Industrial civilizations are committing suicide in an approach similar to what long term drug addicts go through. The unlucky ones die because eventually their bodies give out or they get killed by someone or some disease. The lucky ones hit bottom and have some treatment options that might help shift them back towards health.
The problem we face, though, is much worse. Not only are the industrial civilizations suicidal, but the "hitting bottom" events occur well into the global warming process. Many tipping points will have been passed. And unless the pains from hitting bottom are so catastrophic, so lethal to the wealth and property of the world's wealthiest families, then most governments will stay on a suicidal course.
Only when the pains of changing course, of abandoning fossil fuels and high consumption lifestyles, appear better than the pains of continued global warming responses is any change possible. IOW: Not until the industrial nations suffer prolonged droughts, floods, sea level rise with huge damaging storms, epidemics, famine, civil breakdown, loss of reliable electricity, gasoline and natural gas supplies, breakdown of international trade, shortage of clean water, will there begin to exist a politics are responding to climate change rather than making it worse.
And by then, it's too late. Centuries to millennia will have to pass before the earth's climate has any chance at all of returning to the Mediterranean version that gave birth to all human civilization. We've created a new planet, one that Bill McKibben refers to as Eaarth. It's going to be very, very difficult to live on this planet. People will need to live with far, far less energy and technology. New myths will be needed to explain to people, especially children, how the old earth got so desecrated. The world's traditional religions will disappear with they cannot come up with compelling *new* stories. "Jesus died for your sins" isn't going to cut it.
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Monday, September 22, 2014
Why are the citizens so resistant?
My sense is that most of the US non-denier public (and perhaps publics in other industrial nations) are simply terrified and/or paralyzed. They sense that the current fossil-fuel based way of life is coming to an end, one way or another, climate catastrophe, disappearance of cheap energy supplies and/or global economic collapse. But no one's providing any scenarios of what a future life not based on fossil fuel could/might be like.
Typically, as close as one gets is either some pie-in-the-sky we'll just switch to solar, wind, water and geothermal, use electric cars, low wattage light bulbs and off we go. Or else we get an apocalyptic "back to the neolithic, Mad Max" calamity. There's nothing in between that's presented, much less proposed and planned, and so most people either ignore climate change and hope "someone thinks of something", or else hope that our current era of "Happy Motoring" lasts as long as possible.
People will never voluntarily sacrifice unless they know the game plan, strategy and desired end game. They need to know what it is we're working towards, something other than, "Let's avoid climate disaster".
Typically, as close as one gets is either some pie-in-the-sky we'll just switch to solar, wind, water and geothermal, use electric cars, low wattage light bulbs and off we go. Or else we get an apocalyptic "back to the neolithic, Mad Max" calamity. There's nothing in between that's presented, much less proposed and planned, and so most people either ignore climate change and hope "someone thinks of something", or else hope that our current era of "Happy Motoring" lasts as long as possible.
People will never voluntarily sacrifice unless they know the game plan, strategy and desired end game. They need to know what it is we're working towards, something other than, "Let's avoid climate disaster".
Sunday, July 20, 2014
The Century of Malthus
It was possible about a
quarter century ago to believe that the planet's largest, most energy
consuming nations might be able to negotiate agreements to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions enough to prevent the rapid thermal runaway
we're now seeing. It's perhaps debatable whether these countries
actually could have done so, but we'll never know because the
governments simply were not interested.
And now we face a truly surreal situation. There's about 5 times as much oil reserves in the ground than would be needed to boost the earth's temperature above the 2 deg C threshold (that could allow governments to manage climate change). But those reserves are already booked as petroleum company assets and the oil companies have made it very clear: They are not "unbooking" them. These assets will not be stranded because that would affect company profits and stock values. And besides: we have no idea how to live without unlimited growth, do we?
We're not going to do anything substantial to avoid even the worst climate change effects because that would mean governments of the industrial nations would need to force their citizens to live less energy consuming lifestyles, and that means what we would call a depression. Even an authoritarian nation like China cannot force that degree of sacrifice on its population. There would be a revolution.
So it's time to dust off Malthus. The earth's human population is going to radically shrink this century. How much? 90%? 95%? 99%? Too soon to tell, of course. We don't know how bad climate change will get. We don't know when industrial economies will collapse. What do we know? It's going to be a terrifying century, full of chaos, violence, disease, pestilence, epidemics, warfare and bare knuckled efforts to survive.
Radically new religions will replace the current ones. Young people are going to demand new narratives that explain "what the hell happened" and what, if any, is the basis for hope.
And now we face a truly surreal situation. There's about 5 times as much oil reserves in the ground than would be needed to boost the earth's temperature above the 2 deg C threshold (that could allow governments to manage climate change). But those reserves are already booked as petroleum company assets and the oil companies have made it very clear: They are not "unbooking" them. These assets will not be stranded because that would affect company profits and stock values. And besides: we have no idea how to live without unlimited growth, do we?
We're not going to do anything substantial to avoid even the worst climate change effects because that would mean governments of the industrial nations would need to force their citizens to live less energy consuming lifestyles, and that means what we would call a depression. Even an authoritarian nation like China cannot force that degree of sacrifice on its population. There would be a revolution.
So it's time to dust off Malthus. The earth's human population is going to radically shrink this century. How much? 90%? 95%? 99%? Too soon to tell, of course. We don't know how bad climate change will get. We don't know when industrial economies will collapse. What do we know? It's going to be a terrifying century, full of chaos, violence, disease, pestilence, epidemics, warfare and bare knuckled efforts to survive.
Radically new religions will replace the current ones. Young people are going to demand new narratives that explain "what the hell happened" and what, if any, is the basis for hope.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
In the future
The future meaning mid-21st century...
- People will smell more. Hot water will be much more of a luxury
- Meat, especially beef, will be too expensive for most citizens
- Fresh, safe drinking water will be difficult to come by in many locations
- Septic tanks and outhouses will make a big return. People who can install and maintain them should have little trouble finding work
- Local "low tech" security services: sheriffs who live in town and part-time deputies.
- Horses. They'll be back as common transportation, especially in more rural areas.
- Golf carts. Huh? As a means of cheap local transport, their price will be hard to beat, at least in places where there's enough electricity to power them.
- Firewood makes a big comeback... in regions that can learn to treat it as a renewable resource
- Gardens, gardens, gardens: everywhere there's decent soil and rainfall and somewhat reliable climate. Look for small scale seed firms to pop up.
- In urban areas where electricity supply is sketchy, look for ice boxes to come back... Assuming people can figure out how to build and maintain ice houses.
- Radio makes a comeback: Far less power than TV.
Authoritarianism on the rise
Climate change events (extreme storms, flooding, loosing of arable land, habitat destruction, drought, famine, pandemics) will continue to severely challenge the ability of modern governments to respond. Add to that the looming disappearance of cheap energy supplies, especially oil. The net result is that every modern nation is going to be extremely stressed and many of its citizens will be facing various types of pain, from physical to economic. It's inevitable that authoritarian movements will grow as people demand a restoration of order and punishment for various scapegoats.
The reality is that there is no going back to the cheap energy, safe climate world of the mid-20th century. Every modern nation will be facing emergencies that they have never before faced and the traditional remedies, from "drill, baby, drill" capitalism to brutal crackdowns on weaker groups or nations is not ultimately going to solve the real problems of climate and energy. Governments will struggle to remain in control and in some of the larger nations, they may eventually find that like the Roman Empire in decline, they simply cannot and are better off letting the nation fracture into smaller more manageable regions.
In the US, the Tea Party represents one such movement demanding an impossible restoration of prior order. This is what "I want my country back" is about. In Europe, with its history of fascism, it's not surprising that some nations are again looking to right wing ideologies, even wearing Nazi inspired uniforms, and selecting the usual scapegoats for condemnation (e.g., Jews, immigrants).
The reality is that there is no going back to the cheap energy, safe climate world of the mid-20th century. Every modern nation will be facing emergencies that they have never before faced and the traditional remedies, from "drill, baby, drill" capitalism to brutal crackdowns on weaker groups or nations is not ultimately going to solve the real problems of climate and energy. Governments will struggle to remain in control and in some of the larger nations, they may eventually find that like the Roman Empire in decline, they simply cannot and are better off letting the nation fracture into smaller more manageable regions.
In the US, the Tea Party represents one such movement demanding an impossible restoration of prior order. This is what "I want my country back" is about. In Europe, with its history of fascism, it's not surprising that some nations are again looking to right wing ideologies, even wearing Nazi inspired uniforms, and selecting the usual scapegoats for condemnation (e.g., Jews, immigrants).
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Waiting for the meltdown
At this point, There's only one way that the industrial world might have a chance of holding global temperature rise to 2 degrees C: A global economic meltdown that severely restricts the amounts of fossil fuels that get extracted and burned, primarily coal and oil.
Obviously no politician is going to run for office under a "vote for me and I'll crash the economy and make you all lose your jobs" platform... So we'll have to depend on Wall Street shenanigans again, or some kind of black swan event that strangles much of the world's oil supplies and produces such a collapse. And we'll have to "hope" that the nations' central banks cannot restart the industrial economies nor can any other government actions... So, a good time for wars to get started.
I wish there were some other "hope", but this much should be clear: Since neither the US nor China is willing to voluntarily crash their own economies, we're either heading for climate catastrophe or else we have to hope that a global economic collapse - long term - happens within the next decade. There are no miracles. Industrial civilization is going through a huge bottleneck, along with the human population.
Obviously no politician is going to run for office under a "vote for me and I'll crash the economy and make you all lose your jobs" platform... So we'll have to depend on Wall Street shenanigans again, or some kind of black swan event that strangles much of the world's oil supplies and produces such a collapse. And we'll have to "hope" that the nations' central banks cannot restart the industrial economies nor can any other government actions... So, a good time for wars to get started.
I wish there were some other "hope", but this much should be clear: Since neither the US nor China is willing to voluntarily crash their own economies, we're either heading for climate catastrophe or else we have to hope that a global economic collapse - long term - happens within the next decade. There are no miracles. Industrial civilization is going through a huge bottleneck, along with the human population.
The coming authoritariansims
Climate change events (extreme storms, flooding, loosing of arable land, habitat destruction, drought, famine, pandemics) will continue to severely challenge the ability of modern governments to respond. Add to that the looming disappearance of cheap energy supplies, especially oil. The net result is that every modern nation is going to be extremely stressed and many of its citizens will be facing various types of pain, from physical to economic. It's inevitable that authoritarian movements will grow as people demand a restoration of order and punishment for various scapegoats.
The reality is that there is no going back to the cheap energy, safe climate world of the mid-20th century. Every modern nation will be facing emergencies that they have never before faced and the traditional remedies, from "drill, baby, drill" capitalism to brutal crackdowns on weaker groups or nations is not ultimately going to solve the real problems of climate and energy. Governments will struggle to remain in control and in some of the larger nations, they may eventually find that like the Roman Empire in decline, they simply cannot and are better off letting the nation fracture into smaller more manageable regions.
In the US, the Tea Party represents one such movement demanding an impossible restoration of prior order. This is what "I want my country back" is about. In Europe, with its history of fascism, it's not surprising that some nations are again looking to right wing ideologies, even wearing Nazi inspired uniforms, and selecting the usual scapegoats for condemnation (e.g., Jews, immigrants).
The reality is that there is no going back to the cheap energy, safe climate world of the mid-20th century. Every modern nation will be facing emergencies that they have never before faced and the traditional remedies, from "drill, baby, drill" capitalism to brutal crackdowns on weaker groups or nations is not ultimately going to solve the real problems of climate and energy. Governments will struggle to remain in control and in some of the larger nations, they may eventually find that like the Roman Empire in decline, they simply cannot and are better off letting the nation fracture into smaller more manageable regions.
In the US, the Tea Party represents one such movement demanding an impossible restoration of prior order. This is what "I want my country back" is about. In Europe, with its history of fascism, it's not surprising that some nations are again looking to right wing ideologies, even wearing Nazi inspired uniforms, and selecting the usual scapegoats for condemnation (e.g., Jews, immigrants).
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Exercise
I did something today that tens of millions of other people in industrial nations also do: I got some exercise. Until half a century ago, getting exercise was considered unnecessary, even unthinkable. The daily rigors of life kept most people in decent shape. The concept of exercise would baffle the ancients.
By the end of the 21st century, the human population is going to drop substantially and it will be a struggle in most places just to stay alive. No more exercise... another artifact of industrial civilization. Looking in the decaying junkyards and dumps for exercise equipment.
By the end of the 21st century, the human population is going to drop substantially and it will be a struggle in most places just to stay alive. No more exercise... another artifact of industrial civilization. Looking in the decaying junkyards and dumps for exercise equipment.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
"Someone will think of something"
There's this persistent feeling throughout industrial nations that used to justify doing practically nothing at all to respond to the rushing train of climate change and disappearing supplies of cheap energy. That feeling boils down to: Someone with think of something.... Something to prevent the worst climate effects from destroying our civilization. Something to replace the cheap energy. Something to let us keep living as we are, and if change has to happen, then someone else will have to do it.
In other words, we've created an illusion for ourselves: the illusion that some kind of magic will happen and we in the industrial nations will be able to keep on growing forever with no real consequences.
You may wonder: why would we even want such a strange, unnatural existence? Why would we want to grow like bacteria in a petri dish, as if growth for its own sake was a mandate for a happy life? Part of the answer rests in recognizing that over the last few hundred years, years of scientific and technical progress made possible by cheap energy whose use had not yet begun to impose serious constraints, we lost almost all of our connections to the rest of the natural world. Even our farmers become more like industrial engineers, injecting synthetic pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides into a deteriorating soil while planting vast amounts of acreage using large fossil fuel powered machines. In the cities, clean water was delivered to every household and sewage flushed away to go who knew where. And who cared, as long as the water was safe, the toilets flushed, the lights worked, and the heat came on in winter? It was an environment where almost everyone could easily conclude: More of this has got to be better.
And now that we are finally bumping up against some limits that will not yield, most humans in the industrial nations either: deny reality and insist nothing out of the ordinary is happening, or else take comfort in the belief that "someone will think of something".
In other words, we've created an illusion for ourselves: the illusion that some kind of magic will happen and we in the industrial nations will be able to keep on growing forever with no real consequences.
You may wonder: why would we even want such a strange, unnatural existence? Why would we want to grow like bacteria in a petri dish, as if growth for its own sake was a mandate for a happy life? Part of the answer rests in recognizing that over the last few hundred years, years of scientific and technical progress made possible by cheap energy whose use had not yet begun to impose serious constraints, we lost almost all of our connections to the rest of the natural world. Even our farmers become more like industrial engineers, injecting synthetic pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides into a deteriorating soil while planting vast amounts of acreage using large fossil fuel powered machines. In the cities, clean water was delivered to every household and sewage flushed away to go who knew where. And who cared, as long as the water was safe, the toilets flushed, the lights worked, and the heat came on in winter? It was an environment where almost everyone could easily conclude: More of this has got to be better.
And now that we are finally bumping up against some limits that will not yield, most humans in the industrial nations either: deny reality and insist nothing out of the ordinary is happening, or else take comfort in the belief that "someone will think of something".
Saturday, May 17, 2014
We have to stop flying
Yes, you, me, all of us. We have stop flying... Emergencies, OK. But vacations? No. Business travel? Needs to be greatly reduced. Airplanes use too much carbon based fuel.
The view from 2014: The commercial aviation industry will be decimated by mid-century, a victim of increasing oil prices, the inability of citizens to pay for air travel, the deterioration of infrastructure, and the worsening climate conditions.
The view from 2014: The commercial aviation industry will be decimated by mid-century, a victim of increasing oil prices, the inability of citizens to pay for air travel, the deterioration of infrastructure, and the worsening climate conditions.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
How did we get in this mess?
Joke from the old USSR: "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
Human cultures that have historically been more or less in balance with their natural surroundings tend to endure until their ecosystem changes - possibly through their own actions - or until they are conquered and decimated by foreign peoples with superior technology and a believed mission to exploit whatever resources, including other people, they may find.
Put more simply: Live and let live people tend to get overwhelmed by exploit, extract and enslave type of people....
The present day modern industrial nations have all played and continue to play to varying degrees the "game" of exploitation. They just weren't - we just weren't - interested in reaching a state of balance with the rest of nature. That would have been unthinkable in cultures where growth for growth's sake is one of the guiding principles.
Didn't we know this was crazy? Didn't we know we were going to severely damage the earth's environment, disrupt almost all the ecosystems, including the ones we ourselves need to survive? No, not really. We always thought that some sort of technical fix or other would save us and let us keep growing... The vast majority of the human race who has lived in a "modern" advancing society thought this way and still do. And the ones who knew, the ones like the citizens of the First Nations of the Americas? Mostly wiped out. And ecologists like Aldo Leopold and Howard Odum? Ignored and marginalized for the most part.
Buy why? Didn't we care what they said? Did we listen and then conclude that they must be wrong? No... we may have heard but we didn't really listen. Why not? Because we chose to hold ourselves above and apart the rest of nature. We placed artificial boundaries between ourselves and the natural world that makes our lives possible. Ultimately, we embraced a dangerous ideology, a deviant spirituality. We convinced ourselves that we were better than all other life on earth because we had been so successful - so far - at molding life on earth to our own personal, exploitative desires. We didn't know that when we choose live of exploitation that we exploit ourselves most of all.
And those who did know better, those who knew all along that this approach was radically wrongheaded, that the only way to survive in the long term was to be in balance with the ecosystems where we hoped to live? They tried, but there were too many of us (and we were quite arrogant, quite stubborn, quite well armed) and far too few of them. And so they often isolated themselves in hopes that we would eventually seek out their knowledge. There are some hints that in the presence of the global dangers we are facing, more of "our" people are starting to do just that. Will it be in time to make a difference?
Human cultures that have historically been more or less in balance with their natural surroundings tend to endure until their ecosystem changes - possibly through their own actions - or until they are conquered and decimated by foreign peoples with superior technology and a believed mission to exploit whatever resources, including other people, they may find.
Put more simply: Live and let live people tend to get overwhelmed by exploit, extract and enslave type of people....
The present day modern industrial nations have all played and continue to play to varying degrees the "game" of exploitation. They just weren't - we just weren't - interested in reaching a state of balance with the rest of nature. That would have been unthinkable in cultures where growth for growth's sake is one of the guiding principles.
Didn't we know this was crazy? Didn't we know we were going to severely damage the earth's environment, disrupt almost all the ecosystems, including the ones we ourselves need to survive? No, not really. We always thought that some sort of technical fix or other would save us and let us keep growing... The vast majority of the human race who has lived in a "modern" advancing society thought this way and still do. And the ones who knew, the ones like the citizens of the First Nations of the Americas? Mostly wiped out. And ecologists like Aldo Leopold and Howard Odum? Ignored and marginalized for the most part.
Buy why? Didn't we care what they said? Did we listen and then conclude that they must be wrong? No... we may have heard but we didn't really listen. Why not? Because we chose to hold ourselves above and apart the rest of nature. We placed artificial boundaries between ourselves and the natural world that makes our lives possible. Ultimately, we embraced a dangerous ideology, a deviant spirituality. We convinced ourselves that we were better than all other life on earth because we had been so successful - so far - at molding life on earth to our own personal, exploitative desires. We didn't know that when we choose live of exploitation that we exploit ourselves most of all.
And those who did know better, those who knew all along that this approach was radically wrongheaded, that the only way to survive in the long term was to be in balance with the ecosystems where we hoped to live? They tried, but there were too many of us (and we were quite arrogant, quite stubborn, quite well armed) and far too few of them. And so they often isolated themselves in hopes that we would eventually seek out their knowledge. There are some hints that in the presence of the global dangers we are facing, more of "our" people are starting to do just that. Will it be in time to make a difference?
What is collapse? How does it happen?
Collapse is the economic, political, societal, technological contraction, simplification, disassembly and fragmentation of a more complex society. I am not aware of this ever having occurred voluntarily. Much pain, and often widespread death leading to population collapse, is involved.
Why will this happen this century, the 21st century? Like many nations, empires, societies before ours - and our is now a global society - we are about to exhaust our primary resource bases: fossil fuels, fertile soil, clean water. Complicating this is the phenomena of global warming, sometimes called global climate change.
The net result - though we are only in the beginning stages: a radically changed planet, disappearance of a third to a half of all species, a collapse of the human population. Whether we survive appears in 2014 as debatable. The real question right now is: What are we willing to do to make life a bit easier for our descendants? How can we make the coming dark age less dark? How can we preserve some of the positive elements of our so-called modern societies that will be beneficial to our survivors?
How does collapse actually happen? Does it start in our financial sectors, which are quite corrupt? Does a new pandemic breakout? A new war that greatly reduces our energy supplies? Will there be a simultaneous global collapse in the industrial nations, or will it simply spread from regions already sinking into desperate poverty? I tend to believe that the second possibility, the spreading inkblot model, is more likely. Why? Because the more prosperous regions will try their best to isolate themselves from the spreading chaos and maintain their lifestyles for as long as possible. But how long can they do this? Don't they need food from "the hinterlands"? Don't they need electric power and fuels from great distances? Doesn't the delivery of this energy require protecting the power lines, pipelines, fuel sources? Does it require spare parts from great distances? Don't they need a stable climate? Yes to all of those. So the question becomes: How long can the remaining "modern" industrial areas hold out? How will they defend themselves against "new barbarians" - people who are the former citizens of once functioning societies?
What will our modern societies be collapsing to, and how will we get there? Many possibilities exist, ranging from the slow descent down a gradual slope, to a series of stair step drops where each step down provides a temporary landing point of stability, to a relatively rapid drop "all the way down". The end destination in all these possibilities is the same - it's the pathway and thus the timing that's different.
What's that destination? From the vantage point of 2014, it's not possible to tell. It's going to depend on where the climate finally reaches some kind of longer term equilibrium pattern. In the best possible case, that's no more than 2 degrees C above a pre-industrial value. In the worst case, it could be 4 - 10 degrees C, levels that will make human survival almost impossible, if not impossible.
And it's going to depend on where the human population level settles. Two centuries ago, there were about a billion people on earth. That's when the climate was far better than now or what we're approaching. So in a much worse climate with severe habitat destruction, a world of well under one billion humans may be where we're headed. Will it drop to under 100 million? 10 million? Those numbers all seem possible.
That would make this century, "The Century of Malthus". How does the human population crash in the presence of growing resource exhaustion? Pandemics, civil violence, wars over remaining resources, widespread famine, pestilence, loss of potable water supplies, disappearance of basic (much less advanced) medical care, lack of fuels to heat dwellings in winter months, lack of reliable transportation, deterioration of infrastructure (roads, power lines, sewage facilities, water purification facilities, lack of knowledge of food preservation techniques). Which will be the most important in reducing the size of the human population? My guess: famine and disease, including exposure to the elements.
What level of technology to we drop to? Where do we end up? Will it be like the 1910s, a hundred years ago, with modest amounts of electricity and the very basics of modern medical care? Will we get to "keep" some more modern inventions? Antibiotics (if they still work)? Radio? Refrigeration? Or will we end up closer to the middle of the nineteenth century? Or the seventeenth century, or the Middle Ages, or all the way down to the neolithic? Or will we be really lucky and only fall back about half a century, at least for a while? It all depends on the climate and the population level.
Why will this happen this century, the 21st century? Like many nations, empires, societies before ours - and our is now a global society - we are about to exhaust our primary resource bases: fossil fuels, fertile soil, clean water. Complicating this is the phenomena of global warming, sometimes called global climate change.
The net result - though we are only in the beginning stages: a radically changed planet, disappearance of a third to a half of all species, a collapse of the human population. Whether we survive appears in 2014 as debatable. The real question right now is: What are we willing to do to make life a bit easier for our descendants? How can we make the coming dark age less dark? How can we preserve some of the positive elements of our so-called modern societies that will be beneficial to our survivors?
How does collapse actually happen? Does it start in our financial sectors, which are quite corrupt? Does a new pandemic breakout? A new war that greatly reduces our energy supplies? Will there be a simultaneous global collapse in the industrial nations, or will it simply spread from regions already sinking into desperate poverty? I tend to believe that the second possibility, the spreading inkblot model, is more likely. Why? Because the more prosperous regions will try their best to isolate themselves from the spreading chaos and maintain their lifestyles for as long as possible. But how long can they do this? Don't they need food from "the hinterlands"? Don't they need electric power and fuels from great distances? Doesn't the delivery of this energy require protecting the power lines, pipelines, fuel sources? Does it require spare parts from great distances? Don't they need a stable climate? Yes to all of those. So the question becomes: How long can the remaining "modern" industrial areas hold out? How will they defend themselves against "new barbarians" - people who are the former citizens of once functioning societies?
What will our modern societies be collapsing to, and how will we get there? Many possibilities exist, ranging from the slow descent down a gradual slope, to a series of stair step drops where each step down provides a temporary landing point of stability, to a relatively rapid drop "all the way down". The end destination in all these possibilities is the same - it's the pathway and thus the timing that's different.
What's that destination? From the vantage point of 2014, it's not possible to tell. It's going to depend on where the climate finally reaches some kind of longer term equilibrium pattern. In the best possible case, that's no more than 2 degrees C above a pre-industrial value. In the worst case, it could be 4 - 10 degrees C, levels that will make human survival almost impossible, if not impossible.
And it's going to depend on where the human population level settles. Two centuries ago, there were about a billion people on earth. That's when the climate was far better than now or what we're approaching. So in a much worse climate with severe habitat destruction, a world of well under one billion humans may be where we're headed. Will it drop to under 100 million? 10 million? Those numbers all seem possible.
That would make this century, "The Century of Malthus". How does the human population crash in the presence of growing resource exhaustion? Pandemics, civil violence, wars over remaining resources, widespread famine, pestilence, loss of potable water supplies, disappearance of basic (much less advanced) medical care, lack of fuels to heat dwellings in winter months, lack of reliable transportation, deterioration of infrastructure (roads, power lines, sewage facilities, water purification facilities, lack of knowledge of food preservation techniques). Which will be the most important in reducing the size of the human population? My guess: famine and disease, including exposure to the elements.
What level of technology to we drop to? Where do we end up? Will it be like the 1910s, a hundred years ago, with modest amounts of electricity and the very basics of modern medical care? Will we get to "keep" some more modern inventions? Antibiotics (if they still work)? Radio? Refrigeration? Or will we end up closer to the middle of the nineteenth century? Or the seventeenth century, or the Middle Ages, or all the way down to the neolithic? Or will we be really lucky and only fall back about half a century, at least for a while? It all depends on the climate and the population level.
Authors I hang out with
William R. Catton, Jr
Richard Heinberg
John Michael Greer
Michael Klare
Gail Tverberg
Marty Zehner
Ken Deffeyes
Thom Hartmann
Chris Hayes
Mark Hertzgaard
Joe Stiglitz
Paul Gilding
Andrew Bacevich
Gwynne Dyer
Dmitri Orlov
Glenn Greenwald
Bill McKibben
Naomi Klein
James Howard Kunstler
Richard Heinberg
John Michael Greer
Michael Klare
Gail Tverberg
Marty Zehner
Ken Deffeyes
Thom Hartmann
Chris Hayes
Mark Hertzgaard
Joe Stiglitz
Paul Gilding
Andrew Bacevich
Gwynne Dyer
Dmitri Orlov
Glenn Greenwald
Bill McKibben
Naomi Klein
James Howard Kunstler
Saturday, May 10, 2014
The Motivation of this Blog...
... is to describe, discuss, chronicle and sometimes lampoon the last years of what most people who have lived in the 20th and early 21st century have been taught to refer to as their time: the modern industrial world. This is a world where the more powerful countries derive the vast amount of their energy resources from fossil fuels, primarily coal, oil, and natural gas.
Commentary may be long, short, frequent and infrequent. I often write as if I were trying to explain our time to some future, perhaps very distant, future civilization. Presumably a civilization advanced enough to recover a 21st century blogging effort, but also one that has found far more sustainable ways to live in balance with the rest of life on earth.
Commentary may be long, short, frequent and infrequent. I often write as if I were trying to explain our time to some future, perhaps very distant, future civilization. Presumably a civilization advanced enough to recover a 21st century blogging effort, but also one that has found far more sustainable ways to live in balance with the rest of life on earth.
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