While imaginings of a future world are useful, Kunstler's dark jeremiad is too pessimistic to help the cause of changing minds. People are repulsed at his insistence that we shall all be forced back into a world where central governments do not function at all, skyscrapers are abandoned, people flee cities and suburbs become derelict wastelands. Kunstler is a misanthropic curmudgeon whose bile has colored everything he writes. His education extends to an Arts degree in Drama, and boy, does he know how to be melodramatic! I've communicated privately with him about various issues, but stopped when he had a knee-jerk negative reaction to any possibility that technology would survive "the change" and that humanity would retain some post-medieval advantages. In many circles he is simply a laughing stock. Even his wife left him.

If an accurately imagined future is sought, the book "When Technology fails" (reviewed here by Richard Heinberg recently) is the book you want:

My take on "Seven Tomorrows":

During the Carter administration, the US had started down the "Mature Calm" pathway.

"Apocalyptic Transformation" was kind of thrown in largely on the strength of the Evangelical revival then underway. In retrospect, it largely describes a path not taken, as that movement largely got captured and subverted by extreme right-wing elements. The evangelical movement was largely seduced into serving Mammon rather than God. This resulted in the evangelical movement being largely marginalized rather than being transformative, and thus reduced to not much more than a historical footnote.

With the Reagan, there was a very conscious and deliberate effort to move the US back on to the "Official Future" pathway.

We stayed on the "Official Future" pathway for about two decades. Then the Bush II administration came along, and 9/11, and the whole world started coming apart and becoming more dangerous. Welcome to "The Center Holds". This perfectly describes Dick Cheney's USA.

The center isn't going to hold, of course, we all know that. Even as I write, it is quite obvious now that we are moving rapidly into "Chronic Breakdown".

The next few years are going to be a massive struggle to try to at least keep it at the "Chronic Breakdown" stage, or maybe even turn things around. Sadly, "The Beginnings of Sorrow" describes what actually may be a slightly optimistic vision of our likely future.

The other path we won't be taking would have lead us to "Living within our means". That is the scenario that I suspect that a lot of us are hoping for. Unfortunately, I doubt that you can get there from here. If we had kept on the "Mature Calm" pathway, then "Living within our means" would have been the logical next step (assuming that "Apocalypic Transformation" was improbable). Since we reversed course and turned our backs on "Mature Calm", though, the preconditions have not been created that would be necessary for an evolution into "Living within our means".

Thus, "Chronic Breakdown" describes our immediate future about as well as any 25+ year old scenario could, and "Beginnings of Sorrow" comes close to describing what we have to look forward to in another decade or two.

Pretty bleak thought, I'm afraid.

There seems that there are quite a few who have looked at the same issue as JK with very interesting insights. I find JK's writing is hilarious though. Have you ever heard of the Plan B series?:

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm

Teoc - Thank-you for the referral for Seven Tomorrows. That is now on my reading list.

I have tried to consider life as I have observed it in America from a personal perspective. Growing up in the 60's and 70's in a nation dominated by "car culture". I remember being a child seeing orchards and large open areas around LA that are now paved over as far as the eye can see. Until you witness the I-10 and I-405 Interchange at 4 p.m. on a Friday (24 lanes of traffic that have stopped moving) you can't fathom despair!

I think the notion of the U.S.A. getting a Marshall Plan together to herald our national might to the challenge is niave. When the Marshall Plan was put in place there were a fraction of the world's population and we were climbing up the Big Rock Candy Mountain (Peak Oil). The "Psycology of Previous Investment" will prevent us from acting either in a timely or effective fashion. As a society we are now so fragmented that consensus on anything is impossible. By the time the population at large "get it" I think it will be far too late and Kunstlers' notion of "The Long Emergency" will be playing out in a thousand different ways simultaneously.

Given that the Club of Rome gets some mention in "Lucifer's Hammer" (the technofairy is the key refutation to the COR thesis), I'm sometimes inclined to think of the story as a metaphor for the deleterious effects of fossil fuel scarcity. Just for the sake of literary exercise. :o)

After all, in "Lucifer's Hammer," people were aware of the approaching comet. There was plenty of disbelief in the possibility of a collision even up to the last moments before impact. And the available technology (even with people in orbit watching events unfold) was insufficient to prevent the outcome. Indeed, with a nuclear gift-exchange between China and the Soviet Union post-impact, certain kinds of technology made the situation worse. These details kind of mirror certain fears with regards to Peak Oil.

And thanks to Robert for the insightful review. I will pick up a copy of "World Made by Hand" and give the book a read.

-best,

Wolf in YVR BC

Hello

I tend to agree with JMG's catabolic collapse concept too. It matches what I see of reality, where I often notice that events seem to move both very rapidly and excruciatingly slow. So it makes sense that there will be step changes and times of relative calm. Some of those steps might be pretty big though.

My biggest reservation with the idea of catabolic collapse is that the use of fossil fuels has allowed us build up a much bigger population very rapidly, and that may mean the downside will also be more extreme. Especially when combined with the confluence of issues at hand.

Oh, and I would have died at 2wks of age, my teeth would be crooked (that is if I lived, which I wouldn't have), and my eyesight might have been a problem. I often wonder about eyesight - would it have been better without all the close up work? Is people's vision worse now than it was a couple of hundred years ago, or did they just deal with it? If I were an optometrist, I would learn how to grind lenses.

Conventional wars may require lots of oil, but nuclear war just requires someone to push the big red button. Perhaps in the oil wars of the future, if there is a serious shortage of oil for the military it would be tempting to use nukes to soften the opposition thus saving a lot of the oil used for conventional warfare.

Do you have any thoughts on the four main factions-- town/community, "practical" religious sect, trailer park-dwelling wolfpack, and plantation barony?

I think if you accept the premise, then all of those factions are probable. People turn to religion in times of uncertainty. There are lots of warlords out there even today, and I think we would see this sort of thing spring up without modern law enforcement. Towns and communities would definitely have to pull together as depicted in the book.

And the plantation barony? Lord, I am counting on that. Otherwise, how will I take care of my plantation. :-)

I will definitely check that out. Hopefully he is familiar with Colbert. I have seen more than one guest caught off guard by Colbert's style.

Comedy Channel? so PO is just a joke after all then so i can relax and go buy a gas guzzler.

But, should we ever decide to get moving the technical solutions are straightforward.

Can you explain how this "solves" the problem of peak oil? In other words, are you suggesting that these measures would somehow mean that the rate of oil production would not ever peak? Or is that you think we can reduce our consumption fast enough that it won't matter?

Note: you added to your comment before my response.

"The Iraq war does demonstrate that it's possible, OTOH it's lessons have made additional such wars much less likely."

Doesn't that depend on whether McCain gets elected?

Your comments about Y2K are a bit short-sighted. My late father was a computer programmer and analysist, doing unix systems. He spent four years of his life correcting and/or re-writing computer systems of various companies to head off the Y2K problem at the pass - as did thousands of other programmers. I wrote a blog about it re 9-11 a couple of years ago, and here's the Y2K relevant part:

...Now, let me tell you a parable of Y2K. Remember Y2K? A few years before the turn of the century, unix and dos programmers noticed that there was no way to enter the year 2000 into programs that had only a two digit way of calculating the year. When you put in zero-zero for the year, and tried to do basic calculations such as "how much interest has your account earned since last month," and "what amount of electricity needs to be generated today based on the average use for last month," and so on and so on, that the computers malfunctioned. After all, you can't take away 99 from 00. That's an illegal mathematical operation. The programmers were concerned. Just how many banks, utilities, stock brokerages, communications, and business computers out there only used two digits in their year calculations?

Well, class, the answer was, almost all of them.

Oops. So the programmers worked furiously for almost four years to update, rewrite, recompile, and re-test nearly every computer program running every major computer in the entire United States. The deadline was looming. But guess what?

They did it! Every major system was updated on time. And as a result, there was no major malfunctions in the computer backbone of our country's life. And you know what happened then?

People said there was never a problem in the first place. It was just hype.

"WHAT?" The programmers said. "We worked our butts off for years to make sure the problem was fixed and no major disruptions occurred - how can you say the problem never existed?"

For the record, there was one program of mine that I didn't replace. It was my favorite fax-modem program. In it was saved all my important faxes. And sure enough, when I tried to use it after January 1st, 2000, it kept saying I was sending a fax from the year 1739. Why that year, I'll never know. But since faxes need an accurate date/time stamp, I had to reluctantly part with my favorite program. That was my experience with Y2K, because hundreds of programmers had worked themselves countless hours to make sure nothing worse than that happened...

Y2K was a real problem that was solved by several years of hard work by people who knew what the solution was and could implement it - all that was necessary was time and dedication. Peak Oil is different - no amount of tinkering with oil fields is going to make them refill themselves. Technology and energy are not the same thing - and there is no other substance out there that has sufficient BTUs to move your 5000 car and yourself with as much efficiency as petroleum products. Even electric cars are not really an option because the electric grid is already maxed out - the head of economic development of our state happens to be a friend of myself and my husband, and he says that industries have turned away from our state or been unable to expand simply because there was insufficient electricity capacity available for them to do so. That's real and it's right now - much less adding millions of cars to the grid. It just can't be done in any reasonable amount of time or for the funding currently available to do it - and funding will tank along with tax revenues. By the time it could be done, it will be far past "too late." There is no urban-county government out there willing to completely abandon road construction in favor of electric trolleys and streetcars and electric busses - which is what they will have to do RIGHT NOW to have everything in place in the years ahead when they will be unavoidably necessary. They won't do anything until it is too late - we all know it. Pretending otherwise is wishful thinking.

And even after that, government has to have gasoline and diesel - HAS to have it: ambulances, firetrucks, police, military, border patrol, emergency food distribution... They will confiscate available resources or outlaw personal automobiles to cause demand destruction long before anybody actually "runs out" of gas or diesel, and long before it becomes completely unaffordable for govt to pay for out of available funds. You have no right to drive - and government will see you don't have opportunity, either. A "permit" for a personal automobile will only be available to the excruciatingly wealthy and politically connected. I'm guessing that excludes you (it certainly excludes me).

I have been employed in the transportaion field mostly (engineering) for the past 30 years. I have also done consulting work for an energy company and have studied energy supply/use for about that same amount of time. Your idea that huge amounts of oil could be saved while keeping the general populus transported in automobiles couldn't be more wrong.

First, automobile and light trucks use most of the gasoline and a amall amount of diesel, thus consuming about 50% of the oil. If each trip were by car or truck pooling then 25% of the oil could be saved. This is logistically impossible. Even when the US had shortages of gas in 1974 and 1979, only a small percentage of people car pooled. Certainly carpooling could be promoted, but it would take years to have the effect of even a 10% drop in oil usage.

Second, to think much of the population has the ability to soon buy a $25,000 car (Prius) to double their fuel economy is also wishfull thinking, unless you are counting on government hand outs to subsidize the purchases. As the economy declines fewer people will have the money or credit to make such purchases. Furthermore, should the US personal vehicle fleet be converted to run largely on electrical energy from power plants, the US rail system and probably the coal mining industry do not have the capacity to supply the additional coal. With natural gas production declining in the US and world demand for nat. gas growing (remember the new cartel being formed for gas producers, initiated by Iran, Qatar & others?), how likely can we quickly ramp up electrical power capacity? Not much in the next five or ten years.

With the oil situation in the US dictated not by world production, but by world export market, the US will face huge shortfalls in supply and greatly increased price. In 17 years the world export market is likely to decline by half (see Westexas's Export Land Model). This means that certain segments of the transportation system will contract, like personal auto travel and air travel, while energy efficient modes such as electrified rail will hopefully expand with government assistance and tax incentives.

The US economy will be hard pressed to find the capital to make these changes as foreign interests hold huge amounts of personal, business and government debt. Will these foreign interests make further loans to the US to allow these changes to more energy efficient transport, manufacturing and housing? If those holding this debt think the US is a bad risk, then not enough capital may be available. Remember nearly 25% of US treasuries are held by foreign governments, institution and individuals. And foreign interests also are gaining control of US personal debt as they buy equities in US banks and make loans to US banks. In essence the US may not direct its destiny as will be required in the energy limited future. More of JHK's World may come true than most would believe.

Nick - "Kunstler...just assumes that they are inadequate (which they aren't)."

Oh really? You need to be careful about what web-sites you wander into Nick. You might pick up some bad habits like...Reality!

2) Kunstler is an urban planner who decided that suburbs were terrible long before he know about peak oil,

Kunstler is not an urban planner and has never claimed to be an urban planner. Nor has he claimed to be an expert in the field, nor has he ever consulted as an urban planner. For more details, listen to KunstlerCast #9: Urban Planning

and the demise of suburbs due to peak oil is wishful thinking on his part, and

Distant suburbs have already begun their demise due in part to spiraling gas prices. See for instance the NPR story Home Prices Drop Most in Areas with Long Commute:

Economists say home prices are nowhere near hitting bottom. But even in regions that have taken a beating, some neighborhoods remain practically unscathed. And a pattern is emerging as to which neighborhoods those are.

The ones with short commutes are faring better than places with long drives into the city. Some analysts see a pause in what has long been inexorable — urban sprawl.

or the Atlantic magazine feature, The Next Slum:

But much of the future decline is likely to occur on the fringes, in towns far away from the central city, not served by rail transit, and lacking any real core. In other words, some of the worst problems are likely to be seen in some of the country’s more recently developed areas -- and not only those inhabited by subprime-mortgage borrowers. Many of these areas will become magnets for poverty, crime, and social dysfunction.

... Unfortunately, the next transformation, like the ones before it, will leave some places diminished. About 25 years ago, Escape From New York perfectly captured the zeitgeist of its moment. Two or three decades from now, the next Kurt Russell may find his breakout role in Escape From the Suburban Fringe.

carpooling could reduce overall US oil consumption by 25+% in 6 months.....we could easily require that non-emergency highway travel be done with two people, or that driving above 20 MPH must be done with passengers, or some such

We could also mandate by law that no Mexicans come to America illegally, we could mandate by law that no one smoke pot, we could mandate by law that people not drink/drive, we could mandate by law that everyone drive the speed limit.

First, I'm not convinced that your "25% in 6 months" number is correct....do you have a source or a mathematical breakdown for that figure?(hint: it's a bit more complex than a X-Y=Z equation) but even assuming that is technically accurate - that doesn't mean it's realistic - which is the position that I think Kunstler argues from. If you ask Kunstler, he'd probably agree that it's technically possible to replace domestic air travel with high speed rail, but does he foresee this happening? No, because it's not realistic.

Second, it's almost as if you believe America is a dictatorship. Do you really believe that the President can just say: "Today you drive alone, tomorrow you'll drive with a passenger" No, he'll have to have congress sign on to it, which is laughably impossible. There is absolutely no way that such a law would be supported by the public, period. This is America, not Russia. Your comparison to the New Deal is fallacious - the whole thing was just a series of regulatory reforms and spending programs. Not draconian mandates on the public, and certainly not some kind of dictatorial coup constitution-burning party.

Kunstler may have an overly cynical view of the future, but that doesn't mean your overly rosy is anymore realistic. IMO, it's borderline delusional.

If he's an urban planner by inclination that would explain a hatred of suburbs with no corresponding hatred of population growth while railing about irrevocable resource depletion.

How can the current grid power 85% of light vehicles being converted to battery power? Is there some kind of excess capacity at night that can charge them all with no need for more power generation?

Hybrids like the Prius reduce fuel consumption by 50% over the average US vehicle, and plug-in hybrids like the Chevy Volt reduce consumption by 80-99%.

Peak metals will prevent the hybrid car future from becoming a reality.

http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=33255

You know the initial production of the Volt for 2010 is 10K units - and will likely sell for 48 thousand USD according to GM's Vice Chairman of Global Product Development? If you expect Volts and Priusi to be the sum total of your new car figures we could wholly ignore depleting supply; I'd more likely expect scooter sales to go through various roofs.

Haven't read every comment but is anyone paying attention to the fact that Kunstler is using nuclear destruction of cities to throw Union Grove back a century? Or considering that conditions may be wholly different in other parts of the country - including better?

Chevrolet Volt - Wikipedia

"My understanding is that only a small percentage lack of supply to meet demand can cause widespread panic like it did in the 70's oil crunch. I was there and as a sophmore high school student working at a gas station where the line stretched for a 1/4 of a mile."

That wasn't a panic due to inherent psychology, it was due to rationing, a bad government response which made problems much, much worse.

People would occasionally use up a good portion of their allotted 5 gallons just waiting for another ration.

There is general understanding in the US government that rationing didn't work well (at least for most people....), and that seems to be a relatively unlikely response to future oil shortages.

"There's the rub right there. The US is actually in the worst case position as a world player. We import more oil than any other country while our own production continues to decline."

That assertion is in no way correct if are talking about imports as a percentage of consumption. Japan, Korea and most of Europe for example will be in horrific shape compared to the U.S. as they import almost all of the oil they use. And the North Sea which provides what oil and gas Europe can produce seems to be declining in production far faster than the U.S. did post peak.

RC

Outside of the PO community there seems a great deal of scepticism that a real problem exists. CNBC calls the current increase in oil prices a bubble. National online publications regularly poo-poo the idea. One fellow believes that oil should be around $30 a barrel, and that oil will soon drop to that price (he seems to have a strong following in the online world). The real consensus is PO denial, and denial will continue to control our national reactions to higher oil prices. Fixing the price problem will involve getting more oil, not conservation.

/concur kcrsnova, Harsh Mistres is an excellent book, one of Heinlein's best. The crisis on Luna (for those that havn't read the book) had specifically to do with water (extracted from lunar rocks) and thus how much wheat could be produced for earth's starving masses. The only way for Luna to survive was to halt all exports, heinlein's version of ELM. this of course led to war with Terra. In the book, the Loonies had AI to help them, not sure we even have the regular kind of I to help us. we could use a nice dose of collective intelligence. We're resourceful, or we wouldn't have lasted this long. Maybe the crisis will give us the incentive to work together again and (to quote Buckaroo Banzai) get our butts off this rock.

yes?

And all of that focused on continuing to churn out products, doesn't matter what kind, color or cost, to sell and to buy and to discard.

Wind energy that is a significant contributor to the coming extinction of many bird species. Solar power to further enable and prolong consumerism and the filling of the oceans with ever greater quantities of plastic and chemicals.

Biofuels to further enable synthetic and corporate agriculture requiring inputs and outputs to be transported hundreds and increasingly thousands of miles with many other wasteful inputs required (packaging, marketing and legal costs for consumers who suffer negative health outcomes as result of consuming their products) to produce the most elemental food products.

Market drivers. Well the thing about market drivers, and markets in general, is that they don't do well with externalities. You know those pesky melting glaciers and ice caps, depleting aquifers and creating toxic lakes to turn tar sands into oil, and global fish stocks the have been market driven to the point of absolute and eternal collapse.

What may turn out to be THE fatal flaw of humans is our arrogant belief that there is no problem that can't be solved with the right people in the room working the problem.

bob dylan also wrote, "and it's a hard rain that's going to fall"

Absolutely.

By page 19 we've been informed that women make the wine, do the laundry, and have their bodies loaned to their husband's best friends in an "arrangement."

Women don't need to buy this book- simply pick up any old science fiction book and it'll contain the same ideas. In WMBH we're Real Dolls and factories wrapped up in one.

I didn't even question that society reverts back to blatantly elitist male control I thought JHK was throwing us a mind candy bone, men back in local control.... major fantasy. Seriously though if we slide back to a 19th century model do you expect the fairer sex to assume control? the economically disenfranchised to wield voting power? While I wouldn't rule out special circumstances I can't see it any other way. The smaller the world gets IMO the more the traditional roles will assert themselves. Its only been this way for less than half a century and then only in the Western world (disregarding our recent cult reminders) that leaves the rest of recorded history for the nakedly patriarchal ethos.

Hi Berkeley,

I really (really) appreciate your bringing this up - and thanks to Sandblaster.

When one lives the "nakedly patriarchal ethos" - and plenty of people do (present tense) in the world today - it's personal. It's about survival of consciousness. Or, to put it another way - it's about the survival of the possibility of consciousness, for lack of a better word. The possibility of the existence of a mind (or a spirit) and the recognition of it - or even...surviving for the unimagined possibility of an education.

I could call it the struggle to survive as a human being, despite something so stereotypical as youth and/or physical beauty and all the dangers that come with it - dangers in the form of threats to one's humanity. To one's physical survival.

Actually a lot of the circumstances in the novel seem a little too pat - at the end you have five seamstresses working on treadle sewing machines - dug up in a town of, what, 5K people? Maybe the whole novel is set in an alternate reality.

John Crowley wrote a series of novels, the Aegypt books, where magic has fallen by the wayside due to science's domination, but begins to reassert itself. Perhaps JHK is a closet mystic!

In general I hope as things become more obviously grim some more talented writers put pen to word processor and we get some more classics of doomer porn like The Road. Gene Wolfe wrote a great short story called "Blackberry Jam," whose title doesn't refer to spreadable edibles, but rather a broken down freeway filled with its last traffic. He's way ahead of Kunstler as an author, I'd love to read a whole novel of his depicting an low energy world, before entering the real thing that is.

Very well done. Someone's thinking with feeling.

Unless there's a homebrew recipe for valproic acid...

I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice.

Valproic acid is an analogue of Valeric acid which occurs naturally in the Valarian Plant, Valeriana officinalis, which is hardy in most of the inhabited regions of North America and Europe.

The dried and ground roots (up to 10 grams per day) can be consumed directly or a tincture made by mixing them with an ethanol & water solution (i.e. vodka or similar) for several weeks then filtering. It's no taste treat either way, think "old socks" or "wet dog".

Cultivation in a somewhat dry and "poor" soil will yield roots with more active ingredient than if grown in a rich high humus & water one.

It may very well be a small workshop world, but it is also going to HAVE to be a lower-energy-input world, and that means it is NOT going to be a mass production world or a mega-project world. Know-how won't be the limiting factor, energy will be.

Since we can't really know the future, it is tempting to imagine the only lower-energy-input world that we know anything about, and that is the past one. You are right that it is unlikely that we will literally go backwards. We'll apply what we now know to the lower-energy-input problem and create a world that looks different than both what our world is now and what it was in the past. I have no idea what such a world will actually look like. I can make a few informed guesses:

1. Energy for transport of all kinds will be very expensive, so there will be very little of it. What transport there is will only be to move people or things that really matter, and only to and from places to the extent that it really matters.

2. Energy and other resources to make stuff of all kinds will be scarce and expensive, and thus manufactured (whether by hand or machine) stuff of all kinds will be scarce and expensive as well. Things will only be made and bought if they really matter and really are necessary. They will be built to last and well cared for, because a low energy society can't afford to be a throwaway society. Simple living will be normal living, because people simply can't afford to have much stuff any more.

3. I don't know how the problem of brining the population into line with the carrying capacity of the land will be resolved, but I do know that eventually and inevitably it must be brought into balance one way or another. Of all the stuff that people must produce, food ranks #1 in priority, and food production is going to therefore be an increasing preoccupation of just about everyone in the future.

Thanks. Beautifully written. I find Kunstler's lack of imagination, and pessimism, depressing. You've written a nice antidote.

Mr Conner,

I happen to be a member of that tribe of tinkerers and fabricators, and I am very aware of our dependence on recent technologies. Mechanical progress in the West has been incremental; each time based on RECENTLY aquired technology.

The earliest steam engine we know of in the West was a jet engine, built by an ancient Greek, so I assume you're referring to the first reciprocating steam engine. Its bore was produced using technology developed for making iron cannon (subsidised by state funding from Henry VIII).

The Wright Brothers corresponded at length with Otto Lilienthal, using a functioning international postal system. They contracted out the manufacture of their engine; the first one failed and was redone by the contractor. The precision machining technology for this was perfected by Sam Colt for the production of his revolving firearms (subsidised by contracts for the Union Army). The lathes and milling machines were water powered via jackshaft.

What points am I trying to make?
1. Much of our technological research into control and channeling of exosomatic energy has been paid for by governments trying for advantage in war. This is the priority of those who rule society: power and control.

2. Each of these steps forward is very dependent on what Kunstler called "the technological platform." Consider for a moment just exactly what bubba can build in his shop when the electricity stops coming. No arc welder. Probably no deliveries of bottled O2, either. Lets see those lathes and milling machines whirring without electricity.

3. When the electricity does become intermittent (can't happen here? Tell that to the Iraquis. Or the South Africans), do any of those bubbas know how to build a overshot waterwheel & jackshaft system? If they can't, they won't be machining metal. Hell, they couldn't even build a Colt 1852 Navy revolver. Nor do they know how to extact and purify saltpeter to make the gunpowder to put in it.

4. Can we produce enough food without massive petrochemical inputs to provide the social stability for bubba to stay near his shop (not become a refugee)?

Kunstler may be a little early in his timing, but I'm pretty sure that by the middle of this century, bubba is going to be making hoes and rakes on a charcoal forge. If we're lucky.

PLAN, PLANt, PLANet
Errol in Miami

Your comment is a masterpiece. Reminds me of Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an inspiring piece of work, especially for one coming from a non mechanical background. We will have to learn or relearn how to get our hands dirty.