Topic
Canada's acclaimed energy journalist tackles The Big Question October 3 in Vancouver. Here's a taste.
Award-winning author and regular Tyee contributor Andrew Nikiforuk: When it comes to people and oil, which enslaved which?
ENERGY & EQUITY: The lethal footprint of 'handy' gizmos will stomp us into oblivion.
ENERGY & EQUITY: There's power in people caring what their neighbours do.
A boom, a bonanza, a decimation, a collapse. Learn from Ahab.
[Editor's note: This Wednesday, Oct. 3, the Tyee is proud to present an evening with Canada's preeminent investigative reporter on energy issues, Andrew Nikiforuk. Details are here. The price of admission is free. The opportunity for you to come, listen and participate is invaluable, for Nikiforuk has spent the past two years researching the key question of our age:
If we can't live with oil, how can we survive giving it up?
Nikiforuk's acclaimed new book The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude argues the petro-economy is a false one allowing us to delude ourselves (until it's too late?) about what really matters in life.
His soon to appear series on The Tyee, "Big Shift: Leaving Oil Behind," extends that inquiry by exploring what it will really take -- politically, economically and culturally -- to survive peak oil and stave off climate change.
Expect an evening of hard nosed realism about oil, society and whether we can get to a better place without setting civilization on fire. Hosted by Tyee editor David Beers.
To give you a taste of what to expect on Wednesday, we asked Nikiforuk how his new book can make the claim that humanity's ingenious harnessing of fossil fuel energy offers dark parallels to a previous era during which humans enslaved others. He laid out his thoughts in a dozen points.]
1. Slavery was first and foremost an energy institution that deployed captured muscle to get work done. We have largely imposed its values and attitudes on mechanized slaves fueled by hydrocarbons. In the process we have created unique plantation economies based on the use and proliferation of energy slaves. And like the slaveholders of old, we, too, have become fat, incompetent and lazy. What we have gained in comfort, we have lost in vitality.
2. High flows of energy through a society generally encourage if not enable the growth of big corporations and big government. As unconventional hydrocarbons get more expensive, we'll see a contraction of both the economy and government. The social consequences will be unpredictable. Descending an energy ladder is generally more dramatic than the climb up.
3. Energy, not capital, makes the world go around. In the 1780s the invention of the steam engine made it possible for machines to do the work of millions. Shortly afterwards the poet Samuel Coleridge described the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson as a "moral steam engine." It took a faith-based movement nearly 50 years to abolish human slavery. But the multiplication of energy slaves fed by coal guaranteed its economic and political success. But one form of slavery replaced another. The new industrial servitude shackled men to machines and mechanical thinking.
Andrew Nikiforuk's latest book Energy of Slaves is a radical critique of how we use energy. Here is where you can hear him speak in the next several days.
Oct. 1: Victoria. At the UVIC Environmental Law Centre. 7 p.m.
Oct. 2. Whistler. Nikiforuk at the Whistler Forum. 7 p.m. Details here.
Oct. 3: Vancouver. "De-Friending Oil: How petro-dependency corrodes our humanity. And what it will take to pull free." Details here.
4. In the 1950s a massive number of electrical slaves invaded the typical North American home in the form of fridges, vacuum cleaners, dryers, dish washers, blenders, fryers, waffle makers... A decade later the women's liberation movement exploded on the social scene. Changes in energy flow can expand and contract social movements.
5. The first industrial revolution mechanized human muscle with coal-fired energy followed by cheap oil. The second industrial revolution (the digital revolution) has carried on the process by mechanizing mental activity. Digital slaves powered by electricity are also impregnated with oil. The production of computer chips is such a high energy activity that it may be one of the world's largest unrecorded oil spills. The digital revolution is simply a product of high energy spending.
6. Frederick Soddy, the American sociologist, once defined capitalism as a system of economics that designs new high energy technologies or energy slaves that consume more cheap energy. It remains one of the best definitions.
7. The proliferation of energy slaves in every aspect of our lives has created a level of complexity and chaos that we now manage by deploying more slaves. The anthropologist Joseph Tainter doesn't think this approach is sustainable.
8. Economics is not about money but about the quality and quantity of energy flows. Until the advent of fossil fuels no one regarded the philosophy as simply money doings. let alone a science. National economies expand when they enlarge the flow of energy (British Empire grew on coal and the American Empire flourished on oil). These same economies contract when energy supplies diminish or become too expensive. The continent's last 10 recessions all followed oil price shocks.
9. Societies that consume high levels of energy in the form of fossil fuels tend to be much unhappier and materialistic than low-energy cultures. The energy of machines, as Leo Tolstoy noted, cannot replace the energetic love of a family.
10. The real political divisions in life are not left and right but low energy and high energy. Low energy cultures tend to geographically placed, fatalistic, family-orientated and religious. High energy societies tend to be materialistic, mobile, and self-centred. They also believe in unlimited progress based on the multiplication of energy slaves. One of the great ironies of North American life is that so-called progressives support the ambitions and values of low energy cultures while so-called conservatives uphold the values of materialistic slaveholders.
11. Oil servitude is so prevalent that it is no more visible to us than the abuses of human slaves were to Roman slaveholders. Most North Americans are slaves to their machines and frequently incur great debts to expand their McMansions with stuff and labour saving gadgets. But we have become slaves to our machines and the cheap stuff they make. Oil importing states are slaves to petro states and petro states have become obsequious servants to oil money. And we have used oil to become "masters of the universe" and change the very energy balance of the atmosphere.
12. The master slave dynamic is a powerful one. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that when "if you put a chain around the neck of a slave, you fasten one around your own neck." ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Fiat lux
33 weeks ago
As I've been saying it for
As I've been saying it for the past 25 years, copyrighted in my 1991 "Principle for the application of physical efficiency to economics", repeated on this blog for the past 7 years:
"Wealth is the temporary control of energy"
"Wealth can not be created only taken from others, the environment and future generations"
"Real costs can not be cut only transferred on others, the environment and future generations"
As long as humanity permits the distortion of physical realities and measurements by imaginary monetary figures, "created" from the air and controlled by a special interest sector, there's no hope for any improvement, or even survival.
The biggest killer and destroyer in history has always been "faith"
Witness the new GDP monetary games by Stats Can, featured among the news items. sold as "economics". The haven't figured it out yet that real economics are concerned with physical realities and not silly games with imaginary figures.
Hopeless.
Ed Deak.
Birch
33 weeks ago
Exciting and Unnerving
It's always exciting and a little bit unnerving to experience a new paradigm of understanding the world. Noting the foundational status of energy (rather than that of money) is one of these paradigm shifts.
Although these ideas are not completely new (Ivan Illich introduced some of these concepts a couple of decades ago in his book ENERGY AND EQUITY), the ongoing energy crunch in terms of cost, the spectre of peak oil (and all the adjustments that may entail), and the long-term catastrophic threat of climate change have all combined to raise these issues into public consciousness. They need to be there. So thank you to Mr. Nikiforuk for continuing to amplify the message.
The message is exciting because it points to the necessity, indeed, to the inevitability of considerable change to the ways in which society operates. Of course, fundamental changes within societies are inherently somewhat unpredictable. The unknowns can lead to fear. And fear can lead to all kinds of ugly consequences. Thus, the message is unnerving.
Whether or not society will rise to the occasion or simply blunder into chaos remains to be seen.
Fiat lux
33 weeks ago
What people should come to
What people should come to grips with, once and for all, is that most disasters in history have been caused by faiths, overruling realities and demanding submission.
The cause of most wars, mass murder and destruction.
The present monetary system is not a reality but a form of religion, designed to mislead, distort and overrule physical realities, human rights and elementary democracy.
Climate change, 30 million starvation deaths per year, foodbank lines, environmental destruction, the oil economy,etc. etc. are all licenced to maintain the imaginary value of imaginary money "created" from the air by special interests, to enforce "wealth taking".
Not making, but taking.
One of the funniest experiences of my Cambridge years in the early 50s was going to the movies, filled with students.
Whenever the silly American expression of "making money" came on the screen, the whole audience burst out laughing and hooting.
Now everybody is using these silly words, ignoring that money can not be "made" by people, yet that single word is the cause of most of our problems.
Faith conquers all. Especially logical thought, used by ruling sectors all through history.
Ed Deak.
Talon
33 weeks ago
thank you Andrew and Ed
Excellent article by Andrew and great follow-up from Ed. Thank you both. Now if I could just figure out where Andrew's talk is going to take place I will be there. Cheers!
wiley
33 weeks ago
re: wealth
Let me add one to the list:
True wealth is needing very few energy slaves to be happy and free.
hg
33 weeks ago
Talk
Profound subject and the talk would be interesting, but the links come to a dead end on the SFU page.
TYEE MODERATOR RESPONDS:
HG: link is working on page we tried. Here is the link:
http://sfuwoodwards.ca/index.php/events/details/journalist-andrew-nikiforuk
Dan the socialist
33 weeks ago
Sad the slaves won't do
Sad the slaves won't do anything about it, they are fooled into keeping the same old whether the cons or libs...
Jeffrey J.
33 weeks ago
Energy of Slaves: Powerful and Compelling
When I heard Nikiforuk had published his latest book Energy of Slaves, I ran out and purchased it immediately. Like his other volumes (Tarsands, Empire of the Beetle), Energy of Slaves is crisp and lucid, filled with reflective, powerful contemplations about the plight we face.
Nikiforuk has clearly become Canada's foremost intellectual. His depth and grasp of the ethical abyss we face as oil destroys the earth is stunning.
Every thoughtful Canadian will find this book illuminating. And in the end, it will be up to us to choose our fate.
The talk by Nikiforuk will be a real treat. How lucky for those who live in the lower mainland.
RickW
33 weeks ago
There is no doubt that we are an energy-intensive society
And there can be no doubt that ANY vision of the future involves yet more energy (the sheer amount of energy implied in the Star Trek scenarios is 'proof' enough).
One problem is the source of this energy. The other problem is control of this energy. Energy sources need to be compact and personal (phasers in the Star Trek example), so that central control of energy sources becomes impossible.
Until then, we will always have Harpers and Hitlers, and other Big Brothers with the proverbial "boot stamping on a human face - forever".
frances
33 weeks ago
Location
The Wednesday forum will be at 149 West Hastings. It is part of the new Woodwards building complex
lynn
33 weeks ago
Excellent article once again by Andrew Nikiforuk
"Of course, fundamental changes within societies are inherently somewhat unpredictable. The unknowns can lead to fear. And fear can lead to all kinds of ugly consequences. Thus, the message is unnerving.
Whether or not society will rise to the occasion or simply blunder into chaos remains to be seen." ~ Birch
Insightful comment, Birch.....on the large and often unacknowledged role fear plays in outcome.
SuzieR
33 weeks ago
I guess it is just me
For the life of me, I can't figure out why we are supposed to feel bad about substituting almost endless energy from the ground for human slaves. There turns out to be no connection at all between burning oil, coal or gas and the endless climate change the Earth goes through.
This article is beautifully written nonsense.
freewilly
33 weeks ago
More energy not less
Andrew was being interviewed on CBC radio about his new book, Cant say I havent heard it all before. I take issue with his point that societies that consume high amounts of fossil fuels are unhappy ones
The desparity between classes of people and unrealistic expectations created by the media and marketeers make people unhappy.
What would happen if we figured out how to create limitless cheap amounts of clean energy for everyone? The fact the we havent figured out how to harness the power of a star, we dont have colonies of people on Mars yet, terra-formed the moon ,we dont have machines to recycle waste into useful gadjets, and noone has to work anymore because money has no value makes me unhappy.
I get the impression Andrew want to see us all live like I dont know what, hippies? . I dont want machines as slaves or be a slave to machines. Id like to be in a harmonic union with my plastic and metal brethren.
(and I like rickW comments hes right energy source have to be portable and personal)
In all seriousness we can't go backward, technology is the only thing thats going to save us, climate change is happening, the earths population is bursting at the seams, species are disappearing, we are polluting the planet with fossil fuels and the only thing available at the grocery store will be boxes of soylent green crackers, if we dont smarten up.
Sine Nomine
33 weeks ago
A touch too much Chicken Little for me
I don't see the point in demonizing petroleum. It made most of our lives possible, and I for one am grateful.
We do need to talk about transitioning away from it, but the slave analogy seems a bit silly to me.
Let's not go off half-cocked shall we.
RickW
33 weeks ago
free willy
Fact is, 90% of us would be dead without the energy we use.
RickW
33 weeks ago
Sine Nomine
That's because you aren't looking at it from an energy viewpoint. What in your opinion do slaves represent if not energy? You think the cotton plantations could have operated with just the owner and family picking the crop?
Fiat lux
33 weeks ago
A reasonable degree of
A reasonable degree of quality survival could be achieved for everybody on Earth with a fraction of the present energy use.
The vast majority of energy is now used to get rid of human labour and skills and replace them with automation as "cheaper", but in reality more profitable and to feed the imaginary figures on the stock and money markets.
The forced depopulation of rural areas and the jamming of people into mega cities raises the per capita energy use many, could even be hundreds of times.
Not for economic, but fraudulent GDP and stockmarket reasons.
There are many of us who can easily prove all this in practice and not by having read and got hooked on to some harebrained theories.
Of course we need oil and electricity, but how much? The difference is between the drinking of a glass of wine, or beer, on occasions, as opposed to total alcoholism.
There were many reports and figures after WW2
on what might have been achieved with the resources and people wasted in the war.
The same applies to neoclassical monetary economics.
Ed Deak.
moern
33 weeks ago
Are you seriously suggesting petroleum is the equivalent
of flesh and blood in terms of suffering, for instance.
"Help us, please", cry the molecules of hydrocarbon. "We burn, we burn."
This article must be a parody. Did he really write a whole book based on this conceit?
nlo
33 weeks ago
?????
Please buy his book so he never has to sell those books out of a car. The thought of his slave hauling those heavy things around infuriates me.
RickW
33 weeks ago
moern
So petroleum is our savior? I ask you the same question I asked of Sine Nomine......
RickW
33 weeks ago
moern
So petroleum is our savior? I ask you the same question I asked of Sine Nomine......
Fiat lux
33 weeks ago
Our savior can only be
Our savior can only be logical thought, based on physical realities and divorced from faith based beliefs and theories.
Which cuts out all past and presently dominating governing religious/ideological/economic theories that resulted in the mass murder of billions in history and the destruction of our ecology, endangering the survival and lives of the whole human race.
Ed Deak.
moern
33 weeks ago
The biggest problem with petroleum?
"Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network" by Dean Henderson
We are the slaves of the oligarchy that controls the oil.
Yes, oil substituted for slave labor because it cost more to keep a slave than employ petroleum based technology. The surplus people were left to fend for themselves.
This article turns the relationship on its head and ignores the basic problem.
RickW
33 weeks ago
moern
Not really. Nikiforuk's dissertation is all about control. Slaves were controlled directly. Control is now exerted indirectly through the monopoly of the prevalent source of energy, namely oil - because the civilization we've built up remains wholly dependent on energy. As I stated in an earlier post, the ONLY way to break this monopoly is to create an energy source that can be controlled by individuals.
RickW
33 weeks ago
BTW
Elizabeth May maintains that we waste fully 60% of the energy we generate:
http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/04/01/GreeningHomesCanBoost/
And we waste nearly 40% of the food we buy:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/09/28/food-waste-report.html
most of which is generated through fossil fuel usage.