JOHN MICHAEL GREER

The difference between diffuse and concentrated energy sources, the theme of last week's Archdruid Report post, means that some of today's highly touted alternative energy schemes may be worth much less than currently claimed, while other technologies that receive much less attention may be the wave of the future. A closer consideration of energy concentration and its effects helps clarify which is which.

A great deal of discussion of renewable energy these days focuses on massive, centralized projects, relying on habits of thought we inherit from the departing age of cheap abundant energy. With the aid of two inventors and a glass of brandy, the Archdruid explains why thermodynamics suggests a radically different approach.

One of the least understood dimensions of the crisis of industrial society is the role of energy concentration, rather than the simple quantity of energy, in making the modern world possible. Renewable energy sources have much lower concentrations than fossil fuels, and that distinction can have critical impacts on what can and can't be done with them -- a lesson easily learnt from one of the few really mature renewable energy technologies we have at present.

The predicament of industrial society unfolds to a large extent from its mishandling of energy issues. Because of that, the laws of thermodynamics -- and no, to borrow a phrase, they're not merely suggestions -- have to be taken into account in any attempt to make sense of the economics of the approaching deindustrial age.

If the United States is becoming a Third World nation, as last week's Archdruid Report post suggests, one unexpected resource with particular relevance to relocalization is the alternative approach to economic development in the Third World proposed by maverick economist E.F. Schumacher.

Amid today's varying attempts to imagine a postpetroleum America, one very likely equivalent has received little attention -- the impoverished, dysfunctional nations of the contemporary Third World. Maybe it's time to consider the possibility.

For decades now, those concerned with the future of the industrial world have warned that a point would come, sooner or later, when the consequences of all that short-term thinking would begin coming home to roost. For the United States, that point might be arriving now.

Much of the conversation about community on the peak oil blogosphere in the last few weeks has tacitly assumed that Americans had their communities taken from them by circumstances, if not by some sinister cabal. In fact, of course, most Americans actively walked away from their communities, and continue to do so. Maybe it's time that we ask why.

Very little seems to connect the quest for community in today's declining industrial societies with the mostly empty and mostly forgotten lodge halls that still dot America's older cities and towns. Appearances deceive, though, for the old fraternal lodges -- themselves the product of an earlier quest for community -- offer some useful pointers for the present, as well as a cautionary lesson of no small importance.

Discussions of community in peak oil circles, as elsewhere, tend to focus exclusively on the benefits to be gained from participation in community, and rarely discuss the costs -- a point that may have more than a little to do with the very limited success of communitarian projects so far. Given that community organization is one of the few tools able to cope with significant features of our present predicament, it's high time to grapple with both sides of the equation.