An Update

(7/11/2009) - The last two weeks have been busy, perhaps the two of the busiest weeks of my life.  I got a job, packed up my apartment, transported my furniture to my parent's house, drove across the country in three days, unpacked, turned an old basement storage room into a livable space, worked 52 hours over eight days, and saw a half-dozen people I haven't seen in almost a year (or more).

Long story short, The Finite World got the shaft.  But I'm back, and am in the middle of composing a long article I hope to publish tomorrow/early next week.

But while I'm here, I wanted to comment on a short article by Luis de Sousa at The Oil Drum: Europe.  The premise of the article is simple: the term "sustainable development" is an oxymoron.  In general, I agree with him.  However, I don't think that his emphasis on self-delusion or the supirior morality of his Future world are particuarly helpful or even morally right.  I don't think most people live their lives in self-delusion, but simply live their lives and deal with the struggles that are thrown at them in the short term.  The reason people aren't concerned about the "End of Civilization" isn't that they know about it and consciously reject it.   People are currently living the game of survival.  That's always the game.

The question is, what are the rules of the game?  That's what will shift dramatically.  But until they do, I don't expect people to change their minds.  The key for long-term policy makers is to try and "artificially" shift the rules of the game early so that we can ease into them.