

They Used to Say Whale Oil Was Indispensable, Too - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/nyregion/03towns.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

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sh1mmer
This makes me think of Clay Shirky's book "Here comes everybody".

I think the example of the whale oil industry's feeling of superiority until
their rapid decline, is similar to Clay's example of the feelings of scribes
during the advent of the printing press.

He talks about how the last people to be able to adapt were the people
entrenched in the industry, who spent their energy justifying why change was
bad rather than adapting and bringing their experience.

Often change is inevitable but a big enough change such as petroleum or
electricity (or the internet) make it hard to predict how the future will pan
out. People don't like change because it's unpredictable, so it's easier to
deny it will or should happen.

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michael_dorfman
It's impressive that the entire argument of the article can be compressed down
to the title-- and still be that thought-provoking.

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qqq
We will find another/better way, but we still have a long time to find it, and
it's probably just going to be shale oil, which isn't going to run out for a
very long time. What comes after that hasn't been invented yet and there is no
hurry.

The idea of a "sustainable" way of life is one which never encounters new
problems. What it really means is a static way of life. It's _not a bad thing_
to have a dynamic way of life which depends on human creativity to deal with
the new and unknown.

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time_management
I think tar sands and shale oil buy us out of the "classic" peak oil scare,
which was that we had used up 50% of the world's oil and were headed for
production decline. No, we've used up less than 30%... and can get much more,
expensively and with massive cost to the environment.

I don't think an oil _shortage_ is in the works just yet, but the era of cheap
oil is gone.

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kingkongrevenge
That is an extremely stupid comparison. They used whale oil for reading at
night. Crude oil is a critical ingredient of modern industrial civilization.

And the implicit assumption that superior substitutes always emerge is also
childish. Just because they figured out kerosene says absolutely nothing about
our relationship to crude oil.

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josefresco
The argument that humans will "always find another/better way" has more to do
with faith in humanity than it does about any commodity and it's successor.

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kingkongrevenge
Well that reads nice on a hallmark card, but back here in reality societies
have fallen into decline, crisis, and famine many, many times because of
resource shortages.

