.

 Some have pondered what it means for pump prices to get past $4 a
gallon and for oil prices to get to $135 a barrel. Continuing to
ponder away has, significantly, resulted in no action other than be
forced to cut back on some expenditures. Your habits and thinking
haven't changed, but they will shortly. This is a heads-up on what
goes on with the oil industry; it might help, for there is more than
meets the eye that affects everyone. What's in store for us all,
energy-wise and for our very survival?

"You know something is happening here, but you don't know what it is
Do you Mr Jones" -- Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man, 1965

Our collective problem as we see the world sputter out of control for
the worse (before it gets better) is largely that so many loud mouths
claim to know what IS happening here. Honest and wise assessments of
what all is really going on are hard to come by, partly because the
corporate media suppress independent voices who may have the
background and objectivity to offer clarity.

 There are several major assumptions blinding most of those who try,
within the confines of the dominant culture and "The System", to grasp
trends and glimpse the future:

1) Oil supplies will diminish gradually now that peak extraction has arrived.

 2) Alternative fuels and renewable energy can replace our petroleum
consumption.

 3) The petroleum infrastructure can last or become renewable-energy based.

 4) Technology is the equivalent of energy, and energy is energy (all the same).

 5) Today's population of consumers has something to fall back on if
and when petroleum-grown/distributed food and petroleum-pumped water
disappear.

 6) Government and scientists can see us through this challenge and save us.

 7) "The market" and "entrepreneurial innovation" offer salvation for
our unraveling social fabric and our destruction of the ecosystem.

 8) Climate change will be gradual and be reflected accurately by
numerical averages.

 9) The US population can cope with anything and is at an advantage
over other countries especially as scarcity and adversity mount.

 10) The "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan are winnable or can be put
behind us with elections, and that the waste of lives and wealth on
these wars can be absorbed.



Baby, here are the debunking facts on the above, in order:

1. The oil industry and the oil market are, like the global corporate
economy, not set up for contraction. Enough of a shortage will sink
the whole ship.

 2. Petroleum has no substitute, neither for all its uses nor for the
cheapness of the bygone days of rising supply. "Unlimited" petroleum
created the growth and abundance we've known. The main alternatives
are just for electricity and have far lower energy yield than the
easily extracted, cheap petroleum of yore.

 3. The petroleum infrastructure is hard-wired and decaying rapidly. A
replacement-alternative needed to be created decades ago to avoid
industrial and economic collapse.

 4. Energy comes at a physical cost (entropy) and has been exploited
according to convenience at hand. Continuing to wish for a free lunch
to power our endless consumption may yield gee-wizz technologies, but
there are too many weak links in the supply chain (metals, petroleum,
uranium). "Externalities" such as environmental degradation come home
to roost with, for example, the cancer epidemic.

 5. People are basically eating petroleum as part of modern
agriculture's industrialization and scale dedicated only to profit.
Ten units of fossil energy are needed today to create one unit of
food-calorie energy, and that does not include transportation or food
preparation.

The average piece of food in the US has to travel 1,500 miles from its
point of origin.

 6. Government is not really in control of the gigantic, complex
systems it has unleashed for its Big Business constituency.
Corruption, incompetence and ignorance prevail, and reflect the
dominant culture of materialism and private wealth - at odds with any
spirit of citizen-cooperation for the public good. Katrina and Rita
were only ameliorated by individual and grassroots volunteerism.

 7. Making more money and relying on ever-advancing technology is the
basis of not only green consumerism but the promise of a "new economy"
that is really just more of the same: a disconnect with ecology.

 8. Global warming is already out of control, as positive feedback
loops have kicked in. The tipping points, accompanied by mass
extinction already underway, are inescapable and are characterized
over geological time by sudden, total flips to new states not seen on
Earth perhaps for the last 55 million years. It has always been true
that Mother Nature knows no restraint.

 9. The average US citizen has become far softer than our tough
forebears who worked the land and could create and repair anything
their lives depended upon. Crucial skills have been lost along with
community. Most other countries have been called impoverished, but
even after being ravaged by corporate and government manipulation,
they remain - compared to Northern Americans-close to the land, and
their peoples retain family cohesion.

 10. The cost of the Iraq War alone has approached half a trillion
dollars and is projected to cost over three trillion in the long run.

Far more significant is the death and destruction that, although
tragic and incalculable already, will persist for generations. The use
of depleted uranium amounts to a nuclear war that the average US
citizen knows nothing about, as if one is not affected on this side of
the world.

 One could add to the list and go far beyond ten. My May 22 2008 essay
on Ecocities (Culture Change Letter #185) contains explanation on the
workings of the oil industry and the oil market, helping to inform the
seeker.

 We do not have an energy crisis or a financial crisis, but rather a
culture crisis. The above regrettable assumptions cover most of the
attitudinal confusion and error that prevent modern consumers from
understanding their own lives. Automatic acceptance of technology, and
chauvinism for the "Red White and Blue", with some religious faith
thrown in, are leading all of us-humanity and innocent species that we
drive extinct-to what may be oblivion. If this sounds too dire to be
possible, look at the direction we are going in, and do the math.

 "Hope" is a human trait that we cannot live without, but it can be
dangerous to over-rely on. What are we hoping for? Continued affluence
for those who slave away, or compete or exploit, so that our homes can
be spacious and loaded with electronic convenience?

Why should the loss of our doodads and energy profligacy be considered
"doom and gloom"? This column has tried to dispel that false claim
since Culture Change's beginning in 2001, by exploring values enhanced
by fundamental change. Some of us have tasted the fruits of truly
sustainable living and equitable relationships. We will not restate
here the "solutions" or "the answer" that many demand upon realizing
profound change is in the offing.

 People who are locked into their conventionalism and the collapsing
paradigm are afraid to question their own life-styles and their
rulers, such that a further-trashed natural world is preferable to
taking action that involves uncertainty. Their "System" is sacrosanct,
but perhaps society is on the verge of seeing widespread questioning
of The System and its demise at the hands of the many.

 I used to provide the hungry news media with regular announcements
and analyses on US gasoline prices. Seeing the boring pointlessness
and the ethical toxic–hole of supplying solace and profitable
information to the motoring public and my major oil-company clients, I
left. The "truth business" I went into, that of researching and
developing alternatives to the dominant forms of transportation,
land-use, has been lucrative only in the spiritual sense, one might
say. I trot out this background to assure anyone that there is no
refuge in playing the game of materialistic "$uccess", because sooner
or later one comes up empty.

And, the rewards of opening one's eyes and meeting people on equal
terms of real respect are vast.

 I close with my explanation of what we are experiencing and what's
about to hit. I offer a warning and some hope.

 We are caught in a culture of denial and ruination: of our rights as
humans and animals, and of the absolute interdependence of humans and
the rest of nature. Too many of us want to believe the propaganda that
brainwashed us as "THE Americans", regarding our being the most
special and justly proud of nations-never mind the inextricable bases
of slavery and the genocide of the native peoples. This is not to say
there are not amazingly wonderful Americans today. Nor do we forget we
have unique wonders of natural beauty such as the Grand Canyon.

 But our phase of history whereby our "exuberance", as William Catton
called our "Overshoot", is coming to an end more swiftly than some us
thought even a few years ago. The world is turning upside down for
better AND for worse. The days of pumping gas and flicking a switch
are going to be all but forgotten when we lurch desperately toward
more human, "convivial" interaction (as Ivan Illich described our next
possible phase). That is, if we do not go extinct from our releasing
the chemical and radioactive genies into the world. Gone will be the
days of further such atrocities done without the permission of all
affected.

 If we pull through, we will live in such a way to reject false
values, idiocies and greedy tendencies that have dragged us all down.
This hegemony has at least accelerated its own demise and helped to
close the chapter on a bloody period that began many centuries ago.
Now it is time for us to open up the doors and go outside to our
freedom. Don't wait for the talking heads or bosses or politicians to
give you permission.

Just tell them "Have a global warming day".

 http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php

-- 

Néstor Gorojovsky
El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autoría