Is Tory Leader justifiably hot at Liberals, or just too angry?
Harper's recent outbursts threaten to alienate him from Canadian voters
For the past few weeks, ever since Prime Minister Paul Martin appeared on television begging for a delayed election, and Mr. Harper immediately denounced it as a "sad spectacle," the Conservative Leader seems to have been simmering. Experts say it is important for politicians to be able to show indignation at the appropriate times, but Mr. Harper risks alienating the public with his anger. "If somebody only operates in one gear, which is the angry mode, it can be wearying," said Paul Nesbitt-Larking, who chairs the political science department at the University of Western Ontario in London. Canadians, he said, have shown their distaste for anger in their repeated rejection of political attack ads. Mr. Harper's ill humour got worse this week when he learned about a Liberal move to delay a confidence vote until Thursday. That would push the decision to a day when a Conservative MP with cancer was recuperating from a trip to the operating table, thus reducing the opposition's numbers. Mr. Harper is angry that the government has the audacity to carry on even as the stain of the sponsorship scandal widens. He is angry that the Liberals refuse to give up power after losing what he believes was a confidence motion. Mr. Harper -- a man who began his political life as an unassuming policy wonk -- has seemed miffed many times since becoming Conservative Leader last year. He stopped talking to reporters when a plan to paint Mr. Martin as being soft on child pornography soured during last year's election campaign. There was a backstage chair-kicking incident at a Conservative convention in Montreal. And there was a reported outburst at a Liberal photographer who tried to take his picture on the plane back from V-E Day celebrations in Europe.
If humour, ridicule, and satire are the weapons of joyful disobedience to authority in our culture, as George Orwell says, than anger is the reaction of the authoritarian to a sense of powerlessness. Anger occurs when things don't "go as planned". Anger and hate are the emotions of authoritarianism when dominance is challenged.
The Canadian born Sci-Fi Author A.E.van Vogt writes about the angry man type of fascist Authoritarian personality in his 1962 prescient book; The Violent Man. He predicts the white American male authoritatian personality will develop into the white middle class rage that became so well publicized in the 1980's and 1990's. In his book vanVogt refrered to this kind of dominant male as "The Violent or Right Man", as in he is always right.
"He returned to full-scale writing in 1962, with the publication of The Violent Man, a book that is not science fiction but was of crucial importance in the development of his career. It was meant to expose the psychogenesis of violence, a subject he felt to be of such importance that the book would necessarily become a best-seller. But, though the book was carefully constructed and undoubtedly his most serious piece of writing, his hopes for it were not realized."The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. van Vogt
Long out of print the book has been re-released with a new introduction by Colin Wilson; A Report on the Violent Male by AE van Vogt. Wilson used van Vogt's ideas extensively in his book A Criminal History of Mankind.
One such angry Right Man in the House of Commons this week was Stephen Harper. And for that reason he has failed his party and failed Canadians, he has failed to be a Prime Minister in waiting. Harpers anger reflects the "Violent Man or Right Man" personality that van Vogt wrote of.
"Looking around for examples, it struck Van Vogt that male authoritarian behaviour is far too commonplace to be regarded as insanity. .. 'the violent man' or the 'Right Man' [...] is a man driven by a manic need for self-esteem -- to feel he is a 'somebody'. He is obsessed by the question of 'losing face', so will never, under any circumstances, admit that he might be in the wrong. The Right Man hates losing face; if he suspects that his threats are not being taken seriously, he is capable of carrying them out, purely for the sake of appearances. He feels he [is] justified in exploding, like an angry god. [...] he feels he is inflicting just punishment. What causes 'right mannishness'? Van Vogt suggest that it is because the world has always been dominated by males." The Right Man And The Fear Of Losing Face.
Harpers outbursts and secretive personality which was shown during last election when he all but hid from the media for the last week of the election because they peeved him off, well it fits the Right Man personality.
And this past month Harper has been angry and only angry when it has come to the Liberals and their continuing to rule inspite of all his efforts. Harper is a Right Man, and believes he is the Right Man for the PM's job.
Certainly for leader of Canada's most right wing party ever, the Reform/Alliance/Conservatives, being the Right Man is perfect for the job of being Leader of the Right. However it is clear that this type of psychopathic personality is NOT fit to be Prime Minister.
In his Alberta doppleganger; Ralph Klein, Canada already has a Right Man ruling in at least one province. And Ralph is another one quick to anger when challenged. To have this personality type ruling the whole country, woe is us.
PM should call election now, Klein says
Premier is first provincial leader to back opposition demands for Martin to quit
And Canadians sense this about Harper. It is not the Conservatives who have failed to increase in the polls at the Liberals expense it is Harper. His personality dominates HIS party, and thus Canadians are rightly suspicious of this authoritarian Right Man. Even in what will be the election battleground; Ontario, they show no confidence in a government led by Harper. But Harper will play out his game to bring down the government and be our Leader cause he is the Right Man for the job, he thinks.
In his tirade against the Liberals on Friday the 13 (sic), he refered to them as "Monsters". Misquoting Nietzsche, "Conservative Leader Stephen Harper decried what he called seedy Liberal tactics, saying his father once told him: "Be careful when you fight a monster, lest you yourself become a monster." Canadian Press
The real quote from Nietzche, the original Right Man, is:
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
- - -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche "Beyond Good and Evil
Harper would do well to ponder the whole quote, for if he takes us into the abyss of another election he may not come out the winner. Then he will have to face the Monster which is Stephen Harper the Right Man. The Leader who would be PM but failed.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Thursday, May 12, 2005
The End of the Oil Age
Not with a bang but a whimper.
What those that deny there is a Peak Oil crisis mistakenly believe is that those who proclaim the end of the Oil Age are catastrophic hysterics. The facts which oil geolgists continue to point out is that Peak Oil is here, and its impact will change the world, not with a bang but with increasingly repetitive crisises.
The Age of Oil, which has lasted for 150 years has seen the greatest environmental change caused by humans.
J.R. McNeil in his book on the Environmental History of the 2oth Centruy; Something New Under the Sun, Norton, 2000, calculates that "humans in the 20th Century used TEN TIMES as much energy then our forebearers have over the last one thousand years."
Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century
by J.R. McNeill, Penguin Books Ltd., London 2000.
How will the twentieth century be remembered? For world wars and politics? The spread of literacy and sexual equality? This ground-breaking work shows us that its most enduring legacy will in fact be the physical changes we have wrought on the planet. Humanity has undertaken a gigantic experiment on the earth, refashioning it with an intensity unprecedented in history—now there really is something new under the sun. In this landmark and award-winning book John McNeil uses a refreshing mixture of history, anecdote and science, avoiding blame or sermon, to explain how and why humans have altered their world. He takes us from London smog to dust bowls of Oklahoma, introducing fascinating characters such as conservationist Rachel Carson, pirate whaler Aristotle Onassis and the little-known scientist who invented CFCs and put lead in petrol. Above all this compelling account shows that the damage can be reversed. It is up to us to decide how long our gamble can continue. WWF review
The impact of the Age of Oil can be seen in the Climate Change Crisis we face,as the two coincide. So is it any wonder that those who benefit from the current capitalist system that created the Oil Age deny that there is any crisis? They deny there is a Climate Change Crisis and they deny there is a Peak Oil crisis, and this denial is a very real threat to our continued existance.
Peak Oil is coming for most producing countries, and so is global Climate Change which coincides with the oil crisis. These two crisises will create an even greater synergetic phenomena, that industrialized capitalism and finance capitalism will NOT be able to deal with.
The old adage; Socialism of Barbarism, will be as relevant tommorow as it was yesterday.
Today we need to take seriously the crisis the capitalist system is in globally, while it may not appear to the average consumer in the Industrialized world it is in a crisis of global and historic proportions. It is in a period of economic, geological, and environmental decadence. Capitalism cannot deal with these two major crisis because of the anarchy of the market. No matter what proponents of sustainable or "Natural Capitalism" say. Capitalism is antiethical to human and other species survival.
A planned economy under the direct control of the individuals and their communities is the historical and ONLY solution to this crisis and even then it may not be enough. Where technocracy and socialism agree is that a planned economy based on labour and energy credits not on money is the only way out of this coming calamity. And while technocracy offers a North American planning model it lacks the community council/workers councils inputs required to make this work.
Only a Libertarian socialist society based on planned economy models where communities are based on self sufficieny, free associations and mutual aid, and throught the confederated sharing of excess energy, can provide the basis for really dealing with both of these pending world shaking events.
These were and are the revolutionary ideas of the 20th century and the model espoused by Kropotkin, Thorstien Vebelen, the IWW, Howard Scott, Jane Jacobs, E.F. Schumaker and Buckminister Fuller, - OPERATING MANUAL FOR SPACESHIP EARTH
"You must choose between making money and making sense. The two are mutually exclusive."
R. Buckminster Fuller
Nope no catasrophic hysteria here, just the facts mam.
And the facts are Capitalism has hit its decline, its decadent period, where it may make technological breakthroughs, but these cannot be used because they are restricted to creating a profit for the sole reproduction of capital itself. This is antiethical to the creation of a human society and a sustainable environment.
This is the barbarism of capital; not merely a melt down in profits, nor a Great Depression, but an ecological disaster based on the reliance on oil which will lead to a renewed authoritarian state; fascism, as people sacrifice freedom for security.
The 20th century will stand out as a peculiar century because of the breath-taking acceleration of so many processes that bring ecological change. That idea permeates environmental historian J. R. McNeil's recent book Something New Under the Sun. McNeil points first to the change in scale in the practice of our traditional technologies in industry, transportation, and agriculture. At the end of the 20th century human activities had contributed to an increase of around 30% in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Our level of nitrogen fixation now matches what nature herself provides. The direct transformation of land for human use now affects 39-50% of the earth's dry surface. What this will ultimately mean ecologically, we don't fully know. McNeil further argues that the 20th century has also seen a growing and radically different range of technologies of largely unknown consequence.
For example:
In 1930 the American Nobel Prize winner for physics said that there was no risk that humanity could do real harm to anything so gigantic as the earth. In the same year the American chemical engineer Thomas Midgley invented chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs -- which we now know can destroy the earth's protective ozone layer).
The 20th century has thus seen the modern landscape become an uncontrolled experiment of grand scale.
McNeil concludes: What Machiavelli said of affairs of state is doubly true of affairs of global ecology and society. It is nearly impossible to see what is happening until it is inconveniently late to do much about it. Introductory Remarks: Natural Resource Stewardship Mike Soukup, Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science
When will we reach Peak Oil?
2008? 2010? 2020?
Coming oil crisis feared
John Vidal
Guardian Weekly
April 29 2005
One of the world's leading energy analysts called this week for an independent assessment of global oil reserves because he believes that Middle Eastern countries may have far less than officially stated and that oil prices could double to more than $100 a barrel within three years, triggering economic collapse. Matthew Simmons, an adviser to President George Bush and chairman of the Wall Street energy investment company Simmons, said that "peak oil" -- when global oil production rises to its highest point before declining irreversibly -- was rapidly approaching even as demand was increasing. "This is a new era," Mr Simmons told a conference of oil industry analysts, government officials and academics in Edinburgh. "There is a big chance that Saudi Arabia actually peaked production in 1981. We have no reliable data. Our data collection system for oil is rubbish. I suspect that if we had, we would find that we are over-producing in most of our major fields and that we should be throttling back. We may have passed that point." Mr Simmons told the meeting that it was inevitable that the price of oil would soar above $100 as supplies failed to meet demand. "Demand is pulling away from supply . . . and we have to ask whether we have the resources that we think we do. It could be catastrophic if we do not anticipate when peak oil comes." The precise arrival of peak oil is hotly debated by academics and geologists, but analysts increasingly say that official US Geological Survey estimates that it will not happen for 35 years are over-optimistic. According to the International Energy Agency, which collates data from all oil-producing countries, peak oil will arrive "sometime between 2013 and 2037", with production thereafter expected to decline by about 3% a year.
The end of oil is closer than you think
Oil production could peak next year, reports John Vidal. Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye
John Vidal
Thursday April 21, 2005
The Guardian
The one thing that international bankers don't want to hear is that the second Great Depression may be round the corner. But last week, a group of ultra-conservative Swiss financiers asked a retired English petroleum geologist living in Ireland to tell them about the beginning of the end of the oil age.
They called Colin Campbell, who helped to found the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre because he is an industry man through and through, has no financial agenda and has spent most of a lifetime on the front line of oil exploration on three continents. He was chief geologist for Amoco, a vice-president of Fina, and has worked for BP, Texaco, Shell, ChevronTexaco and Exxon in a dozen different countries.
"Don't worry about oil running out; it won't for very many years," the Oxford PhD told the bankers in a message that he will repeat to businessmen, academics and investment analysts at a conference in Edinburgh next week. "The issue is the long downward slope that opens on the other side of peak production. Oil and gas dominate our lives, and their decline will change the world in radical and unpredictable ways," he says.
Campbell reckons global peak production of conventional oil - the kind associated with gushing oil wells - is approaching fast, perhaps even next year. His calculations are based on historical and present production data, published reserves and discoveries of companies and governments, estimates of reserves lodged with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, speeches by oil chiefs and a deep knowledge of how the industry works.
"About 944bn barrels of oil has so far been extracted, some 764bn remains extractable in known fields, or reserves, and a further 142bn of reserves are classed as 'yet-to-find', meaning what oil is expected to be discovered. If this is so, then the overall oil peak arrives next year," he says.
If he is correct, then global oil production can be expected to decline steadily at about 2-3% a year, the cost of everything from travel, heating, agriculture, trade, and anything made of plastic rises. And the scramble to control oil resources intensifies. As one US analyst said this week: "Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye."
"The first half of the oil age now closes," says Campbell. "It lasted 150 years and saw the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade, agriculture and financial capital, allowing the population to expand six-fold. The second half now dawns, and will be marked by the decline of oil and all that depends on it, including financial capital."
So did the Swiss bankers comprehend the seriousness of the situation when he talked to them? "There is no company on the stock exchange that doesn't make a tacit assumption about the availability of energy," says Campbell. "It is almost impossible for bankers to accept it. It is so out of their mindset."
The Long Emergency
What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?
By JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER
Rolling Stone Magazine Feature
The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world's all-time total endowment, meaning half the world's oil will be left. That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there's a big catch: It's the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of much poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us. A substantial amount of it will never be extracted.
The United States passed its own oil peak -- about 11 million barrels a day -- in 1970, and since then production has dropped steadily. In 2004 it ran just above 5 million barrels a day (we get a tad more from natural-gas condensates). Yet we consume roughly 20 million barrels a day now. That means we have to import about two-thirds of our oil, and the ratio will continue to worsen.
The U.S. peak in 1970 brought on a portentous change in geoeconomic power. Within a few years, foreign producers, chiefly OPEC, were setting the price of oil, and this in turn led to the oil crises of the 1970s. In response, frantic development of non-OPEC oil, especially the North Sea fields of England and Norway, essentially saved the West's ass for about two decades. Since 1999, these fields have entered depletion. Meanwhile, worldwide discovery of new oil has steadily declined to insignificant levels in 2003 and 2004.
Some "cornucopians" claim that the Earth has something like a creamy nougat center of "abiotic" oil that will naturally replenish the great oil fields of the world. The facts speak differently. There has been no replacement whatsoever of oil already extracted from the fields of America or any other place.
Now we are faced with the global oil-production peak. The best estimates of when this will actually happen have been somewhere between now and 2010. In 2004, however, after demand from burgeoning China and India shot up, and revelations that Shell Oil wildly misstated its reserves, and Saudi Arabia proved incapable of goosing up its production despite promises to do so, the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production.
It will change everything about how we live.
The End of Cheap Oil
What those that deny there is a Peak Oil crisis mistakenly believe is that those who proclaim the end of the Oil Age are catastrophic hysterics. The facts which oil geolgists continue to point out is that Peak Oil is here, and its impact will change the world, not with a bang but with increasingly repetitive crisises.
The Age of Oil, which has lasted for 150 years has seen the greatest environmental change caused by humans.
J.R. McNeil in his book on the Environmental History of the 2oth Centruy; Something New Under the Sun, Norton, 2000, calculates that "humans in the 20th Century used TEN TIMES as much energy then our forebearers have over the last one thousand years."
Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century
by J.R. McNeill, Penguin Books Ltd., London 2000.
How will the twentieth century be remembered? For world wars and politics? The spread of literacy and sexual equality? This ground-breaking work shows us that its most enduring legacy will in fact be the physical changes we have wrought on the planet. Humanity has undertaken a gigantic experiment on the earth, refashioning it with an intensity unprecedented in history—now there really is something new under the sun. In this landmark and award-winning book John McNeil uses a refreshing mixture of history, anecdote and science, avoiding blame or sermon, to explain how and why humans have altered their world. He takes us from London smog to dust bowls of Oklahoma, introducing fascinating characters such as conservationist Rachel Carson, pirate whaler Aristotle Onassis and the little-known scientist who invented CFCs and put lead in petrol. Above all this compelling account shows that the damage can be reversed. It is up to us to decide how long our gamble can continue. WWF review
The impact of the Age of Oil can be seen in the Climate Change Crisis we face,as the two coincide. So is it any wonder that those who benefit from the current capitalist system that created the Oil Age deny that there is any crisis? They deny there is a Climate Change Crisis and they deny there is a Peak Oil crisis, and this denial is a very real threat to our continued existance.
Peak Oil is coming for most producing countries, and so is global Climate Change which coincides with the oil crisis. These two crisises will create an even greater synergetic phenomena, that industrialized capitalism and finance capitalism will NOT be able to deal with.
The old adage; Socialism of Barbarism, will be as relevant tommorow as it was yesterday.
Today we need to take seriously the crisis the capitalist system is in globally, while it may not appear to the average consumer in the Industrialized world it is in a crisis of global and historic proportions. It is in a period of economic, geological, and environmental decadence. Capitalism cannot deal with these two major crisis because of the anarchy of the market. No matter what proponents of sustainable or "Natural Capitalism" say. Capitalism is antiethical to human and other species survival.
A planned economy under the direct control of the individuals and their communities is the historical and ONLY solution to this crisis and even then it may not be enough. Where technocracy and socialism agree is that a planned economy based on labour and energy credits not on money is the only way out of this coming calamity. And while technocracy offers a North American planning model it lacks the community council/workers councils inputs required to make this work.
Only a Libertarian socialist society based on planned economy models where communities are based on self sufficieny, free associations and mutual aid, and throught the confederated sharing of excess energy, can provide the basis for really dealing with both of these pending world shaking events.
These were and are the revolutionary ideas of the 20th century and the model espoused by Kropotkin, Thorstien Vebelen, the IWW, Howard Scott, Jane Jacobs, E.F. Schumaker and Buckminister Fuller, - OPERATING MANUAL FOR SPACESHIP EARTH
"You must choose between making money and making sense. The two are mutually exclusive."
R. Buckminster Fuller
Nope no catasrophic hysteria here, just the facts mam.
And the facts are Capitalism has hit its decline, its decadent period, where it may make technological breakthroughs, but these cannot be used because they are restricted to creating a profit for the sole reproduction of capital itself. This is antiethical to the creation of a human society and a sustainable environment.
This is the barbarism of capital; not merely a melt down in profits, nor a Great Depression, but an ecological disaster based on the reliance on oil which will lead to a renewed authoritarian state; fascism, as people sacrifice freedom for security.
The 20th century will stand out as a peculiar century because of the breath-taking acceleration of so many processes that bring ecological change. That idea permeates environmental historian J. R. McNeil's recent book Something New Under the Sun. McNeil points first to the change in scale in the practice of our traditional technologies in industry, transportation, and agriculture. At the end of the 20th century human activities had contributed to an increase of around 30% in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Our level of nitrogen fixation now matches what nature herself provides. The direct transformation of land for human use now affects 39-50% of the earth's dry surface. What this will ultimately mean ecologically, we don't fully know. McNeil further argues that the 20th century has also seen a growing and radically different range of technologies of largely unknown consequence.
For example:
In 1930 the American Nobel Prize winner for physics said that there was no risk that humanity could do real harm to anything so gigantic as the earth. In the same year the American chemical engineer Thomas Midgley invented chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs -- which we now know can destroy the earth's protective ozone layer).
The 20th century has thus seen the modern landscape become an uncontrolled experiment of grand scale.
McNeil concludes: What Machiavelli said of affairs of state is doubly true of affairs of global ecology and society. It is nearly impossible to see what is happening until it is inconveniently late to do much about it. Introductory Remarks: Natural Resource Stewardship Mike Soukup, Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science
When will we reach Peak Oil?
2008? 2010? 2020?
Coming oil crisis feared
John Vidal
Guardian Weekly
April 29 2005
One of the world's leading energy analysts called this week for an independent assessment of global oil reserves because he believes that Middle Eastern countries may have far less than officially stated and that oil prices could double to more than $100 a barrel within three years, triggering economic collapse. Matthew Simmons, an adviser to President George Bush and chairman of the Wall Street energy investment company Simmons, said that "peak oil" -- when global oil production rises to its highest point before declining irreversibly -- was rapidly approaching even as demand was increasing. "This is a new era," Mr Simmons told a conference of oil industry analysts, government officials and academics in Edinburgh. "There is a big chance that Saudi Arabia actually peaked production in 1981. We have no reliable data. Our data collection system for oil is rubbish. I suspect that if we had, we would find that we are over-producing in most of our major fields and that we should be throttling back. We may have passed that point." Mr Simmons told the meeting that it was inevitable that the price of oil would soar above $100 as supplies failed to meet demand. "Demand is pulling away from supply . . . and we have to ask whether we have the resources that we think we do. It could be catastrophic if we do not anticipate when peak oil comes." The precise arrival of peak oil is hotly debated by academics and geologists, but analysts increasingly say that official US Geological Survey estimates that it will not happen for 35 years are over-optimistic. According to the International Energy Agency, which collates data from all oil-producing countries, peak oil will arrive "sometime between 2013 and 2037", with production thereafter expected to decline by about 3% a year.
The end of oil is closer than you think
Oil production could peak next year, reports John Vidal. Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye
John Vidal
Thursday April 21, 2005
The Guardian
The one thing that international bankers don't want to hear is that the second Great Depression may be round the corner. But last week, a group of ultra-conservative Swiss financiers asked a retired English petroleum geologist living in Ireland to tell them about the beginning of the end of the oil age.
They called Colin Campbell, who helped to found the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre because he is an industry man through and through, has no financial agenda and has spent most of a lifetime on the front line of oil exploration on three continents. He was chief geologist for Amoco, a vice-president of Fina, and has worked for BP, Texaco, Shell, ChevronTexaco and Exxon in a dozen different countries.
"Don't worry about oil running out; it won't for very many years," the Oxford PhD told the bankers in a message that he will repeat to businessmen, academics and investment analysts at a conference in Edinburgh next week. "The issue is the long downward slope that opens on the other side of peak production. Oil and gas dominate our lives, and their decline will change the world in radical and unpredictable ways," he says.
Campbell reckons global peak production of conventional oil - the kind associated with gushing oil wells - is approaching fast, perhaps even next year. His calculations are based on historical and present production data, published reserves and discoveries of companies and governments, estimates of reserves lodged with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, speeches by oil chiefs and a deep knowledge of how the industry works.
"About 944bn barrels of oil has so far been extracted, some 764bn remains extractable in known fields, or reserves, and a further 142bn of reserves are classed as 'yet-to-find', meaning what oil is expected to be discovered. If this is so, then the overall oil peak arrives next year," he says.
If he is correct, then global oil production can be expected to decline steadily at about 2-3% a year, the cost of everything from travel, heating, agriculture, trade, and anything made of plastic rises. And the scramble to control oil resources intensifies. As one US analyst said this week: "Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye."
"The first half of the oil age now closes," says Campbell. "It lasted 150 years and saw the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade, agriculture and financial capital, allowing the population to expand six-fold. The second half now dawns, and will be marked by the decline of oil and all that depends on it, including financial capital."
So did the Swiss bankers comprehend the seriousness of the situation when he talked to them? "There is no company on the stock exchange that doesn't make a tacit assumption about the availability of energy," says Campbell. "It is almost impossible for bankers to accept it. It is so out of their mindset."
The Long Emergency
What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?
By JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER
Rolling Stone Magazine Feature
The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world's all-time total endowment, meaning half the world's oil will be left. That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there's a big catch: It's the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of much poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us. A substantial amount of it will never be extracted.
The United States passed its own oil peak -- about 11 million barrels a day -- in 1970, and since then production has dropped steadily. In 2004 it ran just above 5 million barrels a day (we get a tad more from natural-gas condensates). Yet we consume roughly 20 million barrels a day now. That means we have to import about two-thirds of our oil, and the ratio will continue to worsen.
The U.S. peak in 1970 brought on a portentous change in geoeconomic power. Within a few years, foreign producers, chiefly OPEC, were setting the price of oil, and this in turn led to the oil crises of the 1970s. In response, frantic development of non-OPEC oil, especially the North Sea fields of England and Norway, essentially saved the West's ass for about two decades. Since 1999, these fields have entered depletion. Meanwhile, worldwide discovery of new oil has steadily declined to insignificant levels in 2003 and 2004.
Some "cornucopians" claim that the Earth has something like a creamy nougat center of "abiotic" oil that will naturally replenish the great oil fields of the world. The facts speak differently. There has been no replacement whatsoever of oil already extracted from the fields of America or any other place.
Now we are faced with the global oil-production peak. The best estimates of when this will actually happen have been somewhere between now and 2010. In 2004, however, after demand from burgeoning China and India shot up, and revelations that Shell Oil wildly misstated its reserves, and Saudi Arabia proved incapable of goosing up its production despite promises to do so, the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production.
It will change everything about how we live.
The End of Cheap Oil
Implications of Global Peak Oil
by Mark Anielski
In a technical paper to the US Association of Petroleum Geologists in 1956, a senior scientist at Shell Oil Company, Dr. M. King Hubbert, made a controversial prediction that US oil production would peak in the early 1970s. Shell encouraged him to quietly bury this paper, but Hubbert refused.
According to Hubbert, the US would eventually face a critical tipping point in energy security: Peak Oil — the point in time when extraction of oil from the earth reaches its highest point and then begins to decline. ‘Hubbert’s peak theory’ predicted that, with Peak Oil, prices would fluctuate wildly, resulting in economic seismic shocks, even as demand for oil and gas continued to rise. He did not say that the US was going to run out of oil, per se, but that a peak in domestic production would result in economic tremors felt around the world.
The consequences of global Peak Oil would indeed be catastrophic. It would herald the end of cheap oil at a time when global demand for oil is growing, driven by the voracious energy appetite of China and other developing countries. Unfortunately, most people, especially our politicians, seem oblivious to this looming crisis or are extremely reluctant to talk about it.
All signs seem to suggest that this issue will soon demand a greater degree of public attention. A group of oil analysts led by petroleum geologist Colin Campbell — the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) — has predicted that global oil production will peak in 2005. Important oil producers like UK and Norway have already experienced Peak Oil - in 1999 and 2001 respectively. Saudi Arabia’s production is expected to peak in 2008 followed by Kuwait in 2015 and Iraq in 2017. Canada’s own Peak Oil event occurred in 1973, and our natural gas production peaked in 2001,without much notice.
Of course, because there will always be disagreement among geologists on petroleum statistics, no one knows precisely when global oil and gas production will peak. Even if you are a technological optimist, there is no getting around the basic problem of rising demand and lagging production capacity. Based on the figures I have researched, global oil production in 2001, at 76 million barrels per day (bbd), outstripped global production of 74 million bbd in 2004. And in 2004, global oil consumption reached 80 million bbd, growing by 2.2 million bbd over 2003 levels, the highest growth in demand since 1978. Of this amount, the US alone consumed 25% of the world’s total oil production
Oil industry executives are also worried. Harry L. Longwell, executive Vice-President of Exxon-Mobil warned: “The catch is that while [global] demand increases, existing production declines… we expect that by 2010 about half the daily volume needed to meet projected demand is not on production today.” In a speech in the autumn of 1999, Vice-President Dick Cheney warned that, "By 2010, we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. Exxon-Mobil will have to secure over a billion and a half barrels of new oil equivalent reserves every year just to replace existing production.” Putting this in the context of Alberta, oilsands production is predicted to reach a maximum of 1.56 million bbd by 2012, which is only 3% of the additional global daily demand predicted by Cheney.
According to Colin Campbell, the world is running at full production capacity. With global Peak Oil looming, he predicts that global oil and gas prices will fluctuate wildly, fall back once or twice and then reach sustained price highs.
What about Alberta? Why should we care, living in debt-free and oil-rich province? First, few people noticed that Alberta’s peak in conventional crude oil occurred in 1973 and natural gas production peaked in 2001. Fortunately, in the oilsands, Alberta has arguably the world’s largest reserves of non-conventional oil, with an estimated 300 billion barrels of proven reserves (although official international statistics report 174 billion barrels). This means that Alberta’s official reserves exceed Saudi Arabia’s.
While Alberta’s impressive reserves would last 500 years at a predicted maximum production of 2.0 million bbd (a volume quadruple today’s production), they would only supply the entire projected world 2012 oil consumption demands (95 million bbd) for less than 9 years or supply 10% of current US consumption of 20 million bbd.
The problem for Alberta is not only the limited reserves of oilsands, but the growing scarcity of natural gas needed to power its extraction. Most importantly, Alberta’s natural gas production peaked in 2001, without anyone noticing. Oilsands production is highly energy intensive and relies mostly on natural gas. It takes the energy of about one barrel of oil (from natural gas) to produce 4 barrels of synthetic crude oil. At current production volumes and remaining gas reserves, Canada has less than 10 years of natural production remaining.
Another serious problem for Alberta is water. Oilsands production requires huge amounts of water: each barrel of oil produced from oilsands requires about six barrels of water. For each barrel of oil produced, about one barrel of water is permanently lost from the hydrological cycle. Alberta’s oilsands producers are currently licensed to use 26% of the province’s groundwater, in addition to surface water from rivers and lakes.
Combining the impacts of dwindling natural gas supplies in the face of growing domestic and US demand and growing demand for surface and groundwater supplies, Alberta’s oil paradise may not be as rosy as it first appears.
- But what about the consequences of global peak oil in 2005 for Alberta? I predict the following:
- Dramatic oil and natural price shocks resulting in budgeting challenges for Alberta;
- Greater pressure by US (in competitive conflict with China) to secure even more oil from the oilsands and natural gas;
- Growing demand from China for Alberta’s oil and gas, including Canadian resource companies;
- US and industry pressure to maintain an already favorable royalty regime for oilsands; and
- Greater global conflict for each remaining barrel of oil, especially in areas such as the Middle East.
In spite of this gloomy global peak oil scenario there is an opportunity for Alberta to take a leadership role by investing today in greater energy efficiency and conservation, and by promoting the transition to a renewable energy future in our homes, businesses and communities. At stake is nothing less than the economic well-being of the world.
In a post-debt, we have a responsibility to the children of Alberta and the world to show leadership by investing prudently in the frugal use of our resources and gushing resource revenues.
Author: Mark Anielski is a well-being economist and Adjunct Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurship at the School of Business, University of Alberta and Adjunct Professor of Sustainability Economics at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Washington. Part of this paper is from his presentation to the Council of Canadians on Energy and Canada-US Relations on November 30, 2004 at the University of Calgary.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
A Lesson in Mutual Aid
"The war of each against all is not the law of nature. Mutual aid is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle"
Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid
STRAY DOG IN KENYA SAVES ABANDONED BABY
"She reckoned it was a young animal and possibly wanted to bring it up," Gilchrist said. "It is something to do with the canine-human bond." "Other dogs might have just left her there to die. ... She's obviously a very special dog," Gilchrist added. "She is a very street-wise dog, that is for sure. The other dogs in the compound did not look very well, but she is the fattest of them all — she obviously knows how to look after herself."
"The importance of the Mutual Aid factor -- "if its generality could only be demonstrated" -- did not escape the naturalist's genius so manifest in Goethe. When Eckermann told once to Goethe -- it was in 1827 -- that two little wren-fledglings, which had run away from him, were found by him next day in the nest of robin redbreasts (Rothkehlchen), which fed the little ones, together with their own youngsters, Goethe grew quite excited about this fact. He saw in it a confirmation of his pantheistic views, and said: -- "If it be true that this feeding of a stranger goes through all Nature as something having the character of a general law -- then many an enigma would be solved. "He returned to this matter on the next day, and most earnestly entreated Eckermann (who was, as is known, a zoologist) to make a special study of the subject, adding that he would surely come "to quite invaluable treasuries of results" (Gespräche, edition of 1848, vol. iii. pp. 219, 221). Unfortunately, this study was never made, although it is very possible that Brehm, who has accumulated in his works such rich materials relative to mutual aid among animals, might have been inspired by Goethe's remark. " Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin 1902
It's the feel good story of the day, of the week, of the month. It has gained world wide news coverage and resulted in the saving of both the dog and the baby. Both were abandoned, but thanks to the the natural instinct of soldiarity between species, which libertarian communists call Mutual Aid, a stray dog in Kenya saves a starving baby. It is not just a canine human bond, it is a bond between members of a speicies as well as an interspecies bond, which Peter Kropotkin shows in his ground breaking work on the sociology of evolution: Mutual Aid
This much overlooked work, which has won praise from such modern biologists as Stephen Jay Gould, immediately came to mind when I read this story about dog saves human.
Besides being a tale of morality that ellicits our sympathy and empathy, it is also a story about how the struggle of all against all, the survival of the fitist is not the morality of nature, but of capitalism as Kropotkin exposes in his work. He calls it a study of evolution and sociology, and it is a counter theory to the social Darwinism of the capitalist apologists such as Malthus and Spencer.
Kropotkin was not the originator of the idea of Mutual Aid, nor of its basic theory, he was its greatest defender and adaptor, but unfortunately like many Russian science theories it was not accepted in the West.
It still is not taught as an evolutionary theory or as part of the theories of evolution in schools or universities. You will probably come across references to Lamarck before you come across references to Mutual Aid.
"Consequently, when my attention was drawn, later on, to the relations between Darwinism and Sociology, I could agree with none of the works and pamphlets that had been written upon this important subject. They all endeavoured to prove that Man, owing to his higher intelligence and knowledge, may mitigate the harshness of the struggle for life between men; but they all recognized at the same time that the struggle for the means of existence, of every animal against all its congeners, and of every man against all other men, was "a law of Nature." This view, however, I could not accept, because I was persuaded that to admit a pitiless inner war for life within each species, and to see in that war a condition of progress, was to admit something which not only had not yet been proved, but also lacked confirmation from direct observation.
On the contrary, a lecture "On the Law of Mutual Aid," which was delivered at a Russian Congress of Naturalists, in January 1880, by the well-known zoologist, Professor Kessler, the then Dean of the St. Petersburg University, struck me as throwing a new light on the whole subject. Kessler's idea was, that besides the law of Mutual Struggle there is in Nature the law of Mutual Aid, which, for the success of the struggle for life, and especially for the progressive evolution of the species, is far more important than the law of mutual contest. This suggestion -- which was, in reality, nothing but a further development of the ideas expressed by Darwin himself in The Descent of Man -- seemed to me so correct and of so great an importance, that since I became acquainted with it (in 1883) I began to collect materials for further developing the idea, which Kessler had only cursorily sketched in his lecture, but had not lived to develop. He died in 1881.
In one point only I could not entirely endorse Kessler's views. Kessler alluded to "parental feeling" and care for progeny (see below, Chapter I) as to the source of mutual inclinations in animals. However, to determine how far these two feelings have really been at work in the evolution of sociable instincts, and how far other instincts have been at work in the same direction, seems to me a quite distinct and a very wide question, which we hardly can discuss yet. It will be only after we have well established the facts of mutual aid in different classes of animals, and their importance for evolution, that we shall be able to study what belongs in the evolution of sociable feelings, to parental feelings, and what to sociability proper -- the latter having evidently its origin at the earliest stages of the evolution of the animal world, perhaps even at the "colony-stages." I consequently directed my chief attention to establishing first of all, the importance of the Mutual Aid factor of evolution, leaving to ulterior research the task of discovering the origin of the Mutual Aid instinct in Nature."
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin 1902
The tale of the dog and the baby in Kenya illustrates this point well. Kroptokin asserts that all species are social species, and that the individual is supported in their individuality through the socialism/social construction of the species. It is a radical idea, one that says evolution occurs through species cooperation not competition. And that such species Mutual Aid occurs also between species, including those such as herbavores and carnivores which may normally prey on each other.
And it applies to those species who are territorial in giving up territory to those who need it. It would be interesting to note how this may have occured recently in Indonesia where the Tsunami drove animals into the mountains not their usual territory.
Kropotkin contends Mutual Aid between species is evidence of social morality appearing in nature.
Moreover, it is evident that life in societies would be utterly impossible without a corresponding development of social feelings, and, especially, of a certain collective sense of justice growing to become a habit. If every individual were constantly abusing its personal advantages without the others interfering in favour of the wronged, no society -- life would be possible. And feelings of justice develop, more or less, with all gregarious animals. Whatever the distance from which the swallows or the cranes come, each one returns to the nest it has built or repaired last year. If a lazy sparrow intends appropriating the nest which a comrade is building, or even steals from it a few sprays of straw, the group interferes against the lazy comrade; and it is evident that without such interference being the rule, no nesting associations of birds could exist. Separate groups of penguins have separate resting-places and separate fishing abodes, and do not fight for them. The droves of cattle in Australia have particular spots to which each group repairs to rest, and from which it never deviates; and so on.(30*) We have any numbers of direct observations of the peace that prevails in the nesting associations of birds, the villages of the rodents, and the herds of grass-eaters; while, on the other side, we know of few sociable animals which so continually quarrel as the rats in our cellars do, or as the morses, which fight for the possession of a sunny place on the shore. Sociability thus puts a limit to physical struggle, and leaves room for the development of better moral feelings. The high development of parental love in all classes of animals, even with lions and tigers, is generally known. As to the young birds and mammals whom we continually see associating, sympathy -- not love -- attains a further development in their associations. Leaving aside the really touching facts of mutual attachment and compassion which have been recorded as regards domesticated animals and with animals kept in captivity, we have a number of well certified facts of compassion between wild animals at liberty. Max Perty and L. Büchner have given a number of such facts.(31*) J.C. Wood's narrative of a weasel which came to pick up and to carry away an injured comrade enjoys a well-merited popularity.(32*) So also the observation of Captain Stansbury on his journey to Utah which is quoted by Darwin; he saw a blind pelican which was fed, and well fed, by other pelicans upon fishes which had to be brought from a distance of thirty miles.(33*) And when a herd of vicunas was hotly pursued by hunters, H.A. Weddell saw more than once during his journey to Bolivia and Peru, the strong males covering the retreat of the herd and lagging behind in order to protect the retreat. As to facts of compassion with wounded comrades, they are continually mentioned by all field zoologists. Such facts are quite natural. Compassion is a necessary outcome of social life. But compassion also means a considerable advance in general intelligence and sensibility. It is the first step towards the development of higher moral sentiments. It is, in its turn, a powerful factor of further evolution.
Chapter 2 Mutual Aid Among Animals
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin 1902
Such is the case with our stray bitch in Kenya who rescues an abandoned baby to suckle with her pups. She went to great efforts to save a puppy of a different species. But as the story says she was also suckling two other stray puppies. Unfortunately only the baby survived. Such effort to drag a baby back to her nest, and to feed and protect it is beyond the so called maternal instinct, or even the domestication bond between humans and dogs. If ever there was a clear cut case of evidence for Mutal Aid this is it.
"When the dog picked up the baby in a dirty bag, it came and dropped her behind the wooden building where the dog has its puppies," Mwalimu told The Associated Press Monday.
The dog reportedly dragged the baby across a busy road and through some barbed wire to the shed in the poor Nairobi neighbourhood where puppies from two stray dogs were sheltering.
The infant was discovered after two children alerted elders that they heard the sound of a baby crying near their wooden and corrugated-iron shack. Residents found the baby lying next to the mixed-breed dog and a own pup.
Unwanted infants are often abandoned in Kenya, with poverty and failed relationships frequently to blame. Kenya's weak law enforcement and poor social security system mean most people who forsake their babies are never caught.
The stray dog that saved the child also was being cared for Tuesday, a day after its last surviving puppy died for unknown reasons, said Jean Gilchrist of the Kenya Society for the Protection and Care of Animals.
Animal welfare officials named the dog Mkombozi, or "Saviour," and gave the dog its first bath and de-worming.
"She looks a bit depressed, so we'd like to examine her to see if she has a temperature or any other problem," Gilchrist said. "She wasn't happy when we all poured into the compound. She decided to leave, but kids in the compound brought her back for the bath because she was full of ticks."
KENYANS ARE EAGER TO ADOPT BABY GIRL FOUND IN LITTER OF PUPPIES
Felix Omondi, an 11-year-old student with his dog now named Mkombozi (Saviour) in a compound on the outskirts of Nairobi, Tuesday, May 10, 2005, after She was treated and washed by medics from Kenya Society for the Protection and care for Animals. The nursing dog foraging for food retrieved an abandoned baby girl in a forest.
So much for the individualist ideology of Herbert Spencer, Ayn Rand and the egoists, that say its a dog eat dog world,that the individual only does what feels good for them. It is a fallacious theory, with little empirical evidence other than philosophical assurances that it is the way things are aka; "There is No Alternative", as Maggie Thatcher said.
Such is not anarchist morality, as Kropotkin takes pains to prove over an over again in Mutual Aid. A stray dog in Kenya shows more anarchist morality than one will ever find in the pages of Reason magazine or the novels of Ayn Rand. Now that's irony.
Anarchist morality is the cooperative communalism of humans as social beings which allows us to express our individuality through Anarchist Communism.
Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid
STRAY DOG IN KENYA SAVES ABANDONED BABY
"She reckoned it was a young animal and possibly wanted to bring it up," Gilchrist said. "It is something to do with the canine-human bond." "Other dogs might have just left her there to die. ... She's obviously a very special dog," Gilchrist added. "She is a very street-wise dog, that is for sure. The other dogs in the compound did not look very well, but she is the fattest of them all — she obviously knows how to look after herself."
"The importance of the Mutual Aid factor -- "if its generality could only be demonstrated" -- did not escape the naturalist's genius so manifest in Goethe. When Eckermann told once to Goethe -- it was in 1827 -- that two little wren-fledglings, which had run away from him, were found by him next day in the nest of robin redbreasts (Rothkehlchen), which fed the little ones, together with their own youngsters, Goethe grew quite excited about this fact. He saw in it a confirmation of his pantheistic views, and said: -- "If it be true that this feeding of a stranger goes through all Nature as something having the character of a general law -- then many an enigma would be solved. "He returned to this matter on the next day, and most earnestly entreated Eckermann (who was, as is known, a zoologist) to make a special study of the subject, adding that he would surely come "to quite invaluable treasuries of results" (Gespräche, edition of 1848, vol. iii. pp. 219, 221). Unfortunately, this study was never made, although it is very possible that Brehm, who has accumulated in his works such rich materials relative to mutual aid among animals, might have been inspired by Goethe's remark. " Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin 1902
It's the feel good story of the day, of the week, of the month. It has gained world wide news coverage and resulted in the saving of both the dog and the baby. Both were abandoned, but thanks to the the natural instinct of soldiarity between species, which libertarian communists call Mutual Aid, a stray dog in Kenya saves a starving baby. It is not just a canine human bond, it is a bond between members of a speicies as well as an interspecies bond, which Peter Kropotkin shows in his ground breaking work on the sociology of evolution: Mutual Aid
This much overlooked work, which has won praise from such modern biologists as Stephen Jay Gould, immediately came to mind when I read this story about dog saves human.
Besides being a tale of morality that ellicits our sympathy and empathy, it is also a story about how the struggle of all against all, the survival of the fitist is not the morality of nature, but of capitalism as Kropotkin exposes in his work. He calls it a study of evolution and sociology, and it is a counter theory to the social Darwinism of the capitalist apologists such as Malthus and Spencer.
Kropotkin was not the originator of the idea of Mutual Aid, nor of its basic theory, he was its greatest defender and adaptor, but unfortunately like many Russian science theories it was not accepted in the West.
It still is not taught as an evolutionary theory or as part of the theories of evolution in schools or universities. You will probably come across references to Lamarck before you come across references to Mutual Aid.
"Consequently, when my attention was drawn, later on, to the relations between Darwinism and Sociology, I could agree with none of the works and pamphlets that had been written upon this important subject. They all endeavoured to prove that Man, owing to his higher intelligence and knowledge, may mitigate the harshness of the struggle for life between men; but they all recognized at the same time that the struggle for the means of existence, of every animal against all its congeners, and of every man against all other men, was "a law of Nature." This view, however, I could not accept, because I was persuaded that to admit a pitiless inner war for life within each species, and to see in that war a condition of progress, was to admit something which not only had not yet been proved, but also lacked confirmation from direct observation.
On the contrary, a lecture "On the Law of Mutual Aid," which was delivered at a Russian Congress of Naturalists, in January 1880, by the well-known zoologist, Professor Kessler, the then Dean of the St. Petersburg University, struck me as throwing a new light on the whole subject. Kessler's idea was, that besides the law of Mutual Struggle there is in Nature the law of Mutual Aid, which, for the success of the struggle for life, and especially for the progressive evolution of the species, is far more important than the law of mutual contest. This suggestion -- which was, in reality, nothing but a further development of the ideas expressed by Darwin himself in The Descent of Man -- seemed to me so correct and of so great an importance, that since I became acquainted with it (in 1883) I began to collect materials for further developing the idea, which Kessler had only cursorily sketched in his lecture, but had not lived to develop. He died in 1881.
In one point only I could not entirely endorse Kessler's views. Kessler alluded to "parental feeling" and care for progeny (see below, Chapter I) as to the source of mutual inclinations in animals. However, to determine how far these two feelings have really been at work in the evolution of sociable instincts, and how far other instincts have been at work in the same direction, seems to me a quite distinct and a very wide question, which we hardly can discuss yet. It will be only after we have well established the facts of mutual aid in different classes of animals, and their importance for evolution, that we shall be able to study what belongs in the evolution of sociable feelings, to parental feelings, and what to sociability proper -- the latter having evidently its origin at the earliest stages of the evolution of the animal world, perhaps even at the "colony-stages." I consequently directed my chief attention to establishing first of all, the importance of the Mutual Aid factor of evolution, leaving to ulterior research the task of discovering the origin of the Mutual Aid instinct in Nature."
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin 1902
The tale of the dog and the baby in Kenya illustrates this point well. Kroptokin asserts that all species are social species, and that the individual is supported in their individuality through the socialism/social construction of the species. It is a radical idea, one that says evolution occurs through species cooperation not competition. And that such species Mutual Aid occurs also between species, including those such as herbavores and carnivores which may normally prey on each other.
And it applies to those species who are territorial in giving up territory to those who need it. It would be interesting to note how this may have occured recently in Indonesia where the Tsunami drove animals into the mountains not their usual territory.
Kropotkin contends Mutual Aid between species is evidence of social morality appearing in nature.
Moreover, it is evident that life in societies would be utterly impossible without a corresponding development of social feelings, and, especially, of a certain collective sense of justice growing to become a habit. If every individual were constantly abusing its personal advantages without the others interfering in favour of the wronged, no society -- life would be possible. And feelings of justice develop, more or less, with all gregarious animals. Whatever the distance from which the swallows or the cranes come, each one returns to the nest it has built or repaired last year. If a lazy sparrow intends appropriating the nest which a comrade is building, or even steals from it a few sprays of straw, the group interferes against the lazy comrade; and it is evident that without such interference being the rule, no nesting associations of birds could exist. Separate groups of penguins have separate resting-places and separate fishing abodes, and do not fight for them. The droves of cattle in Australia have particular spots to which each group repairs to rest, and from which it never deviates; and so on.(30*) We have any numbers of direct observations of the peace that prevails in the nesting associations of birds, the villages of the rodents, and the herds of grass-eaters; while, on the other side, we know of few sociable animals which so continually quarrel as the rats in our cellars do, or as the morses, which fight for the possession of a sunny place on the shore. Sociability thus puts a limit to physical struggle, and leaves room for the development of better moral feelings. The high development of parental love in all classes of animals, even with lions and tigers, is generally known. As to the young birds and mammals whom we continually see associating, sympathy -- not love -- attains a further development in their associations. Leaving aside the really touching facts of mutual attachment and compassion which have been recorded as regards domesticated animals and with animals kept in captivity, we have a number of well certified facts of compassion between wild animals at liberty. Max Perty and L. Büchner have given a number of such facts.(31*) J.C. Wood's narrative of a weasel which came to pick up and to carry away an injured comrade enjoys a well-merited popularity.(32*) So also the observation of Captain Stansbury on his journey to Utah which is quoted by Darwin; he saw a blind pelican which was fed, and well fed, by other pelicans upon fishes which had to be brought from a distance of thirty miles.(33*) And when a herd of vicunas was hotly pursued by hunters, H.A. Weddell saw more than once during his journey to Bolivia and Peru, the strong males covering the retreat of the herd and lagging behind in order to protect the retreat. As to facts of compassion with wounded comrades, they are continually mentioned by all field zoologists. Such facts are quite natural. Compassion is a necessary outcome of social life. But compassion also means a considerable advance in general intelligence and sensibility. It is the first step towards the development of higher moral sentiments. It is, in its turn, a powerful factor of further evolution.
Chapter 2 Mutual Aid Among Animals
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin 1902
Such is the case with our stray bitch in Kenya who rescues an abandoned baby to suckle with her pups. She went to great efforts to save a puppy of a different species. But as the story says she was also suckling two other stray puppies. Unfortunately only the baby survived. Such effort to drag a baby back to her nest, and to feed and protect it is beyond the so called maternal instinct, or even the domestication bond between humans and dogs. If ever there was a clear cut case of evidence for Mutal Aid this is it.
"When the dog picked up the baby in a dirty bag, it came and dropped her behind the wooden building where the dog has its puppies," Mwalimu told The Associated Press Monday.
The dog reportedly dragged the baby across a busy road and through some barbed wire to the shed in the poor Nairobi neighbourhood where puppies from two stray dogs were sheltering.
The infant was discovered after two children alerted elders that they heard the sound of a baby crying near their wooden and corrugated-iron shack. Residents found the baby lying next to the mixed-breed dog and a own pup.
Unwanted infants are often abandoned in Kenya, with poverty and failed relationships frequently to blame. Kenya's weak law enforcement and poor social security system mean most people who forsake their babies are never caught.
The stray dog that saved the child also was being cared for Tuesday, a day after its last surviving puppy died for unknown reasons, said Jean Gilchrist of the Kenya Society for the Protection and Care of Animals.
Animal welfare officials named the dog Mkombozi, or "Saviour," and gave the dog its first bath and de-worming.
"She looks a bit depressed, so we'd like to examine her to see if she has a temperature or any other problem," Gilchrist said. "She wasn't happy when we all poured into the compound. She decided to leave, but kids in the compound brought her back for the bath because she was full of ticks."
KENYANS ARE EAGER TO ADOPT BABY GIRL FOUND IN LITTER OF PUPPIES
Felix Omondi, an 11-year-old student with his dog now named Mkombozi (Saviour) in a compound on the outskirts of Nairobi, Tuesday, May 10, 2005, after She was treated and washed by medics from Kenya Society for the Protection and care for Animals. The nursing dog foraging for food retrieved an abandoned baby girl in a forest.
So much for the individualist ideology of Herbert Spencer, Ayn Rand and the egoists, that say its a dog eat dog world,that the individual only does what feels good for them. It is a fallacious theory, with little empirical evidence other than philosophical assurances that it is the way things are aka; "There is No Alternative", as Maggie Thatcher said.
Such is not anarchist morality, as Kropotkin takes pains to prove over an over again in Mutual Aid. A stray dog in Kenya shows more anarchist morality than one will ever find in the pages of Reason magazine or the novels of Ayn Rand. Now that's irony.
Anarchist morality is the cooperative communalism of humans as social beings which allows us to express our individuality through Anarchist Communism.
"Communism is capable of assuming all forms of freedom or of oppression which other institutions are unable to do. It may produce a monastery where all implicitly obey the orders of their superior, and it may produce an absolutely free organisation, leaving his full freedom to the individual, existing only as long as the associates wish to remain together, imposing nothing on anybody, being anxious rather to defend, enlarge, extend in all directions the liberty of the individual. Communism may be authoritarian (in which case the community will soon decay) or it may be Anarchist. The State, on the contrary, cannot be this. It is authoritarian or it ceases to be the State.
Communism guarantees economic freedom better than any other form of association, because it can guarantee wellbeing, even luxury, in return for a few hours of work instead of a day's work. Now, to give ten or eleven hours of leisure per day out of the sixteen during which we lead a conscious life (sleeping eight hours), means to enlarge individual liberty to a point which for thousands of years has been one of the ideals of humanity.
This can be done today in a Communist society man can dispose of at least ten hours of leisure. This means emancipation from one of the heaviest burdens of slavery on man. It is an increase of liberty.