The World As We Know It
Aug. 20th, 2008 06:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertangoPaul Krugman had a column the other day at the New York Times. It's about the fragile nature of world trade, and how nationalism and protectionism could cause it to unravel more easily than one might think.
The eye-opener, though, is how he uses the pre-WWI economy as an example of a global one not unlike our own:
"Writing in 1919, the great British economist John Maynard Keynes described the world economy as it was on the eve of World War I. “The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth ... he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world.”
And Keynes’s Londoner “regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement ... The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion ... appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalization of which was nearly complete in practice.”
But then came three decades of war, revolution, political instability, depression and more war. By the end of World War II, the world was fragmented economically as well as politically. And it took a couple of generations to put it back together."
Why was this particularly striking to me?
Well, there's a sub-set of those who believe in peak oil who also clearly think that industrial society cannot exist without oil. One loud exponent of this view is Jim Kunstler, of whom I've written before, and he's expressed it in his nominally non-fiction book The Long Emergency and his novel World Made By Hand. He says at the web site for the novel that one of his main goals was to provide a "credible" scenario for our future. So he shows us a world about 15 years from now (or as far into the future as we are from 1993) -- that has been ravaged by disease, has had a complete economic and political breakdown, has no real communication other than by foot or horse, etc., etc. In other words, he posits a world at about 1830's levels of tech in about 15 years.
And he calls this "credible."
So, what about the Keynes quotes up there from Krugman? Well, the Age of Oil really began with the gusher that was found at Spindletop, Texas, in 1901. But it took a long time for oil to percolate through society. The world Keynes is describing is one without oil.
But, notably, it's one with industry.
And that's the largest problem I have with the with the most pessimistic among the peak oil crowd. I'm willing to give them their premises regarding oil production itself. Although, if Hubbert, Deffeyes, Campbell, and others are to be believed, that means a symmetrical curve. Just as I remember Keynes' London, I also recall the US of the 1950's, which was when the interstates and the suburbs were first being built -- and that was with global oil production of roughly what one would expect in the 2060's if we're at peak now.
What this goes to is what Patrick Nielsen Hayden once described as the real surprise of the Boomers -- they never expected to live this long. That wasn't just because of shooting their collective wad so young. It's because they were told, incessantly, throughout their youth that either they'd go up in nuclear smoke, or a population crisis, or an environmental one. And now they're in their 60s, and they're not dead yet. Hell, they're more prosperous than they ever thought possible.
Kunstler gets to sounding like that a lot. Just like there are some fans who (mostly jokingly) complain about not having their jet packs, Kunstler comes across as complaining as not having his apocalypse yet.
I'm willing to give him peak oil. But that means a rollback to 1910 or so, at worst.
But he's a moralist at heart. Which means his beef isn't really with petroleum, or even the car suburb he so soundly excoriates, it's with industrial society as a whole. So he overreaches, and becomes, well...
Not credible.
The eye-opener, though, is how he uses the pre-WWI economy as an example of a global one not unlike our own:
"Writing in 1919, the great British economist John Maynard Keynes described the world economy as it was on the eve of World War I. “The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth ... he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world.”
And Keynes’s Londoner “regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement ... The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion ... appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalization of which was nearly complete in practice.”
But then came three decades of war, revolution, political instability, depression and more war. By the end of World War II, the world was fragmented economically as well as politically. And it took a couple of generations to put it back together."
Why was this particularly striking to me?
Well, there's a sub-set of those who believe in peak oil who also clearly think that industrial society cannot exist without oil. One loud exponent of this view is Jim Kunstler, of whom I've written before, and he's expressed it in his nominally non-fiction book The Long Emergency and his novel World Made By Hand. He says at the web site for the novel that one of his main goals was to provide a "credible" scenario for our future. So he shows us a world about 15 years from now (or as far into the future as we are from 1993) -- that has been ravaged by disease, has had a complete economic and political breakdown, has no real communication other than by foot or horse, etc., etc. In other words, he posits a world at about 1830's levels of tech in about 15 years.
And he calls this "credible."
So, what about the Keynes quotes up there from Krugman? Well, the Age of Oil really began with the gusher that was found at Spindletop, Texas, in 1901. But it took a long time for oil to percolate through society. The world Keynes is describing is one without oil.
But, notably, it's one with industry.
And that's the largest problem I have with the with the most pessimistic among the peak oil crowd. I'm willing to give them their premises regarding oil production itself. Although, if Hubbert, Deffeyes, Campbell, and others are to be believed, that means a symmetrical curve. Just as I remember Keynes' London, I also recall the US of the 1950's, which was when the interstates and the suburbs were first being built -- and that was with global oil production of roughly what one would expect in the 2060's if we're at peak now.
What this goes to is what Patrick Nielsen Hayden once described as the real surprise of the Boomers -- they never expected to live this long. That wasn't just because of shooting their collective wad so young. It's because they were told, incessantly, throughout their youth that either they'd go up in nuclear smoke, or a population crisis, or an environmental one. And now they're in their 60s, and they're not dead yet. Hell, they're more prosperous than they ever thought possible.
Kunstler gets to sounding like that a lot. Just like there are some fans who (mostly jokingly) complain about not having their jet packs, Kunstler comes across as complaining as not having his apocalypse yet.
I'm willing to give him peak oil. But that means a rollback to 1910 or so, at worst.
But he's a moralist at heart. Which means his beef isn't really with petroleum, or even the car suburb he so soundly excoriates, it's with industrial society as a whole. So he overreaches, and becomes, well...
Not credible.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 02:29 pm (UTC)WW1 was impossible because the trade was so large and important...