Jay Hanson: Interview

An interview of the fellow who created the website: 
<http://www.dieoff.org/>. Interesting reading, it certainly yields 
additional perspective in the analysis of world systems.
-T

Jay Hanson: Interview

Kona, Hawaii / June 21, 2003

by Scott Meredith

"Like some bold seer in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance"

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

Introduction

The "Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come", in Charles Dickens classic 
story, leads Ebenezer Scrooge to his own future gravesite - the 
desolate, neglected and evidently disgraced outcome of his life. The 
scene is chilling:

"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said 
Scrooge," answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things 
that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?"

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered 
in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed 
from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me."

The Spirit was immovable as ever.

Scrooge went on to redeem himself. But the fate of Industrial 
Civilization and the human species may not turn out so cheerily, 
according to the Internet Ages ultimate Neo-Malthusian, super-tough 
and supremely net-savvy Jay Hanson. For more than an Internet age, 
Jay Hanson has commanded attention and respect playing "Ghost of 
Dieoff Yet to Come" to Industrial Civilization's Ebenezer.

Through various venues, most notably his hard-hitting www.dieoff.org 
website (recently transferred to kinder and gentler management), 
which archives seminal papers (many authored by Jay himself) on 
energy, food, population, and economics; his "Brain Food" 
e-newsletters; and his ubiquitous presence on dozens of discussion 
forums, he has established - to his own satisfaction and that of many 
other astute observers - that humanity is unlikely to survive the 
21st century in anything remotely approaching its present numbers and 
(unevenly distributed) prosperity.

Though Jay does not correlate specific dates and population targets 
with quantitative projections of human misery or well-being, he 
casually refers to starving survivors eking out a bare sustenance by 
scavenging through radioactive landfills - and that's his projection 
for the "developed" world!

The key trigger event Jay has identified for precipitating the 
collapse of the Globalized Hypermart, and its political and social 
culture, is the looming certainty of Peak Oil. This idea traces back 
to the brilliant and prescient 20th century energy analyst M. King 
Hubbert, who was able to set out accurately the year of USA domestic 
oil production peak (implying rapid onset of decline thereafter) 
decades before it actually occurred. When Hubbert's attitudes and 
methodology are applied to the world oil scene, many analysts come up 
with a World peak either right now (2003/4), or a years from now, 
perhaps 2010 - but not much beyond. This is because the rate of 
discovery of very large fields of easily recovered, high quality 
petroleum has not kept pace with depletion.

With petroleum increasingly sequestered for special applications 
where it is considered vital (such as fueling gigantic Imperial 
Armies), the neo-liberal global economic order must falter, starve, 
collapse into genocidal resource wars, and ultimately "die off" - 
taking a large chunk of the worlds population, and certainly most of 
humanity's techno-utopian aspirations, down with it. The human 
numbers that swelled exponentially in lockstep with increasing 
hydrocarbon exploitation, will then track the fall of petroleum - all 
the way back down. The hydrocarbon age will be seen in retrospect as 
the ultimate "sugar in a Petri dish" story.

The idea of Peak Oil has recently begun to achieve, if not mainstream 
currency, then at least some respectable attention from pinstriped 
authority, as events like the recent 2nd convening of the conference 
of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (an organization that 
did not exist when Hanson began his writings) indicate. In no small 
measure, these stirrings are due to Hanson's tireless efforts to 
publicize and popularize the dry-as-dust analyses of a number of 
highly experienced and authoritative, but obscure, former oil 
industry professionals - those in the best position to understand the 
geological realities underlying our present ephemeral prosperity.

As the larger wheels have finally begun turning, and as a half-dozen 
years worth of his research, argumentation, and archiving efforts 
have begun to bear indirect fruit in the appearance of a number of 
mass-market books on Peak Oil authored by Hanson's intellectual 
soul-brothers, Jay has recently seemed less public in his presence on 
this topic.

But Jay was never content to languish in the vital, but superficial, 
role of internet Paul Revere - he has also sought to identify the 
underlying cause of the self-generated disaster about to engulf our 
species. Beginning with tireless investigations and reading in "soft" 
fields such as philosophy, psychology, and sociology (most of which 
Hanson now views as unscientific) and extending to the history and 
practice of economics as an academic discipline, up to his present 
interest in genetics and evolutionary psychology, Hanson has 
concluded that human beings are biological robots - programmed for 
irrationality (i.e. not fitting the economists ideal Bayesian 
models) and possessing not so much as a snowball's chance in Hell of 
controlling or escaping their own self-conjured Doom.

For all his preoccupation with this grim and analytically eye-glazing 
subject matter, Jay has attracted his large Internet following in 
part due to his humorously mercurial, combative, edgy, and generally 
witty style (in cyberspace, as the Matrix series subliminally reminds 
us, Style Is All). Unlike the stodgy ruminations of the original 
Malthus, or the dull, dead hand of contemporary writers on ecology, 
economics, and population, Jay can make you laugh through your tears. 
Jay Hanson "Does Doom" better than anybody, masterfully shaping the 
discussion with a Faustian literary élan that helps the medicine go 
down. See the end notes of this interview for a list of links to 
Jays essays.

I recently had a chance to chat with Jay near his home in a quietly 
remote corner of the vast American Imperium. In person, I find him 
gracious and much gentler than his internet persona would lead one to 
expect. He is, however, an intellectual Billy-the-Kid - combining a 
sparkling, mischievous wit with a tough-minded alertness for any slip 
of logic or articulation  whether his own or a visitor's.

We sat comfortably, enjoying the local laid-back ambience - so 
blithely discordant with the Hansonian Zeitgeist. The discussion that 
follows ranges wide and digs deep  Jay Hanson is not really a 
suitable menu item for beginners. Some knowledge and background 
reading in genetics, economics, physics, evolutionary psychology, 
fundamentals of the hydrocarbon energy regime, and the political and 
military history of Europe and North America is assumed on the 
readers part.

Warning and disclaimer: Even brief exposure to Jay Hanson's ideas has 
been known to result in irreversible neuronal rewiring! You may never 
again feel at home in The Hive!

* * *

Q: What triggered your interest in issues of sustainability and 
energy? Can you give us some background in how your thinking on this 
subject originated and matured to this point?

A: I did it because it "felt good", and it felt good because the meat 
between my ears concluded it would contribute to my inclusive fitness 
[genetic potential]. And then theres a conscious or social 
rationalization, which was that to me, the natural world, the rural, 
small town world is beautiful, but the city of concrete, asphalt, and 
congestion, is ugly. I like small towns, I like farms, I like open 
spaces. For many years, Id been running from "ugly". In California, 
my whole life, Id go to a place, a small, nice place to live and 
people would come in and it would become ugly it would become a 
city, with lots of concrete, asphalt, automobiles, and traffic. Then 
Id have to move again. Finally, I got here [Hawaii], and I found I 
had the time, I had the money, and I was bored with what I was 
working on. So I took society on as a problem to be solved  as a 
technical problem. Im a problem solver - thats what I do. I said to 
myself: Hell, Ill take a shot at it. Maybe we dont need to keep 
destroying nice places, maybe we can live in nice places. 
Unfortunately for all of us, I have failed. And Im beginning to feel 
as though Im going to have to move again.

Q: When did you consciously decide to take on this problem?

A: Maybe twelve or thirteen years ago. I said, I cant believe 
anybody wants to screw up the places they live. I talked to a lot of 
people. Many people here are from California  they left California 
because they couldnt stand it any more. Id go up to people and say 
How do you like it here? Theyd answer We love it! [So I asked 
them] You dont want to screw it up, do you? and theyd say No, we 
dont want to screw it up! Everybody said that. A lot of them came 
from California, they left because they couldnt stand it anymore, 
and nobody wanted to screw it up here. So I said well, if everybody 
wants to fix the problem, then I ought to be able to figure out 
whats wrong and we should be able to fix it. That was where I 
started.

Q: Rather a hopeful, almost naive mode? Positive thinking?

A: Yes! I was going to fix it. It was screwed up and I was going to 
fix it. Why not? I can fix everything else. I didnt know any better.

Q: So if "You-Now" were to meet "You-Then" & ?

A: Id tell him "Dont waste your time"! [laughs]

Q: Where did you go from there?

A: I went into some activist stuff, I joined a lot of groups. Groups 
like the Sierra Club, also local activist groups opposed to 
development  those kinds of things. Then I realized that that wasnt 
going to work, because you need to block these things before they 
start. What those groups did was work on problems after theyd 
already gotten started. The typical method was lawsuits.

Q: So, you saw their efforts as mere holding actions?

A: Yes, holding actions, just delaying actions. And I realized that 
it would just wear you out. You could only keep that up for so long. 
I realized that you need to keep the stuff from coming in to begin 
with. So I started to become pro-active with some kind of intelligent 
planning, specifically land-use planning. So that wed preserve open 
spaces and we wouldnt build too much stuff. Keep the place nice, 
keep the view planes nice. I started down that road, and I got into 
local politics. First I got on the local planning commission.

Q: In Kona?

A: It was island-wide. I was appointed by Mayor Yamashiro to replace 
someone else and I was on there for a few months, serving out 
somebody elses term. By the time I got through with that, I realized 
that wasnt going anywhere. Nobody ever discussed the things I wanted 
to talk about. Philosophical questions  What do we want to do here? 
Those are not the kind of people that are on the planning Commission.

Q: It was too narrow in focus?

A: Yes, its an engineering organization. How wide should the streets 
be? Do we need gutters here? Should we put up a traffic light there? 
I dont care about that stuff. Those are civil engineering questions. 
Thats boring. But every time Id try to go beyond those narrow 
boundaries, theyd say Well, policy is up to the Council. You have 
to be on the Council if you want to make policy. So I thought OK, 
Ill run for office. I ran for the County Council, and I lost. I 
tried to beat an incumbent Republican in a primary, and I lost by 
about 60 votes.

Q: This was the guy who was later arrested for child molestation?

A: Yes, [since then] hes been convicted, he pleaded guilty and hes 
a registered sex offender now. But its very difficult to beat an 
incumbent in a primary, unless hes really hated. And this guy was 
popular. I came close, and I was pretty happy with that. But in the 
process, I was seeing a lot of stuff going on. I didnt know what it 
was, but it really bothered me. I saw changes in myself.

Q: Yes, youve referred to that occasionally in your writings. You 
felt the political process was warping you?

A: Several things change in yourself when you get into politics. One 
of them is, you become part of the political tribe. You start seeing 
other politicians as not such bad guys or as good guys  theyre just 
like you. And you start compromising with them. Thats reciprocal 
altruism [genetic propensity to cooperate provisionally with others]. 
When you get across from somebody, you automatically start liking 
them. You cant stop it. The only kind of person who could stop that 
would be a psychopath or a sociopath. Those are the only kind of 
people who could be good elected officials! They wouldnt care about 
anybody around them. Theyd be like computers, which is what youd 
want. Youd need psychopaths as elected leaders; otherwise you are 
just going to get compromise and corruption. Because thats what 
people naturally do.

Q: Thats what happens in any group right? Like with cops theres a 
"blue wall" and so forth.

A: Yes. It is automatic, thats what people do. Thats how they get 
along with each other. So theres that, then theres also the fact 
that you cant tell people the truth. When you want to get elected 
you have a constituency. You start making speeches to them  I made a 
lot of speeches  and they start asking you questions. And you begin 
to give evasive answers, or change the subject, because you cant 
tell them the truth.

Q: So as you were doing it, you felt that happening? That gap opening up?

A: I felt different inside. It was really weird. [I asked myself] 
Whats going on here!? Thats when I started doing all the research, 
after that. I felt really beat up intellectually, because Id just 
been through running for office.

Q: I gather you felt you needed to understand something deeper at that point?

A: Yes. I wanted to find out what was going on in several areas. In 
economics, because I was still interested in solving the fundamental 
problem. But I was also interested in philosophy and I wanted to find 
out about moral theories, and all those kinds of things. What should 
we do? And why should we do it? How should we live? And all those 
deep questions which I had not given much thought to, in my life. All 
the things that most people do at much younger ages, I just got into 
ten years ago.

Q: Most people dont get into those questions at all.

A: Thats when I started digging. I knew there was something terribly 
wrong somewhere. I wasnt sure what it was. I knew that our political 
system wasnt at all like it was supposed to be. I knew people were 
saying they wanted something that they really didnt want. Everything 
was & phony. Everything was different from what it was supposed to 
be. I could see that just from running for office. Thats why I 
recommend everybody run for political office, and keep your eyes 
open. It will really change your mind about things.

Q: Either youll be thoroughly co-opted, or, maybe one in a million 
will wake up?

A: Right. I felt Id gotten caught in a dryer and was spun for a 
while. Most bizarre.

Q: So it was after you lost the primary that you said to yourself 
Im going to stop this activist mode and become more exploratory?

A: Yes. I got out of activist mode because thats not going to solve 
anything. I didnt want to run for office again. Id been a public 
figure. Youre sitting in your car picking your nose and there are 
people standing on the corner pointing at you because they recognize 
you. I dont want to be a public figure. I like to be private. I 
dont want anybody to recognize me.

Q: So you went into reclusive, research mode. But, before we leave 
your activist phase, I wondered whether theres a particular reason 
you went to the Republican side, rather than the Democrats, who are 
much more prevalent here in Hawaii?

A: Yes, very simple. Here, Democrats were seen as the corrupt, good 
old boy network. And Im a reformer. So it was natural for me to go 
Republican. Thats all. It wasnt based on principles  there are no 
principles! It was a tactical choice.

Q: Alright, please tell us more about the opening of your research phase.

A: I started out reading philosophy. I guess I thought of myself as a 
philosopher at that time, because I had all these questions. One of 
the most important books I began with is "The Story of Philosophy" 
[by Will Durant (1)]. Thats just a great little paperback. I read 
about Socrates, and hes great. You read that and you say Yes, hes 
right. Socrates. Then you read about Aristotle and you say "Wait  
hes right, Socrates was wrong and you just keep going like that. 
You find that there were people who had ideas, but the people who 
followed them seemed to have good reasons for not believing what they 
asserted. There wasnt any truth  whos right when it comes to 
philosophy? Which is what I was really looking for. Whats right? I 
wasnt looking for entertainment. I didnt want a debate, I just 
wanted to know who was right. And I finally found it  David Hume. 
Experiment  thats whats right. David Hume was the best 
philosopher, or the earliest good one, that Im aware of. He finally 
realized that its all empirical. If it works, it might be right. And 
thats it, thats as far as we can go. All the rest of it is just 
nonsense. You know, the Logical Positivists, all those guys. Its 
nonsense, theyre playing games.

I went from Hume, and then there were a few philosophers who tried to 
refute Hume, such as Immanuel Kant and Bertrand Russell. They 
couldnt find a good argument against him. Then Karl Popper finally 
took it on. He came up with the Falsifiability Principle, and that 
settled it. That answered the scientific question. But theres a big 
problem with people distinguishing scientific stuff from 
abstractions, observations, and so on. People deal on the social 
level almost totally.

The first thing you need to do is find out whats scientific and 
whats [merely] a social statement. Look in any sociology textbook. 
Youll find something on a given page: So-and-so calls this 
such-and-such. Two pages on, again, So-and-so calls this 
such-and-such. Somebody has named something, and then writes a book 
on it. Its meaningless. Its total noise, it means nothing. Thats 
fairly consistent, I think, throughout the social sciences. 
Especially in economics, which isnt about anything real. Everything 
[in economics] is based on money, which itself is just [an arbitrary] 
creation. Sociology is terrible.

Q: What about psychology? There have been attempts to make that more 
experimental, including Behaviorist psychology, where no assumptions 
are made about consciousness or any other cognitive or introspective 
category.

A: You are talking about the work of B. F. Skinner? Skinner denied 
there was any [internal] nature at all, to anybody, he was like John 
Locke. A tabula rasa.

Q: Then, with that extreme empiricism, might you not think of Skinner 
as an intellectual cousin?

A: In a way, but hes not really relevant because he didnt believe 
in any genetics  there were no genetic biases. He believed 
everything was a blank slate. People could be anything, according to 
the utopian books he wrote. Walden Two, Beyond Freedom and Dignity 
 all that stuff. He thought people could be anything.

Q: So he had the right view of science, but he was ignorant, and 
ultimately wrong, because he didnt bring genetics to the table?

A: Right. Psychology is mostly, or entirely, hanging labels on 
things, describing them, and pretending you know something about it. 
But if you dont know the underlying mechanisms, the scientific 
mechanisms that underlie a phenomenon, you dont know anything at all 
about it. Its like ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder], theres a 
psychologist saying Theres a kid over there who cant sit still, 
hes got ADD Well, [we might ask] Whats ADD? [The psychologist 
answers] Its a kid who cant sit still. What is that? It doesnt 
mean anything. The psychologist says this kid has ADD, so he thinks 
he knows something, but he doesnt.

Q: And even things in psychology which are supposedly better 
grounded, such as the definition of depression, arent really much 
better.

A: If you cant measure something physically you dont know anything 
 you need a physical connection there.

A good example is Tainters work, on the collapse of civilizations 
[The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Joseph Tainter (2)]. He said 
that when societies become too complex for their energy base, they 
collapse. But whats that? Whats too complex? Hes got some good 
observations, but it doesnt really mean anything. In order to make a 
meaningful statement at that level, you have to ask: when the 
available energy inside a society declines, whats going on inside 
the people of that society, in the biological sense.

Thats where the gold is, in biology. The science of biology is the 
science of people. And thats where Tainter missed the boat. Humans 
just werent designed to think about this problem that weve got 
today. We just dont. You need to be aware, realize when you are 
dealing in abstractions. [Analysts like Tainter] are mixing their 
metaphors. And were not geared up to detect that - I didnt. Even 
though I think Im pretty well wired in to these differences [between 
real knowledge and explanation vs. mere labels or empty abstractions] 
Im still catching myself all the time, saying Oh wait a minute, 
thats not real. Its difficult. You have to stay on top of it all 
the time, because we dont naturally think that way.

Q: So its like riding a unicycle, something that is humanly possible 
but unnatural to us, and wed need to pretty well concentrate on it, 
very hard?

A: Maybe some people can do it easily, I cant. I can only talk about 
my own experience, because I dont know what being somebody else is 
like, obviously. For myself, I always stick to the issues. What 
matters is not what I think, but whats true. Thats why I always 
give references. Because what I think is irrelevant. But if I can 
point them down the logic, and give them the references, they should 
be able to follow my tracks and find out for themselves.

Q: I havent observed many people able to keep that distinction in 
mind, as you seem to.

A: Its hard. You just have to keep asking yourself What are they 
talking about?

Q: So you had your methodological focus clarified, but that was just 
background, and you needed a usable tool in your hand. The working 
wrench turned out to be Evolutionary Psychology?

A: Yes, when I got to the people problem. But first I went through 
the energy analysis, because that seemed obvious and simple and in 
hindsight it really is obvious and simple.

Q: What led you specifically to the remarkably prescient 
geophysicist, M. King Hubbert [1903-1989]? I understand that he had 
been very prominent in some narrow professional circles, but Id 
never heard of him until I read your website. Recently his name seems 
to be popping up all over, but when you began your investigation, how 
did you know to focus on him?

A: My first inkling about the oil issue came from a Ted Trainer 
article in Earth Island Institute [The Death of the Oil Economy: 
Running on Empty by Ted Trainer (3)]. He wrote about a 
Petroconsultants study, and he had a [depletion] graph in there. I 
love graphs, they really help. I really glommed onto that thing, and 
I started my research from there. I looked up Petroconsultants. I do 
computer searches all the time. Before I got on the internet, I used 
CompuServe, which got pretty expensive. But Id do CompuServe 
searches for studies. You could spend an awful lot of money in a 
short period of time. But how else are you going to learn? You cant 
go to a library here. Theres no university library worth a damn 
around here. Im sitting out in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, thats where it came from. Starting with Tainter, then the 
Petroconsultants study, and then shortly thereafter, the Scientific 
American article came out [The End of Cheap Oil by Colin J. 
Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère (4)] I had it scanned by a 
professional, and put it on my website.

But even before that, I was starting to get into energy with the 
Ecol-Econ group [(5)]. The book For the Common Good [by Herman Daly 
(6)], was a real breakthrough for trashing economists.

Q: But to stick to the oil and energy for a moment. Anybody could 
look at industrial civilization and identify many points from which 
it is fatally threatened. Somebody could look at food, water, 
over-population, global warming, and so on, any one of which could 
bring it all down. How did you come to focus so particularly on 
energy as the dying canary signaling the end of it all, which not all 
analysts, even the very astute ones, have been able to see?

A: I realized at some early point  but remember this is all stuff 
Id learned in the last ten years  I realized that the only thing 
you really needed to keep things going is energy. Because if you have 
enough energy, you can make food, you can make oil, you can make 
everything else. You can desalinate sea-water, grow plants 
hydroponically, filter your air, and so on. Energy is the root of 
everything. Thats our Achilles Heel. I saw that early on, I dont 
remember when, whether it was some Ecological Economics book I was 
reading or something else. But it was clear to me that everything 
else came from energy. If you dont have energy you dont have 
anything.

Then, you couple that with the oil depletion thing, and the net 
energy concept. The book [Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in 
the Coming Decades by Gever et al. (7)] - I read that the first time 
and I got something out of it. But I had to read it over and over, 
this stuff is not easy. I dont want to give you the impression this 
stuff is easy for me, it isnt  its hard. I need to read it over 
and over again. And I think about it. I need to stop talking to 
people and just contemplate it for two or three weeks, two or three 
months, or even years depending on how complicated it is. Or how 
difficult and how different it is. [I ask myself] where does it fit? 
Even now, I have some scraps of things, paragraphs really, floating 
loose in my head, that I cant really place, waiting to be put in 
somewhere, but I dont really know where they go.

Q: What motivated you to create your shocking website [www.dieoff.org]?

A: I wanted people to change!

Q: So you were still in the mode that you thought it might be 
possible to educate people, improve things, and so on?

A: Yes. Specifically here, in Hawaii. Hawaii wasnt screwed up yet  then.

Q: OK. So you still had that initial idealism you began with.

A: Yes. I had that idea, of fixing the problem, up until a couple of 
years ago, when I pulled out of all the lists and stuff. Up until 
then I thought Well I cant see anything, but maybe somebody can 
tell me [a solution]. A lot of the time I keep hammering on people 
because I want them to prove me wrong. I challenge them, challenge 
them, challenge them  but they never do [prove me wrong]. So, if 
they cant, then I guess Im right. Unfortunately. I wish I was 
wrong. I keep hoping Im wrong.

Q: I have the impression that you are absolutely adamantine in your 
assertion that industrial civilization in anything like its current 
Neoliberal globalized form, cannot possibly survive the 21st century. 
And further, that the downfall of Industrial Civilization implies a 
classic ecological overshoot-crash of human numbers. Is that an 
accurate summary of your main conclusions and your current thinking? 
Must it crash?

A: Yes. It must crash. Its a scientific certainty.

Q: Hubbert himself, in one discussion, appeared to hold out some hope 
for a comfortable and sustainable future society, to be based on 
solar energy [(8)]. He outlined a scheme of birth-right energy 
credits, to be debited along an individuals lifetime, and also the 
end of compulsory work, among other reforms. Thats only one example 
of many ameliorative proposals that have been put forward. Whats 
your view of these optimistic prescriptions? Are all such ideas for 
economic and social reforms utterly impossible, unthinkable, and 
uninteresting, in your view of the real world of the present day?

A: Utopians  lets just call them all that  for the most part are 
not net-energy aware. I believe Hubbert probably was. But even the 
ones that are net-energy aware are not operating with an accurate 
model of human beings. They use a Bambi model of human nature. In 
reality, we are a third member of the chimp family  red in tooth and 
claw much like the common chimpanzee, unlike the more docile pygmy 
chimpanzee. Our large brains are optimized to take advantage of 
others, one way or another, in order to maximize our own inclusive 
fitness. Over millions of years, we were explicitly honed by nature, 
as of 10,000 years or so ago, to put as many copies of our genes as 
possible into the next generation. For all practical purposes, a 
person is nothing more than the genes way of making more genes.

So, it is human nature to assume away all the difficulties when you 
have a political agenda. When I talk about a political agenda, I use 
the term very broadly. Its a normative statement. Everybody who has 
a normative program, who is basically saying we should do something, 
assumes away all the difficulties. In advocating our normative 
political programs, we act automatically, without thinking about it, 
because it worked for us in the past. We are genetically biased to 
think a certain way.

Q: What about people who say theres so much coal, or theres so much 
wind, these things could run the US economy for a long time, and so 
on?

A: There are two answers to that. Number one is the net energy 
question. Have they done the net energy work? The net energy work on 
coal in the US is not good. Its something like forty years and its 
gone. Its down to .5 [energy returned on energy invested]. The other 
half of that is whats going to happen to people when you go over the 
energy curve. And thats where most of the gold is. Thats what 
people dont understand - whats going to happen when the pie starts 
shrinking? When the pie starts shrinking, then you are going to see 
people taking pie from other people. Thats when the chaos begins.

When you are doing research on human nature, you need to look at 
people at their worst, not at their best. What are people capable of? 
What are ordinary, average, everyday people, you and I, or our 
neighbors, capable of?

Q: Sort of a Bosnia model?

A: Yes. When I look at books like Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A 
Report on the Banality of Evil[(9). Or Borowskis This Way for the 
Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen[(10)], or Goldhagens Hitler's Willing 
Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust[(11)], it becomes 
pretty obvious that these were not specially trained SS goons that 
were shock-trained, beaten, or food-deprived to get them to be 
monstrous killers, these were just ordinary people. So whats the 
common thread between shooting unarmed, naked women and children in 
ditches and playing golf?

Q: Hmm, what is that common thread?

A: They both tend to reduce the competition and increase your 
inclusive fitness. You play golf because its a status symbol.

Q: And you go along with these pogroms because thats your place in 
the society too?

A: Its all basically the same as far as your genes are concerned. 
Once you start seeing it from that point of view, it becomes really 
simple. Its not all that complicated. But you have to be able to see 
it from the right angle. If you look at it from the other side, you 
dont see the connections. It isnt natural for us to see these 
connections. Id never read a book that put human behavior really in 
context with the science. Even the scientists who study this stuff 
act as though theyre working with lab rats.

Q: Even scientists who do research in evolutionary psychology?

A: They dont seem to connect [their professional research] with what 
they see in the mirror. The reason is that that would affect what you 
think about yourself and your family. Youll start looking at 
everybody around you differently. What theyre saying is one thing, 
but whats going on in the meat between their ears is something else 
again.

Q: Its very interesting what youve brought together here. On the 
one hand the analysts who are writing about energy depletion  even 
the most forward-thinking of them, Colin Campbell or whoever, they 
have their numbers and charts, saying maybe we should do something, 
and theyre a million miles from evolutionary psychology. Meanwhile, 
the evolutionary psychologists - they arent thinking about oil 
depletion or the end of industrial civilization, not even remotely. 
So as I see it, nobody has brought these elements together before.

A: Nobody in the world, as far as Im aware, except me. And I dont 
know why, I guess its just that nobody gets paid to do that, and I 
had the money and the time. Since nobody gets paid to do it, it 
doesnt contribute to inclusive fitness, and youd have to be a 
little screwy to spend ten years on this.

Q: Some people will say humans didnt always have this much energy, 
and though there have always been wars, still historically there has 
also been some degree of cooperation and cohesion. And even in 
primitive societies, there may have been wars, but they didnt all 
just wantonly slaughter one another at the first opportunity either. 
Do you think the decline can be managed gradually, rewinding 
industrial civilization gently in reverse through earlier adaptive 
stages, or must it crash horrifically?

A: It will crash. We saw the same thing happen with World War I, 
World War II. It happens, its supported by history. When we placed 
an oil embargo on the Japanese, they didnt say OK, we understand 
your point. Well go along with that. They didnt go back to 
rickshaws or whatever they had before. People cant do that. It 
doesnt run in reverse. It only goes one way  up. And the reason for 
that is that the act of getting stuff makes us feel good. Its not 
having it, its getting it. Thats why it cant run in reverse, 
because its getting it that feels good, not having it. Thats why we 
never feel we have enough. We never get enough, because it is the act 
of getting it that feels good. Thats biology.

Q: The Utopians, as you call them, do seem to understand your points 
about energy and they do see all these ecological connections and so 
on. But they still have a huge blind spot, what I call their "We are 
the World" model  that everyone will just hold hands on a hilltop 
and sing and everything will be alright. It ignores political 
reality, as youve pointed out.

A: Yes. They say well have a "paradigm shift" and everybody will 
love everybody.

Q: Id like to ask you about morality and ethics. On the one hand, 
you seem to project a tough-minded, almost elitist version of social 
Darwinism, involving an exaltation of brains and competitive success. 
A kick-ass, capitalistic "winner" figure like Larry Ellison or Bill 
Gates would seem to embody your ideal of a perfect natural 
aristocrat, and very likely your own successful high-tech career 
reflects those kinds of values and achievements as well. Many of your 
comments have a "Devil take the hindmost" quality about them, 
including your extreme positions on certain issues, i.e. the 
undesirability of conservation of resources, because, in your view, 
conservation would just delay the dieoff, resulting in ultimately 
greater numbers of dead. On the other hand, you also project a fierce 
moral outrage at the stupidity and greed of elites, and the toll 
their actions take on the "Proles" of the world - despite these 
elites admirable talent for personal aggrandizement. Sometimes you 
sound more like a Green Socialist than a Darwinian/Republican. Do you 
see any contradictions in your moral tenets and analyses?

A: I see both points of view, and I could play either side. I will 
play one side or the other to try to provoke people, and provoke 
thought. I actually have both those feelings inside of me. I have a 
lot of ambivalence. I can play all those parts because I understand 
them. But I dont really have a moral philosophy. Moral philosophies 
change to fit the times. At one time it was moral to kill Jews. It 
could be anything. Everything comes from one side, from the physical 
side. At one point its killing Jews, at another time we could be 
hopping around on one foot waving our hands in the air. If you want 
good moral philosophy, then you have to provide good opportunity to 
increase fitness [which allows the luxury of that moral philosophy]. 
If the fitness pie is shrinking, then people will invent moral 
philosophies in order to eliminate competition for resources.

Q: And in ancient Afghanistan, they played polo using human heads.

A: Right, and [that might happen again and] it could be on TV and 
play to huge audiences. Its arbitrary. What these things actually 
are [the content of a moral code] is irrelevant. It doesnt make any 
difference, its all the same thing to the genes. Moral philosophy is 
irrelevant because it is nothing more than a rationalization of the 
act. The discussion about philosophy is based on the incorrect view 
that people consciously think about a subject, and then they act. But 
the reality is exactly the opposite - people act then rationalize. 
This is literally true. This also self-evidentially true. Where else 
could consciousness come from except that meat between your ears?

Q: But this elimination of moral philosophy still leaves us with the 
existential problem, of suffering  that we ourselves undergo and 
what we see mirrored in others. Otherwise, theres nothing to discuss.

A: Yes. I dont have a moral theory but I have morality. I dont lie 
knowingly, I dont cheat people, I dont hurt anything. But I dont 
need to rationalize it. Its built in. And thats where it all comes 
from, its built-in. People act in ways that make them feel good and 
then invent social rationalizations designed to increase social 
rankings and fitness, or bond them to their tribe, after the fact. 
These social rationalizations can be almost anything that increases 
fitness. The actions that make them feel good consist of a basic 
genetic set, plus others, which may also be one hundred percent 
genetic, selected by the environment when they were maturing. So from 
what we are when were born, and as were raised, these values or 
morals are instilled. Then when we grow up, we have to tell other 
people why we do that, so we can form tribes. I dont join tribes. 
So, I dont care. I dont bother any more. Why bother? Hey I saw 
Jesus  so what? And Elvis isnt dead either. [laughs]

Q: That leads into something youve written about just in passing, 
which is that when you thoroughly understand the implications of 
genetics and evolutionary psychology, you come to view people as 
absolute automata, as robots, thoroughly and completely conditioned.

A: Yes.

Q: Can you say anything about the personal experience of looking at 
things that way?

A: People literally make decisions, decide what theyre going to do, 
subconsciously. And the conscious [rationalization] follows some time 
later. Its literally true. Consciousness is a meat by-product. 
Continued reflection and reading can alter those algorithms that are 
making those decisions, but its not an immediate kind of a thing. 
Its organic, and we dont have direct access to those algorithms. I 
could try to go in and say Im going to change the way I think about 
such-and-such, tomorrow  but I cant do that. If its going to 
happen it will be by education, reading, critical thinking, and 
reflection, whatever  over time. You need to pay constant attention 
even after you understand, so you dont revert. A lot of this stuff 
keeps trying to draw me back. Its like youre climbing out of a 
slippery pit here. And those genes want you back.

Q: Maybe if you suspended all your reading on these crises, and just 
spent your time sunning yourself all day, then maybe after a year 
youd be thinking "Well, things arent so bad. Probably everything 
will work out alright!"

A: You could be right about that. Although I keep thinking all the 
time about it. It is consciously going through my mind all the time. 
And Ive often wondered  this is one of those paragraphs sitting out 
by itself in my mind  what is consciousness for? If consciousness 
isnt making the decisions, what do we need it for? It wouldnt be 
there if we werent using it for something.

Q: There is a model that might explain that. Prof. Benjamin Libet 
(University of California San Francisco), who performed the classic 
experiment on Readiness Potential (which proves your point that our 
actions are not consciously initiated), has written as follows: 
"Freely voluntary acts [are] & initiated unconsciously. But the 
conscious function could still control the outcome; it can veto the 
act. Free will is therefore not excluded & [F]ree will & would not 
initiate a voluntary act but it could control performance of the 
act." In other words, action potentials may bubble up from the 
genetically conditioned unconscious , and we have the conscious power 
to block some of them.

A: Thats plausible. My view of consciousness is that we use it to 
play back to ourselves the decisions and ideas that the meat has 
created unconsciously. We play it back through words - essentially we 
are talking to ourselves. And the reason we do that is that we want 
to see how it will seem to the people around us. Consciousness is 
used to clean up our communications. Consciousness is used to make 
our communications appear rational, consistent, and compatible with 
community values - for social reasons. I think the main reason for 
consciousness is for social communication. We play this stuff back 
and make sure it makes sense [in the light of community norms]. So 
the Libet thing fits in there, it agrees with that. If you couldnt 
tell it to your neighbor [i.e. it would socially disgrace you], youd 
come up with something else [laughs].

Q: Im struck with the parallel between your statement that people 
are robots and the classical teachings of the Indian Advaita mystics, 
some of whom have said that all actions and thoughts are entirely 
conditioned and the most consciousness can hope to do is simply to 
cease to identify with the animal it is "riding". Just as kids riding 
a carousel can come to understand that none of their actions while 
riding, or even their presence as riders, has any effect whatsoever 
on the motions, speed or progress of their wooden mounts.

A: Thats interesting. I dont know. [laughs]

Q: Do you find it gratifying that people are more widely picking up 
the message that you promulgated much earlier? For example now we are 
seeing these conferences on Peak Oil coming up, new books on Hubbert 
and depletion are being published, many of which refer to your 
archive or credit that as an inspiration, such as Heinbergs book 
[The Partys Over by Richard Heinberg (12)] ?

A: Well its nice. But, every one of these guys [new programs, 
conferences, books, etc.] has come up with a normative message before 
they have all the data.

Q: But in a way they do have the data. Heinberg for example refers to 
your website as having helped to get his thinking kicked off. So he 
does seem to be aware of the facts, very much so.

A: He doesnt have the data about brains. They assume away all the 
people problems.

Q: So in your view, they miss half the message?

A: The hardest half. Thats the tough one.

Q: And they do seem to present normative programs.

A: Some people have asked to interview me for their books and to use 
my name. But I dont want to be part of anybodys political program. 
If they want to know about me, fine. If they want to learn about the 
facts, fine. But I dont want to be used to promote any political 
program.

Q: But it must be gratifying on some level that theres now much more 
attention on this issue that had been completely ignored when you 
began.

A: I dont know. Its still disappointing. Why dont they get the 
other half of the message? How come people cant deal with people? 
Theyre going to run off half-cocked, have another frantic energy 
program and its going to fail. They still wont come to grips with 
reality. The real question they should be asking is, not where are we 
going to get more oil, but how can we control men when theres no 
economic growth? Thats the question.

Q: If you personally acquired enormous political power, on the 
outrageous scale of, say, Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, what actions 
would you take? Would you stock up a palace with a squadron of 
Praetorian Guards and a harem and then just enjoy the ride, or would 
you establish some Draconian program of absolute controls on human 
mobility, consumption, and reproduction, which are the three 
categories of required controls youve identified in your writings? 
If youd go for the authoritarian approach, can you share with us 
some details on how you might work that?

A: Id take the Praetorian Guards and the harem [laughs]. If I wanted 
to be in politics I would be.

Q: Nothing at all could be done?

A: Well, you might get together the brightest people in the country 
and have them work on it. Theres nothing I can see that can be done. 
However, if they were to have a Manhattan Project, with all the best 
evolutionary biologists, microbiologists, etc., maybe they could come 
up with some kind of gene tweaker or something. Some kind of drug 
they could give people.

Q: It would have to be a model of total control? Theres no other way?

A: Exactly.

Q: So in the best case, were looking at something between 1984 and 
Brave New World - total lockdown. And thats in the best case.

A: Absolutely. On some previous forums and discussion lists we tried 
to figure out if theres any way we could make a sustainable society. 
But we couldnt see any way. Because you have the problem of 
reproduction. How do you keep people from reproducing? Do you give 
them a shot when theyre born?

Q: Or a dog and cat model?

A: Heres the problem. The problem is that people evolved 
specifically to overcome social constraints on inclusive fitness. 
Thats what were for, thats what were good at. So no matter what 
kind of controls other people put on us, were going to sit down and 
figure out how to get around it.

Q: So it gets back to us being good at cheating.

A: Were good at cheating. Thats why were here. Maybe Neanderthal 
man died out because he was too honest.

Q: But when you look at the Native Americans, the Indians, you dont 
see them as any kind of model for sustainability?

A: No.

Q: Is that because they were not in fact sustainable, in your view, 
or rather because our modern conditions are too different to allow us 
to replicate their social structures?

A: Even if they had been sustainable, they wouldnt be a model for 
us. My definition of sustainable society - and you have to define 
these terms, people throw them around all over the place - a 
sustainable society would be one that intentionally limited its 
births and its consumption to stay within the carrying capacity of 
its territory. And I dont know of anyone thats ever done that. I 
searched the literature to the extent that I could and I couldnt 
find any society that ever did that. Because youd have to say Sally 
got pregnant, that means were going to have to kill one of Joes 
kids. Or get rid of Grandma. What are you going to do?

Q: What about the ancient Hawaiians? Their society seemed admirably 
ecological in some ways. Have you looked into that much?

A: Only partially, because its an oral culture. I have talked to 
people about that, but there isnt enough data.

Q: They did have their wars, and slavery.

A: The main thing is youd have to deal with the births, whose kid do 
you get rid of? As soon as you have a society like that, we are 
designed to get around those problems. You arent going to get rid of 
my kid, you know.

Q: Then therell be a political elite.

A: Then an overthrow, a revolution. It isnt stable.

Q: It seems the one hope, the one thing you ever saw that was 
sensible was [one scientists] proposal for a fertility-reducing 
virus, to be indiscriminately released.

A: Yes. Make everybody sterile. Theres just nothing else you could 
do. It would have to be some kind of a biological control so it 
wouldnt be up to people. Then it wouldnt do any good to get mad at 
the guy who was telling you that you couldnt have kids.

Q: I think thats the only thing youve ever accepted as a so-called solution.

A: Yes, but youd still have the problem of consumption. Youd still 
have these guys in Palm Beach, with the millions of acres, gondolas 
in the desert &

Q: Golf courses&

A: Oh yes, you know they pretend theyre in Venice in the Palm Desert.

Q: You seem very confident in predicting social decay and collapse as 
energy-intensive systems are starved out and cease to function. I am 
personally acquainted with some hard-core survivalists, whose idea is 
that they and their loved ones can, with superior skills, planning, 
stored necessities, and cold-blooded warrior mentality, ride out a 
total collapse of society. Observing what I can of your lifestyle and 
location, it is not obvious that youve embraced the hardcore 
survivalist mentality and practices. Is that an accurate observation 
about you, and if so, how would you explain it?

A: There are basically two things Im doing. Number one, Im trying 
to brush up on my skills in electronics and programming. And Im 
trying to make myself more useful. For example, I have a number of 
tools. I have a small milling machine, so I can make things, do 
simple repairs. But most importantly, Im making money again, with 
investments.

Q: Oh, even in this market?

A: Yes. I basically ignored ten years of that stuff. I spent 100% of 
my time on something else.

Q: And that was during the boom.

A: Yes, I could have really cleaned up. But when you are in doom and 
gloom mode, its very hard to invest in anything.

Q: But does this imply that you still believe in a crash, but with a 
longer horizon? So it might not affect your personally?

A: Well, you can get stuff in and out of the market really fast. You 
work through mutual funds, with a short window  a day, a week, a 
month. You can do it without being one of those really intense 
stock-pickers. I dont want to be like that, its so boring. I dont 
care about that. You go through one of the tools, like Morningstar, 
and you see which fund has done the best, and you put some money in. 
Then when it starts going down, you take it out. Thats not too 
difficult to do. Ive done really well in the last six months, made a 
lot of money. Now Im kind of bailing out, because I dont know 
whats going to happen in the next few months. But Ill probably be 
back in around November, because we usually get a rally towards the 
end of the year.

But you asked, how do you prepare for the end. Money. Thats how you 
prepare for the end. Because the rich people always do better than 
the poor people. In the Irish potato famine, they had warehouses full 
of potatoes, and the army was shooting the poor people. So the rich 
people could get the potatoes. Money.

Q: Ok, but by hypothesis, if you push things far enough, even money &

A: Yes, but Ill be dead by then.

Q: So in the beginning its money, and in the long run&

A: Were all dead, yes.

Q: Can you project some likely population (reduction) numbers onto a 
21st century timeline for us, and give us a more precise view of how 
you see the Dieoff progressing? Or is the data too sparse and the 
possibilities too various to allow for that?

A: Possibly a 50% dieoff by the end of the century. But I dont have 
any idea. I dont know how to find out. It sounds like a really 
complicated problem to try to find out where the numbers are and when 
the crunches come.

Q: There are books on that like How many people can the earth 
support [by Joel E. Cohen (13)]. I read it but by the end I didnt 
feel any wiser. It seems there are too many dials on that panel.

A: Well, the guy was comparing ecologists to economists and so on. It 
was just a rotten book. A stupid book  I think it was written by 
somebody who wanted to get everybody to stop worrying about it. 
Theres a lot of that going on, its like Julian Simons work. I have 
no respect for those guys at all. I mean, you can be a businessman 
without being a lying son of a bitch. Well, Simon was nuts, he wrote 
a book about it. He was crazy. This Lomberg guy [The Skeptical 
Environmentalist by Lomberg (14)] is probably just a sleaze  I 
dont know him.

Q: Its ironic that you go through all this study, research, and 
thinking, becoming aware of all these problems, and at the end of the 
day, you have to say Well it makes absolutely no difference! 
Theres nothing that can be done. It may be outside my personal time 
horizon anyway, but whether it is or not doesnt matter, because 
theres nothing to be done.

A: Right, theres nothing that anybody can do about it. And thats 
kind of interesting. Why do all the work, and you come back to the 
same place you started? [laughs] But thats basically what I did. I 
wish I had that time to live over.

Q: You spent ten years of your life on that, when you could have been 
taking it easy or boating in your outrigger canoe&

A: &and working on my harem! [laughs]

Q: I guess it is a matter of taste, or aesthetics. Some people just 
have an interest in doom, or the future and so on. Some of us do like 
to speculate on that.

A: It is automatic for me, it just keeps working. Those tapes just 
keep playing themselves back. [For example] Whats consciousness 
for? Every day, I get a little bit more. And I wake up in the middle 
of the night and Ive got a solution to a C program that Im working 
on. The computer is going all the time, even when were sleeping.

Q: Do you absolutely rule out the idea that some form of 
consciousness could survive, independent of the physical platform?

A: Yes.

Q: And when you look at research on the Near Death Experience?

A: The Near Death Experience, the Light, all that stuff  its just a 
problem with the brain. The brains got short circuits, or sparks 
flying around [while it shuts down]. I rule out all that stuff.

Q: So youd be very surprised if, having got run over by a car 
tomorrow, you found yourself floating above your body and so on?

A: Yes, I really would be. You have to realize that its human nature 
to leap to those conclusions. Even famous physicists, such as 
Einstein or Heisenberg. [They had their mystical, irrational moments, 
with statements such as] God doesnt play dice with the universe - 
they became mystics. Or Fritjof Capra and such people. Well, just 
because theyre scientists doesnt mean theyre not human. They still 
cling to the spirit in the gene.

Q: Have you thought about putting it all together, and writing your 
own book? If only just to clear your plate? Other people are picking 
up bits and pieces, they are cherry-picking your synthesis, and you 
could offer it yourself.

A: Part of the problem is that number one, Im a programmer. And 
programmers condense things down. I was going to write a book at one 
time, and I got all the important stuff in about 15 pages.

Q: But you have written a lot. Look at A Means of Control [(15)] 
thats some 40 pages. You could expand that into a book, get it out, 
a one time deal, youve said your thing. I dont know any current 
book that synthesizes things that completely. The closest thing would 
be The Spirit in the Gene [by Reg Morrison (16)] but even he 
doesnt hit as hard as you  hes a welter-weight, youre a 
heavy-weight puncher.

A: The other thing is I dont want to be a public figure.

Q: You could do it like J. D. Salinger, be a recluse.

A: Yes, or maybe write under a pseudonym. But it doesnt appeal to 
me, it doesnt seem like fun. I like writing programs.

Q: But youve written these internet essays.

A: I havent written any in a long time.

Q: I guess A Means of Control pretty well summarizes your message.

A: I dont know why I dont write more. Im rationalizing. It just 
doesnt feel good.

Q: I have often felt that people have misunderstood the structural 
essentials of the doom that you foresee. Many people seem to grasp a 
simple idea of "Depletion = Die off", assuming you mean that well 
simply freeze in the dark, and they react with approval or dismissal, 
depending on their politics, as usual. But what you say is more 
articulated than that. You actually posit a two-stage process. First, 
economic trainwreck triggered by, not the final stages of depletion, 
but by the Oil Peak itself, followed by, Second, horrendous wars 
fought by the great powers desperately hoping to secure the final 
precious reserves to themselves. This second stage would culminate in 
a horrific inversion, whereby "global elites" will decide to directly 
immolate the vast hordes of poor, ignorant, "useless eaters" of the 
world, via some kind of bio-weapon. In other words, not so much a 
"Die off" but rather a "Kill off". Is this sketch of your analysis 
roughly correct?

A: Your snapshot is essentially correct. But a great deal of death 
will occur because food and water supply lines will collapse. Food 
cannot be grown in anything like the quantities we need without oil 
and natural gas. Moreover, neither food nor water can be delivered 
without oil and gas. Cities like Las Vegas must become uninhabitable 
deserts again. The population of Southern California must fall to a 
few hundred thousand again. In Canada, water pipes will freeze in the 
winter without gas. Its a very long list, I cant guess how many 
will die from each.

Q: Do you buy into conspiracy theories that posit various 
organizational mechanisms as the likely planners and implementers of 
a big "Kill-off" (e.g. Illuminati, Skull & Bones, Masons, Bilderberg, 
etc.)? Or, do you assume that the existing governments, or the US 
government alone, would be sufficient to straight-forwardly implement 
the "Kill-off"?

A: I dont think it matters. At any future point in time when people 
feel threatened, when the ruling elite is threatened, when the mob is 
at the gates, theyll find a way to protect themselves. The details 
are not important. But thats what I would do if I were them  get 
rid of them, kill them all. You have to remember, its like playing 
golf as far as the genes are concerned. Its that easy. America is 
the best place to ride out the coming crash because it has the best 
"means of control" to keep public order and protect us from intruders.

Q: I take it you dont share the concerns of certain "Deep 
Ecologists" for the Earth per se. These are people who would like to 
remove humanity, not for any practical reason but just because they 
find it deeply offensive that weve been so inharmonious with the 
rest of the biosphere.

A: No, my goal has been to minimize human suffering, because I could 
see this coming. And Ive looked at Garrett Hardins work. He said 
the role of the gamekeeper is to minimize the suffering of the herd. 
And I thought that was a great statement of the way that government 
should look at its problem. Minimize suffering  thats a great 
principle.

Q: So you arent a true misanthrope as some of the Deep Ecologists 
are, for example, the Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola &

A: No, not at all. I like people! Thats why I wanted to help them. 
But unfortunately the data didnt support that, the program didnt 
work. [laughs]

Q: In Michael Rupperts recent report on the Second Conference on 
Peak Oil, which he attended in Paris [(17)], he writes that 
apparently the US government leaders, the inner circle, actually has 
good data on oil, from the CIA or wherever, and according to the 
speakers at that conference, they are very well aware of the 
impending Peak.

A: They have to be. Thats why the EIA [(18)] cooked the books. They 
admitted right in their document that they cooked the books, 
incorporating "non-technical" factors.

Q: But the real decision-makers apparently have the complete, 
accurate depletion data at their fingertips, and they are believers 
already.

A: Thats why the French and Germans were so pissed off at us 
invading Iraq. Because if thats our MO, were going to do that from 
now on, including taking stuff they want. Thats what we need the ABM 
[various forms of National Missile Defense]for.

Q: Thats interesting because recently on the EnergyResources list 
[(19)], which you created a few years ago, they are talking about 
writing a letter to President Bush, informing him of Peak Oil. And I 
thought, well thats useless. In the deeper sense, everything is 
useless, but even in the shallow sense, that seems pointless because 
if we can believe Michael Ruppert, the big powers are fully aware of 
Peak Oil and all its implications. So that kind of action is just 
normative stuff again.

A: Thats why they dont publish [the transcript of] that meeting 
with Cheney, and Bush and the energy executives. They are keeping it 
secret, because they were talking about this stuff. They put it right 
on the table.

You know one of the things that just pisses me off is, the Union of 
Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, Worldwatch - all those guys 
are so screwed up  none of them have any idea about this energy 
thing to begin with, let alone the people problem.

Q: Yes, why is it that people who seem to be ecologically aware, and 
they are sort of left-wing types, and they dont like the 
establishment, - why are those kinds of people so utterly resistant 
to the idea and implications of depletion?

A: I think they are more interested in their political agendas. How 
do you get money to sell a bad message? You go up to somebody and you 
say You know, your kids are going to be dying in the gutter in ten 
years, they are going to turn around and go the other way. They 
wont want to talk to you, wont want anything to do with you. 
Theyre mad at you, youre bad& You cant sell that kind of stuff.

Q: They want to perpetuate themselves just like any other organization.

A: They want a job. Thats why economics hasnt changed. Thats why 
they are still using [models based on] rational utility maximizers. 
If they used real people they couldnt model, because real people are 
not mathematical, theyre algorithmic. And theyd be out of a job, 
you cant model that. Its an idiosyncratic, algorithmic thing. There 
wouldnt be any economists, if they told the truth.

Q: Is there anything we havent covered that you like our readers to 
know about?

A: American politics. Our Founding Fathers created a plutocracy, with 
all the trappings of democracy. And it was smart, it was a stroke of 
utter brilliance, and given the circumstances, the best possible 
political system. People who argue that democracy is a good political 
system simply havent tried it.

Q: So you are saying it was a scam, basically ?

A: It was a scam to begin with. Its also true that plutocracies 
allocate resources based on ability to pay. So its painfully obvious 
that if you want to survive in America, you must make as much money 
as possible.

Q: It was a psy-op?

A: It was built as a psy-op, as a scam, for good reason. They were 
right. Anybody that advocates democracy hasnt tried it. It doesnt 
work, it couldnt work. The book Reaching for Heaven on Earth [ by 
Robert H. Nelson (20)] talks about how the capitalists were 
fulfilling the progressives agenda.

Q: Thats capitalism as a Christian heresy, essentially a variant 
version of Christianity.

A: Right. His point is that the progressives wanted scientific, not 
political, decisions. And thats what theyre getting, because the 
corporations have taken over the functions that the civil servants 
were supposed to be providing. When you think about it, do you want 
somebody whos been elected, who has no more qualifications than 
being popular, making decisions so complicated that you need 
thousands of people to analyze the data? So who have you got making 
the decisions? Corporate lobbyists. Because theyre the only ones 
that have the data. It couldnt work any other way.

* * * THE END! * * *
References:

(1) 'Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's 
Greatest Philosophers' by Will Durant (1991).
(2) 'The Collapse of Complex Societies' by Joseph Tainter (1990).
(3) 'The Death of the Oil Economy' by Ted Trainer (Earth Island 
Journal Spring 1997 Vol. 12, No. 2; http://www.dieoff.com/page116.htm)
(4) 'The End Of Cheap Oil' by Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherr?e 
(Scientific American, March 1998; http://www.dieoff.com/page140.htm )
(5) http://csf.colorado.edu/ecol-econ
(6) 'For the Common Good : Redirecting the Economy toward Community, 
the Environment, and a Sustainable Future' by Herman E. Daly (1994)
(7) 'Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades' 
by John Gever, et al (1991)
(8) 'Hubbert's Prescription for Survival, A Steady State Economy' by 
Robert L. Hickerson (1995;
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/hubecon.htm )
(9) 'Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil' by 
Hannah Arendt (1994)
(10) 'This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen' by Tadeusz Borowski,
et al (1992 reissue)
(11) 'Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the 
Holocaust' by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (1997)
(12) 'The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial 
Societies' by Richard Heinberg (2003)
(13) 'How Many People Can the Earth Support?' by Joel E. Cohen (1995)
(14) 'The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the 
World' by Bjorn Lomborg (2001)
(15) 'A Means of Control' by Jay Hanson (2000; 
http://www.dieoff.com/page185.htm)
(16) 'The Spirit in the Gene: Humanity's Proud Illusion and the Laws 
of Nature' - by Reg Morrison (1999)
(17) Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference report by 
Michael Ruppert (2003; 
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/041003_paris_oil.html)
(18) http://www.eia.doe.gov
(19) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources
(20) 'Reaching for Heaven on Earth' by Robert H. Nelson and Donald N. 
McCloskey (1993)

Net Essays by Jay Hanson

FIVE FUNDAMENTAL ERRORS: The Short Version, by Jay Hanson, 11/13/2001 
http://www.dieoff.com/page240.htm
FIVE FUNDAMENTAL ERRORS: The Long Version, by Jay Hanson, 11/13/2001 
http://www.dieoff.com/page241.htm
ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY, by Jay Hanson, 11/13/2001 
http://www.dieoff.com/page242.htm
A SECT WITH A CREED AND A POLITICAL PROGRAM, by Jay Hanson, 
11/13/2001 http://www.dieoff.com/page243.htm
A MEANS OF CONTROL, The Last Scheduled BRAIN FOOD, by Jay Hanson, 
01/01/00 http://www.dieoff.com/page185.htm
"The Foulest of Them All", by Jay Hanson, Jan, 1999 
http://www.dieoff.com/page168.htm
MAXIMUM POWER, by Jay Hanson, 01/01/2001 http://www.dieoff.com/page193.htm
ENERGETIC LIMITS TO GROWTH Spring 1999 http://www.dieoff.com/page175.htm
Titanic Sinks June 24, 1998 http://www.dieoff.com/page143.htm
A Peak Under the Covers 11/11/97 http://www.dieoff.com/page128.htm
Los Sangre Es en Tus Manos, by Jay Hanson, April, 1999 
http://www.dieoff.com/page169.htm
"The Market" is simply "Too Cheap to Meter" 11/01/98 
http://www.dieoff.com/page166.htm
It's the Money, Stupid! August 10, 1998 http://www.dieoff.com/page149.htm
Lunatic Politics, by Jay Hanson, June 6, 1998 http://www.dieoff.com/page141.htm
Tragedy of the Commons Re-stated 6/14/97 http://www.dieoff.com/page109.htm
THE FATAL FREEDOM (the Tragedy of the Commons) 8/29/97 
http://www.dieoff.com/page79.htm
KNOW THYSELF -- A Report of the Dominant Animal Life on the Third 
Planet: Executive Summary, by Yaj, January 24, 1997.
http://www.dieoff.com/page89.htm
Requiem, by Jay Hanson, Feb, 20, 1998 http://www.dieoff.com/page89.htm
THERMODYNAMICS AND THE SUSTAINABILITY OF FOOD PRODUCTION November 4, 
1996 http://www.dieoff.com/page65.htm
WHERE WILL IT END? http://www.dieoff.com/page34.htm

--
<http://www.groundtruthinvestigations.com/>
--
<http://www.groundtruthinvestigations.com/>