Progress vs. Apocalypse: the Stories We Tell Ourselves
October 31, 2012
Discussions about peak oil and the predicament of industrial society constantly revolve around two completely different, and in fact opposite, sets of assumptions and beliefs about the future. Most people insist that no matter what problems crop up before us, modern science, technology, and raw human ingenuity will inevitable win out and make the world of the future better than the world of today. A sizeable minority of people, however, insist that no matter what we do, some overwhelming catastrophe will soon bring civilization suddenly crashing down into mass death and a Road Warrior future.
This is a chapter from The ENERGY Reader: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth (2012).