As for Chinese medicine – I am convinced that what the world is waiting for is a genuinely evidence-based synthesis of Western, Chinese, Indian, and other traditional medicine – using the principles that work and chucking out the ones that don’t. Rob is right that Chinese medicine is based on centuries of careful observation and experience – but unfortunately, a continuous synthesis of experience based on erroneous first principles can never outgrow its basic limitations. (The giraffe has a longer neck, but no more vertebrae, than its ancestors. A hyper-efficient car is still a car, not a bicycle. And organic agriculture is still a form of agriculture, it’s not forest gardening.) However, such a synthesis is going to be a long time coming under a system where scientific research follows the money.

He didn’t mention whether they have had any of the major diseases for which children are vaccinated (measles, mumps…) which, incidentally, are often more serious in adults than in children. If they haven’t had them (yet!), then that’s probably because the vast majority of people in any community ARE immune to these diseases, either because they were vaccinated as children or because they’ve had them.

However, if enough people do as Rob did and refuse to vaccinate their kids, then the stage is set for new outbreaks of measles, etc. This may not sound very serious, but people do sometimes die of these diseases; before vaccination, a lot of people did.

Here’s a little homemade scientific hypothesis which should be easily testable.

Fact 1. The idea of not vaccinating your kids spreads in a viral manner among certain subsets of the population.

Fact 2. Transition is another idea which is spreading in a viral manner among certain subsets of the population.

Fact 3. Both movements are likely to have little concrete impact until a “critical mass” is attained within a given community, at which point there is likely to be an outbreak of childhood diseases, or Transition-related activity (according to whatever measure you care to specify). (I think I’m still on safe ground here).

Hypothesis. The subset of the population who are open to new “alternative” ideas includes both groups mentioned above, and there is substantial overlap between the two groups. That is, if you are open to the idea of not vaccinating your kids then you are also likely to be open to the idea of Transition, and vice versa.

Corollary to the hypothesis. Measles outbreaks are more likely to occur in active Transition Towns than in the population as a whole.

If this turned out to be true, I trust that Rob would come out in favour of vaccination on the Transition Culture blog!

Thought-provoking and fascinating as usual, and picked out many of the things that troubled me with ‘Long Descent’. For me the best bit was the bit about stories, his demolition of conspiracy theorists is excellent. I do however think that your attack on acupuncture is a bit misplaced and somewhat naive and troubling. It is, of course, valid to argue that therapies and medicines need to be tested to see if they work and if they have the effects claimed, but it is vital to be aware of how medical research happens at present.

In today’s news, Pfizer, the largest Pharma company in the world, are opening a huge research centre in Cambridge in partnership with the University. http://www.pfizercambridge.com/ . Most medical research is not done by independent scientists, dedicated to the accumulation of knowledge. Most of it is done by the drug companies themselves, linked to Universities whose medical departments are now deeply dependent on these companies’ funding both in order to function and to fund PhD researchers, and linked to the NHS, which has an absolutely staggering bill for medicines. Many of these medicines create a spiral of intervention and dependency, rather than promoting health from the basics of good diet, exercise and less stressful lives, what you and I might think of as health. One could argue, and many do, that the NHS has become merely a retail outlet of Big Pharma.

It is akin to agriculture. Yes, if you add nitrogen you will get bigger crops. You can prove that in double blind trials. If you add mashed up sheep to cows their milk yield will rise. If you spray DDT on crops it will destroy the pests. Lots of research has been done on these things, again, often funded, directly or indirectly, by the very companies who stand to profit from the findings of that research.

Look at people like Mark Purdey, who tried to do the work no universities or research organisations were doing, looking at how the mixture of chemicals that farm animals are exposed to could be a trigger for BSE. Vital research, but no-one wanted to fund it because there was little to be gained financially from it. Likewise, funding for research into organics obviously gets far far less funding than research into chemical farming.

Yes, we need rigorous testing, but it is somewhat naive to assume that out there in the world there is a level playing field when it comes to research, whether it be into drugs, agrichemicals or whatever. Universities are increasingly funded by multinationals, and research, the kind that gets in Nature and Science and the other journals (which is increasingly one of the key outputs expected of academics) is expensive.

You claim that “the multi-million dollar alternative medicine industry is really just an alternative marketing wing of the mainstream drug companies”. If you are talking about vitamins and supplements you are perhaps correct, at least partly, but in terms of herbal medicine, acupuncture and so on, that is really not the case. In comparison to the UK’s conventional drug bill, both are negligable.

Testing, it would appear to me, is not the unbiased, apolitical, neutral, impartial tool dedicated to the universal good that you seem to think it is.

Finally, I have had a great deal of acupuncture in my life, I think it is extraordinary. Had some on a painful back the other week, worked a treat. Acupuncture is based on many centuries of the observation of subtle phenomena. Acupuncturists read 5 pulses as opposed to the 1 in Western medicine. Western medicine has evolved by, in part, using the human body as a tester, adding various formulations of chemicals and seeing what will happen. Chinese medicine is about a built up body of knowledge based on observing subtle phenomena, and I have always found it very effective. None of my children have ever been vaccinated, nor have they ever had any antibiotics. They are strong and healthy (touch wood).

Personally, I am deeply suspicious of many of the medicines that Big Pharma produces. In the same way that GM is sold as being about ‘feeding the world’ when really it is about maximising corporate profits, a great deal of modern medicine and research is driven by profit than by health. What next, Zone 5 arguing the benefits of double blind tested GM crops? There’s plenty of entirely impartial research on that out there to choose from…..

It’s puzzling and amusing to hear a writer chide his fellows for being overly catastrophic, while his personal expectation is a ~2 century catabolic collapse into a new Dark Age.

Sorry, but that makes him a doomer, and as Graham says, so far away from the mainstream that he’s got zero chance of ever being taken seriously by the lumpen proletariat.

I saw James Howard Kunstler give a 2 hour lecture in Vancouver, Canada back in January 2008. Kunstler is regarded by many as a doomer, but he is not. JHK expects there to be complex social organisation in the future – just at a lower level than is currently enjoyed. Something similar to that of the mid 19th century, if we’re smart and begin to make preparations.

JHK gave a laundry list of things we should do:

1. Fix the rail system and expand it.

2. Localise food production.

3. Create walkable communities.

4. Mixed use zoning of towns.

To name but 4. In spite of this, when it came time for questions and answers, the audience – or at least the questioners – just didn’t get it. There was the Electric Car Kook (there’s always one), there was the angry young man who called JHK a hypocrite for not having made his own clothes (!), and a Woo-Woo of the first order who said that we should all have sat in a circle, and that we’d fix these problems by “telling stories and singing songs”.

All the prophets of Doom have slightly different opinions on the shape of the collapse – it’s an exercise in futility for them to snipe at one another when the gulf between the collapse community and the general public is so vast.

Regarding Carl Sagan: he would been the first to deny being a Theologian. That’s just revisionism, sorry. Carl followed Plutarch’s view that

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, it is a fire to be lit.”

In calling human beings “stardust” he was speaking literally – but in POETRY, not PROSE. In one scene in the TV show Cosmos, he is asked by a 10 year old:

“Is the Earth a part of the Milky Way Galaxy?”

“YOU are a part of the Milky Way Galaxy.” he replied.

A mediocre teacher would have simply answered “YES” to the question. Both answers would be correct – but the kid who heard Sagan’s answer has a much better chance of not turning out “dumb”.

Independent studies conclude that global crude oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time, demand will increase. Oil supplies will be even tighter for the U.S. As oil producing nations consume more and more oil domestically they will export less and less. Because demand is high in China, India, the Middle East, and other oil producing nations, once global oil production begins to decline, demand will always be higher than supply. And since the U.S. represents one fourth of global oil demand, whatever oil we conserve will be consumed elsewhere. Thus, conservation in the U.S. will not slow oil depletion rates significantly.

Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment. The independent scientists of the Energy Watch Group conclude in a 2007 report titled: “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society:”

“By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame.”

http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Press_Oilreport_22-10-2007.pdf

With increasing costs for gasoline and diesel, along with declining taxes and declining gasoline tax revenues, states and local governments will eventually have to cut staff and curtail highway maintenance. Eventually, gasoline stations will close, and state and local highway workers won’t be able to get to work. We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel and gasoline powered trucks for bridge maintenance, culvert cleaning to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, and roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, large transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables from great distances. With the highways out, there will be no food coming from far away, and without the power grid virtually nothing modern works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated building systems.

This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html

I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207. http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/

“the fallacy that [... people ...] would sit on their hands and do nothing until collapse overwhelmed them.”

“Statistics from Russia, where a similar scenario played out in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, suggest that population levels could be halved within this century”

It doesn’t require a catastrophic collapse to have population drop heavily over a century. As noted here, Russia has a high rate of deaths from violence and alcohol, and more importantly a low birth rate of 1.34 children per fertile adult woman (compared to the 2.14 required to keep a steady population), and are expected to lose 14% of their current population total by 2050.

Japan also has a low birth rate, but low mortality and high life expectancy, yet still expect a 21% decline by 2050.

So the prosperous country faces a similar or greater population decline compared to the post-collapse country. Thus, a population decline is not in itself indicative of a catastrophic collapse.

The lesson of the Soviet collapse is not that millions drop dead from famine or civil conflict, but rather that people have a much shittier life, yet somehow muddle along. And one thing they do in response to low available resources is to have less children.

Strouts also queried,

“One dimension of that context is likely to become the preeminent political fact of the age of peak oil: the impending decline- and, at least potentially, the catastrophic collapse- of America’s world empire.”

asking, “I mean, how catastrophic is “catastrophic” exactly?”

Obviously that’s for Greer to say, really. But one definition of catastrophe is, “Any large and disastrous event of great significance; a disaster beyond expectations.” Definitions of “disaster” mostly refer to catastrophes, but the UN tells us that a disaster is,

“A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society causing widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.”

I think we might be getting somewhere with this. Is there a chance of a combination of events – economic, military, environmental, political – which are a serious disruption exceeding the ability of a country to cope using its own resources? Absolutely.

In fact, if we imagine collapse as Greer does, as its being like Winnie-the-Pooh being dragged downstairs by Christopher Robin – bump, bump, bump – then a “disaster” is the “bump” down, and the period where the country desperately tries to recover is the flat step – until the next bump.

But perhaps the key thing here is the event overwhelming the country’s own ability to handle it. Because in the modern world if one country is hit by a famine or tsunami, other countries step in to help. Notably, countries recently hit by their own disasters don’t send much help.

So as we hit resource limits and suffer climate change, it’s easy to imagine that a series of disasters in different countries mean that each is left pretty much on its own.

And that, perhaps, is a “catastrophe” – when you have a disaster and there’s nobody to help you.

There are other things in Strouts’ article I could respond to, but I think that’s enough for one comment.

Your review is very interesting. It is neither that I agree with your viewpoints nor Michael’s.

I have an history of exchanges with Michael. I have been perfectly aware of the weaknesses you put the finger at, for years now. The book which explains my position will be published in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, in French. But, an english translation should soon follow.

You know, let me tell you, Michael does not get it completely. You don’t too. I am not sure I do it either. However, from my vantage point, I understand very well what you are both talking about.

All important key-words are in your text. However, and this is the crucial thing, our future is beyond current consciousness. It is there that we shall find the exit door. There, spirituality and science can be, in a way, reconciled. In a very surprising way. Western philosophy, thinking, religion and science is about to be launched on a radically new path.

Yes, I know. It is hard buy this.

But, you will see it with own eyes pretty soon.

Regards

P.S. Please, do not hesitate to get in touch with me.