Environment & Energy

And no, there's no existential illness, thanks for your concern.

I've been mulling over this new analogy of competing prophets a bit more. It's very fruitful.

I see people like FBaggins and kristopher as street-corner prophets for different Gods, each promising salvation in return for worship.

The Prophet of the Sun God and God of the North Wind thunders, "If you follow me and worship my True God, the path to Salvation shall lie open before us. Worship at the Altar of the Wind, Sun and Water, and mankind shall have Eternal Life. Turn aside from this One True Path and ye shall burn forever in the Lake of Nuclear Fire."

The Prophet of the Atom (praise be unto Einstein!) says something oddly similar. "If you follow me and worship my True God, the path to Salvation shall lie before you. Worship at the Altar of the Atom and we shall all enjoy Eternal Life. Turn aside from this One True Path and ye shall have condemned all mankind to eternal torment in the Climate Apocalypse."

Each of them reviles the other. They develop clever techniques to twist each others' words, invalidate each others' numbers, and deny each others' Gods. Each portrays the other as either Antichrist or Fool.

In this little psychodrama I see myself as a bit like a street-corner atheist - maybe with a touch of Richard Dawkins' bellicosity. I'm the guy who stands nearby and tells the people who come up to listen, "You know, there is actually no God. There is no Salvation. We are all mortal, made of flesh and bone. When we die, that's it. Nobody lives happily ever after in real life. These guys are trying to sell you something they don't own. Go home and hug your children."

People like listening to the prophets. The conflict is fun, and no matter which one you choose to believe you get an in-group to belong to and an out-group to hate. Their messages are full of the fluffy bunny-ears of hope and the fangs of contempt - there's something there for everyone.

People generally don't like listening to me or anyone who sounds like me. I don't offer Salvation, I don't even offer Hope. I don't tell anyone what they should or shouldn't do. I've stopped blaming anybody. I don't see our predicament as a moral failure. I tell people that we have to accept who and what we are, and offer an unusual interpretation of what that is:

We are dissipative structures whose DNA has been formed in the context of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, whose behavior is best described by evolutionary psychology. As a result, our collective behavior is strongly constrained by the flow of free energy through our societies - the more energy, the more we are constrained. We are herd animals easily entrained into lockstep by group norms. If there is enough free energy flow around us, our evolutionary history inclines us to behave like the "Takers" in Daniel Quinn's novel "Ishmael". Some of us long to be more like the "Leavers" instead, and are angry and blameful that humanity can't seem to make that shift. Those dreamers don't understand the power of our evolved, unconscious neural circuits - or how strongly those circuits respond to conditions of excess with exactly the sort of "immoral" behavior we so love to disparage.

This debate is not really about whose numbers are correct, but about what vision of the world can confer status upon its holder. The one thing the prophets here can agree on, it seems, is that somebody's numbers must be right. Well, I don't think this debate is actually about numbers at all, no matter how much effort we put in convincing ourselves that it is. It's about different visions of reality. It's not even so much about the future (which we all agree is pretty unpredictable), as it is about the nature of humanity - right here, right now.

The intent of my curve fitting is not to demonstrate some possible energy future. It is to demonstrate the ridiculousness of the notion that there is a God of Energy Salvation. The Prophets of Power are selling something they don't own. Go home and hug your kids.