{"id":4762,"date":"2015-01-22T07:06:45","date_gmt":"2015-01-22T12:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=4762"},"modified":"2015-01-22T07:08:07","modified_gmt":"2015-01-22T12:08:07","slug":"the-mariners-rulein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=4762","title":{"rendered":"The Mariner’s Rule"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mariner’s Rule<\/a><\/h3>\n

One of the things my readers ask me most often, in response to this blog\u2019s exploration of the ongoing decline and impending fall of modern industrial civilization, is what I suggest people ought to do about it all. It\u2019s a valid question, and it deserves a serious answer.<\/p>\n

Now of course not everyone who asks the question is interested in the answers I have to offer. A great many people, for example, are only interested in answers that will allow them to keep on enjoying the absurd extravagance that passed, not too long ago, for an ordinary lifestyle among the industrial world\u2019s privileged classes, and is becoming just a little bit less ordinary with every year that slips by.\u00a0To such people I have nothing to say. Those lifestyles were only possible because the world\u2019s industrial nations burnt through half a billion years of stored sunlight in a few short centuries, and gave most of the benefits of that orgy of consumption to a relatively small fraction of their population; now that easily accessible reserves of fossil fuels are running short, the party\u2019s over.<\/p>\n

Yes, I\u2019m quite aware that that\u2019s a controversial statement. I field heated denunciations on a regular basis insisting that it just ain\u2019t so, that solar energy or fission or perpetual motion or\u00a0something<\/em>\u00a0will allow the industrial world\u2019s privileged classes to have their planet and eat it too. Printer\u2019s ink being unfashionable these days, a great many electrons have been inconvenienced on the internet to proclaim that this or that technology must surely allow the comfortable to remain comfortable, no matter what the laws of physics, geology, or economics have to say.\u00a0\u00a0Now of course the only alternative energy sources that have been able to stay in business even in a time of sky-high oil prices are those that can count on gargantuan government subsidies to pay their operating expenses; equally, the alternatives receive an even more gigantic \u201cenergy subsidy\u201d from fossil fuels, which make them look much more economical than they otherwise would.\u00a0\u00a0Such reflections carry no weight with those whose sense of entitlement makes living with less unthinkable.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mariner’s Rule One of the things my readers ask me most often, in response to this blog\u2019s exploration of the ongoing decline and impending fall of modern industrial civilization, is what I suggest people ought to do about it all. It\u2019s a valid question, and it deserves a serious answer. Now of course not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2569,150,2839,2499],"class_list":["post-4762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-civilisation-collapse","tag-collapse","tag-industrial-civlisation","tag-industrial-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4762"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4765,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762\/revisions\/4765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}