GranolaBox

This is an excerpt from Richard Heinberg’s Power Down: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World. I learn really well from analogies like this. This is why I like Elaine so much.

Much like the first time I listened to another alcoholic’s story with an open mind, this excerpt from Heinberg’s introduction really hit home. This is how I feel sometimes, but just haven’t been able to clearly articulate it. Now I don’t have to, since Heinberg has done it for me.

IMAGINE YOURSELF IN THE FOLLOWING CIRCUMSTANCE: You’ve just been awakened from sleep to find yourself on a tarpaper raft floating away from shore. With you on the raft are a couple hundred people or so, most of them seeming completely oblivious to the situation. They are drinking beer, barbecuing ribs, fishing or sleeping. You look at the rickety vessel and say to yourself “My God, this thing is going to sink any second.”

Miraculously seconds go by and you’re still afloat. You look around to see who’s in charge. The only people you seem to find who appear to have any authority are some pompous-looking characters operating a gambling casino in the center of the raft. In back of them stand heavily armed soldiers. You point out that the raft appears dangerous. They inform that it’s the greatest vessel ever constructed and that if you persist in suggesting otherwise that the guards will use their special skills of persuasion. You back away smiling and move to the edge of the raft. At this point you’re convinced (and even comment to a stranger) that, with these idiots at the helm the raft can’t last for another minute or so.

A minute goes by and the damn thing is still afloat. You turn your gaze out to the water. You notice that the raft is being surrounded by many sound-looking canoes, each carrying a family of indigenous fishers. Men on the shore are systematically forcing the indigenous people out of their canoes and onto the raft at gunpoint and shooting holes in the bottom of the canoes.

This is clearly insane behavior. The canoes are the only possibly way of escape or rescue if the raft collapses, and taking more people on board the already overburdened ship is causing the deck to go even with the water line. You reckon there must be 400 souls on board. At this rate, the raft is sure to collapse in a matter of seconds.

A few seconds elapse. You can see and feel water lapping at your shoes, and amazingly enough the raft is still afloat, and everybody is still busily eating, drinking and gambling. In fact the action around the casinos has increased dramatically. You hear someone off the distance shouting about how the raft is going to sink. You rush forward to find the source of the voice being thrown unceremoniously overboard. You decide to keep quiet, but think silently to yourself “Jeez, this thing can’t really last for more than a couple minutes…What the hell should I do?

You notice a group of a dozen people or so working to patch or reinforce one corner of the raft. But it’s not long before you realize that the only materials used to patch the boat are those cannibalized from other parts of the raft. Clearly the people you’re working with have the best intentions and are making some noticeable improvements to few square feet of raft they’ve been working on there’s no way they can render the rest of the raft “sustainable” given its size, the amount of materials available and time required. You think to yourself that there must be some better solution but can’t quite focus on one.

As you stand there fretting a couple minutes pass. You realize that every one of your fears about the fate of the raft has been disconfirmed. You feel useless and silly. You are about to make the only rational deductions - that there must be some mystical power keeping the raft afloat - and that you’d better make the best of the situation and have some barbecue when a thought occurs to you…The “sustainability” crowd has the right idea, except that, as they rebuild their corner of the raft, they should make it easily detachable, so that when the whole boat sinks they can easily disengage from it and paddle toward shore. But what happens to the other people that can’t fit on this smaller, reconditioned “raftlet?”

You notice that there’s a group of rafters grappling with the soldiers who’ve been shooting holes in the floors of the canoes. My if some of the canoes and their indigenous operators survive then the scope of the impending tragedy could be reduced. But direct confrontation with the soldiers appears to be dangerous business since many of the protestors are being shot and thrown into the water.

You continue to work with the sustainability group since they seem to have the best understanding of the problem and the best chances of survival. At the same time your sympathies are with the protestors and the fisher families. You hope and pray that this is all some nightmare from which you will soon awaken, or that their is some means of escape… for everyone.. that you haven’t seen yet.

Filed under: General Observations, Politics, EWAKI on February 10th, 2008