This a review of the newish movie ‘Collapse’, review written by a woman of color named Erinn, which I saw on the Bring the Ruckus website. ‘Collapse’ apparently features Michael Ruppert talking about his apocalyptic visions for the world, filmed from his hideout bunker underground somewhere. Ruppert maintains a horrific blog and used to edit From the Wilderness, a conspiracy-oriented website that intermixes information about peak oil with 9/11 Truth stuff and other scary things.
I was glad to read Erinn’s review, even though I’m not planning to see this film, because it highlights both the racist/classist elements, as well as the lack of grounding in analysis about social change, that continues to hinder the peak oil “movement.”
What Ruppert, and other scaremongers like William Catton of Overshoot and Jay Hanson of dieoff.com have failed to comprehend is that peak oil and other ecological limits do not in themselves guarantee social disaster just because capitalism is collapsing. There are non-capitalist, non-fossil fuel-driven ways of organizing society, some of which would be much better, and some much worse.
Peak oil does present us with a stark dilemma, but like any dilemma we have two paths we can go down – of course there’s the path of continued plunder and violence, militarism and neo-fascism – but there’s also that of freedom, democracy, and sustainability. By hiding this second path from their readers and viewers, Ruppert and other ‘doomers’ inadvertently present compelling arguments for the first.
There’s still plenty of resources to meet everyone’s basic needs of food, shelter, water, etc. But because those in power have control over production, resources are being diverted to socially and ecologically inappropriate ends, like the military, banks, private jets, prisons, tar sands, etc. Never ever forget that there is always a fundamental political choice of how to allocate resources. Until the peak oil ‘movement’ catches on to this reality, it will continue to be dominated by scared, privileged white folks worried about a future catastrophe yet who don’t see the catastrophes that are already affecting most of the peoples of the world.
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Happy MLK Day!
[alex knight]
by Erinn
So, I went to see a movie called “Collapse.” I read about this movie a little bit before seeing it (full disclosure: I get caught it weird Internet spaces and was reading an article about Mein Kampf. This movie was mentioned in the article for some reason). The premise of the movie is pretty simple: Michael Ruppert believes that he know how and why the US and global economies are currently collapsing (Get it? That’s the movie title…and the country…). The ticket was like $4, which in LA is pretty much like highway robbery.
Originally I went to see this film because it looked interesting and because of the whole $4 thing. About 30 minutes into the movie, I realized that there was a larger discussion to be had here that went beyond reviewing a film. There are aspects of this film that I found interesting and problematic from a practical political perspective, but I think that there is even a more interesting discussion here on the limitations of some supposedly “leftist” and “revolutionary” political ideologies and the complicated nature of the political moment that is in our near future.
So, just to summarize: The film really focuses on Ruppert and the Peak Oil Movement (which to be fair I know little about.) For those of you that are in the same boat as I am, the Peak Oil Movement refers to the idea/scientific principle that there is a limited amount of fossil fuels in the world. Ruppert looks at the fact that Saudi Arabia, which has the largest, recorded landed oil reserves, now drills for oil offshore. As offshore oil drilling is a much more costly endeavor than drilling for oil on land, this could be an indication that the oil in Saudi Arabia, and thus countries with even less oil, is on the global decline as a “dependable” resource. Ruppert identifies the fact that the economic system that the US and the rest of the world operates with requires “infinite resources” while depending on the “finite resource” of oil as the central paradox of our existence today. The movie goes on to note the limitations of other fuel possibilities (with the exception of solar and wind power, Mike identifies other fuel resources as economically and environmentally unfeasible) and declares that “revolution” (which isn’t ever defined in the film) will come from the anger people feel because of the fuel and food shortages that will plague the world in the upcoming decades.
Ruppert constructs a parable to help the audience understand his perspective. He describes the Titanic and himself as a boat-builder on the ship. He’s just been informed that the ship is going to sink and that there are not enough boats on the ship to save everyone on board the ship. (While telling this parable Ruppert seems to be ignoring the racial and gendered histories of this moment…aka white dudes locking poor and “colored” folks in the engine room of the ship.)
Ruppert says that as a boat-builder, he can select from a group of three sets of people to help:
1. People that are just trippin’. They can’t figure out what to do and generally run around, scatterstyle like a squirrel.
2. People that are ready and willing to build boats and do what’s necessary to get off the boat.
3. People that have drank the Haterade, don’t believe that the boat can ever sink, and want to go back to playing shuffleboard or whatever it is that you do on a boat for that long.
According to Ruppert, years of work in this field have taught him that the people he wants to save are the people that hang out in that second category. Beyond this, he notes that his only responsibility really is to only help himself. Basically, everyone else on the boat can go suck it. Ruppert’s goal is not to save everyone on the boat, or even anyone for that matter. He simply operates as the key master for access to the New World with no real mechanism for helping people either do something about the end of the world or get a ticket to this new spot. So, to continue Ruppert’s boat metaphor, he seems stoked to have saved these “conscious” people on the deck of the boat, helping him, but he never thinks about where all the people of color that work on the Titanic went. Something tells me my Black ass isn’t invited on that damn boat.
I should discuss Ruppert’s background because it clearly has an impact on the film and his perspective. His mother was a code-breaker for the US Army and his Dad worked as a creepy CIA spook guy. He got a Bachelors at UCLA in Political Science and graduated as the Valedictorian of his class at the LAPD Police Academy. After that crowning achievement, he went on to work in South Central Los Angeles, a community that he describes as “the jungle” in the opening moments of the film. After working on DEA taskforces for narcotics, he found out that the CIA was helping to facilitate the importing and distribution of cocaine from Nicaragua to communities of color, specifically in Black communities in South Los Angeles. Apparently, Ruppert bucked up and complained to his superior about this shady behavior and was effectively run out of the LAPD. He’s the guy that told John Deutch off at that community forum in South Central. He went on to do investigative journalism through his newsletter Into the Wilderness and hang out with his dog.
While Ruppert spends considerable time discussing the nuances of oil reserves around the world, he seems to overlook and/or out-in-out ignore fundamental principles for the discussion he’s having. He never seems to want to say the word “capitalism.” In fact, I think that he said the word only once throughout the entire film. Along with this, the biggest gaping hole in this film is the lack of a racial or gendered discussion. He talks about the destruction of markets and how demand will wash up as prices go through the roof, but he never explains how white supremacy ensures that people of color are first in line for this path of destruction and upheaval that he describes. He discusses this conflict using a universalized “we” when in reality, the “we” he’s talking about throughout the film is clearly “we, white people.”
Ruppert’s analysis clearly misunderstands US history. The conflict he describes is not a new one; rather the US has been waging in this war against people of color since the country’s inception. What becomes apparent in listening to Ruppert is that while he was hanging out in Oregon, he never used his library card to borrow some DuBois or C.L.R. James or pretty much any race scholar of the past 100 years. His unwillingness to examine social histories and his social position as a white man living in the United States makes his movement almost cannibalistic. His perspective is built on understanding how the drive by capitalist governments to colonize the Brown world for access to power and resources (which, depending on the era has been gold, slave labor, sugar, cotton, diamonds, oil, etc) has lead to/will lead to the end of the world. But the foundation of the Peak Oil Movement as described by Ruppert seems to be to sit around and wait for the shit to hit the fan, while basking in their dopeness in these “eco-villages” or other sustainable, sealed off communities, populated by those that “got it.” Essentially, Ruppert’s solution seems to be to use his white privilege as a way to compile information about the end of the world and protect others (see: white folks), while those that are tied to the system (and locked in the bottom of the boat shoveling coal in the engine), reified by his very identity as a white man, are left to fend for ourselves.
Ruppert looks to compare two countries that have faced changing political landscapes, he says, primarily because the collapse of the U.S.S.R. took their access to fossil fuels away: North Korea and Cuba. He says that North Korea responded with “Socialism” (I quote this because this was his description, not mine. All these years and I thought that totalitarian, authoritative regimes and Socialist republics were different…), Cuba responded with a local growth model. Ruppert goes on to describe the Agrarian Land Reforms of Cuba as the quintessential capitalist idea, one that has provided Cuba with stability through this fuel decline.
At this point in the film, my brain actually popped out of my skull and said, “Shut the fuck up.” So since I didn’t have the time nor desire to spend time thinking about just how flawed that analysis was, I started to think about the tone of the film. The idea behind the movie really just seems to be to show how fly Ruppert and his group of other activist road dogs are. The movie shows clips of him “predicting” the current global financial crises, clips of him claiming to have “predicted” the attacks on 9/11, and “predicting” the growing increase in oil prices and decline in oil production. He starts to cry in the film only when he notes how hard it is for him to always have been right about these crises.
This, coupled with his perspective of individualism/his boat analogy, present a perspective that must be interrogated. Ruppert seems to be caught up in the paradox of a wanting to inform people of all the fucked up things in the world but not caring enough (maybe?) to offer solutions to fix these things.
It becomes clear in the film that Ruppert is right about one thing: there is a global decline and this decline is going to lead a lot more people going down Pissed Off Ave. Most of us, I think, have been waiting for a moment where people can recognize the flaws of the system and will look to reshape the world using a different model. Shit, all we have to do is watch 20 minutes of the nightly news or “Flavor of Love” to know that shit is fucked up right now. But what Ruppert’s movie along with other crazy clips of people trippin’ like this one, this one, and this one, show is that while this is clearly a critical moment, it isn’t a moment that is exclusively seen and/or owned by those prepared to develop a world where exploitation isn’t the central principle. There are others, on both sides of the political spectrum that see moment as a time to capitalize on “collapse” and incorporate their political ideology into the mainstream.
What becomes clear when watching this film or watching various white people flip the fuck out at political “rallies” and tea party shit is that people are legitimately frightened. Whether they’re scared of Black people, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, liberals, religious zealotry, crazy ass white folks, or turtles (seriously. fuck turtles.), people are straight up scared right now. And while fear will lead up all to some revolution, it may not lead up to the one that we all want.
By the end of the movie, it becomes pretty clear that the goal of the film is to frighten people. And that shit worked because I was scared shitless. Ruppert doesn’t seems to want to offer any suggestions to help his audience either. Instead, he spends the final moments of the film chiding the audience for not listening to him and all the things that he knows. The line of the film that best summarizes Ruppert’s political/moral perspective is when he tells the audience “If a bear attacks your camp, you don’t have to be faster than the bear. You just have to be faster than the slowest person in your camp.”
I think the flaws of this movie highlight ideas that should constantly be engaged by any radical organization that is participating in the liberation of people from systems of racism, capitalism, and oppression around the world. The free society we envision cannot come about without the majority of the world becoming participants in their own liberation. I think that the goal of any group doing this work should be to help all those people on that boat, even those dumb motherfuckers that think the boat is fine.
And if a bear attacks your camp, you should all get together, collectively scream, and jump in the car. Fuck running from a bear; the car’s faster dumbass.
The End of Capitalism 
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January 21, 2010 at 12:51 am
ED`
Ruppert represents anything but the mainstream of the peakoil movement.
“What’s wrong with Ruppert’s peak oil activism/rhetoric” would be a reasonable title if reviewing his film…but please don’t title it “what’s wrong with the peak oil movement”as a whole.
“There’s still plenty of resources to meet everyone’s basic needs of food, shelter, water, etc”
Agreed,but please don’t assume that no one who is in the POAM isn’t aware of that (peak oil awareness movement, that is we work for awareness about peak oil, we don’t work for peak oil itself)
And just because there’s enough resources doesn’t mean that global warming won’t make a mess of water availability, or that peak oil won’t make food production harder,or that peak oil won’t make a major problem energy-wise.Don’t lecture to us that solar and wind are possible; most of us know this, including those of us who are not “doomers” like Ruppert is. We are more than well aware of that, but the point is that way, way too little is and will have been done, on those fronts, and thus, in the short to medium term, being stuck (thanks to the politics you understand all too well) with a fossil fuel based economy, there will be major energy problems. So there’s no contradiction at all: both are true: energy problems (given the way the energy infrastructure is today and how long it takes to change hundreds of gigawatts of it) and it’s also true that potentially there is enough energy, water, etc, to end all of extreme poverty, etc, etc.
Meanwhile some of us who are level headed have to battle against the “doomer” crowd of peak oilers, have to wake up peak oilers who dismiss global warming, have to wake up global-warming aware people who try to dismiss peak, and if you study carefully it’s not hard to understand why the two problems are, first, both real, and second, do NOT cancel each other out. One of the MANY reasons being the establishment will likely push towards coal or tar sands or both, as crude oil peaks, making global warming worse, so we must educate ourselves and the public about both problems, and will have our hands full working to address both.
As positive is that within the POAM, there is a subset of non-radical folks who (thanks to peak oil, peak NG coming in the next decade of so, etc) understand something: that our economy not only can change, but MUST change– they are thus a good recruiting ground for those who want to wake people up to the need to move to (democratic etc) alternatives to today’s “capitalist” economy.
January 21, 2010 at 5:10 pm
ED`
“As positive is that within the POAM, there is a subset of non-radical folks who (thanks to peak oil, peak NG coming in the next decade of so, etc) understand something: that our economy not only can change, but MUST change”
I neglected to say why; because while not yet seeing many reasons to criticize capitalism on other grounds (democracy, justice, etc) they DO see, this subset of the POAM, they do see that it’s “based on perpetual exponential growth” and understand, unlike the majority of the public, that this is impossible to continue indefinitely.
Thus: “they are thus a good recruiting ground for those who want to wake people up to the need to move to (democratic etc) alternatives to today’s “capitalist” economy.”
February 1, 2010 at 3:34 am
alex
hey economic democracy,
thanks for posting your comments. i am sympathetic to your views, and appreciate your website.
sorry if i came off as hostile to the peak oilers, i personally started out with my ideology and activism very much in the peak oil camp, in 2001. in 2005/6 i even organized a community group called Lehigh Valley Beyond Oil which was similar to a Transition Town project. that same year i wrote my Master’s Thesis on PO. and now i’m writing a book which sees peak oil as one of the most important ecological limits to growth and ties this geological fact into a radical political analysis in a way that as far as i know is entirely original.
so yes, i appreciate that the “peak oil awareness movement” as you say does have the potential to wake some people up to the unsustainability of our system and perhaps lead them to envision and work for alternatives. i’m living proof.
however, i believe the contradictions within the ideas of Ruppert, Hanson, Catton, Savinar, etc. have NOT been sufficiently challenged within the “POAM”, and therefore there IS something “wrong with the peak oil movement.”
specifically, there is a tendency to FEAR the meltdown of the capitalist system, without thinking about the huge positive potentials that exist within this paradigm shift. without any appreciation for how capitalism has devastated our planet and impoverished billions of people, it’s hard to see why ending it is potentially a very good thing. and it is.
behind this irrational FEAR is often an unquestioned PRIVILEGE – for example the white, male, wealthy/affluent privilege that people living in the Empire often hold as if by right. many folks who are concerned about peak oil are primarily concerned that it means they’ll have to give up their suburban McMansions, cushy jobs, and tomatoes shipped in from Chile. that’s why Mike Ruppert has retreated into an underground bunker and still has followers listen to him tell them to buy gold, etc. he’s not alone in these privileged, fearful views.
i’m not saying there won’t be economic dislocations that could be nasty, but look at the NASA picture below – capitalism has winners and losers. why should we identify with the winners? i’d rather stand in solidarity with those who’ve been losing. because this way of life has been horrible for me and most everyone i know, if we’re honest about it.
so keep up the good fight to make the peak oil awareness movement relevant to the cause of social and environmental justice and sustainability! i’ll keep doing my work to bring awareness of peak oil into the larger movement, and hopefully our paths will cross more often.
thanks again for writing,
alex
February 14, 2010 at 12:25 pm
sapplanningadmin
I did not see the Rupert film so it is possible that the presentation of Peak Oil did not seem convincing or was intermingled with other elements.
However, Peak Oil is real. The only reason there is “enough to go around” is because we are leveraging a one-time energy source. Sure, it would be nice if we got together and built giant solar farms, but that is not happening because long term planning like that is not how humans work. Nothing is easier than grabbing oil and refining it. Furthermore there are real constraints on solar and wind in terms of our ability to build it on a massive scale. So our present population can not be supported without Peak Oil. This point can’t be debated. In fact the earth can not support the present population due to the shortage of other resources such as fresh water, fish, etc..
Because we have not planned, because we prefer to act emotionally and not have religion make man of our decisions regarding things like family planning, after Peak Oil there must be a terrible crash.
February 14, 2010 at 12:42 pm
sapplanningadmin
A correction. In the paragraph above I meant to say,
“because we prefer to act emotionally and have religion make many of our decisions…..”
February 14, 2010 at 7:07 pm
alex
hi, thanks for the comments.
i agree with you that we are in trouble because we have failed to plan. it is entirely possible that in the future there will be a population crash as people do not get the food, shelter, heat, or other necessities that they require.
however, i think we can agree that the most humane way to respond to this situation would be to minimize these forms of human suffering would be to use the remaining resources we have in a rational, planned, and moral way, and STOP leaving the allocation of resources up to the irrational, unplanned, and immoral decisions of capitalism.
for example, why not stop producing HUMMERs, or fighter planes, or nuclear weapons, etc etc etc, and use some of those resources to create millions of organic farms, train millions of people to become small-scale sustainable farmers, create lower-impact forms of transportation like high-speed rail, mass transit, wind and solar, etc.?
obviously these kinds of decisions are not being made in our current society (capitalism), because the people in power do not care about us. they would rather bomb people than give them the resources to control their own destinies, because they make more money doing so.
to change this paradigm will require democratizing power, so that smart and concerned people like us, and our neighbors, and everyone affected by these sorts of decisions, can be a part of making them.
its not about human nature, its about power. who has it, who needs it, how to get it?
thanks again!
alex
March 22, 2011 at 12:09 am
Lisa
How can you criticize a film you didn’t bother to watch? Attaching your opinions to another person’s assessment of the quality and validity of this film is lazy, irresponsible and lacks credibility. I don’t care which way your opinions swing, but if I’m taking the time to listen (read) your opinion, I’d like to think (and hope) you’re informed.
If you want to bash the film, fine, but take an hour and base your opinions on your actual understanding of the material — not someone else’s. The film brings up some good points. And, honestly, if oil does deplete, there can’t possibly be enough food for 300 million people… no gas equals no distribution. Production will be seriously disrupted, that spinach you get from China — well that ‘slow boat’ won’t have fuel to push its cargo to port.
Tires are made from oil, so if there’s no oil how can you build cars, any cars? Is there an alternative? Plastic is made from oil, so consider that for one day and count all the items made from plastic (including your car), not to mention packaging in food, pesticides are made from oil, you need oil to distribute food, to plow fields… these are issues are worthy of further consideration.
You speak of social disaster, as if it’s impossible to fathom… if you don’t think the “financial bailout” wasn’t a disaster, I’m not sure what planet you’re living on. There couldn’t be a bigger red flag.
The point of the film is to galvanize people with the idea that we will need each other, our close knit communities (local communities) to survive the transition of moving from an oil dependent society to one independent of it. He’s not saying it’s the end of civilization, he’s saying we will have to adapt to survive. It’s rooted in the idea that we will need to change our way of thinking… and since when is that a bad idea?
March 23, 2011 at 5:15 pm
alex
hi lisa,
thanks for commenting.
i’m sorry if you thought my intention was to “bash the film.” i had no such intention. my goal was to highlight some of the limitations of the perspectives of Mike Ruppert and the other “doomers”, not to discourage people from considering their views. i definitely consider it beneficial to “galvanize people with the idea that we will need each other, our close knit communities (local communities) to survive the transition” and to “change our way of thinking.” i share these exact views. but change our thinking towards what exactly? most crucially, is peak oil a terrible thing, or potentially a very necessary and beneficial thing for humanity? Ruppert and I are on opposites of this question.
i absolutely agree that hard times are ahead, and peak oil will (has) put limits on the ability of capitalism to grow. i see this as a very good thing, understanding that 1) capitalism is based on ecological and social disaster, and 2) in the long stretch of human history, capitalism has been a brief and failed experiment, and therefore it is futile to attempt to prolong it – it must come down so it can be replaced by more democratic and sustainable ways of life.
you say, “Tires are made from oil, so if there’s no oil how can you build cars, any cars? Is there an alternative? Plastic is made from oil, so consider that for one day and count all the items made from plastic (including your car), not to mention packaging in food, pesticides are made from oil, you need oil to distribute food, to plow fields… these are issues are worthy of further consideration.”
i agree, and i’ve made many of these arguments for the past 10 years that i’ve been concerned about peak oil. however, oil is not about to disappear, that is not what peak oil means. half of all the oil of the Earth remains there, and will continue to be exploited. in the short term this is good, because we ARE dependent on fossil fuels. but in the long term this is very bad, because capitalism has exploited oil for the purposes of war, social inequality, and ecological catastrophe. we need to transition away from fossil fuels – not for the purpose of preserving capitalism and the existing system, but for the purpose of destroying it.
also, i want to highlight a previous comment i wrote because it responds directly to your concerns about “social disaster”.
“it is entirely possible that in the future there will be a population crash as people do not get the food, shelter, heat, or other necessities that they require.
however, i think we can agree that the most humane way to respond to this situation would be to use the remaining resources we have in a rational, planned, and moral way, and STOP leaving the allocation of resources up to the irrational, unplanned, and immoral decisions of capitalism.
for example, why not stop producing HUMMERs, or fighter planes, or nuclear weapons, etc etc etc, and use some of those resources to create millions of organic farms, train millions of people to become small-scale sustainable farmers, create lower-impact forms of transportation like high-speed rail, mass transit, wind and solar, etc.?
obviously these kinds of decisions are not being made in our current society (capitalism), because the people in power do not care about us. they would rather bomb people than give them the resources to control their own destinies, because they make more money doing so.
to change this paradigm will require democratizing power, so that smart and concerned people like us, and our neighbors, and everyone affected by these sorts of decisions, can be a part of making them.”
i also should add: there is no such thing as a famine that is not politically perpetrated. this planet is huge and can provide for humanity, if we respect it and work with it, rather than against it. small-scale organic farming can do much better than industrial monoculture – in terms of producing healthy and sustainable futures. there IS hope, but it must come from us!
thanks for writing and thinking!
alex
June 21, 2012 at 10:29 pm
Morgan
I think we need to understand the difference between “classic” Capitalism and the modern industrial version of it. Capitalism in form or another has existed at least as far back as c2000 BCE but once the idea that tomorrow *will* be better then today hit is when things went pear shaped. Debt and more importantly usury became things to embrace rather than avoid resulting in the mess we have now. The Debt Usury Capitalism system we have will died but Capitalism itself will survive.
June 23, 2012 at 1:54 pm
alex
thanks for the comment Morgan.
by “capitalism” in 2000 BC do you mean people selling things in small markets and bazaars and using coins as representations of value? i agree that those things are likely to continue, but i wouldnt call it capitalism.
capitalism, at the very least, has to mean wage labor – the landlessness of the great majority who are forced to sell their labor in order to survive. i also think capitalism has to include the mass production of commodities, first organized through the slave plantation and now the industrial factory. at the top of the pyramid, there’s also a financial elite which thinks only of profit, and will only make investments which are sure to provide a return – so growth is a necessary element of capitalism as well. finally, i dont see how any of this would be possible without large-scale violence and force, to keep the wealth in the same hands, and to generate “new” wealth through ecological and social plunder across the world.
i think this is about as loose of a definition of capitalism that could still make sense. without any of these four elements, you’re missing something crucial to how the system actually structures our lives.
alex