My Colloquium experience was enhanced by the privilege of picking two of our speakers up from the airport and then dropping them off after the event. On my final trip back from the airport Molly Hatchet's anthem, Flirtin’ With Disaster, came on the radio. I blasted it, reflecting on how the lyrics tied into the theme of the Colloquium.
Well I'm travelin' down the road,
I'm flirtin' with disaster.
I've got the pedal to the floor,
My life is running faster.
The most pessimistic of our speakers, Richard Heinberg opened the event. He wasted no time pointing out that we are in trouble. Similar to the theme of his book, The Party's Over, Richard detailed how the days of cheap oil are over. There have been no significant discoveries of any new reserves in decades. Since 1990 the world has been using oil three times as fast as it can be discovered. The oil "producers" are pumping it out of the ground as fast as we can burn it. He's revised his prediction of when we'll reach the peak from 2012/2013 to 2007/2008. He believes that in less than two years we will have pumped half of the world's oil supply from the ground and from that moment on there will be less oil available each year. This is happening at the same time that demand has reached an all time high and shows no sign of slowing down. Richard feels that the collapse of the oil based economy is inevitable. The only decision we have left is how we manage the collapse. We can do as much as possible with the time and resources available to transition to a sustainable, albeit drastically simpler, way of living. Or we can fight to hang on to the lion's share of the world's diminishing oil supply, risking the environment, the economy, and global war. The choice is ours to make.
I'm out of money, out of hope,
it looks like self-destruction.
Well, how much more can we take,
With all of this mass corruption?
John Turner is slightly more optimistic. He's been working on figuring out how to transition from using oil as our energy carrier of choice to using hydrogen. The problem involves finding renewable methods of creating the hydrogen. The technology already exists, but it must be ramped up to a massive scale in a very short period of time. Proving that this is not an impossible dream he points to the Interstate Highway system. If we could line the side of the highways with solar panels using today's technology, adding just seven percent to the area we've already covered with asphalt, we would have enough energy to make the transition. On a U.S. map he showed the total area that would need to be covered with solar panels compared to the size of the country. It is only slightly larger than the size of White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. He also pointed out how we could do the same thing using windmills. Using today's technology the area that would need to be dedicated would be similar in size to that needed for solar panels. It represents a fraction of the area of North Dakota, his choice based on yearly wind availability. His view is that there is still time to make the transition but that it will require the will of the government (which in this country is the people) to make the investment.
I don't know about yourself or what you plan to be.
When gambling with the times, we choose our destiny.
To me, Judy Knox gave the most personal and inspiring message. She began by paraphrasing a Chinese proverb, "If we don't change direction we'll end up where we're headed." Her talk, Journey of a Champion, focused on how each and every one of us makes decisions every single day that affect our environment. She talked of how all of our decisions are interlinked and can produce unexpected consequences. As a pioneer in the straw bale construction of housing, she gently explained to well meaning people that building a straw bale house way out in the country, where the materials needed to be transported long distances, new wells drilled, power hookups connected, and creating a need for a long commute to the city to interact with society, actually created more problems than it solved. Her talk caused me to do the most self examination.
Flirtin' with disaster, baby.
Ya'll damn sure know what I mean.
You know the way we run our lives;
it makes no sense to me.
I think David Orr blew us all away with his high impact examination of how intelligence relates to the design decisions we're making. He started with a look at some of the marketing that encourages us to make the decisions that we do. In this context the ads seemed nonsensical, even suicidal. The SUV ad telling us that "when the asteroid hits and civilization crumbles - you'll be ready" was just surreal. David was able to show example after example of "intelligent design" in place today that, for some reason, is not being universally adopted. He showed us slides of termite mounds in Africa where the internal temperature needs to stay within a few degrees of ambient year round in order for the hive to survive. Then he showed us a hotel in Africa that was engineered using the same principles as the termite mounds it resembled. The hotel uses no external electricity and the internal temperature varies less than four degrees no matter what time of year. Why aren't all new buildings designed this way?
Yeah! We're traveling down that lonesome road,
Feels like I'm dragging a heavy load.
I'm trying to turn my head away.
Oh, Ba Ba yeah!
Flirtin' with disaster every day.
Looking back I can't help but think the Colloquium was a huge success. Discussing it with Amy Vaughn, one of the Program Chairs, she agreed but added that if we don't share what we've learned with others then the energy we spent organizing the event and bringing the participants together will have been wasted.
Bibliographical information about the Colloquium speakers is still available on the national website. I encourage everyone reading this to take advantage of these resources to learn more about sustainable energy sources and form their own opinions on the consequences of changing nothing.