The London Lounge

The End of the Petrol Era and its Possible Positive Consequences on the Elegant Life

Please, don’t think that my intention is to start any kind of debate on economic, political or ideological matters. I’ve in the lounge long enough to understand that it those topics are not to be treated here, however much we will to express our ideas in a such a well-build community. However, I’ve had a thought on the end of petrol that relates to the elegant life, and I’ve moved to expose it here by the recent comments by Frog in Suit and NJS in the thread ‘Cigar bands – on or off?’.

I’ve always thought that the of petrol will be good not only for the environment and the conservation of planet earth, it’s life and it’s beauty, but also for our uncontrolled, decentralized, trade-centred, globalized late capitalist world economy. Not only because it will mean that the ups and downs of the stock market, inflation, exchange rates and even interest rates will not be dependent on a bunch of authoritarian, totalitarian, and generally dictatorial leaders of third-world countries supportive of radical religious and ideological views with no sense of responsibility and no knowledge of the moral and socio-economic consequences of their fear-leaded, emotive decisions made to satisfy their greed and misleading their citizens – as I’ve said, I don’t intend this as a thread on political and economic issues.

But it all comes from my admiration of the lifestyle of the old money European and American haute bourgeoisie households and the fantasies it arises on me. When I see photographs or read descriptions of, or see with my eyes the amount of accumulated wealth they could have, the quality of everything material that surrounded them, I come up with a question somewhat rhetorical – why don’t we have it now? Of course, what a wealthy person can have now is much less than then, and at the same time the conditions of the least favoured have improved enormously. But I think, if we are supposed to be better now, shouldn’t we have an economy capable of producing more wealth? For example, the grandiosity of a building like Saint Petersburg’s Winter Palace, or Madrid’s El Escorial, or Versailles, is impossible even to think of achieving today – even for the richest of billionaires. Not only the materials they were build of and decorated with are majestic, but the aesthetics achieved by the architecture’s and various artisan’s oeuvres are unbelievable today. I won’t be asking here why we’re not building them today, because we all know the answer – it simply isn’t practical. It’s not practical to make an enormous and beautiful building just for a family to live on it. We obviously live in a more practical world, but perhaps we have gone too far on the opposite direction and we’ve forgotten the use of practicality – i.e. that it serves us and our lives improve. I don’t want to get into the debate of how the modern life steals people’s time and energy from them to serve the rest. But what I want is to say that economy exists as the system of production, exchange, distribution and consumption of goods and services, and therefore, we should be able to use in our favour, and one of the ways of doing so would be to try and improve the quality of the materials, objects and tools we use to live.

The end of petrol might be the perfect opportunity for this. Because apart from being our main source of energy, it is one of the components of a material which, although practical, lacks any sort of qualitative or aesthetic value – plastic, in all its forms. I guess scientists are already working on developing plastic without petrol, perhaps they’ve already achieved it, I don’t care and I’m too tired and unwilling to find out, but if we can avoid it we should. Because no more plastic means we need substitutes for it. And that could be the start of a move towards better quality and more aesthetic materials. Materials like metal, wood, marble, shale, granite, all sorts of rocks, glass, textiles, ceramic, porcelain… Who knows, there are plenty of them for us to use. All these materials are better than plastic in many ways: their more natural, more lasting, more aesthetic, and have much more attributes than plastic or any synthetic, artificial material. There are so many possible functions for each of them, and would improve the quality of the objects and tools of all sorts.

Just as with clothing, were synthetic fibres have substituted better quality and more aesthetic fabrics for being more practical, the same has happened with furniture, objects, and tools of all sorts. I’ll give an example: I play tennis, and those of you who play tennis and are over 40 years old you will definitely have noticed the changes in the materials of tennis racquets over decades. True, modern racquets are incredibly light, they have practical qualities like being more precise when hitting the ball, not vibrating when hitting it, etc. But when I saw my father’s old Dunlop racquet, the quality of it’s heavy, real, natural wood and pig’s gut strings, compared to my titanium and graphite alloy and synthetic strings, and of course, his read Made in England and mine Made in China, I realized how quality and aesthetic had been lost to practicality. I’m not saying we should make Nadal and company play with the old racquets from now on, but tables from Ikea made of some sort of material which is similar to wood but not exactly, or glasses made of glass and not of plastic, or just anything else you can think of – I’m a bit tired to think of more examples right now, but there are thousands which could work.

I think this is something we seriously need to think about. Not only because it relates to the elegant life, but also because it could be the start of something. Perhaps a move from industrial, machine-made, mass production series, soulless products made by soulless people without a job but not an oeuvre, to a more artisan-based economy, where people’s job enhances their lives and rewards them in a spiritual level, even if still with technology, capitalism and numbers on it, but focused on improving our lives instead on our lives focused on improving the economy. Otherwise, we—humanity as a whole—are moving towards being the richest of the cemetery, but being dead in life, and that is seriously absurd – dada-level absurd.

Thank you for reading this long, extensive post, I hope it inspired or added something to the reader’s conceptions. Please don’t take this that much as a proposal of a utopian new economic system but simply as a proposal of possible positive consequences of the end of oil. I am willing and hoping for debate.

I suppose that nowadays we live in a civilization where wealth is more evenly distributed. It is certainly true that some could afford magnificent palaces and so forth, but this was only possible at the expense of the lower classes who had their labour exploited (I am trying not to sound too much like a Marxist).

I do agree with you though that we may be entering a more natural and renewable age, out of necessity. Whether you agree with this climate change nonsense or not (perhaps this phrasing betrays my viewpoint? ) to ween ourselves off oil dependency is desirable regardless for its environmental and material after effects. I find it ironic that people who are supposedly 'aware' (but that's about it) of environmental factors still persist in buying cheap material objects that are not designed to last. There is lot to be said for paying for quality upfront and getting something that lasts.

Interesting topic.

I agree of course that Versailles et al. were only possible because labour was very cheap (think how many gardeners it must have taken to maintain a huge garden, without mechanized tools) and the owner, being the king, had virtually unlimited funds. And it housed several thousand people: the royal family, the court, the central government, the servants...

Even now, maintaining a stately home of England implies a very large income on the one hand and available and willing labour on the other hand (with mod cons -- no more scullery maids carrying hot water and chamber pots-- and machines --vacuum cleaners, tractors, etc...-- Thank god for technology!)

As to the question of oil running out, i would hazard that the rising prices, which we are witnessing in fits and starts but the long-term trend is undeniable, will make oil-based materials (plastic...) more expensive and will also make it feasible and economically sensible to develop alternatives, and to recycle more. What those alternatives will be, I do not know. I am not sure that this will make us go back to traditional materials and techniques, except at the margin and much to my regret (I am an old fogey!). I think new materials will be invented (nano technologies?).

Another impact will be on transportation patterns: I remember reading somewhere that chickens raised in Brazil were being shipped (presumably frozen) to the Far East for processing, then reexported to North America and probably Western Europe as well. Higher oil prices will put a stop to this wasteful nonsense, or have already done so. Manufacturing, at least where the cost of transportation relative to the cost of the goods is high, will be repatriated to be closer to the consumer. (It is to be hoped that Western Countries, in their urge to outsource production, have not wiped out or let whither some useful skills.--I read somewhere that in some fields, it was difficult to find experienced production managers to run factories.)

The third impact will be on new energy sources: not bio fuels which seem inefficient and displace foood production, but wind power (until we get fed up with windmills destroying our landscape), tides and sea currents, thermal wells (not sure if this is the proper term in English), and solar. I recently read that new technologies are being brought in which reduce the cost of solar panels, make them pliable and more efficient (so they can be useful in more areas). Large Investments are being made in the production of solar panels, in China, no less, among other places. One consequence could be that we will not be relying so much on large production and distribution networks for our energy, but more on local providers, even on individual energy sources. I find the idea of being self-sufficient quite attractive....

I think that, beyond the immediate economic cycles, with the property bubble, after the internet one, predictably bursting, we are also witnessing the slow changeover away from oil toward future energy sources and utilization, whatever they may be. This is likely to be traumatic for many people. Unfortunately, and I am not going to go beyond that, I do not see among Western leaders much effort or political capital being spent on explaining the foreseeable changes and their likely consequences, or preparing their people to adapt and survive.

One last note: I have to remind myself that predicting the future is impossible I apologize for pontificating for so long and hope the above is not too controversial.

Frog in Suit

Imagine the London tailors voyaging to NY on a sailship to get a few suits fitted Of course I am being silly, but that reminds me of a joke where a small child is asked: "What would we do every evening if we didn't have electricity?" - to which he replies innocently: "We would have to watch television at candlelight"...
Don't forget that we are many more today and we are used to many more amenities and consume a lot more resources than 200 years ago. The chain reactions of oil exhaustion throughout our social edifice are so severe that it would probably take mankind at least 50 years if not 100 to recover from the shock, especially that we are unprepared for it.
Are we ready to give up our comfortable lives? Would that make us any more spiritual, or even less so since we would be striving to survive on dwindling (and therefore expensive!) natural resources? I don't know, but I suspect that for about a century elegance would be the last and least of our concerns...
Read Alvin Toffler for more.

Some cars in Brazil run on ethanol, which is renewable resource, produced fron sugar cane. Of course, the main oil producing and consuming nations have taxed its importation to death, which is a pity really, because they will not have running vehicles when the oil does run out. However, there are too many vehicles on the roads everywhere and if I ruled the world I would restrict car ownership and impose big taxes on fuel and encourage walking and The Bike. In all seriousness, the pollution from burned fuels is extremely concerning. Dead Penguins are (ominously) being ashed up here - they starved to death in their Antarctic waters and the currents bring them all the way up the coast of South America. Why they starved to death is not totally clear to me but I expect that it has at least something to do with man's use of fossil fuels.
NJS

storeynicholas wrote:Some cars in Brazil run on ethanol, which is renewable resource, produced fron sugar cane. Of course, the main oil producing and consuming nations have taxed its importation to death, which is a pity really, because they will not have running vehicles when the oil does run out. However, there are too many vehicles on the roads everywhere and if I ruled the world I would restrict car ownership and impose big taxes on fuel and encourage walking and The Bike.
NJS

In Australia the problem is not availability of ethanol (we have plenty of left over sugar cane bits [I'm not up on the process] to convert) but rather on public perceptions. For some reason, despite the fact that I have read that some cars in Brazil run on 100% ethanol, there are plenty of rumors floating around that ethanol ruins motors. As a result, people here have been slow and reluctant in adopting it.

I tend to agree with Costi in this. As a former historian, I see overpopulation as the taproot of present-day evils: the world holds twice as many people as it did when I was born -- as recently as the 1950s! -- and more than four times as many as it did when my great-uncle, whom I knew well, was born.

Much of the lifting of the very poor to modest affluence, in the Western world, and from a brutish and short existence (apologies to you-know-whom) to something slightly better in the rest of the world, occurred at the expense of unsustainable production and consumption. Now that both production and consumption are threatened by exhaustion of easily found and fashioned materials, I fear war, famine, and plague will afflict mankind for -- who knows? two or three generations? -- before a vade mecum is established for revival of civilization on, alas, a lesser scale.

It's happened before, albeit on nothing larger than a continent. Think of the collapse of the Roman empire in the West, or of the Moslem conquest of the Eastern empire, the fall of Germany in 1945, the period of the warring states in China, and much else. Why should we be exempt?

Quick comments on NJS's and PVPatty's observations:

I understand the mass starvation of penguins to be caused chiefly by overfishing (by human beings anxious to feed their burgeoning billions, and carried out at a rate that does not allow the fisheries even to sustain themselves) and only slightly by pollution of Antartic waters. Will we cure the problem by reducing our own numbers or even by curbing our personal appetites? I doubt it.

Ethanol is produced and used in quantity in the United States. It is no solution for the exhaustion of petroleum, however: one of the major reasons for the worldwide rise in prices of comestibles is the diversion of maize from foodstuff to fuel; and even sawgrass (switchgrass? hemp?) may require more energy in conversion to fuel than its product will afford the user.

There can be little doubt that overpopulation is indeed a problem. I'm not suggesting (as I believe Prince Philip has) that we introduce superbugs to kill some people off (though I know some that we could put at the top of the list ) but I can't understand the chronic fear people have of declining birth rates and so on. The same goes for measures of economic growth. Is growth really everything? Is growth worth it if it is not sustainable?

These are the questions I ask; I wish that I had the answers.

Overcrowding is a big problem - when people lack space they interefere with each other's comfort. The UK is vastly overcrowded and it's getting worse.
NJS

pvpatty wrote:There can be little doubt that overpopulation is indeed a problem. I'm not suggesting (as I believe Prince Philip has) that we introduce superbugs to kill some people off (though I know some that we could put at the top of the list )

While I would heartily endorse the use of such a device for selected targets (You know who you are !), I may lose some sleep over its likely inaccuracy.

Frog in Suit

storeynicholas wrote:Overcrowding is a big problem - when people lack space they interefere with each other's comfort. The UK is vastly overcrowded and it's getting worse.
NJS

On this point, I recall reading that Alan Pease (I think) did a study where it was found that crime rates and so on were higher in areas such as big, highly urbanised cities where people were in closer physical proximity to each other. Apparently having less personal space (or at least a perception of such) can send some people mad.

pvpatty wrote:

storeynicholas wrote:Overcrowding is a big problem - when people lack space they interefere with each other's comfort. The UK is vastly overcrowded and it's getting worse.
NJS

On this point, I recall reading that Alan Pease (I think) did a study where it was found that crime rates and so on were higher in areas such as big, highly urbanised cities where people were in closer physical proximity to each other. Apparently having less personal space (or at least a perception of such) can send some people mad.

While I do not doubt the truth of your observation, I think other factors may play a role here. I have heard that Japan for instance, while giving Westerners an impression of overcrowding, is a remarkably safe place (This is hearsay only).

I should think that architecture and urban planning (Cf another thread on the subject) as well as "social control" (by which I do not mean coercion or repression) have a lot to do also. A neighbourhood made up of human-sized quality dwellings, where people know one another, where social classes mix, whith many small shops, local schools nearby, activities for the local youth, etc... is less likely to breed crime than a large housing estate from the sixties or seventies, put up in the middle of nowhere, with adults either unemployed or far away at work everyday, with the young left to their own devices all day long.

Frog in Suit

Frog in Suit wrote:

pvpatty wrote:

storeynicholas wrote:Overcrowding is a big problem - when people lack space they interefere with each other's comfort. The UK is vastly overcrowded and it's getting worse.
NJS

On this point, I recall reading that Alan Pease (I think) did a study where it was found that crime rates and so on were higher in areas such as big, highly urbanised cities where people were in closer physical proximity to each other. Apparently having less personal space (or at least a perception of such) can send some people mad.

While I do not doubt the truth of your observation, I think other factors may play a role here. I have heard that Japan for instance, while giving Westerners an impression of overcrowding, is a remarkably safe place (This is hearsay only).

I should think that architecture and urban planning (Cf another thread on the subject) as well as "social control" (by which I do not mean coercion or repression) have a lot to do also. A neighbourhood made up of human-sized quality dwellings, where people know one another, where social classes mix, whith many small shops, local schools nearby, activities for the local youth, etc... is less likely to breed crime than a large housing estate from the sixties or seventies, put up in the middle of nowhere, with adults either unemployed or far away at work everyday, with the young left to their own devices all day long.

Frog in Suit

I agree that where there are communities there is less trouble. There are plans afoot to build swathes of housing estates in Cornwall and bring in people from all over the country - this is bound to produce problems.
NJS

Doesn't Prince Charles have some sort of foundation that is trying to setup harmoniously planned communities? I recall seeing something on TV, and remember that he was chastising modern architects for placing the motor vehicle at the centre of residential design. I will investigate.