Life After Growth--Managing our Way to a Desirable Future
Posted by Gail the Actuary on March 10, 2010 - 10:13am
This is a guest post by Richard Heinberg. It is a shortened version of a longer post published by the Post Carbon Institute.
What if the economy doesn’t recover?
In 2008 the U.S. economy tripped down a steep, rocky slope. Employment levels plummeted; so did purchases of autos and other consumer goods. Property values crashed; foreclosure and bankruptcy rates bled. For states, counties, cities, and towns; for manufacturers, retailers, and middle- and low-income families, the consequences were—and continue to be—catastrophic. Other nations were soon caught up in the undertow.
In late 2009, the economy showed some signs of renewed vigor. Understandably, everyone wants it to get “back to normal.” But here’s a disturbing thought: What if that is not possible? What if the goalposts have been moved, the rules rewritten, the game changed? What if the decades-long era of economic growth based on ever-increasing rates of resource extraction, manufacturing, and consumption is over, finished, and done? What if the economic conditions that all of us grew up expecting to continue practically forever were merely a blip on history’s timeline?
It’s an uncomfortable idea, but one that cannot be ignored: The “normal” late-20th century economy of seemingly endless growth actually emerged from an aberrant set of conditions that cannot be perpetuated.
That “normal” is gone. One way or another, a “new normal” will emerge to replace it. Can we build a different, more sustainable economy to replace the one now in tatters?
Let’s be clear: I believe we are in for some very hard times. The transitional period on our way toward a post-growth, equilibrium economy will prove to be the most challenging time any of us has ever lived through. Nevertheless, I am convinced that we can survive this collective journey, and that if we make sound choices as families and communities, life can actually be better for us in the decades ahead than it was during the heady days of seemingly endless economic expansion.
Four Propositions
The following summary statements are fundamental both to grasping our current situation and managing our way toward a desirable future:
1. We have reached the end of economic growth as we have known it. The “growth” we are talking about consists of the expansion of the overall size of the economy (with more people being served and more money changing hands) and of the quantities of energy and material goods flowing through it. The economic crisis that began in 2008 was both foreseeable and inevitable, and it marks a permanent, fundamental break from past decades—a period in which economists adopted the unrealistic view that perpetual economic growth is necessary and also possible to achieve.
As we will see, there are fundamental constraints to ongoing economic expansion, and the world is beginning to encounter those constraints. This is not to say the U.S. or the world will never see another quarter or year of growth relative to the previous year. Rather, the point is that when the bumps are averaged out, the general trend-line of the economy (measured in terms of production and consumption of real goods) will be level or downward rather than upward from now on.
2. The basic factors that will inevitably shape whatever replaces the growth economy are knowable. To survive and thrive for long, societies have to operate within the planet’s budget of sustainably extractable resources. This means that even if we don’t know exactly what a desirable post-growth economy and lifestyle will look like, we know enough to begin working toward them.
3. It is possible for economies to persist for centuries or millennia with no or minimal growth. That is how most economies operated until recent times. If billions of people (cumulatively) through countless generations lived without economic growth, we can do so as well—now and far into the future. The end of growth does not mean the end of the world.
4. Life in a non-growing economy can be fulfilling, interesting, and secure. The absence of growth does not imply a lack of change or improvement. Within a non-growing or equilibrium economy, there can still be a continuous development of practical skills, artistic expression, and technology.
In fact, some historians and social scientists argue that life in an equilibrium economy can be superior to life in a fast-growing economy: while growth creates opportunities for some, it also typically intensifies competition—there are big winners and big losers, and (as in most boom towns) the quality of relations within the community can suffer as a result. Within a non-growing economy it is possible to maximize benefits and reduce factors leading to decay, but doing so will require pursuing appropriate goals: instead of more, we must strive for better; rather than promoting increased economic activity for its own sake, we must emphasize whatever increases quality of life without stoking consumption. One way to do this is to reinvent and redefine growth itself.
The transition to a no-growth economy (or one in which growth is defined in a fundamentally different way) is inevitable, but it will go much better if we plan for it rather than simply watching in dismay as institutions we have come to rely upon fail, and then try to improvise a survival strategy in their absence.
In effect, we have to create a desirable “new normal” that fits the constraints imposed by depleting natural resources. Maintaining the “old normal” is not an option; if we do not find new goals for ourselves and plan our transition from a growth-based economy to a healthy equilibrium economy, we will by default create a much less desirable “new normal” whose emergence we are already beginning to see in the forms of persistent high unemployment, a widening gap between rich and poor, and ever more frequent and worsening financial and environmental crises—all of which translate to profound distress for individuals, families, and communities.
Journey to a New Economy
The propositions described above are the starting points for a search that can be summarized in a single question: What are the guideposts toward a livable, inviting post-growth society?
This search has in many instances entailed a literal, geographic journey. During the past few years, as I traveled the lecture circuit, I met thousands of people who had already concluded on their own that the global stage was being set for an economic crash of epic proportions. They had passed through the psychological stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. They were thinking creatively, building new lives, and experimenting with a wide range of strategies for meeting basic human needs while using much less of just about everything.
Some of these folks, like me, had been thinking along these lines for a long time—since the 1970s. Many were much younger, though, had learned about Peak Oil or climate change just within the past few years, and had recently decided to devote their lives to building a post-hydrocarbon world. Some were clearly members of what was known in the 1970s as the “counterculture.” Others were mainstream citizens—investment bankers, real estate sellers, high school teachers, small business owners, corporate middle managers—who had chanced upon information that awakened them forcibly from their routines. Many of these folks lived in large cities, but others in small towns or on farms; some were rich, some poor (a few by choice); some were devout, others agnostic or atheist; some were working alone on survivalist projects, while others were building community organizations; some saw the transition as a business opportunity while others were working through non-profit organizations. Here are just three examples that stand out.
In 2005, while on a lecture tour in Ireland, I met a young college teacher named Rob Hopkins who believed that life could be better without fossil fuels. He had led his students in developing an “Energy Descent Action Plan” for their town, and believed he had the seed for something larger and more significant. He soon moved back to his native England to earn his Ph.D., and designed his thesis project around helping the village of Totnes begin a cooperative, phased process of transitioning away from its dependence on fossil fuels. This project in turn led to the start of a series of Transition Initiatives in villages, towns, and neighborhoods throughout the U.K. In 2007, a version of Rob’s written Ph.D. thesis was published as a book (The Transition Handbook) that quickly began inspiring others to take up this strategy. Today there are hundreds of Transition Initiatives at various stages of development in a dozen countries (including about 60 in the U.S.).
While in Montana for a speaking engagement at the University of Montana in Helena in spring 2009, some local Peak Oil activists drove me to the town of Ronan and introduced me to Billie Lee, who had helped start Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center. The Center is housed in a fairly small, non-descript building and features medium-scale food processing equipment that local small food producers can rent at reasonable rates. This enables small farmers to produce value-added products (everything from canned soups to herbal tea bags) that are profitable and are price-competitive with those made by industrial food companies located hundreds or thousands of miles from Ronan. Local food has become an obsession for the sustainability-minded during the past few years, and local food systems will be a necessary pillar of post-growth economies. Yet aspiring small-scale farmers often have a hard time getting started because they cannot afford the equipment to enable them to produce profitable value-added products. Here in the tiny hamlet of Ronan was an ingenious solution to the problem, and one that deserves to be replicated in every agricultural county in the nation.
On a trip to New England in 2007, I met Lynn Benander, a community energy activist and entrepreneur who had started a project called Co-op Power to bring renewable energy to low-income and multi-ethnic communities throughout the Northeast. Typically, renewable energy projects cost more to get going than conventional coal or gas power projects, and so they tend to be found in wealthier communities and regions. Conversely, the most polluting energy projects tend to be sited in or near poor neighborhoods or regions. Co-op Power aims to change that imbalance of power—in a way that any community can copy. A typical project: You help four people put up a solar hot water system and everyone comes to help you put up yours; you save 40 to 50 percent off your total system price, get to know your neighbors, and learn how your system works. Co-op Power had also pioneered a cooperative financing method that cuts through the usual roadblocks to renewable energy projects in poorer neighborhoods by leveraging member equity.
Individually, these initiatives and projects may seem to be on too small a scale to make much of a difference. But multiplied by thousands, with examples in nearly every community, they represent a quiet yet powerful movement.
Few of these efforts have gained national media attention. Most media commentators who address economic issues are focused on the prospects—positive or negative—of the existing growth-based economy. These projects don’t seem all that important within that framework of thinking. But in the new context of the no-growth economy, they may mean the difference between ruinous poverty and happy sufficiency.
The trends are already in evidence: as the financial crisis worsens, more people are planting gardens, and seed companies working hard to keep up with the demand. More young people are taking up farming now than in any recent decade. In 2008, more bicycles were sold in the U.S. than automobiles (not good news for the struggling car companies, but great news for the climate). And since the crisis started, Americans have been spending much less on non-essentials—repairing and re-using rather than replacing and adding.
Many economists assume these trends are short-term and that Americans will return to consumerism as economic crisis shifts into recovery. But if there is no “recovery” in the usual sense, then these trends will only grow.
This is what the early adopters are assuming. They believe that the nation and the world have turned a corner. They understand something the media either ignore or deny. They’re betting on a future of local food systems, not global agribusiness; of community credit co-ops rather than too-big-to-fail Wall Street megabanks; of small-scale renewable energy projects, not a world-spanning system of fossil-fuel extraction, trade, and consumption. A future in which we do for ourselves, share, and cooperate.
They’re embarking on a life after growth.
* * *
The realization that growth is at an end raises many questions. Will the financial impact be inflationary or deflationary? Will some nations fare better than others, leading to protectionist trade wars? Will the “down-sizing” of social and economic complexity lead also to a substantial die-off of the human species? How quickly will all of this happen?
There simply are no hard and fast answers to such questions. The financial, energy, food, transport, and political systems on which we rely are complex, so it is almost impossible to reliably model their response to a shock such as a resource limits-imposed end to economic growth. The only reasonable response, it seems to me, is to act as if survival is possible, and to build resilience throughout society as quickly as can be, acting locally wherever there are individuals or groups with the understanding and wherewithal. We must assume that a satisfactory, sustainable way of life is achievable in the absence of fossil fuels and conventional economic growth, and go about building it.
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Thanks, Richard!
I think we would all like to think these things are true, but I see several obstacles:
1. Population growth. Whether or not the economy is growing, in a very poor world without birth control, there is a real possibility of each woman having an average of something like six children. Unless four of these children die before maturity, this growth will lead to huge pressure on resources, with or without economic growth. My reading of the Old Testament and of history is that they were filled with resource wars, because of just this issue (whether or not there was economic growth!).
2. Declining resources. At this point, we are not looking at level resources in the future, we are looking at a year after year decline. On a per capita basis, the effect is likely even worse.
3. No non-fossil fuel based "renewables". Regardless of the amount of hype about wind power, solar PV, geothermal, etc., in order for these to be manufactured and delivered to our homes requires fossil fuels. They are extenders--don't operate without fossil fuels (except perhaps until the parts of their systems degrade sufficiently and cannot be replaced).
4. Globalization. A huge amount of the things we have today, from computers to pumps for irrigation to replacement parts for electrical transmission depend on globalization for continuing manufacture. Globalization to the extent we have it today depends on a functioning financial system, and this depends on economic growth (the way it is currently set up). So we are likely to see a huge scale-back in globalization in years ahead.
It seems like our task will be difficult because of these issues.
I just got a reminder of another obstacle; bureaucratic inertia and stupidity/resistance to learning the truth.
Yesterday I got the semi-annual newsletter from my school district. They spelled out the difficulties ahead in the school budget. Ahead for us taxpayers, of course, is higher taxes and then much higher taxes. A big, looming, unfunded liability for the school district is the retirement packages which are mandated by law to be funded. Funding these liabilities, as well as the costs of maintaining an aging school infrastructure that has a growing population of students (apparently more and more parents are sending their children to public school because private schools are no longer affordable) will fall largely upon the shoulders of the local tax base. The concept that the taxpayers may be physically unable to fund these costs is not even considered by the school district (pretty frightening).
The newsletter ended with the upbeat prediction that in the near future, "Economic growth will resume following renewed growth in sales in the private housing sector and in resumption of commercial development" and financing pressures will ease.
Boy, am I relieved to hear THAT!
And to add insult to injury, all the school district employee benefits which the taxpayers must find a way to fund, will, of course, use annuities as the investment vehicle of choice. So, in the end, the taxpayers will be bankrupted and the money will simply disappear, not even being dispersed to the intended recipients.
There is no way to explain these issues to the powers that be. One would immediately be dismissed as a fool and a kook.
That is a hurdle....
Most people I know wont even listen to me about peak oil.
That is exactly the response I receive.
People are always afraid of change. PO represents incredible change. They cannot get their heads around it, and vested interest in BAU use that fear in their denials. Those VIs are doing incalculable harm since whether we want it or not, change is coming. Most people know this, but do not want to acknowledge it, so the grasp at any straw... any tweeked statistics showing "the economy is recovering." They will turn on you if you persist in speaking the unspeakable.
Meanwhile, they continue to do the undoable, and hope against hope for a miracle to make things all better.
There will be a future. I disagree with Gail about alternative energy, except that I do agree that it will be limited in scope and in geography. Areas with good hydro potential will continue to have okay electric power; areas with abundent sunshine, may have okay solar. I have seen discussions demonstrating how manufacture and delivery of components will be difficult, but not impossible... it will mean somewhat limited electric from wind and solar. Hydro will be better since the components are easier to deal with and widespread. Steel can be manufactured using wood and charcoal, all renewable. Plastics can be recycled; lubricating oils can be made from plant substances, again all renewable. We will not suddenly become illiterate - schools will continue to teach most basics, and many sciences.
Unless of course we see the unthinkable, a worldwide conflagration coming from resource wars. Nuclear winter might be able to wipe us out altogether. In that case, well... like I said, unthinkable.
More and more I come to the long decline version of TEOTWAWKI. Economic decline, followed by short upswing, and then further decline, repeated time and again until starvation, local civil uprisings, and disease combine to drop that population problem below critical mass. At that point, we slowly discover the true carrying capacity of Planet Earth. Meanwhile, like all species H.Sapiens evolves into something else. Eventually, given epochal time frame, we either leave the planet or die with it, but that is so far away as to be meaningless today. If our evolutionary descendents so determine, the genetic product of our planet may leave our local solar system, and find new planets to inhabit. I hope we have learned enough from the past 150 years that we do not destroy them. Maybe for their unobtainium?
Craig
How do you expect to mine these lower and lower grade ores with wood and charcoal or other (diffuse) renweables, for that matter?
I do not know if we'll have a decline or a crash....
The ores will eventually play out. Recycling scrap is going to have to do it for the long haul.
Not aluminum ores.
Alan
Recycling scrap aluminum into fuel?
Aluminium (Australian spelling)is one of the most abundant elements in the earths crust. It is almost impossible to run out of. However it is very difficult to refine into elemental Al (the metal we are familiar with) without electricity. Ferrous metals on the other hand can be worked with wood generated heat but this wouldbe on much much lower scale than the blast furnaces churning it out today.
One of the reasons New England was deforested in the 19th century was the harvesting of trees for charcoal to feed the foundries of the North, particularly for the Civil War armaments industry and for rail steel, etc. Since the early 20th century — think coal oil and natural gas — much of the forest has regrown. New Hampshire was 85% or more cleared by 1900 and now is nearly 90% forest. It took industry only a century to almost completely clearcut New England, or so the story goes.
the easy wood, easy ores, easy food and water supplies all near each other, required to make steel on a very small scale centuries ago, have long since been consumed.
which is why we need to waste so much fossil energy per unit steel today.
Brazil
Alan
Libya
Bryan
(you now must say a country that starts with A)
Sir Fred Hoyle has already addressed this dilemma for humankind long ago. Paraphrasing, "we humans get one shot, one grasp at the brass ring. Once the high grade ores and energy resources are spent, if we have not achieved the stars, we never will."
And he was an optimist for assuming we would eventually be clever enough to invent the warp drive or figure a way to use mini-black holes and worm tubes in the fabric of space-time to achieve interstellar and intergalactic space travel.
Quick, one of your smarties, figure these things out before we begin the Great Descent on the steeper slope of the net energy curve! Clock's ticking.
searching for a miracle?
please don't waste our time with postings like this :-(
Polydeukes, D3PO' point was that there are no miracles. And I agree with him when he wrote:
Of course he was being sarcastic. Some of the smarties on this list think we can convert to charcoal blast furnaces, plastics and rubber from plants and continue with business as usual. What a load of donkey doo! I agree with D3PO except that I am even more cynical where the smarties of this list are concerned.
Ron P.
No, not BAU, and certainly not the stars. It just might be possible to arrange things so that we as a species might live out our remaining time here on this planet at least somewhat happily and comfortably, if we would really put our minds to it.
Really now? Of course "we as a species" might live but not too many of us. And it would not be very comfortable, it would be a really hard life.
Ron P.
Do you think in a long decline everything will remain static. I mean do you think populations will wither on the vine without moving?
As things get tough people will move. They will move to where the energy is, be it electricity generation, gas production or horse drawn carts, that will be where the work and food is.
Try to understand that nowhere will operate free and easy as island and insulated from the world or other communities.
We must, must, must let it wind down now and conserve. I'm absolutely certain that engineering for solutions and expecting miraculous changes in human nature is the worst possible route to take.
We are erecting stone heads and the stone heads are getting bigger and using ever more resources.
I just no longer believe in stealing from the future to try and save my sorry ass. I (the world) should have woken up fifty years ago. As Catton said in Overshoot, we should have changed several population doublings ago.
Humans have nothing left to exploit but each other and that's how it's beginning to play out.
Things never remain static. It is trying to remain in place that is creating so many problems today.
No, as you said, people will move. Especially they will move to where they believe things are better. More electricity, jobs, food, etc., are the draw. Or they will move because they are afraid where they are, and believe somewhere else is safer, cheaper, cleaner, or has better schools.
In a gradual decline, populations will slowly drop. In locations with extreme imbalances vis-a-vis their resources, you will see an attempt to move when food supplies become insufficient. This could cause local conflagrations. The biggest danger in the future, whether the decline be slow or fast, is that these insurrections will result in nuclear response, and that the response becomes global.
There are certainly sufficient indications that the US will not be immune to urban conflict; IMHO lack of food will drive these battles, and in the long run will determine them. Without food, the warriers will in relatively short order find themselves unable to muster the energy to keep fighting, and will simply die off. Not a pleasant thought, and one that leads me to wonder who is going to be burying all of these folks. I suppose the sort of mass graves seen during the big die off from bubonic plagues in England and Europe will become common, especially in and near large cities.
Once the numbers of eaters drops to the level of sustained food production, a new normal will be found. My hope is that sufficient knowledge of science, technology, and in particular of agronomy, survives. If it does, my post above will be indicative of the sort of technologies we will see. Steel, much of it scavanged from cities, aluminum and plastics from city dumps, all plant wastes being composted, use of animal and human labor (and feces) in farming, electricity for transportation, water power for many uses, such as grinding of flour, factory level production of needed products, etc.
Altogether this will be a very different normality, neither better nor worse than what we have now in a qualitative sense. It will be as good or bad as we make it. I can only hope that my grandchildren survive to help with our new civilization.
Craig
Even the worst future scenarios posited for a post-peak oil, non-growth economy seem to be ignoring climate change and ecosystem collapse, which puzzles me no end. Assuming that we can continue to grow trees for wood strikes me as wildly optimistic given the certain desertification of much arable land, not to mention flooding from rising seas. Furthermore, the acidification of the ocean, never mind the warming, is guaranteed to destroy the food chain by dissolving coral reefs and calcium based species. So, in addition to losing a source of food and employment for billions of people, we will also lose the source of most of the oxygen we breath. Good luck with that!
The way we do education in the US is fundamentally flawed and utterly unaffordable. The public education system must eventually collapse, and will have to be replaced by a different approach.
The basic flaw is in assuming that two totally different things need to occur at the same time and place:
1. The acquisition of knowledge and development of intellect of the student; and
2. The socialization of the student.
The first thing is what is commonly thought of as education. However, what many fail to realize is that this is an activity that takes place entirely within the mind of a student. Merely placing a student in a classroom by itself accomplishes nothing whatsoever, and certainly by itself does not constitute actual "education". What really needs to be done is to supply the student with the materials needed to learn, along with guidance, motivation, feedback and correction as he or she tries to learn. The thing is, this is best done on a one-to-one basis. The ancient model of tutor/pupil is ancient for a reason - it was discovered early to work very well.
This being the case, we really don't need classrooms at all. In fact, classrooms, and the "socialization" that they are intended to cultivate, if anything are more of an obstacle to effective learning than they are an aid. In other words, we are paying all this tax money for something that inherently works very poorly, if at all.
What we really need is for a teacher to be assigned to a number of students, and to spend a little bit of time with each a couple of times per week. They should be assigned material to study and problems to work, and the student should then be expected to spend a substantial part of each day studying. If there is a parent at home, then they can supervise and make sure that the student does his/her assignments. Arrangements could also be made for a trusted adult in each neighborhood to monitor several students in their home for those cases where the parents work.
What about "socialization"? I suppose that is important, but there are a lot better ways to do that than sticking kids of the same age in the artificial and highly constrained environment of a classroom all day for twelve years. If you want them to be effectively socialized, then what you need to do is get them working and playing and experiencing together as a group in a wide variety of situations, all structured and under close adult supervision. Team sports, band or choir, community service projects, "field trips", hobby clubs, scouting - the list is endless of things that could and should be done on an organized and planned basis to promote socialization. The thing is, you don't need a classroom for any of these; for some of them, you may need a multi-purpose community room, which a community needs anyway. You also don't need a professionally certified teacher, just trustworthy and reliable adult supervision.
Thus, all most communities need to effectively educate and socialize their children are: 1) public parks and recreation facilities, including multi-purpose indoor facilities; 2) public libraries (to provide learning materials for students); 3) a cadre of responsible adults to supervise children when studying or on group activities; and 4) a very small cadre of teacher/tutors who are assigned to direct and monitor the progress of a number of specific students. This can all be done for a small fraction of the cost of the present-style public education establishment.
I don't know if this is what communities will transition to in the future, but I don't think they'll be able to afford anything much more than this.
WNC Observer, with some tweaking of your comment we could substitute any number of things that are unaffordable and patently unsustainable as they are currently done in the US.
The first one that comes to mind is universal health care and preventive measures to ensure good health. We might need a lot fewer doctors who specialize in bypass surgery if we had a few more qualified nutritionists and personal physical trainers in our communities...
Long after the peak oil era has ended, Canadians will still march to the polls to defend universal health care. The business community (with a small but noisy dissenting minority) will also defend the single payer system against all comers since they have long learned that it provides an important competitive advantage vis a vis the inefficient US system.
The system is however evolving. It is becoming more efficient and more effective with the steady adoption of a new organizational model for health care service: the family health team, which includes nutritionists (dieticians).
The world is brimming with examples of better practices than what bau offers.
http://www.swchc.on.ca/
http://www.peterboroughfht.com/
Personal trainers are fine, but mostly people need to walk more, lift more and stretch more. One of the great promises of peak oil is the decline of automobile dependency with all the physical flabbiness that it entails. Even taking the (electrified) bus or train involves a good deal more walking than comes from ownership of the biggest killer of the modern era. I say ownership because the most significant indicator of car use is car ownership. In all likelihood, the extent of car ownership will decline as the economy transitions to a lower energy future. If this happens, the quality of life in a carbon restricted future will be greatly enhanced.
There are plenty of obese people who take public transport, and plenty of thin people who drive cars.
Declining from widespread automobile ownership and use to taking the bus and train is in no way, shape, or form an enhacement of quality of life.
Better for the earth, probably. But hardly better for the people who have to do it.
I strongly disagree.
Alan
Odd that you would think there is a divergence between what is "better for the Earth" and "better for the people". Aren't they the same?
Car Culture has turned modern cities into incredibly ugly, toxic wastelands. I very much look forward to the disappearance of the Auto.
Chris
"Car Culture has turned modern cities into incredibly ugly, toxic wastelands. I very much look forward to the disappearance of the Auto."
I agree with this. Car culture is bad in lots of other ways too, beginning with the carnage on the highways and city streets, and the social isolation which it affords and encourages.
We may have built a high quality of life around the automobile, but it doesn't mean a high quality of life is impossible without the automobile.
Sold my car last fall and I feel liberated. Walking and taking transit everywhere at 67. Of course it helps to live in a place with decent transit (Portland).
I am large and I walk or take the bus. My dad is the same weight he was since his army days in the late 50's and he owns two vans, One is a work van and the other the traveling van.
I can't ride a bike, my knees can't take it, they couldn't even when I was thinner.
But sharing transport amoung several people is what we do with my dad's van. We currently support 6 people who need rides places, 2 of them non-family. We don't make many trips, and when we do go out we do a lot while we are gone, money is tight, why waste it.
As yet getting a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood on the bus is a bit of a challenge. We'll have a van until we can't afford to own it.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better future.
Yeah, so be your own personal trainer.
Makes me think of a sign I saw on the beach "ALWAYS SWIM NEAR A LIFE GUARD" and I agree, the best way to do that is to be one. A long time ago I learned how to be my own life guard. Now when I swim alone out in the open ocean it's up to me to save myself. BTW I actually am a certified rescue diver and one of the things I was taught was that you can't save any one else if you don't save yourself first.
While your points are well taken, I think that universal health care at some level would enhance the possibility of having a no growth or negative growth economy. People are tied to an eight and higher number of hours day because of their need to obtain group health care that is subsidized by their employer. People are precluded from working less hours under this scenario and because they are forced to work long hours anyway just because they can have health care, they also get into the trap of spend, spend, spend, which translated into consume, consume, consume.
It is work and consumption that drives this economy and people are too busy, overworked, and afraid to consider alternatives to their current work and consumption based lifestyle.
Universal health care does not have to be as expensive as the current system, especially if we do some of the things you advocate and if we take steps like Cuba to make more doctors and nurses available through free public education.
George Carlin on education
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q&feature=related
porge - I really miss that guy!
He was not only the best comedian of all time but a visionary genius with a good heart and a bad attitude.
Hi WNC,
Good thoughts. Couple of add-ons:
And then there is the school bus to get them to this classroom (and home again). Every day I see able bodied teenagers who live 2 to 5 miles from school riding these insane buses. Almost anyone can cycle 5 miles - even many handicapped people can use a modern trike for that distance. Clothing for crummy weather is now very lightweight and very effective. Instead, we spend FF and money to encourage obesity and bad behavior.
The duplication of expensive resources (public and private school plus community based) is another nutty practice. In Ireland (at least rural counties I visited) ran many athletic programs at the county level - not the school level. As you said "trustworthy and reliable adult supervision". You got to be known as a "Sligo Man", or a "Mayo Lad" for sports - not someone from a parish school.
In my neck of the woods, there are all kinds of "community rooms" - many are called "churches" and one brand of faithful hardly every shares facilities with a competing god fear-er. The duplication of resources (building, heating, cooling, lighting, etc) is not only wasteful but also a great impediment for cooperative community activity.
The time-honored approach seems to be apprenticeships.
It seems like manufacturing in big factories is going to disappear or be cut back dramatically. The big factory seems to become possible through concentrated sources of energy. As our energy sources return to a more diffuse pattern, I expect small scale craft manufacturing will return.
A lot of what kids learn in school is how to deal with large scale bureaucracy. Standardized tests, of course, but so much of what is taught is how to fit like a cog into a big machine. The government is one such big system - young folks have to learn how to vote and pay taxes! And also the government needs young folks ready to join the military. Big corporations need workers who can follow complicated instructions. When these large scale social systems disintegrate, the valuable things to learn will be very different.
When I went to College The first thing they asked me was what Career I wanted to go into. I told them I was there to learn things, not for a career, it kinda made the guy annoyed, then again it was the first and last time I used that service.
I did go into Landscape Architecture, but I thought it fit into what my point of view was, sustainable living, only to find out, half the plants they were planting had no food values and were low maintaince and looked pretty but were not really of any use to my way of thinking. Also I didn't fit them in that I was unable to be molded into what they wanted to produce as far as students went. I got enough training on my own to know most of everything they do, besides the paper on the wall.
Where is the latin and logic classes for everyone, they only teach art history, to get a general feel for art, and everyone forgets it the minute class is over, same way with history, and chemistry.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed future.
A lotof adult education is now delivered this way. I am currently studying a science degree from a universtiy 5000 km away. I am using all my local facilities but eh content is coming from them. Supplemented with good civic and other institutional libraries, I am find this a fantastic way to learn. Kids don't yeat have the same discipline which is why they will need adult supervision but I beleive that my 12 year old son could tackle some of the work I am now doing rather than being babied in high school and he is no genius. I like your model. Perhaps an idea for a transition initiative.
I learned a lot more from my parents and an aunt and uncle than I did in school. But not everyone has that same gift, and not every adult is able to teach, as some of them need to be taught just as much as the children.
As Richard said, small local seeds of change can spread faster, and further than a big top down mode of change.
You have an idea, now go make it happen in your local area, talk about it to others, write about it in your blog, on your social networking sites and spread the flame of your good idea.
One of the best ways to turn someone off to the whole Peak Oil is going to harm you idea, is to force them to see the whole thing at once. Change your own actions and get people to ask you what you are doing, and show them your changes, and lead them bit by bit to the BIG story of peak Oil and all that comes with it.
I started out as an edible yard kind of person, and even there it is hard to start out with big changes when showing others. You help them grow some herbs, or a few edible plants, then you help them grow more and soon they are helping you grow things they found while expanding on the general theme. But if there is not need for food in thier lives, they aren't going to start growing anything. I can't sell this to some people, they would rather buy it at the store than get their hands dirty.
But people have been growing things for a long time and their is at least something to work with most places you go.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better future.
Those of us who had good teachers outside of school are indeed fortunate. My father in particular taught me many useful and not so useful skills.
I learned the basics of gardening from him, as well as how to build a fence or a fire. He taught me how to use a hammer, a hand saw, a chisel, an axe and a shovel. He taught me how to ride a bike, as well as how to repair punctures, and do other maintenance on it. As I grew older he taught me how drive (when I was about ten), and how to maintain and repair a car, well enough that a few years later I could do a clutch overhaul on a Landrover, by myself in the middle of the Simpson Desert. He taught me how to use an electric welder, basic blacksmithing, how to temper steel, how to sharpen knives and scissors, how to read a map, and how to repair shoes.
From other people, outside of school, I learned how to sail and to navigate by the stars, how to operate a bulldozer, how to fly a light plane, and countless other skills.
In school, I also learned a few things of lasting value. Through elementary to high school, the lasting things I picked up were reading, writing, and arithmetic, along with a pretty good grasp of physics, chemistry, logical thinking, algebra, geometry, calculus, an appreciation of error propagation, and good skills with a rifle. I also learned how to read music, and achieved reasonable proficiency in French, basic knowledge of Latin, and a broad acquaintance with English literature.
At university, the major new learning was how to think in three dimensions, along with an understanding of geological processes.
But when I look at what is taught in schools today, I see a surprisingly small overlap with what I have found valuable. The standards require where I live have, for some years, been the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and skills. This standard is (according to many children I know who have been tested with it) almost laughably low. It is very heavily weighted towards multiple-choice questions, which are easy to grade but do not test knowledge or skill very accurately. In my entire formal education, I do not recall a single multiple-choice test (which reveals how old I am). Even with this standardized testing, many young adults I know are functionally illiterate.
College education seems to fail too. I currently deal on a daily basis with a recent graduate (from a respected geoscience program) who is proficient in the latest software packages but does not understand basic geological processes and is unable to visualize parts of the earth in three dimensions without a $100,000 computer system.
My father grew up poor, and then when he was just starting to get on his feet the Great Depression hit. He had to learn to do things himself: to reduce, reuse, and repair. And he passed on a lot of these skill to his children. The skills Dad passed on to me include many skills which will be very useful as the economy contracts, but young people today aren't learning them. My own skills are rusty, too. For example, I know how to repair a leather shoe, but I haven't done so for decades. Shoes today are ridiculously cheap, are mainly made of plastic, and repair materials and tools are hard to find.
Hi lrd.
This is a beautiful post. It conveys things I've tried to say - or, really, been at a loss for words of how to express this to friends - when it seems I see a lot of kids being raised as though their purpose in life, so to speak, is to seek out expensive entertainment - i.e., to consume electronic entertainment. And that's it! (Nothing more than this.)
Yes, nicely written post Ird. Now if I could only learn how to convince my 10 yr old daughter the Quest for the latest version of an iPod Touch isn't the answer to Everything ...
Mass school closures approved in Kansas City, Mo.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_closing_schools
in order for these to be manufactured and delivered to our homes requires fossil fuels.
Simply wrong.
Much, much easier, more "economic", more efficient, etc. with FF, but NOT strictly required.
eCargo bikes (I would have no problem designing one that could carry 600, or even 1,000 lbs on flat or gently rolling ground with leg muscle assist) can do local distribution to homes. Tram cargo (or electric trucks) for in-city distribution to stores. Some bio-diesel (cotton seed oil, a side product of growing cotton, might be enough) for wind installation & maintenance. etc.
Remember the Swiss during WW II. They built new hydropower plants, electrified some more rail lines, kept a functioning economy, all with a pittance of oil (by 1945 the average Swiss used less than oil that year than the average American uses in a day). Take the oil away from police, military and medical (all of which can still function without oil, although in degraded form#) and Swiss use would be much lower still.
A reasonable SWAG, if Hitler did not have them surrounded (the military had #1 priority on oil) and they were willing to accept bicycle ambulances (China once had them), is that the Swiss could have kept a functioning, modern industrial economy and democratic society going with 1/5000th the oil that Americans use. An amount easily derived from biofuels or other sources (recycling, tar sands, oil shale, etc.)
Best Hopes for Seeing the Possible,
Alan
# The Swiss Army had several bicycle regiments.
Alan - I think the Swiss are a poor example for a number of reasons:
1. In the 1940s, particularly during World War II the economy profited from the increased export and delivery of weapons to the German Reich.
2. In the 1950s, annual GDP growth averaged 5% and Switzerland's energy consumption doubled. (Since their infrastructure was intact after WWII they recovered quickly. Think secret bank accounts for Nazi industrialists.)
3. In the 1960s, annual GDP growth averaged 4% and Switzerland's energy consumption doubled. By the end of the decade oil was Switzerland's primary energy source.
4. In the 1970's Switzerland became increasingly dependent on oil imported from its main supplier, the OPEC cartel.
5. Currently their agricultural sector produces only 60% of their food and that is only due to exceptionally high tariff's. Also a large part of that is exported for the profit of specific sectors of the economy.
The one bright spot would be:
Today their economy is primarily service. Currently they produce little of in the way of actual products. In the 80's the Japanese took away their advantage in watch production but I suppose they still make cuckoo clocks...
Joe
Joe,
how does this invalidate the argument that Switzerland in the forties could expand their non-oil-based industry with very little oil inputs?
Polydeukes - The recognized neutrality of the Swiss during WWII allowed their banking sector to grow at an unprecedented rate. If you consider being Nazi Collaborators is an example of a good example then we have a fundamental misunderstanding.
Joe
The Swiss were completely surrounded by German troops. Their degree of co-operation was minimal considering their desperate situation. Example, their radio services were the only reliable information for much of Europe and Germans tried to muzzle them.
In 1938, the Swiss had a large chemical industry, fine machinery including optics (I noted that my ophthalmologist uses "Made in Switzerland" equipment), they are the major makers of dairy equipment, etc.
Alan
And my favorite anecdote from a colleague that was a child in Switzerland during WWII (they fled Germany)...
I asked Hans if they rationed food during the war?
"No", he replied. I thought this was rather odd given their situation as described by Sir Alan of the Big Easy.
"They didn't allow the sale of fresh bread on the first day.", Hans described.
As anyone knows, who cannot resist wolfing down a whole loaf of fresh, hot, steaming bread? Give it a day and a slice or two is just fine thanks.
Pure genius! I use this anecdote to illustrate pragmatic and simple measures that go right to the very nature of the situation. Control the cause, not the symptoms.
We visited Switzerland a couple of times back in the day. The Swiss made it known that they could defend themselves from invaders if they had to do so--all those narrow mountain valleys and passes. They have a version of the draft, and they have a very well provisioned army. I think that may be why the Germans left them alone in WWII---too difficult for any potential gains. I'm sure they would have gotten around to the Swiss eventually, just like with Britain, if things hadn't gone so wrong for them in Russia.
The Swiss seem to also pander to the rich and powerful, and certainly they "helped" any number of Germans hide the spoils of war. Swiss bearings also were found in German weapons, which led to the "accidental" bombing of Swiss factories by the Allies. One must wonder how solid the Swiss economy would be without a hundred years of siphoning off a share of the hidden wealth of the world's oligarchs. To a large degree they figured out the shadow banking game first and best.
The Swiss are the most conservative people in Western Europe. Pandering to the rich comes naturally :-)
OTOH, they do prepare. They started electrifying their railroads on a large scale after WW I, and kept building more trams (streetcars) after other nations were reducing their's in the mid-1920s. Both strategic decisions.
About 90% of the electricity for SBB (Swiss Rail) comes from their own hydroelectric power plants and the balance from the grid.
In 1998, they voted approval of a 31 billion Swiss franc program to improve their rail system. Shifting freight from truck to rail was the #1 goal amongst several goals.
Adjust for population & currency, and this would be like the USA voting over $1 trillion to improve our rail system.
The program should be complete by 2017#, a few years later than ideal, but likely quite welcome then.
Best Hopes,
Alan
# Due to cost over-runs, they have deferred several small segments for an undefined "later". My SWAG is that could finish all these bits & pieces in 3 or 4 years if need be.
Ha ha! That's an apt description. I hope we are not offending the Swiss reading here, BUT....while we were visiting Lausanne, we also went to the castle at Montreux. It's a famous castle, on the highway that skirts the lake by the mountains. In fact, it is strategically placed there to stop all traffic (and extract a tax) coming from the south and heading to points north. We were told that the nation of Switzerland got its start there. I recall thinking at the time, "a fitting and telling start for them".
Switzerland inported coal and petroleum products from Germany during WW2, so they were still using lots of fossil fuels. Swiss (and Swedish) GDP grew during WW2.
http://ces.univ-paris1.fr/membre/Krautheim/EEI%20Frankfurt/Slides_Histor...
Most of German commerce with Italy ran on Swiss electrified (or coal)trains in sealed box cars.
http://www.zum.de/whkmla/sp/0809/kdy/kdy2.html#V2
There's also the issue of how long Switzerland and Sweden could continue on their alleged 'low energy paths'.
IMO, Swiss experience in WW2 will be nothing like a post-Peak world.
Even bicycles require fossil fuels.
No, they do NOT require fossil fuels !
Electric arc furnaces are the most common way of recycling steel today. The world has an extreme excess of natural rubber for bicycle tires. BTW, a well built, well kept bicycle frame could well last over a century.
Given the "force multiplier" effect of bikes, one can devote a lot of the available resources towards their production.
I suspect that a small part of Grand Coulee could recycle ALL the steel required for bicycles for every citizen of the United States of America. And some bikes would be made out of titanium and aluminum (see recycled aircraft for raw materials).
Best Hopes for Seeing Reality,
Alan
Check out Davis Monthan.
How many bikes do you need?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i9wQGidG2M
Google earth Tucson and find the airport with the big runway just to the east is the bone yard.
I did, where is the water coming from for all that suburban housing?
Aquifers.
http://cals.arizona.edu/AZWATER/publications/sustainability/report_html/...
Grand Coulee ... my birth place
What do you think those asphalt paved roads that bikes ride on are made out of?
They manage well enough on concrete or the cobblestones two blocks away.
Roads with bikes only (and no salt) last just about forever.
Alan
As a kid, I rode a lot of miles on my bike on dirt/gravel roads.
Sheesh Gail, it's almost like you are a troll on your own blog.
It's really is hard to know why you keep persisting with this particular assertion, in the face of numerous objections to which you don't respond, or don't respond substantively. It seems like this belief has become an article of faith with you and was perhaps never the product of research and reason. Were it not for your contributions on debt and financial issues I would stop trusting you entirely and probably stop visiting this website.
I think she is saying that bicycles don't self-assemble, or grow on trees.
There's also the matter of tires and such.
No, she is saying that bicycles and tires cannot be assembled without oil, coal, and/or natural gas. And that is false.
Both of you are making assertions without proof.
My assertions are so common sense they need no references. What's in a bicycle? Steel and rubber. Steel pre-dates fossil fuel use by nearly two millenia. Rubber (enough for the world's bicycle tires, anyway) comes naturally from trees. Look it up wherever you like.
If Gail meant to refer to issues of scale, she didn't say that. And she often makes these blithe comments about fossil fuels being necessary for a particular technology without offering any qualifiers.
I'm sure bicycles could have been made before the industrial revolution with little trouble. Not enough to allow the whole world to use them, but I agree....
The first bike was made during the industrial revolution....
I don't see any reason why you can't make one without fossil fuels.
Yes, especially if you can just build one rather than having to go to the trouble of inventing one. ;-)
Thanks for backing me up.
Hi jaggedben,
I don't want to gang up on Gail, but I think she misses a couple of important points:
- Regardless of the technical issues in building and maintaining bikes, the actual utility value of bikes is so great (lots of stuff was moved by bicycle on Ho Chi Minh trail) that all sorts of precious and scarce resources may eventually be used for this machine.
- Bicycles frames can be built from a variety of materials, even bamboo
- Millions of bikes (in perfect condition) hang unused in US garages and basements. Plenty of spare parts for decades.
- As mentioned - we don't need to invent this machine - it is probably one of the best understood machines on the planet - and the most marvelous invention ever.
I suspect there will be issues with some of the components unless we plan carefully - for example ball bearings are critical for most existing cycles and one of the elements that do wear out and need to be replaced. Steel chains could be replaced with rubber belts, but steel chains work very well - they are not extremely hi-tech, but some thought should be put into their production in a lower energy future. Examples like this (it seems to me) would not be a major problem if we did a little planning for production equipment that can operate in a lower energy future.
Perhaps some kinds of bicycles can be built without fossil fuels, but I would be willing to be that our current system of building bicycles cannot be maintained apart from fossil fuels. The buildings the factories are in depend on fossil fuels for heating and light; parts are transported long distances using fossil fuels; the making of the parts themselves uses fossil fuels; the bicycles get delivers to our stores using fossil fuels. The workers drive to factories in cars, or perhaps take public transportation, which again uses fossil fuels.
Hi Gail,
I agree; and, that is actually my main point - we should be thinking about how to manufacture bicycle components locally in a lower energy future. What I think is especially important (as you point out) is the global nature of the process now - many bike components come from across the planet. And,in many cases, the US has no current factories for producing this stuff.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but it think it is quite feasible to locally produce all of these components on a small scale in lower energy shops. Ball bearings, bearing races, chains, chain rings, derailleurs, brakes, spokes, rims, hubs, tires, cables, shifters, pedals, crank arms, etc. - it is my impression that these items don't necessarily require the high-tech, mass production factories that you allude to. I suspect that all of these items could be produced in small machine shops that could probably get enough power from PV and wind to operate. The components produced this way would not be as elegant as the ones today, but should be functional.
As far as the shop buildings, workers getting to work, deliver of bicycles and such, I really don't think that is such a big deal. Passive solar - super insulated buildings, workers ride bikes to work, bikes assembled and sold locally, etc.
The real issues is whether or not we will recognize the problem and take appropriate action in a meaningful time frame.
Of course, it may be that 200 years from now that solar and wind devices will be unsustainable - and maybe not.
Grand Coulee requires Fossil Fuels. You can't get around it.
Without fossil fuels things stop working
A few other points:
Tires can also be made from biomass materials.
And though this doesn't disprove the already disproven statment, I will add that while there may be a bottleneck in fuel (especially for wasted purposes), we will have enough FF for critical feedstock purposes for quite some time. The crunch will come to burned fuel first.
Bikes are often made from aluminum, which is plentiful, and can be recycled, and I don't care what anyone says, there are ways to make aluminum without fossil fuels. Electricity for electroylis, charcoal, and where extremely high temperatures are needed, synthetic fuels could be made using electricity.
And again, we will not be without coal and nat gas for this purpose for a while.
Lastly, negative EROI fossil fuels can and likely will be used for feedstocks and critical niche applications (like smelting).
...and it was long reserved for military applications, because steelmaking was so ridiculously expensive without fossil fuels.
we might as well argue that future people can all wear golden hats, because kings wore them millennia ago.
Please re-read the second paragraph of my comment that you're responding to.
Natural rubber comes from sap from rubber trees. They can be grown in the tropics to the south of us. We might have to send some ships down a few times each year to get it, and to offer something we produce in trade. This is not an insurmountable problem.
Thomas Edison was experimenting with goldenrod latex in the 1920's. He bred a variety of goldenrod that was about 12% latex as opposed to the 5% in the wild types. The rubber was a bit soft but it worked. It was intended to be a contingency plan if we lost access to rubber producing areas in a conflict. Synthetic rubber put the idea out of business.
Yes, Gail, exactly.
For everyone else arguing semantics, the intent of Gail's comment was that bicycles as they are manufactured today are dependent on the fossil fuel infrastructure.
The rubber, yes, could conceivably come from rubber trees, in fact most of the "rubber" used today world worldwide is synthetic and comes from petroleum. The manufacture of bicycles, yes, could conceivably rely on wood and charcoal-fired forges and locally human-mined ores, in fact the ores used in manufacturing today come from a fossil-fuel infrastructure. The transportation of bicycles from manufacture to sale requires transportation by truck. The paints require additives from petroleum. Some chain lubricants are 100% "natural", many are petroleum-derived. Many people directly and indirectly involved in the manufacture and sale of bicycles drive cars to work.
Plus, any of the plastic found in reflectors, lenses, handlebar wraps, decals, spoke inserts, and let's not forget your helmet, that plastic comes from petroleum.
Bicycles could conceivably be made any number of ways. Currently, we're doing it only in the way we're doing it, which is a way dependent on fossil fuels.
Even bicycles require fossil fuels.
...and no one has mentioned the road systems we bicycle on, built at great effort and expense with the surplus energy of a fossil fuel gulping economy.
As a bicyclist and a mechanic, I still have to agree with Gail - in the long-term, a bicycle is a luxury rather than a solution. The people of the future are more likely to rely upon their feet (which isn't exactly a bad thing anyway).
John Michael Greer's idea of succession makes a lot a sense to me. Yes sometime in the future the productive capacity to produce bicycles will be hard to come by, but that future is far enough out that we can't effectively plan for it in the present. The capacity to produce bicycles will be with us as we ratchet down to the scarcity industrial and salvage societies, that will probably put us out a couple of hundred years. Beyond that who knows, somebody may figure out how to make carbon composite like polymers cheaply out of cellulose and someone may not.
And why are you so sure that we won't one day have road systems built at great effort and expense with the surplus energy of a nuclear economy?
If Gail's intent was what you think it is, she said nothing to indicate it. Sweeping, unqualified, unexplained statements deserve to be challenged.
More substantively, when the subject under discussion is whether it is possible to do things without fossil fuels that we currently do with fossil fuels, it begs the question to point out that we currently do those things with fossil fuels.
So...what was your point again?
There appears to be some confusion/conflation with the concepts "requires fossil fuels" and "requires fossil fuels to be economically competitive in today's business environments".
Yes I agree with Gail.
What do bicycles travel on?
They will last longer than cars, but will eventually become useless without FF's.
As usual narrow-mindedness takes over, the big picture gets screwed up and thrown in the bin.
A concrete, asphalt, gravel or dirt surface.
Dirt turns to mud and ruts.....and gravel, well you are just not thinking.
Paved roads facilitate the usefulness of bicycling. Bicycles must get stronger and heavier and slower to cope with unmaintained roads. Eventually walking will be faster.
Many millions of cycles throughout the world use only paved roads. To envisage them using non-paved roads is as stupid as your reply.
This is a idiotic reply. Twenty years ago, I rode bicycles on dirt roads in Malaysia. So there.
There's gravel and dirt bike paths all over the place in the US. Lots of bicycles on them too, I frequent some myself.
Hi barrett,
As I mentioned up thread, I think we could produce bikes for a long time if we planned now for local, lower energy processes. The other side of the equation is the type of surface upon which we ride bikes. Again, much of that part of the problem relates to early planning.
If we were collectively smart enough to get heavy, fast motor vehicles off of many roads while we still had the ability to maintain them - many of these roads would last a long time with much less maintenance effort. Conserving fuel for snow removal (small vehicles) and repair would keep us biking for a long time.
But, aside from conventional roads, the value of bikes on rougher roads and trails is well established. As I mentioned before, huge amounts of goods were moved long distances in very difficult conditions on the Ho Chi Minh trail. As you mentioned, younger and tougher folks spend lots of time riding on the worst possible trails they can find!
In between perfect paved roads and rough dirt tracks are all kinds of variations. Some dirt/gravel roads can hold up for centuries with little to no maintenance (they don't all turn to mud). I've biked on cobblestone roads built by the Romans - not the best, but OK. Here in Wisconsin we use a lot of something we call "traffic bond" which is a kind of crushed limestone, sand, whatever stuff. It makes a pretty decent bike path that requires minimal maintenance.
As I said up thread - the inherent value of a bike is so much greater than just feet, that people will figure out how to build some variation of this machine unless we really do have a total collapse.
The plastics in bicycles are a smarter way to use fossil fuels than BURNING. Burning produces carbon dioxide and various other pollutants. Converting it to plastic for such use does not. Since we need all kinds of plastic for various uses in daily life, I don't see why this is considered bad.
Yes, future generations will have to find other sources of feedstock for manufacturing of plastic. Too bad.
Give me one turbine at Grand Coulee, electrified rail and I could make over 1 million bicycles/year.
Electric arc for scrap steel (see SUVs, more than enough raw material for two bikes for every American). Electricity for some aluminum (use nearby clay if transporting scrap Al or bauxite is somehow a problem). Electricity for machine shop that makes all assembly tools.
Seats from local leather.
Rubber from Russian dandelions or imported.
http://bioproducts.osu.edu/index.php/news-room/96-russian-dandelion-dome...
As for an anti-corrosion coating for the steel bikes, natural paints exist and with "economic" demand MANY more bio-products could be developed (such as dandelions example). Stainless steel exists (no paint/coating needed), chrome or nickel coatings, ceramic coatings.
The same molecules found in petrochemical feedstocks can be found in nature. Since bikes use so very little, one could use either the last dregs of oil, tar sands or derive them from nature.
Gail is simply wrong.
Alan
If its so easy why isn't it done now.
I guess you will just have to wait til' things start falling apart to make it easier and cheaper to make bicycles. Assuming bicycles will be made in the millions because there will be nothing damn well else to do with all the money flying around.
Rubber from dandelions, that would be a step up from ethanol from corn, can't really eat dandelions but at least it would stop that farm from growing food for fuel.
Haitians, Somalians and Zimbabweans should be flocking to two wheels. They could do with your free advice.
Are you saying Gail is wrong because it can be done or it will be done?
"can't really eat dandelions"
Actually, dandelions are in the US because they escaped from people's gardens years ago. The roots are edible like carrots, the leaves are good steamed or raw and are rich in vitamin C. Even the flowers can be used to make wine.
You need to be much more flexible in your thinking, or you will never survive.
Man are we in trouble when you get whacko replies like yours.
What a relief, hear that everyone we can eat dandelions, we need to get flexible with our thinking, grow 'em like carrots, plenty of dandelion soup, lots of vitimin C, stuff all else though.
I can just imagine the energy I'd expend collecting dandelions to eat, probably expend more energy chewing the petals.
I didn't know it was a wacko thing, but thought everyone knew dandelions were edible. If you don't poison them, you probably wind up picking them anyway, and if you like salad (as I do) its perfectly normal to wash some up and slice it in - leaves, flowers, root and all. Give it a try!
I've been planning on trying a kimchi recipe with dandelion root next season.
I never said at any time they were not edible, I know they are.
I eat celery and parsley too but one consumes more energy eating it than they contain.
Dandelions are crap and have not and will not ever be grown commercially for food. They are a weed herb and can picked and eaten. If you went without eating them, even if you were starving hungry you would hardly be worse off.
I can suggest a good diet for you though especially if want to lose weight quickly. Replace your food with dandelions, I guarantee you'll lose weight hand over fist.
Apparently, there are 68 Calories in a cup of dandelion greens. How many calories would it take, do you think, to pick and eat a cup of dandelion greens? Maybe the roots and flowers have even more Calories.
Apparently you are wrong there is 25 calories in 55 grams which is a cup.
You want to pick a cup of dandelions chew and eat, go ahead.
I didn't state it, Bandits, I gave a link to a site that lists the various nutritional contents of a cup of dandelion greens. Do you have a reference for your claim? And how does that compare with the energy needed to harvest and eat the greens?
http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-dandelion-greens-i11207
http://www.dietbites.com/calories-dandelion-greens.html
http://www.calorieking.com/foods/calories-in-fresh-vegetables-dandelion-...
http://theherbalshopper.com/natural-diuretics-3/dandelion-root-natural-h...
There is no end of garbage written about this "food", look it up yourself.
Calorie content ranges from 13 to 35. They suit themselves, If they claim they are good for dieting the calorie count is low if they say good for eating the count is higher. The simple fact is they are good for a garnish if you like that type of thing but as a "food", forget about it.
If you want to starve to death eat dandelions.
Well, I don't think anyone suggested a diet made up entirely of dandelions. That you've tried to make it appear so says more about you than Koyaanisquatsi's comment being wacko. As others have pointed out, it's a very nutritious food.
You are wacko alright, if it's "very nutritious food" (but who pointed it out) go eat the damn stuff. You can live on "very nutritious foods", dandelions aint it.
Please yourself I'm not continuing this B/S
That's good. Who pointed out the nutrition? Koyaanisquatsi and at least one of the links you provided.
Calories aren't the only measure of food. I quote from Wikipedia:
"Nutritional properties
Dandelion leaves contain abundant amounts of vitamins and minerals, especially Vitamins A, C and K, and are good sources of calcium (0.19% net weight), potassium (0.4% net weight) and fair amounts of iron and manganese [23], higher than similar leafy greens such as spinach. They contain 15% protein and 73% carbohydrates, 37% of which is fiber (27% of the leaves are fiber) [24]. The leaves also contain smaller amounts of over two dozen other nutrients, and are a significant source of beta carotene (0.03% net weight), lutein and zeaxanthin (combined 0.066% net weight) [25]. A cup of dandelion leaves contains 112% daily recommendation of vitamin A, 32% of vitamin C, and 535% of vitamin K and 218 mg potassium, 103 mg calcium, and 1.7 mg of iron."
It wouldn't be wacko to eat dandelions...wacko would be eating the neighbors.
Have you seen the Hmong gathering dandelions to eat? I have. They know how to survive in conditions you could not.
Because fuel is still cheap enough that you will be put out of business in short order by competitors. I don't recall anything in the thread that suggests it would be easy.
Who are you attributing that to? No-one said it would be easier and cheaper to make bicycles without FF.
Doesn't matter, if either were true she would still be wrong. There is a difference between "requires fossil fuel" and "requires fossil fuel to be competitive in present markets".
No Alan, you are simply wrong. Of course you can make a few bicycles with charcoal blast furnaces but soon all the trees would be gone, then what? Of course you can use electricity also but we are not going to build that many nukes and we already have about all the hydro power we are ever going to have.
The idea that we will can have all the steel we need, all the plastics we need and all the other things made from or with fossil fuels, is the most absurd idea ever presented on TOD. I am really shocked at the naïveté of some of the veteran posters here.
I am not saying that we cannot have some of those things but not nearly enough to support half the current population even if there were no cars and everyone rode bicycles.
Ron P.
The scrap steel just from SUVs can provide several times (50 times ?) the steel required (using electric arc furnaces) for all the bicycles that the USA could conceivably use. Absolutely no need for charcoal.
The USA has quite a few GW in untapped small hydro (current licensing makes it uneconomic to just renew the 50 year license for a 2 or 3 MW existing hydropower plant. How does that affect new small hydro development ?). Plus several dozen GW of large hydro in Canada waiting for a buyer. So more hydro is quite possible.
Total electrical demand will go down as the economy shrinks and efficiency improves. Just how much is subject to conjecture. But bicycles are valuable enough (and consume just a couple dozen pounds of steel and other materials. Easily recycled at end of life).
Doomer case: Much of the USA has sporadic electricity (think 3rd World) and most rural/exurban/outer Suburban areas none at all. Even then, it would make lots of sense to devote the limited hydropower and other scarce resources to bicycle manufacture. Bikes would be a priority and other uses would simply do without.
Grand Coulee is a massive hydropower producer (6.8 GW, 21,000 GWh) far from major population centers (or much of anything except Spokane). Good place for some bicycles to be manufactured in the doomer case.
Yes, we can have all the steel, etc. we NEED w/o FF, if "need' is severely redefined. And a better quality of life is quite possible with severely redefined needs.
If we reduce our consumption of plastics 100 to 500 fold (easy, think WalMart plastic bags replaced by canvas bags, no more private cars, etc.), then bio-sources for what we NEED appear easy (with some research, almost entirely neglected).
As a side note, during WW II, 11 million lbs of dandelion fluff (from their flowers) was collected by volunteers as a substitute & supplement for other products. Not "economic" but when needed, it was done. About one ounce/capita.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Gail said nothing to indicate that her intent was what you think it is. She made a sweeping, unsupported statement that is literally false.
Pointing out that we currently use fossil fuels to make bicycles is begging the question, when the question is precisely whether something else could be used. Begging the question is a much more serious fallacy than getting a little too sematical.
So...what was you're point again?
As a former actuarial student, my point is that it is unwise to annoy actuaries, for they are subtle and quick to auger.
In the bicycle museum in Cadouin France, there is a primitive bicycle made from a European box plant. The maker was very patient because he bent the plant into the proper form as it grew and when it was strong enough he cut off the frame. I don't remember the date of construction.
Last year I met a former president of the French cyclo-tourist federation. He owned 2 bicycles, one had been ridden over 400,000 kilometers, the other over 500,000. At 73, he was still riding 13,000 km per year. They were expensive bikes (Reynolds 531 custom built) but per kilometer, the frames at least are pretty energy efficient.
I'm all for cargo bikes -- Wish I could figure out how to post a pic of my Big Dummy up against the truck that delivered chicken litter for my hay meadow (first time in three years). I carry 50 lb sacks of feed on my bike. Only thing I can't do is haul livestock to the processor, but eventually we'll be doing that at home, too!
picture of my Big Dummy cargo bike on my most recent blog post: http://ltbeef.blogspot.com/
Lauren
Hi Lauren,
Thanks! Nice blog and links. I hope to be in touch soon, with questions!
The main reasons why women had so many children in the olden days were: 1) Shockingly high levels of infant and childhood mortality; 2) lack of any effective means of contraception, or even in many cases the most rudimentary knowledge of how human reproductive biology actually works; and 3) in a society that was still growing and had not yet bumped up against resource limits, children were seen as being more of a benefit than a cost.
We now know about germs, and we know what simple soap and water and sterilization of things in boiling water will do to prevent their spread. We know how to quarantine contageous people. We know how vaccination works and how to create vaccines (and it is not THAT high tech, after all). We've learned some things about maternal and childhood nutrition. If we just bother to retain and use the things we've learned, there is no reason why infant and childhood mortality should be as high in the future as it was in the past. Ergo, less reason for families to try and have quite so many kids.
Basic knowledge of human reproductive biology is now also widespread. You no longer have the old Victorian phenomenon of brides getting to their wedding night with no idea about what was about to happen. We have multiple contraception methods, many of them low-tech or even no-tech. Attitudes have changed, I wouldn't assume that we are just going to revert back to old-style attitudes and old-style ignorance.
One of the big reasons why people have been having fewer kids is that they are so damn expensive. The truth be known, I suspect that more than a few people wonder if it is really worth the trouble. In a declining economy, the cost-benefit calculation is not likely to shift in favor of having more kids any time soon; quite the contrary, most likely. In fact, I suspect to see most societies that haven't already done so to transition to a below-replacement birth rate within the next couple of decades, which should be a major and relatively benign driver of population to lower levels over the long term.
The population timebomb has momentum. So even if people start having only a replacement rate or less, the population will continue to rise for a while anyway.
population is already in decline in Europe and Japan (despite immigration)
Why should the US be different?
Or are you expecting a heavy influx from the south?
People in Latin America have less interest coming north these days.
Matter of fact, Canadians are concerned about Americans wanting to come north.
[sarc]
As I stated some time ago, we'll ensure they have good jobs for landscaping, domestic help, agriculture transient work, etc. Promise we won't scapegoat all the national problems on them though.
What goes around...
[/sarc]
At this point, we still have birth control pills and other contraceptives. Early term abortions still work well as a backup, and permanent sterilization is an option when we can do surgery in a sterile environment, with anesthetics.
Without fossil fuels, we will have less capability for birth control. People will have fewer alternative forms of "entertainment". A lot of women get pregnant extremely easily, without birth control--families with 16 or more children were not all that uncommon, back before the publicity about the need to limit family sizes. If people need help caring for their gardens, social security is not available, and death rates go back up, and contraception is not available, I expect family sizes will rise again.
Gail said
So now you're saying that we need oil for making hormonal contraceptives and we need oil for a sterile surgical theatre environment! These are both patently untrue assumptions, AFAIK. I really think that you need to take a step back, Gail.
BTW, did you do that homework on global warming? Listen to those mp3s? Or are you still not sure about the whole issue?
"Less capability" being the key words in what you quoted. It is not going to be possible for a woman to be able to ensure 100% of the time for 100% of her life that she can avoid (or early terminate following Gail's language) pregnancy.
It's pretty clear that sex as a form of entertainment is one of the few low energy options available (from a fossil fuel/electrical standpoint), and thus will spike even more so in popularity. Couple that with less reliable availability of the various forms of birth control, and you have a formula that results in many more children being produced. Even if both consenting adults both agree that they cannot sustain another mouth to feed (even after the potential gains are calculated), how likely is that to influence the results in the heat of the moment?
I agree with Gail, I can't see people being able to run down to the store and pick up condoms because they're out. The availability of birth control will decrease and fertility will rise. It's one thing if you can hop in a car and get to Walgreen's in 3 minutes, it's another if you have to hop on a scooter and ride for 25 minutes each way. This isn't Eastern Europe, there is still a religious element here, abortions will not be popular and most likely will not be as available.
Hi Gail,
re: "A lot of women get pregnant extremely easily, without birth control"
Just a point of information, based on cases I've seen:
Some number (It seems relatively high to me, given the total) get pregnant extremely easily even *with* birth control (and back-up birth control).
Also, there has to be the willingness to use birth control, which relates to my point about legal rights of women. I've also seen abortion used pretty much as *the* method - quite a questionable (what I could call cultural) trend (IMVHO).
Unfortunately decline in fertility rate is not in itself good enough to result in population decline, at least not in the timeframe we are looking at. You also need practically no immigration (or positive emigration) and an increase in the death rate.
Japan's fertility rate is so low, and immigration very low to nonexistent, so they are getting there. It's still not enough to avoid the poverty of a post-peak world, and they'll really just have alot of old people around.
Russia is the best example to look at, and the model that will be followed around the world, whether we like it or not. Declining fertility, net emigration, and increased death rate. All three, and only all three, will give us any chance. Of course, not all countries can simultaneously send their citizens somewhere else, so this is problematic, to say the least.
Hi Sachs,
I think you are getting at the real issues. I find it amazing that many TOD folks simply trust that global population is trending in the right direction and we should not get our panties in a bundle over this issue. I would rather take my changes at a roulette table.
The simple fact is that the US and most other countries (China being the major exception) have made zero effort at defining an official population policy. Until we actually face this issue, and confront all the folks with one-sided agendas for population growth, I doubt that we can prevent some very nasty consequences.
Birth/fertility rates are just so much fog - all that counts is growth rate. Even a declining growth rate is no good as long as the global population is still growing. I really don't see how a 9- 10B global population is going to work without the 4 horsemen riding in on our party.
Maybe, but it's not true. Fertility rate in Russia is rising again(though still too low for replacement) and standard of living also is on the rise. So the average age of the population is expected to increase. Energy use will increase, so because of ELM oil-exports will decline more rapidly.
Which is a better use for latex, bicycle tires or condoms? If we use it for condoms we will need fewer bicycle tires. If we use it for tires then we may need to make vasectomies mandatory for any man who has fathered a child. Having gone through vasectomy surgery sitting on a bicycle seat for about a month afterward is not a good idea.
Abortion and cheap birth control have yet to stem the growth in America, especially among the poor and immigrant communities. Starvation and disease are the most likely eventual curb on population.
Anybody who has tried using common birth control long-term can attest to the failure rate, even when being careful. If you don't go for abortion (and many won't), you won't have population control, IMHO.
We can easily stem the huge, recent population increase in this country. Throw out 85% of the people of post-1965 stock at the point of a bayonet. We don't need teeming third world masses in this country, they won't be doing anything anyhow. The FIRE economy is dieing.
Throw out 85% of the people of post-1965 stock at the point of a bayonet
i.e. American born American citizens.
Racism, pure and simple.
Alan
I figure we could do it by net worth. Those who didn't make the 86th percentile or higher in this group get booted out of the life raft. They wouldn't be "American-Born Citizens"... Just need to go back and clarify some stuff in regards to the 14th amendment jus soli nonsense and declare some of Ted Kennedy's handy work as treason.
In many ways the post '65 massive immigration from Latin America and Asia has been problematic, but it will never be reversed. If anything, we are staring straight at an amnesty for illegals as an increasingly desperate federal government tries to bring in as many taxpayers as it can. It doesn't matter if TPTB are Republican or Democrat...both love the immigration and the potential workers/voters, and they think that any talk of overpopulation or racial strife/social breakdown is the domain of kooks or worse.
Moreover, even high oil prices or economic decline is not enough to stop immigration, only temporarily slow it. I submit that the middle classes from places like Latin America will continue to flee to the U.S., as their countries stand to do worse in a post-peak world.
The only thing that will slow immigration is either rapid worldwide collapse in transportation, or for America to become so poor that even the masses of Mexico won't want to come here. Take your pick.
It's really not difficult to remove people, I bet some of my cousins were saying "Us Jews never need to worry about anything happening to us here in wealthy Germany we will always be here!"
When those corporations no longer have any real power, the immigration flood will halt. When this country really begins to slide, dead weight will get thrown out.
I doubt there will be an amnesty, conditions are declining too fast.
Excellent response. I was going to mention population growth.
Richard Heinberg
but only with a smaller population.
Here's the problem with guys like Richard Heinberg. He only tells the optimistic half of the story. Sure, he says things will be rough, but he rarely mentions die-off or bottlenecks. The reader is to assume all will be fine if we just follow a few practical localization tips. Get real, Richard. There are already way too many people, most supported by "green revolution" fossil fuel applications to modern agriculture and the JIT (Just In Time) FF transport system of food deliveries to metropolitan areas. To say some localizations here, some over there, are going to bring the whole lot through the Great Descent is just so much green smoke blown up the billions and billions of human rear ends. I guess it goes well for the lecture circuit and selling a few books, but it's just another version of false hopes being peddled to the hopeful. Hey, it's a living, huh?
You know what I truly admire about William Catton? He's an honest intellectual. I think Gail is, too.
In his book, The Party's Over, Heinberg says, " Overpopulation is currently one of humanity's greatest problems and will become a far greater one with the gradual disappearance of fossil fuels", and, "If that reduction does not take place through voluntary programs of birth control, then it will probably come about as a result of famine, plagues and wars". In Peak Everything he wrote, "The longer we wait, the fewer our options. Social liberals and progressives who fail to talk about population and resource issues and to propose workable solutions are merely helping to create their own worst nightmare."
Heinberg has been delivering a message of reality, but with an optimistic tone. Recently, I sense his optimism is fast waning.
I think the point of this post is that it now seems, more than ever, down to individuals to make whatever change they can. For some communities, that might give them an edge in getting through this. Those that come out on the other side can fashion societies that don't rely on growth but can still provide satisfying and fulfilling lives.
I'm not totally convinced of that. The dutch were building some pretty amazing windmills and equipment that ran off of them way back in the seventeenth century, using no FF inputs at all. Most of the watermills that were built in US up through the mid-nineteenth century at least were done with no significant FF inputs. It is quite feasible to manufacture glass and metals on a fairly small scale, using only charcoal and/or biogas, and maybe CSP.
I am more sceptical when it comes to manufacturing PV cells, or WT blades made of high-tech composite materials. Those may not be possible to sustain absent FFs. It is possible, though, to think through a level of production technology and a level of reneweable energy infrastructure that match up to each other, and I am pretty confident that this level is well above zero.
You are right--there are things like wind mills and water wheels that we can do.
It is the current generation of extenders that doesn't look very sustainable to me.
Small (~1 MW) modern, efficient water turbines (Kaplan, bulb, Pelton, etc.) can be built with a small machine shop (say 5 to 10 people). Generators can be hand wound.
http://www.mhylab.com/En/index_en.html
There is no reason to give up the efficiency of modern design (an extra 15% to 60% more power) just to have a quaint looking water wheel.
Just as knowledge of modern aerodynamics can make a better blade than 1700 Dutch designs.
Designs can be adapted to available materials. For example, Aluminum requires no FF and cannot be depleted.
Best Hopes for not throwing away two centuries of engineering knowledge,
Alan
I'll have to catch you a minor engineering detail. Pelton turbines are typically high head which require steel penstocks.
However the Kaplan and Francis are low head and can use wooden penstocks. Matter of fact, wooden penstocks can last longer than steel, and they are assembled by hand.
(Penstock is the big pipe that delivers the water from the high water intake to the water turbine driving the generator).
http://www.frenchriverland.com/wooden_penstock_web_page.htm
Low tech wins again...
Which reminds of thoughts about complexity utilized beyond maximum limits and the recent automobile travails, ... but that's another topic for another day.
At the lower end of the Pelton range (65 m or so), concrete can work as well. Some sites allow a hole drilled through good rock to be the penstock with steel only on the end.
Wood works into the Pelton range.
http://www.ic.gc.ca/app/ccc/srch/nvgt.do?lang=eng&prtl=1&sbPrtl=&estblmn...
And steel can be made (and easily recycled with electric arc furnaces) without FF (the carbon in carbon steel can come from organic sources if you are a purist).
Best Hopes for Materials Engineering :-)
Alan
I do think that some people sell humankind short. In spite of appearances sometimes being to the contrary, there actually are some smart people out there. There will be motivation for some of them to apply their intelligence to the problems, and they may very well come up with some things. This is not to suggest in any way that they can keep BAU going, just that they might be able to come up with some things that will actually help us to cope with the decline.
Are you saying that you believe that renewables are not EROI positive? Because if they are, then why can't some of their generation be use to make a very small amounts of fuel (ammonia, hydrogen, syn fuel, whatever) to power the very few maintenance/building requirements that need fuel?
If you believe they are EROI neg, how can you even call them "extenders"? This is why I am assuming you think they are EROI+.
None of this is to say that we can scale windmills to today's level of generation... but no one is arguing that (here).
I think so. However, a large part of what this will mean is the opportunity for lower-tech, smaller-scale localized technologies to flourish. Instead of going to the store to buy cookies baked in Denmark from wheat grown in Australia, we will be baking cookies at home or buying them from the local bakery (using an oven built of local stone or masonry, and fired by local firewood), made from flour ground at the local mill (built from local stone and timber and blacksmith-forged metal parts), made from wheat grown not too far away. The end result is still a world where it is possible to eat a cookie.
It is the high-tech, highly complicated things that are most likely going to go by the wayside. The more components that go into something, the less likely in general that thing will continue to be built.
WNC Obs said
Disagree, because even if a gizmo is made of 1,000 widgets, there is no energetic reason why those widgets cannot be donkey-carted (or bicycled, or sent by train and sailing ship) from the 4 corners of the world to the assembly plant. Price may go up, but there is no prima facie reason not to continue manufacturing useful complicated things.
The reason is Tainter. When societies are no longer able to sustain a high level of complexity, then they re-set downward at a lower level of complexity. This applies both to complexity at a whole systems level and also to the complexity of specific artifacts. That is what just about all of us are talking about here, with only the scenarios, pathways, timelines, and extent differing.
what are historical norms for infant mortality and life expectancy? and how long would it take to return to a sustainable population if we trended toward those norms, which i'd expect in the decline?
the human population must have been so much smaller in the past compared to now because the old died younger and as many children died as didn't. how will we manage to avoid that?
your second point assumes the first is correct, and i don't see the logic in the first point. in our very poor future, our population won't be growing.
The most sobering object lesson I ever got on the subject of former rates of infant mortality was when visiting my wife's family cemetery. Amongst the headstones of the adults were large clusters of very small grave markers, most no more than a brick or a stone, some with a name on them, many with nothing at all. Dozens and dozens of little children, all gone in such a short time, and all so soon totally forgotten. Back in the nineteenth century, the deaths of children must have been an all-to-common experience.
Before I post some statistics, I want to say that I do not believe we will unlearn all of the science and technology that has contributed to our current life spans. These include germ theory of disease, vaccinations, public health measures, treated water, refrigeration, plant nutrition and fertilizer production, human nutrition, vitamins, etc.
In 1662, John Graunt, in Observations upon the Bills of Mortality, using London population data, noted that life expectancy is 27 years, with nearly two/thirds dying before 16 years.
Another recent work based on data from England, France and the US is titled "The Escape From Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100" It showed life expectancy in England and France being about 32 and 27 years respectively, in 1700. Life expectancies in the US were 45-50 due to having enough to eat. Height and weight tables show the people in England and France were malnourished and stunted, making them susceptible to disease.
Living conditions of the early 19th c. factory workers are beyond anything we can relate to:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1844engels.html
See: The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, Fredrick Engels
From my own family history in the US. Maybe life was better out in the country on the new continent.
grandfather born 1885 lived to 78 (11 children, 9 survived)
ggrandfather born 1847 lived to 70 (8 children)
gggrandfather born 1826 lived to 79 (8 children)
ggggrandfather born 1791 lived to early 70's (10 children, 9 survived)
gggggrandfather born 1750 lived to 85 (11 children)
ggggggrandfather born 1715 lived to 58 (9 children)
If you made it past childhood, avoided war or accidents, and lived and worked in a healthy rural environment, you usually could look forward to a long life. Not everyone was so lucky, though.
Living to adulthood did not necessarily mean lifing a long life as we know it today, which is unique to the 20th c. Chronic hunger and malnutrition took years off of life span.
All agricultural workers put in extremely long hours under sometimes harsh working and living conditions.
The landless lived on the verge of extinction.
Yes, it was largely a matter of luck. Queen Anne of Great Britain (1665 to 1714) had at least eighteen pregnancies, and had no surviving children when she died at age 49. As heir apparent and then queen regnant of a rather rich nation, one would suppose she had the best living conditions and best medical treatment money could buy.
Let's hope that the basics of modern preventative medicine survive, so that this does not become a typical life in the future.
Actually, inbreeding and the concentration of genetic defects that go with it has been a chronic problem amongst the royals, even back then. It is no wonder that the royal family tree so often came up to a dead end, with the need to go a few branches over to find a viable line (with more common blood intermixed) to continue.
Thank you for this thought provoking post. A concern that I have is that Obama will be seen to have failed due to this stagnated economy you allude to and that perhaps we are in, and that a whacko will get in as President and feel the need to start a resource war. Or, that Iran will hammer the decent man down like Carter was stiffed, and then the troubles intensify for the entire world.
"In fact, some historians and social scientists argue that life in an equilibrium economy can be superior to life in a fast-growing economy:"
I hope so. We are doing our best to prepare should this happen in the near future.
...which is why I think "early adopters", to do well at all, will have to turn their backs on national politics. There will always be that political sideshow of invented causes and effects, but a part of localism is ignoring it, expecting and needing nothing from it.
I think Obama is failing so far. Don't get me wrong, I prefer Obama to Bush, but I view the president as a "green cornucopian."
Green cornucopia is just as wrong headed as BAU.
Paulo:
I hate to break this to you, but you have a lot more to be concerned about than just that.
Yes, Obama will fail. As will the guy that follows him. The US political system is incapable of raising up good, competent, wise, effective leaders and placing them in positions where they can do any good. The political system itself is failing, and is now entering a terminal stage.
The thing I worry about is that the present constitutional system of government will collapse altogether, and be replaced by a new, considerably less benign regime. I see this as not being just possible, but highly probable, and greatly to be feared.
You only need to fear the empire if you are not part of it ;)
The US political system is incapable of raising up good, competent, wise, effective leaders and placing them in positions where they can do any good
I think that just about sums it up. Its a pity
The feds have reached the limits of what it can do within the context of its current form
I guess this is why the US has been the poorest, least-influential, weakest, unadvanced nation in the history of the Earth for about a century or more now.
While I understand people's cynicism, statements like that show an inability to look at the big picture objectively.
Actually, your statement makes me think you live in the past and can't see the present and what lies ahead in the future.
We simply disagree about what lies ahead. We're probably both wrong. But human nature being what it is, I'm inclined to believe I am less wrong than you.
And anyway, I was simply commenting that it is silly to say that we have had complete crap leadership in the nation that has historically done the best. But you are doing a whole lof of inferring about my beliefs. Wwhy do you think I participate in this site? I think things will change. I just also think that people will do whatever they can to adapt when it is prudent to do so.
Even if Obama went to the world and said "Here is peak oil." And everyone said, "I get it." And they really did. I still don't know if anything would change, not until there were the right market signals. No one in the US is going to get behind making changes prematurely that are going to put us at a global disadvantage.
That said, more transparency would help make sure the markets and gov'ts act prudently.
We are seeing those signals now and have been for sometime. I would argue change has already started.
"I'm inclined to believe I am less wrong than you."
At least we can both agree that your wrong. In 1940 the German people believed in their leadership also.
The United States is a country that stole it's land from it's natives. Inslaved free people to the build the nation. Sold WMD to a country and than attacked the country killing 10's thousands of innocent people for having WMD when they didn't have them.
Any good capitalist should be proud.
Your comment is just a bunch of harping on the past and finger pointing. It is a bunch of red herrings. There hasn't been a group of people on this whole Earth not to commit attrocities at some point in history. What's your point? Does that make all leaders from all of history bad no matter what? What are you even arguing?
My point was it is easy to focus on the bad so much you ignore the good. I am not defending nazis or the Bush admin. I was pointing out that a country as sucessful as the US was doing something right, along with the wrong.
Quit it with the appeals to emotion already... I'd prefer a conversation based in fact and reason.
Yes, but "done the best" by what standard? True, a few years ago it looked invincible. But now it looks like a blind alley ( JHK calls it "the biggest misallocation of resources in history"). If that turns out to be true (and it is hard to see it not being true) then history will judge your leaders harshly, especially over the last 30-50 years. Perhaps the biggest blunder was the failure, after the 1970's oil shock, was to not price gasoline correctly. Had "gas" been as expensive as in Europe the US would also have had a fleet that averages 35mpg, SUVs and the exurbs wouldn't exist and Peak Oil might still have been a few years off. Indeed the GFC might not have happened yet; and we would have had another few years to blow the bubble even bigger. Amazing how your mind can run riot.
That's one way to look at it... but it is likely as wrong as it is right.
What if instead, the oil would have been pumped as fast it could be anyway? Putting peak oil here and now regardless. What if the US hadn't imported so much... wouldn't someone else have used it similarly? Consumption is power in a lot of ways. What if oil efficient housing lead to the rise of ten times as many cities since the oil was available? What if that set us up for a worse crash? What if the boom of the last fifty years was in other regions (and it would have been... it's a collective action problem)... how would the US be able to cope without its financial and technological edge?
These are very complex issues, and it is hard enough to make sense of them in hingsight... imagine being a politician forty years ago and trying to make sense of it!
It is very easy for me to see why many people thought Carter was wrong, whether he was or not... that was what I was getting at when I said, even with full transparency, things may not have been very different.
----------
And on the Kunstler bit: maybe it was a waste. (Don't ask me, I hate suburbia anyway). But there is a simple answer: Park and Rides combined with public transport unill new building patterns emerge.
I am with you and San Francisco's BART is proof.
Andrew:
During the first half of that century our system was indeed capable of raising up some very fine political leaders. Things really started falling apart a few decades ago, though, and now far too much damage has been done.
If you say so...
But let's not forget that people have been saying that the US couldn't elect fine leaders for a LONG time.... since the days of de Tocqueville to be exact.
All I am saying is that it's easy to cast stones and focus on the bad.
It is what the system produces....................
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIraCchPDhk&feature=related
I agree with this.
I commented on this statement on March 4th Drumbeats. The statement is basically false, especially this part: If billions of people (cumulatively) through countless generations lived without economic growth, we can do so as well—now and far into the future. Billions have not lived through countless generations without economic growth. The world, in the days of very slow growth contained only millions, not billions. I wrote on March 4th.:
The population grew very, very slow during all history up until the industrial revolution. During all historical times it was growth in lands cultivated, or growth in the efficiency of farming methods or growth in local trade and industry that accompanied growth in the population. True, everything grew at a snails pace but so did the population.
It is impossible to accommodate growth in the population without growth in the economy. Also in historical times the population grew much slower because of lower fertility rates due to malnutrition and women dying in childbirth. And of course the death rates were much higher in those days also.
Simply for Richard to say that “we did it before therefore we can do it again” omits a world of hard life, misery, disease and death. He also omits the fact that the population is many times greater than in the times of extremely slow growth.
There were never long periods of no growth, only extremely slow growth as the population grew at about the same extremely slow pace. And all that slowness was due primarily to the work of the Four Horsemen.
As long as our population continues to grow then there must be growth in order to employ the growth in population. As long as technology continues to produce labor saiving devices it will put laborers out of work. The economy must grow to give these people new jobs. And as long as our economy is based on debt, then the economy must grow to pay the interest on that debt.
For any economy to survive with no growth then first of all, the population must stop growing. Second technology must stop producing labor saving devices. And third all banks must stop lending money because without growth it will be impossible to pay interest on loans.
And there is one more relly serious flaw in Richard's hypothesis; everyone employed in industries that depend on growth will suddenly be out of work. The employment rate would soar to devestating numbers. Replacement construction would be the only construction. Builders would be largely out of business, banks would close. new highway construction would cease.
Of course all these things will happen anyway when the economy collapses. But the point is this statement by Richard is totally absurd:
Absolute nonsense. Fifty years from now there will likely be no growth, only continual shrinkage. And life will be anything but fulfilling, interesting and secure. Instead, in the words of Thomas Hobbs, we will live incontinual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Ron P.
4. Life in a non-growing economy can be fulfilling, interesting, and secure.
Absolute nonsense. Fifty years from now there will likely be no growth, only continual shrinkage. And life will be anything but fulfilling, interesting and secure. Instead, in the words of Thomas Hobbs, we will live incontinual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
That depends upon the choices, and investments, made.
I have no problem seeing, say, Sweden & it's immediate neighbors meeting those criteria in 2060, although "secure" may be relative (as secure perhaps as during the Cold War).
Best Hopes for Good Choices,
Alan
Yikes. You've got a point about population, of course -- but it's certainly possible that pockets of the world will be able to provide a life that's "filfilling, interesting, and secure."
I think Richard's proposing that we each work constructively to give our little 'pockets' the best chance of getting there. We might not succeed, but what other choice do we have?
Let's give it a try.
People living in a nearby miserable pocket may decide to live or invade the pocket doing better.
Darwinian, your point is reiterated day-by-day at the rate of 10,000 per hour, so that at the end of each and every day we have 250,000 new problems to solve.
It's like the simplest (most basic? easiest to comprehend?) problems are the most intractable. And the issue won't go away, in spite of good planning or sheer will or ceaseless internet conversations.
The gods are laughing at us and at our solutions, the same way they laughed at Oedipus, who thought he could outrun the curse of the gods.
After all, he answered the Riddle of the Sphinx.
And the people of Thebes thought he was their savior. Ha!
I see both the US and global populations shrinking for at least the next couple of centuries, maybe more. It may be several hundred years before we even get to the point of having to deal with the issue of preventing the population from rising again.
Populations in the past pretty much leveled off at the amount that their renewable resource base could support. They had no choice. Neither will future generations. The "problem" will pretty much take care of itself, one way or another. No guarantee that anyone is going to like how it is done.
As to employment, the thing to really focus on is the macro level: how much of a surplus can agriculture produce, and thus what percentage of the population can be spared from working on the farm? As the FF inputs decline, agriculture is going to have to become more labor intensive. Just because labor-replacing technologies exist doesn't mean that they will be economical to be employed. In pre-FF days, agriculture couldn't produce all that much of a surplus, so most people were employed in producing food. That's the likely future we'll eventually face, and the likely answer to where most people will be employed.
Europe and the U.S. (ignoring immigartion), have a stable population because women have fewer kids.
All we had to do was educate women, allow women who don't want kids access to contraception and do it all allowing for momentum to avoid a malthusian crash or dieback.
Hello leduck,
re: "All we had to do was educate women, allow women who don't want kids access to contraception"
I'd add in a necessary corollary: The women also require full legal rights, especially insofar as their security of person: protection from assault, battery, harassment, sexualized violence, along with legal protection of the ability to move freely, speak, associate, etc. In other words: legal rights that are backed up by policing and laws.
Education in and of itself isn't enough. There has to be a legal basis for freedom from coercion and control by (dare I say it) men.
I can think of a region that had a reversal of growth due to a pandemic. It occured in Europe in the middle of the fourteenth century.
I'm sure after the trauma of the black death and things stteld down, life did improve for these people who, for a short time, had fewer mouths eating a similar sized pie.
I don't think I buy your premise.
It is true that the world's population genrally grew very slowly prior to the industruial revolution. With the exception of breif periods of reversals during pandemics like the black death.
But,
There is no reason for me to believe the path we ended up on was envitable. If people in the middle east, or wherever, didn't stumble onto farming, I'm sure a growing hunter gatherer population would have eventually reached Malthusian limits (with a modest check from nature).
If a system based on farming plus a small scale mercantilism hadn't started industrialism, farmers would have evetually hit malthusian limits to growth.
This is the reason Thomas Malthus was "wrong."
he was not wrong that societies would reach malthusian limits..., he just never imagined the development of industrialism.
Louis Pasture should also be added to the mix. He got people to wash their hands, focused on sterilization, and worked on fighting and preventing disease, allowing more babies to reach adulthood and reproduce.
Soon, we will hit malthusian limits to industrialism.
Each step along the way needed some new way of increasing food production and increasing the number of babies reaching adulthood to prevent malthusian limits from keeping us in check.
Edo Japan is a classic example of a society living within it's means.
The hunter gatherers could have gone for millenia before hitting any malthusian limits. Farmers could go for millenia too, though not nearly as long before hitting limits to growth. Industrialism is going to have, by far, the shortest run before hitting malthusian limits.
If a pre-industrial society had hit a malthusian limit to growth, it would have been a far more benign check from nature on us.
A population growing at a snails pace is not as big a problem as a poulation rounding the bend of a j-curve.
Does a hunter gatherer society need to grow? I doubt it. They generally did, as long as they had the resources to do so..., but I don't htink it was necessary.
Do farmers need to grow? They may choose to if the population is growing..., but eventually they will hit malthusian limits.
Somehow Europeans managed to survive a shrinking population during the black death.
If we "must have growth?" what are we going to do when the whole thing starts contracting?
I am assuming you meant inevitable. Of course not, no one said it was. Start over and we would have ended with a complete different result. But make no mistake Homo sapiens did not "stumble" onto farming. Farming was discovered in many different parts of the world at different times in history. Farming was most of the Mayan's sole means of livelihood and they did not get it from the Middle East. (A few coastal Mayans supplimented their diet with fish.)
You gave us all the reasons Malthus was right but then state: This is the reason Thomas Malthus was "wrong." Of course Malthus was not wrong. The fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution and especially the green revolution does not make him wrong. His principles still hold. He got it exactly right.
And I fail to see where you describe, in your post, exactly where you disagree with me. No one is saying that we cannot live without growth. What I, and many others, are saying is that you cannot have business as usual without growth. And we are saying that the world cannot support seven billion people without fossil fuels. We are saying that when fossil fuel starts to decline that the economy must decline, that food production must decline and most important of all, the population must decline.
The world as it exists today cannot survive without growth!
Hell Leduck, that is what this debate is all about. Richard is saying that: 4. Life in a non-growing economy can be fulfilling, interesting, and secure. And I, and a few others, are saying that this is pure baloney. When things start contracting all hell is going to break loose. The population will start contracting. We will, in about half a century or less, go from deep overshoot to deep undershoot. It will take perhaps another hundred years after that for the population of the world to stabilize, blocked from further rise by the Malthusian limits.
Ron P.
When I wrote that Thomsa Malthus was wrong, I put wrong in quotes because that is what some people claim. It is NOT what I believe. If I agreed with that claim, I would not have used quotes.
Of course Thomas Malthus is correct.
Sorry..., I didn't realize you guys were stating the obvious. Of course you can't have BAU without growth.
And of course I doubt the world can support 7 billion people w/o fossil fuels.
But,
China has a very large population using much less energy. Europe uses half as much energy as we do and have a similar standard of living. So we can do much more with much less.
I don't know what the carrying capacity is..., but there are two.
One carrying capacity for a nice standard of living and a higher one where everyone or most everyone lives in misery.
Putting something between quotation marks means you disagree? I never heard of that before. Quotation marks are for quotations or are sometimes to emphasize something, but as far as I know, never to indicate disagreement.
China, along with all those other places who get by on much less energy per capita, are headed for disaster when oil production starts to drop. Oil is used to pump water from up to half a mile deep in many places. China uses over twice as much fertilizer per hectare as does the US. Less oil means less and more expensive fertilizer. And I could go on and on for hours explaining how the entire world depends on fossil fuels, and particularly oil, for survival. But what's the use, those who do not understand the truth of that will likely never understand it.
No, that is simply not correct. There is only one long term carrying capacity. You can overshoot carrying capacity for a short time but sooner or later everythig must collapse if you do. China, the US and just about everywhere else in the world is way, way over their long term carrying capacity.
The entire world is way past its long term carrying capacity. The world is deep, deep into overshoot. Only fossil fuel, mostly oil, is allowing us to produce enough food and pump enough water to irrigate the land. When it is gone we are mostly dead.
Ron P.
Putting it in quotes meant that's what some say, but not what I believe.
whatever....
Let me re-phrase the carrying capacity thing.
There is only one carrying capacity but we can choose to live just under it, IN MISERY, or far below it in relative LUXURY.
I do not believe we are all in the same boat. Some regions in the world are further into overshoot then others. Some regions have a higher carrying capacity than others due to more water and ability to produce food, than others.
I believe people in Las Vegas are in more trouble, then people in the pacific northwest.
I believe southern China can sustain a higher population density than Spain.
Less pesticides, as fertilizers are made from gas.
Yes on the pesticides. True, the nitrogen in NPK fertilizer is fixed by/from natural gas (ammonia process). Then the solid nitrates of ammonia are moved about by oil. The mining, processing and transport of solid potassium (K, usually as KCl) and phosphorous (P, as CaPO4) are done using oil. The price of NPK follows the oil price fairly closely. NPK is heavy.
Yes, but less oil doesn't necessarily mean that less fertilizer will be available. When the price of oil is high, in poor countries they will use less fertilizer and that is allready going on. When the world economy goes on the ropes oil demand will collapse and oilprices could drop. It is difficult to say if agriculture will continue in the usual way then, but to make the direct connection between oilproduction and foodproduction that does f.i. the LATOC site is nonsense, at least for the first decades that oilproduction declines.
He may have been broadly right about the fact that an unlimited population cannot be supported. But the specifics that he used were pretty arbitrary, and some are not correct.
His most important assumption was that the only thing that would check population growth was deprivation/starvation. We know that other things, such as wars, pestilence, even voluntary reproductive restraint can also check population. In his model, population increases until death due to privation balances out births.
His other major assumption was what that mattered was farmland per capita. H assumed output per acre was an increasing function of population density, but that it increased slower than the population density, so that per capita output was a decreasing function of density. That seems pretty correct as far as it goes, but there was no concept of resource depletion, i.e. the intrinsic productive capacity of land was assumed fixed. We know know that land can be depleted of soil or nutrients, so in this respect you could say Malthus was an optimist.
Where he was usually claimed to have missed the boat was advancing technology. The industrial age advanced productivity faster than population increases reduced it. Obviously this is a transitory state -but remarkably it held for 200 years.
Malthus was far from wrong. In fact, he was so right that his ideas contributed to the greatest scientific discovery ever made by mankind: biological evolution.
However, as far as resource limitations limiting the human species, he was simply off by a few hundred years . . . but in the long arc of human history (at least a 100,000 years or so), he was only off by a narrow error range. (Albeit an error range that seems very large to us considering our short life spans relative to the length of human history.)
Wrong is in quotes for a reason.
Most people who know of Multhus believe he was wrong, and industrialism gave critics the ammunition to target Thomas Malthus.
I do NOT BELIEVE MALTHUS WAS WRONG
I AM MULTHUSIAN!!!!!
Life in a non-growing economy can be fulfilling, interesting, and secure.
we will live incontinual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Hate to crush you both - its likely to be a mix of the two. Meaning some good, some bad and life goes on
"Life goes on."
Ever heard of EASTER ISLAND?
or
HAITI
Haitians would have been eating each before the earthquake, were it not for international aid.
That's interesting...Should the U.S. and other nations with adequate resources continue to support overpopulated areas?
Joe
I'm sure we will stop at some point as conditions in this country deteriorate.
Wait a minute, the U.S. has adaquate resources?
We can't possibly have adaquate resources as long as we continue growing (in population and consumption).
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell."
Abbey Edward
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
Albert Bartlett
I'll simply add the following link, it should be required reading of anyone concerned with overpopulation and resource depletion:
http://biosurveillance.typepad.com/haiti_operational_biosurv/
Haiti would still be able to produce enough food for it's population if it weren't for international "aid" (imposed 'free trade'). The island was apparently once self sustaining before tariffs were removed and foreign subsidized grains undercut and ruined their farmers.
The word "cumulatively" has a meaning, you know.
Jaggedben, I simply copied and pasted my reply which I posted on March 4th. The version that Richard himself posted on March 3rd, and again on March 10th, did not contain the word "cumulatively". Richard Heinberg did not include the word in his essay, apparently Gail added that after reading my post on March 3rd. And I was replying to Richard, not Gail. Anyway I did not read Gail's version above since I had already read the original. Had I read Gail's version, where she added the word "cumulatively" I would have altered my comment.
The below blockquote is copied and pasted directly from the March 10th edition of Richard's essay:
Richard Heinberg: The End of Growth and the Journey to a New Economy
Ron P.
Fair enough. (Still, even without the word "cumulatively", Richard's phrasing is ambiguous but does not necessarily imply your interpretation.)
"cumulatively" is a redundant word. The phrase is accurate with or without the word. If it was added later then that would just be for those who had misinterpreted the phrase as implying that there were past no-growth economies that had billions of people in them (which almost certainly would be nonsense).
The Population Reference Bureau provides a figure of 106,456,367,669 as the "Number who have ever been born." This proves Heinberg correct and you incorrect. Here we have an estimate "that 96,100,000,000 people have lived on the earth." Yet another reference from 1998 gives us 109,947,781,641. And a fourth reference says "Most studies place the total number of human beings to have ever lived at 60 billion to 120 billion and since the world population right now is a mere 6 billion, the percent of humans who have ever lived and are alive today is anywhere from a mere 5 to 10 percent."
Richard was talking of cumulative billions, not instantaneous billions. If you think economic growth has always happened, could you provide sources please. At a basic minimum, hunter gatherer societies that lived more than 10,000 years ago, didn't have economic growth, nor did more recent ones. Let's take hunter gatherer societies, prior to 10000 BC. There were about a million people estimated to be living at that time. If we assume an average life span of 40 years, and a stable population, that would mean 1 million people dying every 40 years, and 1 million people being born, or about 25,000 each year. So, in "only" 40,000 years, 1 billion people would have lived through zero economic growth.
True. If there is a recognisable economy. Obviously, population growth will stop, at some point. So population growth will not always be a driver for economic growth, however it is measured. But I'm not sure what your point is, relative to Richard's article. I think his point is about the need for growth. People lived for millennia without feeling that need. Obviously, population growth would have grown the economy, but per capita economic activity was probably static. So a lot of people, for a long time, lived without economic growth, as we now think of it.
Death is never omitted. But why you think it has to be a hard life of misery and disease is beyond me. Is that how you imagine a sustainable lifestyle to be? If so, you must be very scared, indeed, since unsustainable lifestyles must end (and badly, if unplanned).
But that's not a flaw in Richard's article. Nor must technology stop producing labour saving devices; Richard is envisaging a very different society from today, maybe labour saving devices would simply give people more leisure time. However, I expect technology activity would greatly decrease, anyway, in a sustainable society. That might not be a bad thing.
That is also not a flaw. Why on earth do you think that Richard foresees a society just as today's, but without economic growth? We need to redefine what a fulfilling life is, that doesn't rely on someone else paying you a salary so that you can buy essentials and non-essentials from a store.
That's your opinion, backed by nothing but your opinion.
Well, for sure there will be a "new normal." But to be fair, we don't yet know whether that normal will be better or worse than the one we have now! In any event, here's the kind of thing that gives me some hope for the future:
http://www.cmt.anl.gov/oldweb/Science_and_Technology/Basic_Science/Alumi...
As oil production declines there will be lot less production of things made with, or with the aid of oil. Fewer automobiles will be produced, fewer plastics, less food will be produced and basically less of everything. Perhaps half the population will be unemployed. The tax base of cities, counties, states and governments will drop to a fraction of what it is today. Social services will disappear; police and fire protection will drop to a fraction of what it is today. Hunger and violence will be rampant.
And we don't know if that will be better or worse than what we have today. Boy, are we really stupid!
Ron P.
It's possible that, with the reduction of plastics, recreational fuel use, etc., fuels and materials could be requisitioned to produce food. Massive reductions and rationing could keep industrial Ag on its feet a long time.
Hypovolemic shock is my analogy: as "flow" is interrupted by bleeding, injury, etc., physiologically the body "compensates" by diverting "flow" away from extremities and toward vital organs: i. e. by analogy away from recreational boating and leaf-blowers, towards tilling soil and shipping turnips to New Jersey.
The key word is could.
Please don't get the idea that I have hope. ;-]
Less automobiles and less plastic sound fine by me! Less food...eh, maybe. A lot of us could stand to eat a lot less!
As for employment...it's overrated anyway.
And as for fire departments, ambulances, etc. I think if we prioritize we might be OK.
I'm not so sure we ever needed cops in the first place.
The thing with a list like this is that we get all sorts of opinions, and most of those opinions, grossly uninformed, are based on wishful thinking, not on any real reasoning or any study of humanity. Your opinion WastedEnergy, is not only uninformed but as wrong as wrong could possibly be.
Montreal's Night of Terror
Ron P.
WastedEnergy isn't that wrong.
I believe what he was referring to is the fact that organized police forces have only existed for a little over one hundred years. The truth is, we CAN do without police forces in many communities if we want to badly enough. It means that more responsible adults have to get involved with community service through town watches and the like.
Personal security is still the responsibility of the individual. If you don't believe that, then just try suing your local police force for negligence for failure to protect you the next time a thug beats the crap out of you. Local police forces can NOT be held liable for any individual's security and the courts have upheld that principal again and again in jurisdiction after jurisdiction in state after state and it has been affirmed all the way up to the Supreme Court.
If "we want it bad enough"? Who is this "we", and even if we can answer that, how does this "we" actually have a decision-making voice to effect genuine change? To me - "if we want it badly enough" are just weasel words ... with little meaning in the real world.
Sorry to be so sceptical - or real world perhaps.
Skeptical?
Or just insulting?
Look, police forces are already shrinking. Tax bases are shrinking in most communities and will continue to shrink in most communities. Police forces in many communities will end up being one or two professionals (maybe not even one or two) with lots of volunteers in the form of community watch groups, auxiliaries and when needed, deputies. It's going to happen. Fire companies have made heavy use of volunteers forever. This kind of thing will grow because there is not going to be any way to fund the current police force infrastructure with expensive salaries, expensive equipment, vehicles, health care plans and pensions and above all, early retirement for out of shape, 50 something guys who cannot run down a wayward homie anymore. A no growth/slow growth economy will not support this stuff. All one has to do is take a visit to a country with a non-industrial economy and you will see all of this first hand.
Schools will also experience a trend in this direction.
The best off are the fire companies. As I pointed out, they already have lots and lots of experience with this kind of volunteer structure. Their main problem will be how to keep $200,000 fire trucks in running condition.
In countries without an industrial economy the military does the policing. As the decline continues in the U.S., I expect the militarization of police forces to continue. Perhaps if things get really bad, the national guard will do the policing in many areas.
Yeah, that's right that the military does the policing in a lot of non-industrial countries. Especially small countries. There are problems with that here, what with it violating the U.S. Constitution; posse commitatus (sp?) and all that. There would definitely be effective political push back on that one. I agree with you that there has been a disturbing trend toward militarization of domestic police forces, but I'm one who believes that a collapsing tax flow will tend to reverse that trend.
I'm very doubtful that the National Guard will provide the answer for many (any) states. They have been largely stripped of the equipment they would need; humvees, etc. which have been shipped off to Iraq and mostly destroyed/worn out. Replacing/reconditioning all the worn out military equipment we have squandered will take years and probably more billions of dollars; we won't be able to borrow it, I think. I'm doubtful that financing for a rebuild of our military infrastructure (equipment) can be found. And to use it to police a country the size of the United States would be daunting in the "best" case scenario; same thing regarding the personnel requirements.
I do think that local police will get volunteer help from former guardsmen and women as well as retired police and former military, but they will have "day time jobs" doing something else in a growing alternative economy. This economy will be an enlargement of the current informal/underground (non-taxed, all cash transaction) economy that more and more Americans will become a part of (further hindering the funding of formal government services thru tax dollars).
Even if the military is cut back, I can't see them sitting idle on their bases while the areas around them lack an adequate police protection. Posse Comitatus can be repealed and they can help law enforcement.
I know that this is a view. That government power will increase and become ever more authoritarian. But I just don't see it. My view is that a collapsing tax base will prove to be a total game changer in terms of government power and capabilities.
We have a large and growing informal economy. And millions of people have been laid off and many of them will probably never get industrial/W-2 type jobs again. These folks will develop income streams for sure, as small contractors, seamstresses, sole proprietors, handymen, etc. And their incomes will be cash and barter based. I also think that there will even be a growing group of young people who will never even start out with jobs in the now shrinking W-2 economy. Instead they will have a succession of cash paying jobs originating from a grapevine of friends, acquaintances and family members. Some of these young people will never even bother to get a social security number. Additionally, fewer and fewer people are going to need driver's licenses. Already, there is a growing group of young men (mainly in the inner cities) who never register with their selective service boards even though we don't even have a draft to worry about.
What all this means is that there is going to be a growing population of people with no official government issued IDs of any kind. They will be official "non-persons" and their incomes will disappear from the IRS "receivables" ledger. This has huge implications for the kind of society we are going to be able to support with tax dollars.
I wasn't being insulting at all (certainly not intentionally) ... I just think very few things happen in most societies or communities because people want things badly enough. There are three reasons for this at least (1) there are electoral processes that are incompetent or corrupt, but nevertheless they put people into decision-making positions, and they govern in their own self-interest, (2) there are rich and powerful elites who make all kinds of decisions in their best interests, regardless of what the majority of people might want or need, and (3) with limited funds, the people themselves have to prioritise their wishlists, and often these are either in conflict with each other, or the list is huge, but the desire to be taxed is very low indeed.
And a fourth is ideological - people can be driven by pretty crazy agendas ("freedom" from government and extreme individualism come to mind), and therefore will vote down taxes even though schools, police forces, and health services are falling apart in front of their eyes. The current USA debate about a health-care scheme is astonishing - from the perspective of those of us who have had functioning universal health schemes for decades, even generations.
I hear ya'.
Perhaps the phrase "want to badly enough" just wasn't the best combination of words (it's difficult to get everything totally precise in semi-informal e-communications. I never view these little communiques as "scientific papers".)
What I was trying to convey is that I, for one, would definitely consider helping my local police out if necessary. I live in a pretty small town and there's no question that I, and other responsible adults, could help out with basic civil order. It's not rocket science. And I do think this will happen. It's part of the American tradition that we have gotten away from and it will return because it will have to. If things get really crazy (I sure hope not) I know how (and under what circumstances) to use firearms, too, as do millions of other Americans.
I wasn't being facetious when I pointed out that local policing CAN be done by responsible "civilians". I firmly believe that it can. And I believe it will.
Your anecdote about Montreal only proves that if your system for managing crime is a police force, and you take that force away suddenly at one moment, you'll have difficulty managing crime shortly thereafter. It does not prove that a police force is the only way to manage crime in the long run.
In a modern industrial city, a police force is probably the most efficient way to manage crime. In other situations, not so much, and for most of history most people had ways of managing crime other than a formal police force.
Yes. It's called by various names: assassination, murder, retribution, immolation, "necklacing," guerrilla warfare, etc.
Well, yes, but you don't have to pick only the worst examples...
Militias, community courts, ostracizing, citizen' arrests, self-defense, etc. Not to mention good socialization resulting in fewer criminals.
Ron, I will counter with some lyrics from Sublime:
April 26th, 1992
There was a riot on the streets
Tell me where were you?
You were sittin' home watchin' your TV
While I was participating in some anarchy
First spot we hit it was the liquor store
I finally got all that alcohol I can't afford
With red lights flashin', time to retire
And then we turned that liquor store into a structure fire
Next stop we hit, it was the music shop,
It only took one brick to make the window drop
Finally we got our own P.A.
Where do you think I got this guitar that you're hearing today?
So I suppose there are (at least) two sides to every story, after all?
Nice antidote to Ron's poisonous pessimism. I just don't buy all that marxist economic determinism mixed in with a twisted christianist version of hebraic apocalytic visionism. Nor the nonsense that future social behaviour will mirror past behaviour, as though we haven't acquired mountains of knowledge and new communications systems.
I do believe that cops are needed, just not with all the high tech gadgetry. Nor does anyone need to commit resources to imprisonment on the scale that the punishment oriented christianists of the United States have done. The most effective way to reduce crime, apart from abortion on demand to reduce the numbers of unwanted children, is early identification of children at risk (of making bad choices) and then intervention. This is cheap and effective, but does require a willingness to proceed in life with a reasoning process that is evidence based. I suppose that might rule out the American south, but then again it might not, as the delegitimization of the growth economy ethos is likely to open minds even there.
Reducing the incidence of crime is a realistic objective, but eliminating crime and the need for dedicated, trained cops is not, in my view. Just think of domestic violence; does anyone expect that it will end anytime soon.
Toil, I fully expected you to chime in with your usual BS. What the hell is Marxist economic determinism? Just what in the hell does overshoot, peak oil and economic collapse have to do with Marxism or determinism? You just seem to make crap up because apparently you think it sounds good.
"mixed in with a twisted christianist version of hebraic apocalytic visionism"? Your whole post is nothing more than a pure ad hominem attack. You call me names and your attempt at an argument is nothing but a smokescreen. For instance I explain why we need law enforcement and you reply with: "Just think of domestic violence; does anyone expect that it will end anytime soon."
What in the hell has that to do with the violence that broke out in Montréal? Does the fact that cops cannot protect some people from domestic validate WastedEnergy's statement: "I'm not so sure we ever needed cops in the first place? No, of course not. Your misuse of simple logic is called "The Fallacy of False Analogy.
But it is all my fault. I should ignore some post, especially the very stupid ones.
Ron P.
I'm glad you capitalized the M in marxist, as I do know a number of small m marxists who don't share your simplified and vulgar economic determinism. What the hell is it. All too briefly, it's the diseased notion that civilizational outcomes are predictably determined by material conditions. You've got the disease, bigtime.
Overshoot, we have it on good evidence, occurs in nature, among species of limited sentience. We, who are also of nature, are expandingly sentient, with a consciousness of time and change. We have more tools in our tool chest than any other species by quite a longshot. It can not be said with anything approaching certainty that overshoot is conceptually applicable to homo sapiens.
Now, I anticipate all the nattering nabobs of negativism to start sputtering about Easter Island. I offer yo'all a simple question: how many libraries did the intrepid explorers find on that statued isle.
Police. You appear to have missed my point. Even if property is protected in various non-police-dependent ways, there is still a need for police. Domestic violence is an example. All the police officers I know say that 'domestics' are the most difficult and scariest part of their work. While I'm well aware that this problem is best dealt with in tandem with others including social workers, trained police officers are certainly required.
You might not like it tinfoil - but tough - economic determinism (dialectical materialism) is the only tool in operation for real people who are seeking real solutions after real analysis - everything else is fairy floss. Might as well watch Glenn Beck on Fox if you can't see that. Hey - maybe you are Glenn Beck!
toil, I agree, and of course I wasn't trying to suggest that we shouldn't have any form of law enforcement whatsoever. But clearly, when you reach a point that the cops have such heavy weaponry and are so uncontrollable that they have come to dominate the very people they are supposed to be protecting, things have gotten...just a wee bit out of hand!
The first thing on that list:
Recently I drove north on I-5 and I got a first hand whiff of industrial meat production. The smell was so foul that I started gagging even with the windows rolled up. 10,000 cattle on a feed lot with mountains of manure is something that you have to see to believe. Next time you go through a fast food drive-through and pay a dollar for a double cheese-burger consider where it comes from...
Joe
I'm a semi-vegetarian who occasionally eats fish or chicken.
but never red meat.
I don't miss it.
Indeed, "where it comes from" will continue to be salient, even as production becomes more local.
I have heard about the feedlots of factory farms.
That is why I never eat beef. I never go to fast food restaurants. I have no car (also my husband has no car). I do not eat meat.
I also dislike plastic and cement. I am a teacher and use every opportunity to promote the environmental message-- anti-cars, anti-plastic, anti-oil.
I am just waiting for higher and higher oil prices to dissolve the horrors of the industrial world.
And I am sure that I am not alone!!!!!!!
I worked in a meat packing plant while living in Utah in 1992, it did cause me to pause when I thought about hot dogs for several years afterwards. We never ate many Hot dogs while I was growing up, besides the ones we used to get in Iceland, but they were made out of sheep.
My parents raised us to be frugal. I'd buy larger cuts of meat and do a second layer of butchering on it and store it away, maybe eating meat once a day for a long while.
I have eaten Meat today, about at most 6 ounces, it is hard to pin down what my dad puts in meatloaf, likely half of it was not meat, though it might have been an egg oats mix, or just oats( shrugs never can tell, it's never made the same twice, always tastes good, but never the same exact way ).
Through a local CSA I can get a half a hog for 350 bucks, at least 85 pounds worth, not that we have the storage space. But it's nice to know the pig was not raised on a feed lot. I have been craving bacon for a while now, and the last time I had any was over a month ago. My dad keeps telling me it'll kill me sooner, and I keep saying you only live once, and that I don't pig out on it(snickers).
As the economy shrinks feed lots will go away, and more grass fed meats will show up, at least I would hope. We still have a ton of waste that you never saw in years past, all the animal was used and the meat was a high value item because you didn't eat it as often as we do, though if you were on the farm you got your pick if you really wanted it.
While in Iceland the smell of the fish packing plant was an everyday thing I got rather fond of the smell, call me strange, most smells that make others keel over don't bother me. Salt air and rotting dead things was common on one of the beaches we went to often, guess it gave me a high tolerance.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better future.
Red meat (beef) is not the problem at all ... it is the agribusiness model - feedlots, corn-fed, hormones, all the rest. In Australia, beef cattle roam vast pastoral rangelands - lands not usable for any other agricultural purposes - not even sheep. These cattle (a) taste great when you eat them, and (b) are grown in situations of sustainable farming - stocking rates cannot exceed carrying capacity, because limited water limits your production in a very tough way.
So I think it is worth not being too holy about "red meat avoidance" - there is nothing wrong with it if it is produced in a reasonable way - on lands that cannot be used economically for anything else - get rid of 10,000 head feedlots, the corn truck, and the hormone injections - rather than condemn the steak.
I believe that the arrival of the industrial feedlot is due to the exponential growth of meat production worldwide. How do you feed 7 billion people hamburgers?
I believe if we tried to raise 56 billion animals sustainably there wouldn't be room for anything else.
Joe
But that number is an aggregate of all the animals raised, sheep, ducks, geese, rabbits, pigs, sheep, goats, cows, chicken, turkey, doves, etc.
How many of these animals are not even being fed to humans? How many dogs are we feeding, and cats? It is not just humans that are eating them.
I wish I had a nice human free planet to test my thoughts on, where you could feed 7 billion humans on 5,000,000 square miles of land, if you utilizied it better than we do now. Just because we don't have very many people maxing out their land use in intensive growing practices doesn't mean we can't do it.
Humans do have the capacity to change, otherwise we would still be hitting rocks together. Knowledge has been gained, why don't we learn to use it in a better way?
yeah I know, greed and me first attitudes have to change.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better future.
I guess he didn't understand what Heinberg meant by the "new normal."
I take it to mean that we are not ever returning to the period from the begining of the industrialism up until around the crash of our economy following $4.00 gas.
The period we're in now is the new normal. And yes, the new normal will get uglier and uglier until eventually, someday many decades or centuries from now, things start to become good again.
I always chuckle when people say "Don't worry, things will go back to normal!".
I say, yes, you're right. But normal isn't the last 100 to 200 years, it's the few thousand years before that. That's normal!
(At least for us humans.)
"This enables small farmers to produce value-added products (everything from canned soups to herbal tea bags) that are profitable and are price-competitive with those made by industrial food companies..."
Yes, those small farmers finally have something they can do with all there spare time so they don't get bored. Hah!
Oh, maybe they can hire someone to do it instead. Oops! this makes something that is already expensive even more expensive or takes any profit out of it.
Much of this article os cheerleading, wishful thinking, delusional, and IMO harmful.
Telling people to shop local is telling them to spend more for less at a time when more and more people are having less to spend.
All of the existing infrastructure of Big Agriculture, Corporate America, and Globalization are still in the drivers seat and will be for some time to come. In fact they will most likely be subsidized (more so than now) and in fact the plans are already written up for Civil Emergency situations. They will be the ones who provide the least expensive goods and services to an ever increasing majority of the population who have less and less to spend as the “Constraints” continue to squeeze the economy. What this means for any small, local startup business is a steadily contracting customer base while at the same time the inputs for their business continually increase.
Encouraging someone to start a small business producing local goods while ignoring all of these hard cold economic realities is basically setting them up to have the rug pulled out from under them. We all want them to do it, but we are not truly invested in their success as we easily just skip over to Trader Joes (as most already do).
If we don't address the Economics of Transition right up front then we are just spouting empty words and are doomed to failure.
I kind of admire this in Richard, actually. What else is he gonna do with his public voice?
We have enough Isaiahs and Jeremiahs. (I'm among their company, btw.)
I side with Richard in tone - Disaterbation never looks or sounds good to me
Agreed - what's wrong with having a little imagination? Speaking of which...I think these guys here may be onto something ;)
http://wastedenergy.net/2010/03/10/the-whiz-kids/
I have the impression that one of the basic premises of the Transition Movement is that a reduced form of BAU can continue, using less fossil fuel. This is something that is not at all clear to me. If we didn't live in a networked system, and the only issue were declining oil use, I suppose it would be true.
It is not clear to me that the economics of transition will ever work, because using fossil fuel will always be much more efficient than alternatives, including muscle power, and because local economies can never produce the high tech equipment that our current economy depends on. People find their discretionary spending squeezed now; trying to do a transition will make the situation worse. Ultimately, it is finances that will likely lead to collapse (even though oil is behind it). So plunging headlong into transition could have the perverse result of moving up the timing of collapse, it would seem to me.
because using fossil fuel will always be much more efficient than alternatives
Again, simply NOT true !
Internal combustion engines are quite inefficient. Electric motors are 90+% efficient. Rubber on concrete/asphalt has 5 times the friction of steel rolling on steel.
Thus, BAU trucking is HORRIBLY inefficient. Converting to electrified rail trades ~20 BTUs of refined diesel for 1 BTU of end use electricity.
The most efficient source of electricity once built is hydroelectric. (Quebec has 25 GW, Manitoba 4 to 5 GW and Labrador 3+ GW of yet to be built hydro that they want to sell). Lasts centuries with minimal upkeep (peak efficiency costs more but they can run for 50 to 70+ years with almost no maintenance. See North Korea and Albania).
One could argue that coal is the "most efficient", but the delta to wind, geothermal, nuke, pumped storage, HV DC to coal is small enough for the economy to absorb (especially if the economy is cashing in the windfall from going to electrified rail).
Quite frankly, modest conservation can save enough electricity to run electrified rail (urban + inter-city) and this is the cheapest source of electricity.
TOD poster "Here in Halifax" can be thought of as a small power plant. His operating costs are pretty damm low, his environmental impact almost zero, but his lifetime results are dozens if not hundreds of MW. A few hundred, perhaps a thousand, of him could run our intercity railroads. {Insert picture of hamster on wheel}
So, electrified rail running off renewable sources of electricity is DRAMATICALLY more efficient than trucking. If they run off of "Here in Halifax's" the efficiency gains over BAU are staggering !
So your underlying assumption is simply wrong.
Alan
PS: Same for walking and bicycling in TOD neighborhoods.
You are proposing changing out huge swaths of infrastructure which is distributed worldwide, changing roads for rails, ICE's for electric engines, increasing powerplant capacity, and ripping out people's lifestyles which are dependent on the lost income from "conservation", and this dreamscape is more efficient than using what we have now?
I must have missed where the aliens landed and shared their technomagic which accomplishes this immediately, with no downtime, and for zero energy, resource, and financial cost.
The costs in today's economy can be measured in single digit AIGs#, spread over a couple of decades (a half AIG/year could do it but 3/4 AIG/year would be better).
Since 3% of today's electrical demand would do it (perhaps 3.5%), a bit of conservation would do the trick. Or a prolonged recession.
Alan
# An "AIG" is the amount of money required to bail out one insurance company.
PS: In 1998, the Swiss people voted to spend 31 billion Swiss francs on improving an already superb rail system. Several goals, but #1 was shifting freight from trucks to rail.
Adjust for population and currency, and this would be like Americans voting over $1 trillion on improving our rail systems.
X
The cost of upgrading existing freight rail would be truly insignificant. Even electric street railways would be affordable.
Compared to when the US economy was a small fraction of todays, as in the mid to late 1800's:
"The general conclusion of a number of empirical investigations (see e.g. O'Brien, 1983, Fishlow,1965, Fogel, 1964, Fremdling, 1975, and Hawke, 1970) is that the railways were never the principal and only "growth locomotive" (or “panacea", O'Brien, 1983) for economic development in the 19th century. For the industry as a whole, railways absorbed - even at peak
levels of construction (and induced** demand) - too Iow a percentage of total output to qualify as a leading sector strictu sensu. Railways are thus a representative element of the steam age rather than being the dominant (in terms of contribution to economic growth) technology cluster of the 19th century."
p 116 The rise and Fall of Infrastructures" Grubler
Right now we could use the jobs a modern rail infrastructure would create.
This is why, if we want to give people any type of realistic and credible hope at all, I believe we need to be talking in terms of decline instead of mere "transition". I don't know if we can actually pull of a mere decline and level-off to a lower sustainable level. There are a lot of doomers here who think not, and maybe they are right; we'll see. The thing is, the one thing the doomers cannot offer is any hope whatsoever. To be honest, it really comes down to either "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die", or else get your firearm of choice and ammo ready for the final shoot-em-up; there really is nothing else to look forward to. Most people can't live that way, and given that neither the doomers nor anyone else truly do KNOW what the future is really going to be, people shouldn't have to. Even if there is only a 1% chance that we can escape a total catastrophic collapse and die-off and instead decline down to a sustainable level, IMHO that is a chance worth grabbing and trying for.
Decline does not have the perverse attractions of doomer porn, nor is it as comforting as greenwashed "transition". Frankly, decline is rather dull and dreary and dismal, so no wonder that people don't like to hear about it or contemplate it. That's too bad, because decline happens to be just about their best, if not only, hope, and they had best get on with accepting it and trying to make the best of it.
Good points WNC - I prefer to lump it all under the call to localize. I also see this as a critical step in avoiding feudalism. Community taking back control of their lives, away from poisonous corporatism.
localize and REDUCE POPULATION
before nature does it for us
Excuse my language, but where the !@#$% did you come up with that impression? As a member of an official Transition Initiative, I ask you to please not ever use the phrase "Transition Movement" (with capital letters) in this way again.
The point of Transition is to warn and prepare people for what's coming so that they can make the changes in the discretionary spending in a managed way, on their own terms as much as possible, instead of as a response to sudden crisis they don't see coming. The Transition Movement does not have an "economics" that is any different from the processes you describe above. I frankly don't know what on earth you mean by "doing a transition" if it is not compatible with being forced to change one's spending habits. Whatever you have in mind is nothing that the Transition Movement advocates.
The transition movement is disingenuous in that the banner issues "climate change, peak oil, and economic instability", which are derived from science, actually play second fiddle to belief structures that predate science (i.e. tribalism). Just look at the mission statements for various transition town initiatives on the web, for example "wisdom from the past" is real popular. As Rob Hopkins noted these folks are "white, educated, middle class, and given to spiritual activities". "Transition Tribe" movement would be a more appropriate name than Transition Town.
absitively
your point is correct i think; but is the typical denial we are all in & out of.
same has been true of peak oil groups i've been in, so guilty; & as natural as rain, which is your overall point.
Whatever dude. People come to Transition for a lot of different reasons. Personally, I'm functionally an atheist and pretty leery of the spiritual people, but that in no way lessens our ability to cooperate to find places in our city to turn into urban farms. If you want to know what a movement stands for as a whole, the only honest way to tell is to see what their "banner issues" are. Your cynical psychoanalysis of a subset of the Transition Movement is shallow cherry-picking. I think you need to get out and actually meet some of us.
I speak from first hand experience and am hot under the collar about it. Transition Anderson was founded here in a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio a few months back. The folks at this initiative act very much like those in "Company C" as described in Dmitry Orlov's recent blog post "Industry's Parting Gifts". Let me provide one personal example.
When I moved to Ohio a few years ago, one of the most striking things was seeing that all of the suburban woodlands are completely overrun by Asian brush honeysuckle. The entire forest understory is this stuff, and the trees above are stunted as well. Pretty much the only effective control method is to cut the brush to stumps and paint with concentrated glyphosate (eg. Roundup) and later to return to remove succession invasives such as garlic mustard and wild strawberry. With aggressive and persistent effort an area can be reclaimed from honeysuckle and other invasives.
A logical activity (scientifically anyway) would be to increase the primary productivity of our local environment by tackling honeysuckle on some public lands and replanting with high value species. I contacted a local "green space" official and was given a date to cut and paint stumps on a 5 acre holding, which garnered interest from 4 other volunteers at the Transition meeting. So... our task for the workday is to cut brush and paint with Roundup, hopefully with the help of some additional people.
Seems like a simple activity to plan and execute, doesn't it?
Well, we still don't have a flyer to announce the workday after a month of exchanged emails. Here is a chronology of the objections raised so far by our "volunteers", and which we have deliberated over:
1) People don't want to be exposed to fumes from chainsaws (solution: divide work schedule into hand tools and power tools). Hand tools will get you about 100 square feet of brush cleared before fatigue sets in (i.e. 2000 man hours using hand tools will be needed to get 5 acres cleared).
2) We should postpone the workday from Spring and reschedule in Fall since honeysuckle cut in Fall will die naturally. Patently not true, but we had to clear that up.
3) Roundup is a "poison" and so instead we should kill stumps manually using repeated return trips to the project area to remove new vegetation from stumps. Tentative solution: Don't use Roundup during the work session in order to not expose those who are concerned. (this particular topic is never ending)
4) Just in today from a volunteer on vacation: "The problem with doing all this by e-mail and while I'm traveling is that I don't necessarily think clearly. Too many ideas bouncing around my head."
Ugh!
I have other stories I could share, but suffice to say these folks are content with the notion of what could be according to their "vision", but actually seem to miss the obvious literal actions that critical thinking, rather than beliefs would produce. On the bright side, they at least drive mostly small cars to the local meetings.
It is tricky to get the timing right. More than a few people have gotten burned starting up a small business in anticipation of a trend that does not materialize until years or decades later.
eeyores - Excellent point! Telling people to quit their day jobs and go into business selling food at farmers markets is a recipe for disaster.
The one area that may show real promise is encouraging groups and individuals to grow their own food. As food prices climb and quality continues to decline, growing your own food is a good idea whose time may be at hand.
Joe
My parents grew their own food, and when we settled down here after my dad retired from the Air Force I grew a lot of our own food on a small plot of land in the back half of the back yard. So over the years that makes a total of 80 years of growing our own food (mom is 80).
Everywhere I have been after leaving this house I have been able to grow some of my own food, except my 3 years at MSU while studying Landscaping.
Growing your own food is not a new thing, but it has been set aside in recent times by some people and they are getting back into it. And there are city folk that are learning that you can grow your own foods even if you only have a few containers and lots of willingness.
Better hopes for more people growing things themselves.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs to help people grow the max in the smallest space.
I agree with much of what Richard is suggesting but my biggest concern is HOW to transition when life and most of the people around you are still completely consumed with BAU? My wife and I both have demanding corporate jobs with a good income so we have little time for preparations.
I don't have any faith that my BMW driving suburban neighbors (who all have gardens btw but I doubt they will provide much if TSHTF) are going to figure out what's going on and move quickly to do the hard work to create a new local economy while they still have busy jobs, if unemployed for most the only option is looking for yet more employment. I see more fighting and bickering than anything as well as a lot of confusion/depression. Many Americans are not going to make it, this is more economic hardship coming our way than any of us have ever delt with.
My personal solution starts with my parents who are getting near retirement. They would like to retire in the countryside where they live in the midwest. So I am planning on helping them find a piece of property and a house and investing in building a farm while I still have employment and a way to fund construction, buy equipment etc. This way hopefully the family can have a place to go not when the world ends but when we all eventually are unemployed. Otherwise it provides a nice place to visit on vacation in the meantime while I still have an income.
Many of the boomer generation like my folks are coming to terms with the fact they may not be retiring anymore on a golf course in Arizona or in a retirement community. Having family work together to transition is the only way I can see making the move with any cooperation, at least in my situation which I would consider to be similiar to a large portion of the U.S.
I do agree with Mr Heinberg on the principles he lays down as to the future, in particular that economic growth is over. However, I also fully endorse what Ron P (Darwinian) says above: that growth is essential, nay built-in, to an ever increasing population. When I studied economics we were taught about GDP, GNP and also GNP per capita. When was the last time any government statistic was released to the main-stream media detailing the economic growth achieved per head of population? It always used to be, now it is not. The reason is that true standards of living have been stagnant for some time now. There is a very good lecture given (at I believe Berkley, Calif) by Elizabeth Warren entitled "The end of the middle-class" (or similar). Here on this side of the pond it is exactly the same. The middle class is being squeezed out of existence and much of this can be attributed to an ever expanding population, and changes to the way people live such as more people living alone for longer creating a shortage of houses etc.
There is no doubt that population is the Elephant In The Room. It is also the most thorny political issue of all time. The Germans invaded Poland for lebensraum which literally means "living space". Here in England the far-right BNP is going from strength-to-strength and, naturally, the main reason for their success is that the main parties in the center ground have refused point-blank to even discuss the situation of mass-immigration and the resulting over-demand on the nation's resources and public services. The aggregate value of all activity in the economy may indeed grow, but the per-capita value, the true measure of wealth, has been shrinking for some time and that is even before a true measure of inflation is applied.
The collapse really started around the time I was born, in 1976. Then it only took one wage earner to provide for a family of four. Now it takes two earners, second mortgages and a bunch of credit cards. The prospects of real career advancement is almost non-existent for vast swathes of the work force and pensions, to my generation, are simply mythical beasts of yesteryear.
My solution to this? I have downsized my entire live. I eat meat rarely, I have no possessions whatsoever, save a single bag of clothes and my MacBook. I decided that the best way to live is completely away from the consumerist melee which the main stream would have us embrace. Not for me! I work many fewer hours as a result, enjoy long walks with the whippet in the Sussex countryside, eat healthy food all freshly cooked and most importantly I don't have any of modern-life's stresses about mortgages, pension plans etc. Life is good when you downsize and stick a middle finger up at economic growth! You should all try it some time! (and you should all get a whippet or similar four-legged companion. Makes life worthwhile when you share your living space with a hound..)
I take a lighter stance - but I have adopted the same mindset
I rent, own cheap goods and cook almost all my own meals and take care of my 83 yo Dad
"if we make sound choices as families and communities, life can actually be better for us in the decades ahead than it was during the heady days of seemingly endless economic expansion."
That is the real rub, isn't it? IF we make sound choices.
Our history is littered with examples of where we humans didn't exactly make 'sound choices' in the face of reality. After looking at this problem for a long time, I have reached the conclusion that, reckless, ignorant behavior bent on ignoring reality and an unwillingness to change is the only real threat to developing a sustainable future.
Is the spelling "error" in your user name a wordplay that I'm missing?
In healthcare, we usually treat symptoms, not the disease. That is a mistake. We should focus more on the actual disease rather then symptoms. Treating symptoms never solves the underlying problem.
Peak Oil, depletion of topsoil, fossil water, natural gas and coal; these are all just symptoms. The problem is GROWTH , in population and consumption.
Waiting for nature to handle our over population problem is unethical. Over population has momentum, so it will not begin to decline immediately following the day when the world's pie begins to shrink.
We can fiddle with post carbon hamlets with organic farms all we want and not make a dent in rising misery throughout the world.
Treating our depletion symptoms will do no good in the long run. We need to treat the disease. We need to somehow reverse our growing population and consumption. Of course, peak oil will handle the consumption part of the equation....
Otherwise, we are still gauranteed to fail, in the long run.
In other words, growth in consumption is not our only problem. We can't ignore the POPULATION timebomb.
"We can't ignore the POPULATION timebomb."
Oh, but we clearly can. It's Nature that can't, and she already has Plan B and Plan C waiting. Plan B is die-off. Plan C is extinction.
Wildcat and others,
In 67 the IRS was used to hassle folks who protested the war. Police were used to break protester's heads. Chicago, anyone? Kent State students were fired upon by National Guard. I am sure that these were all good people, but shit happens when the pressure is on. Canada had the Winnipeg strike when the RCMP (police) fired on strikers. Look at how the coal mining strikes were put down in both of our countries. (And to think we get our nose out of joint about Tiannamen? Square). We just did it earlier!
If you are making preparations it is best to make them discretely and then one day pull the pin. Look at the power of the modern state with dictatorship laws to catch terrorists and all of the surveillance technologies. It is easy to imagine a scared Govt. declaring 'hoarders' a national threat and move to limit your freedoms. It has happened over and over, all over the world. It is perhaps being readied right now. Isn't the Crawford Ranch fully independent to be off the grid? Or, is that just a rumour?
Why couldn't it happen again? It only took a Rodney King beating for all hell to break loose in LA, and that wasn't very long ago. What happens when the lights go out for a couple of days? I sure as hell wouldn't set out with a full car.
If you think a collapse of some kind is inevitable, then perhaps it is best to be in place sooner rather than later. At the very least it is good to have a bolt hole destination before it gets tough to leave. I am not saying this stuff will happen, but it could happen. It is probably a good idea to have a personal list of what you perceive will be early signs. Then, be brave and look after you and yours. It is just 'stuff', after all.
respectfully,
Paulo
Well the difference is I assume that collapse is not danger lurking in every corner but it is simply high unemployment, some confusion and a lower standard of living for an extended period of time. Possibly something similiar to what is happening in Greece, protests in the streets and some angry mobs here and there but it is not total anarchy yet. Most of the anger is directed at the government for the time being.
I think it would be foolish to walk away from a job right now if you can use your income to prepare and also savor the last few moments of a priveledged carbon intensive lifestyle. I, like everyone else in America will ride out my BAU existence until I am unemployed. But when that day comes, I won't waste my time looking for another corporate job of the past but instead will move on to plan B.
I guess what I am saying is that I probably will lose my job due to continued capital markets collapse before angry mobs rule the streets and the lights go out.
Wildcatter - I like your comments, particularly the emphasis on finding personal solutions. Too many of us seem obsessed with large scale programs (more govt.) when actually those are to a large degree the source of the problems.
Joe
I agree.
I am still working and doing just that, however, am already in a good place.
Getting new ideas/thinking out of the box:
A strange book about the social life/ economics / on the strange planet:
http://www.galactic-server.com/rune/iarga.html
A book about the Human Cycle by an Indian philosopher, Sri Aurobindo.
PDF format - free.
Volume 25
The Human Cycle — The Ideal of Human Unity — War and Self-Determination
http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/sriauro/writings.php
In 1980 median (not average) household income in the US was about $60000 in 2006 $. In 2006 median household income was about $60000. Had income been divided in 2006 as it was in 1980 median household income in the US would have been about $90000. So household income grew about 50%, but the median stayed roughly the same, it was just distributed upward. So the US GDP could have remained flat (no growth) for 26 years and household income for nearly everyone would not have changed. Its not clear what all that growth bought us. Yes I'm aware of the arguments about estimating the effects of inflation, but these are pretty overwhelming numbers.
I have started to analyze the income spreads of USA workers. The model for this is rather concise and intuitive. Whether we can effectively change the shape of income distribution or whether we want to is an interesting topic.
Read it here, this is brand new:
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2010/03/econophysics-and-sunk-costs.html
BTW, all this analysis is completely outside the typical economists view of things.
i'm planting trees today. then giving bike taxi rides.
We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.
—Kurt Vonnegut
This order [i.e. capitalism] is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with the economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.
—Max Weber
...Cars in their present form are no more a permanent fixture of our built environment than were the oxcart, the chariot, or the horse and buggy. We happen to live in the historical apogee of the internal-combustion automobile, but even the smallest degree of historical perspective makes plain that it's merely a temporary visitor--and an increasingly troublesome one--on planet Earth.
—Arrol Gellner, Architect and Writer
I find Heinberg though provoking but hard to take seriously. I was exposed to his work about 4 years ago as a junior in college when we critiqued "The Party's Over" in a Poli Sci class dealing with environmentalism specifically.
Heinberg's aesthetics have far too profound an impact on his conclusions. He, like Plato, is inherently attracted to the simplicity and "perfection" of forms. His "forms" are and idealized small community of farmers and tradesman, where a loose anarchy (in the political sense) holds sway and life is "slowed down" and the "rat race" is replaced by the simple existential pleasure of simple "being".
Because modern society is so far away from his ideal he conflates the necessary transition away from a FF (and carbon) based economy with a return to some ideal state, where our true "nature" is allowed to flourish.
I'm sorry, but what a bunch of hogwash. Heinberg makes the same mistake almost all the enlightenment philosophers did, and that is to carve out an idealized and overly simplified premise and then formulate an internally consistent ideology that is interesting and through provoking, but ultimately is built on a false premise.
Heinberg isn't an energy expert, he isn't like Taleb or Pinker a serious social and economic theorist that uses empirical data with the utmost respect for its caveats. No, Heinberg is a polemicist and a charlatan who has found a very successful niche among a certain segment of the population that agrees with his aesthetics of human society and sees the end of the carbon age as a means to an end.
Needless to say, I find his arguments unconvincing. His dismissal of wind power, nuclear, coal and other oil alternatives (like the eltrificed rail that Alan mentions) are simply positions staked out of nothing but thin air. Rather than take a serious look at the ways we can start digging ourselves out of this mess Heinberg takes one look at them and says, "that's just business as usual". But of course it is! But if you're entire premise is based on a hatred of expanding complexity, of expanding knowledge, of lives filled with more data, more machines, more things -- well then of course you will say it can't be done.
I'm not arguing that it can be either -- I'm just not foolish and arrogant enough to pretend to be half the futurist that Heinberg has made a career out of being. People like certainty, Heinberg preaches to those who are certain things would only be better if life wasn't so damn modern. Peak oil is just a convenient talking point to get those folks on board. Technically he offers us nothing.
Yeah, I wouldn't put it with so much vitriol but I do find Heinberg's work (and Kunstler's work) to be overly alarmist and ultimately counter-productive. Peak EVERYTHING? Really? C'mon. And many of the brash predictions that have come from Heinberg and Kunstler have not come true. Thus, their overly-dire and overly-confident pronouncements have made the peak-oil community easy to dismiss by others.
I don't know if it is because they have made a cottage industry out of being doomers or if they have been drinking the kool-aid for so long that they can't see things objectively anymore. I am much more happy to hear from more knowledgeable people like T.Boone Pickens, Chris Skrebowski, Matt Simmons, and Robert Hirsch.
Well said. I agree. People like Kuntsler and Heinberg annoy me greatly (hence the vitriol) because they confuse the debate and overstate their case. It's like being told that if you smoke weed at 16 you'll be dead or in prison by 21. Once you figure out that's not true then it's hard to believe anything from the anti-drug folks, even if what they have to say is mostly worthwhile -- you'll dismiss it out of hand.
Yep, wouldn't it be nice if everyone agreed to be responsible and nice to each other at the same time? Unfortunately, it's not about to happen.
1) There's plenty of evidence that a bunch of mammals, placed in an environment where there are no predators to level out the population, will just reproduce and consume their way to catastrophic population collapse - it's what evolution has equipped them to do, and evolution is a stronger instinct than doing the sensible thing.
2) Moreover, we've got ourselves an economic framework called capitalism, that divides up most of the spoils to the most agressive, the most ingenious, the ones who are most capable of taking the biggest slice. The victory of capitalism is almost complete, almost no-one questions its status as the best form of political economy. The big guys - already naturally ruthless (that's how they got there) are heavily-armed and prepared to do whatever is necessary to defend their big piles of capital. They ain't giving up without a fight, even if that fight wrecks the planet.
Some might say that capitalism is an entirely natural development of the brutal but beautiful logic of evolution.
The evidence of history is stacked heavily against Heinberg et all, and history will win.
Regards Chris
The "Big Guys" have power only through the "little guys".
Who ever controls the military is in control.
There will absolutely be some sort of a populist revolt and then we will see if the military( who is made up of the poor) stands with the status quo or recognizes that the status quo is their true enemy.
I think that they turn on the "Big Guys".
I know which side I am on do you?
If you watch "The End of Suburbia" you`ll see Heinberg making a prediction: PO will bring longer and longer recessions and then finally one long inescapable depression. I think that is what we are seeing now as oil makes its way up in price (now $81-$82 or so!) again after all the "stimulus" packages have wound their way through the system. High oil prices will once again result in a crash and that will bring another recession. He is basically correct. You may quibble over the details of his ideas but give him credit.
Isn't it also possible that you don't know enough about the topic to see where he correct?
I never read Heinberg like that.
I always liked him because he has a broad perspective.
We should question our assumptions about the future and be open for a broad range of possibilities.
So we should look at the doomer and the "rosy future" perspective and try to reach a compromise, since a change is always an investment... you have to live in the (economic) reality now and at the same time strife to a more ideal position.
Sure there are technological solutions out there (though again it would be stupid to confuse technology and energy).
I think "his aesthetics" arise from an understanding, that the underlying problem is not necessarily a problem of technology but one of culture. This broader understanding and open mindedness may just be a consequence of him not being a particular specialist, so I think of it as a great plus.
Heinberg also didn't shove any of his opinions down your throat, I assume you read his stuff voluntarily, he ain't no Glenn Beck, neither as prominent nor as ignorant/crazy.
Social or ECONOMIC theorist? Are you kidding me?
You know that economics is a sytem set with certain boundaries but the destruction of our natural capital is a game changer. So we're not really in need of people that can play within those boundaries but can "play" with them...meaning, they can think outside of the box, use logic and empirically verify it.
If this whole thing would be a simple play of BTU's, things would seem much easier. But there are some things that aren't that easily calculable. I think everybody would agree that there are great injustices in this world and a lot of misery (a lot of good too, let's not forget that).
To lower cost we have borrowed from our natural and human capital, so we are subsidized by a lot of injustice.
You seem to have forgotten how most of the world lives!
How can we tackle all these problems if our culture doesn't acknowledge them? Most people here on TOD have had the sensation of confronting some people with these troublesome subjects (even if one only frames them as possibilities) and have learned that most people don't want to talk about it. Isn't this the best indicator for how how crazy this is... it isn't possible to state some simple facts anymore... that's as if one isn't allowed (or discouraged) to mention that 1+1=2.
Aesthetics is an important subject. It seems obvious that one must have a critical view of how things are that one even tries to invest one's time on that subject (like here on TOD).
Most of us seem to share a certain kind of ideal, from which reality seems to deviate, so that we search for people harnessing the same alternative views.
Aesthetics as a sense of beauty is also very important. Beautiful teeth are healthy teeth, no? As a scout I know how nature's beauty is an experience that even touches people that we regard as difficult (e.g. hyperactive). The amount of designed objects seems to be a reaction to a loss of this beauty (and yes, believe me, I don't think of nature as a romantic entity, I know how harsh she can be). If you grow up in an enclosed urban environment you'll never have this experience, so how much incentive can you have to save something you don't even know because you're so estranged of it.
FF should be of limits because of climate change (even if you don't believe in it, a simple risk assessment will tell you to not take chances with it).
FF's net energy seems to be dropping and we want to change to low energy density sources that sometimes depend on rare earth metals which will be difficult to extract not only because of FF decline (which seems to translate into more debt or higher price etc. in our system, since it's monetary and not based on energy) but also water (3% of earths water is freshwater). Pollution is severe, e.g. plastic has invaded our "natural cycle", how do we want to get that crap out of the system?
Every living system is in decline... we ultimately depend on these systems for our survival but have most probably exceeded earth's carrying capacity and in the meantime degraded it even further down (knowledge, science, technology can be seen as a counterbalance but who knows to what factor).
Just like time marches on evolution does. We can't undo some things we've done, so throwing out our modern achievements and preaching that "live was better" won't help us. People don't seem to address the issue that the present (mess) is a direct result of those so called "better times" (so I'm with you on that... still I think you misinterpret Mr. Heinberg's message, he might be in the same camp as you).
In the end no one really knows how it will work out but there are some stuff we can assume quite safely (e.g. less energy to go around in the future). The time frame is also important for such things but again it's like a goldilocks effect... we don't seem to do anything because we assume a lot of time is available but too much stress and things might go ballistic, it's a very precarious situation.
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work,
but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Excellent post, Dr. Heinberg. However, according to the export land model, simply not growing is sort of a best-case scenario. And, as demonstrated by your "searching for a miracle" report, so-called "renewables" are a joke. I like to call them technosolar harvesters rather than 'renewables,' a term that violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Could the integral fast reactor be the miracle that we need? According to the Sir Hubert Wilkins chair of climate change at the University of Adelaide, the IFR has an EROEI of over 900:1!
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/03/08/tcase8/#more-2425
If you read the article carefully you will see that the EROEI range is 11:1 to 180:1, similar to estimates of the EROEI for wind turbines.
I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. That EROEI range is listed for light water reactors, with the low end being diffusion enrichment and the high end being centrifuge enrichment. Professor Brook makes clear that for the IFR it would be over 900.
Good article Gail.
Totnes, charming as it is, nestled in the upper reaches of the Dart estuary among the rolling hills of Devon, is a town, not a village. It has 8,000 people living in it, so it is not a large town.
I agree that growth on a BAU basis is over, but as Gail says there will still be some growth on a quarterly and regional basis. In fact it is is this patchiness that will delude us for a long time and give politicians and others working to their own agendas the opportunity that "the economy is recovering". Meanwhile we know that is not the case. For me the biggest unknown is the impact of declining oil production on the capital markets. We saw what happened in 2007 and 2008. Was that just a rough blue-print for how it plays out over the longer term?
As for me I would be surprised if I am not laid off today. It is 8am here in Australia and I am in the office. Our business has had no new orders for months and what orders we do have are being delayed. The money has run out and I cannot see how we can make this months wages payment.
Luckily for me Australia supplies China with dirt (Coal, iron, other stuff) and our economy never even had a recession (technically). There are quite a lot of jobs around, but being over 50 makes things very tough. People don't hire people over 50. The other lot who are finding it tough to find a job are the young and newly qualified. And that I guess is the issue. Attrition rates will be high for the over 50's and people will struggle to get into the work force. Kids need to be better educated than ever in fields that matter - engineering (especially water and energy), medicine, education, low energy farming etc.
There are often comments that the baby boomers have had it all ... and in some ways that is true, especially in Australia. No major wars to resist, all the best music, rising incomes 1970-2000, all the best tax breaks, negative gearing to build wealth while working for a salary, free education, near-free health care, and generous superannuation benefits (retirement pensions), especially if you work for government and some other sectors (eg, education).
However lots of boomers (particularly women without a well-financed partner) will still face major financial problems if and when they retire - particularly if they are under 65, when the government Aged Pension becomes available for those who qualify via the means and asset test. Compulsory superannuation has been introduced late in their working life, and lots of them do not have super nest-eggs to rely on for the remainder of their (probably long) retirement.
And despite our leaders' boasts about Australia riding out the global financial crisis remarkably well (true compared to most OECD, thanks to exports), and pretty low unemployment numbers - there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that there is tightening in almost every area, especially discretionary spending.
Good luck with it all SailDog.
After reading some of the negative critique of Heinberg's post (some of it valid IMO), I felt I should weigh in. I am in the process of trying to get my local city council to approve a Peak Oil Task force, and have been giving a PO presentation to civic groups for some time. It is one thing to discuss the likelihood of worst case scenarios, or the practicality of an approach to PO mitigation here on TOD, but quite another when speaking to people who don't know anything about PO. If you present the bleak case with no sense of possible response, people go into shock and turn off. It's too depressing and fosters denial and inertia. Too much truth.
So, I think that Heinberg is putting forth a possible strategy to give people some sense of direction and purpose, and a reason to try and do something. I personally agree that the Oil Depletion Protocol is idealistic and will likely never be implemented, but does it hurt to put it out there? Milton Friedman's ideas are mostly bunk, but the Chicago school put them "out there," and at some point, those ideas became policy because they were out there. So, I agree with Heinberg that the future will be much more localized in scale and economy, so his general approach is going in the right direction.
Then, I come back to why I am doing PO presentations and trying to spread the word about sensible preparedness. It is doing SOMETHING in the face of an intractable predicament, and it makes me feel better. Simple! People are much more likely to listen to you and do something if you are giving them a little hope and a direction to head in.
An economy without growth? How do you end greed and avarice?
Well said, or in this case asked.
Greed has been the killer of us all, even me.
I was greedy today I bought 5 pounds of pepperoni, at a cheap cost, when I don't really need all that fat, I just wanted it.
Charles.
Gail,
<"Let’s be clear: I believe we are in for some very hard times.">
If you think the US having to move from 25 mpg vehicles to 50mpg vehicles or even to 150mpg PHEV's is going to be "hard times" I suppose it depends on what you mean by "hard times".
I am looking forward to a low oil future, the sooner the better!
I agree with you "47". If we engineered our vehicles and transportation system for efficiency instead of 140 mph male penis enhancers this blog wouldn't be here.
Really, why do we need vehicles that do more than 50 mph? To kill ourselfs maybe.
It's engineered today for time-efficiency, not fuel-efficiency. The time cost to go half as fast is much greater than the fuel saved. Perhaps when fuel is expensive and time is cheap that will shift, and then the optimization factors will as well. Proactively shifting doesn't seem to much be in the cards, and shifting late will be problematic. So we'll suffer.
I will respectfully disagree. It's more than that. You don't need 400 hp to go from one stoplight to another for time-efficiency. The speed limit is 70 mph or less on 99 percent of American highways. When you manufacture a 400 hp motor the drive line has to back it up. This heavy driveline and oversized motor comsume large amounts of energy (about 60% of what it takes to cruze at 70) . If you engineered vehicles only to go 70 per hour there would only be a need for maybe 30 or 40 hp at max. If you cut that speed to 50 the need for power would be cut in half (E=MC2). This isn't about time-efficiency. It's about personal power and ego on the road.
Tiny cars going 70 mph = death
Tiny cars going 70 mph on a road full of people driving SUVs for protection = certain death
That, plus the time efficieny, is the main reason. The ego is secondary.
The Germans kill only about 1,000 people/year on their autobahns. About 80 million people, mainly with small cars. Speeds > 70 mph.
Alan
It may not be here now, but it would be here eventually, if society somehow managed to escape all the other limits. Otherwise, a similar blog would be talking about peak soil, peak fresh water, peak climate, peak biodiversity, peak fish or peak something else.
We haven't just got one problem and we'd still be believing in infinite growth, and Hienberg, or someone else, would just be altering some of the resource names, in his article.
You are perhaps envisioning a time when low oil production lasts a century or so? Are you not aware of the fact that once oil production starts to drop, it drops forever? Suppose we do move to all 50mpg vehicles, a transition that would take well over a decade, perhaps two decades, then what? By the time we got there we would need 100mpg cars to keep everyone driving as usual.
When oil production starts to drop it just keeps dropping! We will never be able to convert to more efficient vehicles and more efficient living fast enough. As the Hirsch report clearly pointed out, conversion takes time. And by waiting until the decline is well under way means we can never convert in time.
Ron P.
This not being true for the U.S., why it should happen worldwide ? There could be a plateau or slight rise for a decade or so on a lower production level.
Two points I haven't seen mentioned yet.
#1 Is Heinberg saying there never will be a period of economic growth again or saying the long term average measured in decades will be a steady state economy? Over recent decades we have had periods where many believed that historical business cycles no longer applied. They were wrong in both believing growth would never stop and now in believing growth will never happen again. Lately since the collapse of labor union power in the late 1970s and early 80s almost all economic growth's benefits have gone to a small minority at the top of the economic pyramid and a little absorbed by population growth. The majority of Americans have already been living in a steady state or shrinking share of the economy for over 30 years.
#2 The one institution which Americans consistently list as most respected is the military. If our political institutions are not able to maintain order then we face the danger of falling into a military dictatorship. It almost happened in the 1930s and a prolonged period of high unemployment could lead to enough civil unrest that martial law will be welcomed if not encouraged buy our right wing dominated media. Laws have been on the books for a long time now which give the president the power to suspend civil liberties during a time of "national emergency". With support from the military Congressmen could be kept from meeting if all the airlines are grounded and severe fuel rationing is imposed. Things could easily get very bad very quickly.
The US is passing more laws to enable the government to assign anyone "terrorist" status if they "pose a threat". Note that the new word they are pushing is "enemy belligerent" not "enemy combatant". It has been established in the US that if you are suspected of being a terrorist, you are a nonperson and have no rights.
http://www.slate.com/id/2246903/
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/03/a-detention-bill-you...
Together with extensive surveillance and an ever-growing supply of unemployed people, the US government is going to make collapse much worse than it needs to be. I'm sure creative uses will be found for all those extra people. I suspect that the military will grow but more troops will remain on US soil and we will see something like a stasi arise, where every secret police officer only has a double-digit number of people to surveil.
I suspect that government will play an extremely negative role in the coming decades; I think that if North America were a giant game of Civilization it would be possible for an authoritarian government to mange the decline but I think that this corporate-sponsored totalitarianism that is emerging will not do nearly so well.
One heartening perspective can be found looking at the how nations in the past maintained their standing armies; basically, before the industrial revolution, not very well. Standing armies were quite uncommon when most of a population was involved in self-sufficient agricultural work, as there wasn't much surplus labor or resources to put into it.
Also, if you go decade by decade through European history, for instance, there's a constant shift in fortunes between offence and defence as the technology of weaponry and defensive techniques developed. A new weapon would be developed allowing cities to be taken easily, then a new fortress style would defeat it and aggressors would have to go back to the drawing board for awhile...I think one good question is "which is more energy intensive - offence or defence".
I think the answer is fairly simple myself, and the technology we have favors sustainable, peaceful localism in an energy-poor future, simply because cheap and effective defences require energy-intensive strategies to defeat..
A friend of mine had a former girlfriend's new boyfriend tell the police that my friend was threatening him, he was charged with "terroristic threatening" Which is a new Crime title. Up to 5 years in jail if convicted.
If I were to go to someone and tell them I wanted to kill them, they could call the police on me and I'd have to do a lot of fancy verbal work to convince them I was just joking, but likely I'd either sweat a while or get some cell time.
I have personally had to explain my behavior to police more than once when I was dealing with unruly homeless people, or people that thought I was homeless myself. It is a bit unnerving after the fact when you review all that happened and know all you did was act a certain way that years ago NO ONE would have thought twice about.
Our country is changing, and if the Police don't know you, they treat you as a threat, and even if they know you, they treat you as a threat. Mayberry this is not, and never will be again, at least not that I can see.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fully free future.
I predict #1 will be wrong. How many times over how many decades does the eco-crowd have to tell us we've reached The Limits to Growth, only to have growth continue for years, and decades, before it finally dawns on them that their theories are just flat-out wrong? I mean - seriously! - how often do you have to be wrong, and for how long a period do you have to be wrong, before you finally "get it" and start questioning your assumptions?
Since #1 will be wrong, #2 will be irrelevant.
#3 can definitely be true, but it is irrelevant to the present situation because of #1.
#4 can be true, but is more of a subjective opinion rather than a statement of fact, and is nevertheless irrelevant because of #1.
"it" being something like - if 6 billion of us is great, 9 billion will be even better; and if 9 billion is better, 12 billion will be fantastic; and if 12 billion is fantastic, 15 billion will be spectacular...
...like the breathless rush of yeast in a petri dish, eating their way to the edge.
That's what they said about 2 billion, then 3 billion, then 4 billion, then . . . and if they were right, we should have gone through a half dozen or so dieoffs by now, with world population whittled down to maybe a half billion or so.
I'm still waiting. Let's hear your prediction daxr. When do we get the dieoff? When will economic growth become impossible because of "limits?" I'd love to hear your predictions.
I would go by the UN analyses of water availability as a "first limit", so to speak. About 5.5 billion people had access to clean water a few years back; no more have access today, and no more will in the future. An older paper on global water supply predicted that we would be well on the way to desalinating ocean water to meet our needs by now, using nuclear fusion for the energy-intensive process. I predict that that hasn't happened, and all the population we have added recently has come up against the limit of fresh water. Inasmuch as the lack of it is a fairly miserable condition, all the new population we add over 5.5 billion or so will be limited by the misery of their condition. I don't know how many more we will add, but its nothing to be proud or happy about.
The biggest issue in my BioWebScape designs in water capture and water storage features, There are many methods to gather water from rain and dew, some are 1,000s of years old.
Though there is noted climate change going on in places that used to get better rainfall. And man can change rainfall totals by destroying the ecosystem to the point that land no longer can support what it once did.
So all work to restore land has to fight back from all the man induced wastefullness of the past.
We folks that can just turn on a tap to get water, have been spoiled. My mom remember having to carry water uphill from their well which was shared with another farm down the hill from their house, 2 buckets at a time, and When you see my mom you really wonder at all the work that was involved, she is 4'-10".
I know some people who live in a house without running water, they can't afford to pay the past due bill, they are barely making ends meet where they are living, but one of them does work, but it only covers the rent and the lights and food. They get jugs filled at a nieghbors house and take showers there.
What would happen if the city you lived in Lost the ability to pump water to your house, ala a major storm knocks things out of whack? You'd soon see what more than half the world faces every day. Not a prettty site when you think about it.
You need about 64 ounces of water a day, if you aren't working or living in a hot climate. And in about 7 days without water you are dead. You can go over 40 days without food if you are healthy, but lack of water is the killer.
I wish the still-suits from Dune were a reality, that'd solve a lot of problems.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better feed future.
You're point-of-view was brilliantly summarized by Professor Bartlett this way:
As for "I'm still waiting. Let's hear your prediction daxr. When do we get the dieoff?"
I believe you'll know it when you see it.
If you look at writing like the book The Limits to Growth or the papers of M. King Hubbert, you'll see that the ways things have evolved in reality is not much different than their forecasts - reasonably within the error bars.
It's a bit odd to call physics, geology, and biology "assumptions". Of course science thrives on reexamination of the consensus of the day. But, "It could be wrong!" is a useless statement.
Do you want to dispute the mathematics of the exponential function? Or perhaps you would like to propose that the surface area of the earth is itself due for significant growth? Of course colonization of space is a possibility. But the interesting question will remain, what is the likely population of humans on earth? Can we really expect that to continue growing for centuries at any steady rate like say 1% per year?
It doesn't help merely to assert "It could happen." Give us any kind of suggestion for how it might happen - that could be a useful contribution to the discussion.
I'll help you out by referring to you several posts I made on the peakoil.com forum here. I post as OilFinder2, and the posts of interest are the top two on that page. For some background, you might want to read the exchange between myself and "Quinny" on the previous pages.
The discussion was philosophic, having to do with the ultimate fate of humanity and the planet. But in reference to your comment on the exponential function and mathematics, you'll notice I've included parabolas for all 3 scenarios. Unlike some people who are certain we are near the "limits to growth," and that the parabola must certainly be topping off really soon, I've assumed everything from, 1) they are right, or at least close . . . to 2) they will be so unbelievably off it isn't funny.
Nobody knows how many people the planet can hold. Period. The history of past attempts to model it, only to have time prove them dead wrong, should be more than sufficient evidence that guessing how many people the planet can hold is an exercise in futility. This is why I assumed everything from 10 billion to 100 billion as a maximum population, with time scales ranging from mere decades to millenia for the peak to arrive. All modesty aside, it is the only "realistic" model (if you want to call it a "model") I've seen on future population growth, because it is the only one I've seen that admits "Nobody knows, it could be anything."
And as you will infer from reading it, I also assume no knowledge of future conditions. As much as nobody has a clue how many people the planet can hold, nobody has a clue what life will be like 2,000 years from now, let alone a 100 years from now. We can no more imagine what life on earth will be 100 or 2,000 years from now than someone 100 and 2,000 years ago could have imagined what life on earth would be like now. Those who presume to know what life will be like far in the future are almost certain to be dead wrong.
So your position is to rubbish any attempt at analysing our situation, or any suggestion that the earth has limits, because no-one can foresee the future?
Hopefully, you aren't so stupid as to believe in infinite resources on earth or in the earth's environment having an infinite ability to absorb our waste. If so, then I assume that, because no-one can see the future, we should assume that there will be no future resource or environmental problems that need addressing until those problems become manifest. Is that true? If I'm right, then I'm not sure why you're here since it simply comes down to a matter of opinion: your opinion is that we shouldn't tackle problems that aren't current problems (even if they clearly will become problems on our present course), whilst others believe that we should avoid those problems, if possible (if not, then adapt to those problems), by taking action now. It would be next to impossible for holders of either opinion to influence the other. How could you possibly convince those, who can clearly see a problem up ahead and wish to avoid that problem (for themselves or for their kids/grandkids), to simply meet that problem head on, when it comes?
It is pointless to try to plan for a future problem which you do not even know will exist. Imagine, for example, asking the people of 1850 to plan for the time when we will run out of coal. From an idealistic standpoint, it might have been nice to get people prepared for the time when the energy that (then) powered industrial civilization began to run dry. But here it is, 160 years later, and there is still plenty of coal in the ground. So, let's say that some people in 1850 did decide to try to convince everyone that the Age of Coal was nearing an end. In hindsight, would they have been wasting their time? Absolutely!
You don't know that, you merely believe it. One might have said in 1850 that, on their present course, coal supplies were bound to start running dry because they were consuming so much of it, and at an increasing pace. Yet in hindsight, such a fear at the time would really have been absurd.
No, unless you want to risk wasting a lot of your time, you should not bother planning for a problem until you actually know it is a problem. And don't mistake your beliefs for knowledge.
So you believe in infinite resources? Clearly, if societies are consuming resources (renewable or not) beyond their renewal rates (and, in many cases, at increasing rates) and are degrading their own habitat, that is not sustainable and, clearly, it will present those societies with problems in the future. You write as though there can never be any resource or environmental problems, no matter what we consume or how we act, or that there is somehow some way round the physics. Yours is a belief system, not mine.
The fact that some resource or other doesn't start to decline at exactly the point that someone with incomplete present and future data on reserves and consumption does not mean that all resources will never reach peak.
The waste of time that you suggest would never be a waste of time. It would be a step toward living within our means. That you don't want to do that suggests that you are just as eager for collapse as you claim for the so-called doomers you deride.
Well we know for certain that our present course will result in many problems, if it hasn't already. So I assume you will now be pressing for action to deal with those problems in some way?
This is the lamest argument of the eco-doomsday crowd. Nothing, except perhaps the universe itself, is infinite. Everything else is finite. So what? That does not mean that by consuming these finite resources, we are close to running out of them. For example, there is a finite number of iron molecules on planet earth; but the fact we are continually consuming them does not mean we are about to use them all up. For all we know, we might have millenia left of iron supplies, in which case it would be a waste of time to begin worrying about "depleting" them.
See above reply. Nothing is infinite. So what? Does this mean we should spend all our time worrying about potentially running out of every single resource at every single moment, just in case we might actually soon run out of them? How do you know you have complete present and future data on reserves of these resources you're worried about? History is filled with times when someone was certain we were about to run out of some resource, only to be proven wrong.
It is obvious you're just another type who pretends to be "concerned" about peak oil when the truth is that you want oil production to peak. And the reason you want oil production to peak is because you hate it - it allows an industrial/technological civilization which you are uncomfortable with, or even abhor. I don't know about you, but I personally prefer the "habitat" of the suburbia in which I live to some back-to-nature "habitat." If you are concerned about the rest of nature, you're wasting your time worrying, and your horzons are far too short: In a million years humans will be gone, and the rest of nature will carry on as it had for a billion years before us.
BTW, you can't cite the laws of physics in your favor, because there are serious schools of thought in physics which postulate that the emergence of intelligent life and technological civilization is a natural outcome of the laws of physics (read also Ray Kurzweil, Hans Moravec and perhaps David Deutsch). What if they are right? If they are right, it is the environmentalist crowd who would have their physics wrong, not the cornucopians. Don't be so smug in your beliefs, you just might be wrong.
True, but that wasn't really the point, was it? By consuming finite resources, and by consuming any resource beyond its renewal rate, we will reach a peak in those resources and then decline. Running out isn't the point and pointing to one (or even several) resources that may last millennia is not the point.
I guess you must be new here. Do you understand that consuming resources beyond their renewal rates is unsustainable? If you don't, I suggest you perhaps do some reading and thinking about what happens when resources are so consumed. We should worry about consuming finite resources and about over-consuming renewable resources, as well as degrading our habitat. Continuing to do these things is guaranteed (i.e. no belief system required) to cause problems down the line, either for those alive today, or for their descendants. And it is guaranteed the resources we consume and the capacity of our planet to absorb our waste harmlessly will not all peak at the same time in the future.
As you're new here, maybe you don't quite understand that answering a point by ignoring it and, instead, resorting to some kind of character assassination on a character you know nothing about is not a particularly fruitful line of discussion.
The only physics I've quoted is the obvious fact that consuming resources beyond their renewal rates and degrading our habitat is not sustainable. Of course, the rest of nature doesn't care about that, as you indicate, but don't you think this part of nature, us, should?
I am new to The Oil Drum, but I am hardly new to debating with the Peak Oil crowd. See one of my replies above, with link to a thread in the Peak Oil forum.
As for your observation, consuming resources beyond their renewal rate might technically be "unsustainable," but what does that mean? The items you dismissed by saying, "that's not the point," was in fact, the point. Planet earth, as far as I know, is not creating any new iron molecules. This means our consumption of them might technically be "unsustainable." But given the magnitude of the resource, worrying about running out of it any time in the next several thousand years is a waste of time - unless you enjoy worrying about things which one need not worry about. It might be "unsustainable" to continue consuming iron for, say, 20,000 years, but as I said above, it is impossible for any of us to imagine what life will be like 100 years from now, let alone 20,000 years from now, so you'd be wasting your time worrying about the "sustainability" of consuming iron. For all we know, the consumption of iron might become obsolete in just 50 years, in which case worrying about iron supplies 20,000 years hence is a case of, "Who cares?"
Of course not everything is going to be as abundant as iron molecules. However, you'd have to be absolutely 100% certain Resource X is certain to be running out soon before you ask society to make wholesale changes to adjust to that reality. And in fact, I would suggest you'd not even need to ask (as in, "force") society to do that, because if something started becoming really scarce, that would be reflected in long-term prices. And in that case, people would adjust voluntarily, because no one wants to pay a lot of money for something.
As I said above, you cannot cite physics in your favor. If, as some phyicists claim, it is our destiny to become cybernetic beings, we could turn the entire planet into a giant machine, fueled only by the sun (and perhaps some exotic energy sources not aparrent to us right now), and no laws of physics would be violated.
In case those phyicists are wrong, I am as much a fan of preserving parts of nature as is anyone else. I enjoy trees, wildlife, etc. as much as anyone. But I also have nothing against consuming whatever resources we want/need in the meantime. If the cyberneticists are wrong, then humanity will go extinct someday, and nature will resume its course just as it had before we came along.
Taking one resource, in your case, iron, as an example doesn't invalidate the fact that consuming many other resources, some of which may be critical to our way of life, is unsustainable and may prove to be a problem a lot earlier than running out our iron. However, pointing to the number of iron atoms is not even the whole story for iron. It comes as an ore that has to be mined and processed. So, the problem is not about a single resource, whatever that may be, it's about unsustainable lifestyles.
We don't need to imagine what life will be like 100 years from now to understand that unsustainable behaviours cannot be sustained. I assume, from your remark that you are relying on some magical technology of the future to remove the problem of limits. Well, we don't live in a magical universe. It's pretty clear that consuming any resource beyond its renewal rate, or damaging our habitat, is unsustainable and magic ain't gonna fix that.
Waiting for market signals doesn't work either, because it implies that we can knock off the problems one by one (resource A has gone scarce, let's do something else ... oh resource B is now scarce, let's do something else ... oh that resource we needed to do something else because of scarce resource A, is now scarce, ...). Also, the something else that we have to do is likely to be easier before some resource becomes scarce, rather than after. For example, having a non-declining fossil fuel resource might make a transition to sustainability easier.
Those two statements are mutually exclusive. It is the consuming of whatever resources we want that has caused limits to be neared or breached and has removed most of the trees, and a lot of the wildlife that you could have enjoyed. You appear to be saying that because something magical may happen in the future (such as us all becoming cybernetic beings or discovering some exotic energy source) we shouldn't worry about our kids being able to enjoy trees and wildlife.
Strange that abundance.concept used iron as an example of a constrained resource.
He might as well applied it to silicon and created an even more preposterous example.
You are trapped in a contradiction. On the one hand you are telling us that some resources are critical to our way of life, but on the other hand you are telling us that consumption of these same resources is unsustainable. If you believe consumption of these resources is unsustainable, you should be glad we might be on the threshold of running out of them, rather than acting concerned that it "may prove to be a problem a lot earlier..." After all, running out of a resource whose consumption you consider unsustainable would force society into using something else, would it not? Of course it would. And the sooner it happens, the sooner we will be forced to make a transition to a more "sustainable lifestyle."
Your statement is typical of my main criticism of the whole peak oil movement: Most of it is spectacularly dishonest. One the one hand they tell us we should be concerned about imminent shortages of oil, declining EROEI, etc etc - but that's not their real agenda. Their real agenda is that they want oil shortages to be imminent, because (they hope) it would force society to transition to some more "sustainable" energy useage. I have no problem with peak oil advocates (and that's what they are - advocates) who are honest and come right out and say, "I want oil production to decline." But unfortunately that's not how most of them behave. Instead, the modus operandi of most peak oil advocates is to scare the public into believing oil shortages are imminent, that EROEI is declining, etc., in an effort to scare the public into taking action to do something more "sustainable." Sorry to say, but scare tactics are a spectacularly dishonest way to achieve anything. And the more they do it, the more I find myself hoping they fail.
This makes no sense at all. If we had a non-declining fossil fuel, we would simply use that fossil fuel forever, without ever needing to transition to something more "sustainable." Imagine, for example, the proponents of abiotic oil turned out to be correct. Would the existence of abiotic oil make it easier to transition to something more sustainable? Hardly! All it would do would be to enable society to consume oil for millenia after millenia.
If you want society to transition to something more "sustainable," scarcity is your friend, not your enemy. Even if we go through a series of steps by consuming Resource A until it becomes scarce, then Resource B until it becomes scarce, and so on, eventually we will run out of practical alternatives, at which point we will be forced to use something renewable/sustainable.
I believe you are misreading my statement. Just because I think it's OK to chop down some trees so that I and my grandchildren have toilet paper to use, does not mean I want every single tree to be felled. I rather like nature preserve, wildlife corridors, etc. On the other hand, my enjoyment of trees and nature is not so ideological that I cannot consider the possibility that it might be written in the Laws of Physics that one day in the far future they do all get chopped down in the process of turning Earth into a cybernetic machine planet. If that's the fate of Planet Earth, then so be it. If it isn't, no matter there, either. One day humans will be gone anyway, and nature will carry on without us.
Those are your words and I don't think any oil depletion analyst would say it any differently. And a capitalist would essentially say the same thing. Logic is a pretty universal language.
So I really do not understand your point at all, and I don't see where the dishonesty lies.
I think it should be fairly obvious that we will not be able to run all our automobiles and aircraft on oil in a few decades. What have you got up your sleeve that will allow the transition to occur seamlessly and let a few billion more people get the automobiles that they want. Comparing to oil to iron is not a good analogy, you can recycle iron, it is a basic element and does not break down further. When you combust oil you can't recycle it.
Oil production will decline, have you got a fix for the U.S. whose oil extraction in the lower-48 states has been in decline since 1970?
The only contradiction is that a way of life that depends on resources that are not infinite, or are not renewed at the rate they are consumed, cannot continue relying on such resources. You are suggesting we need not change our way of life until (or maybe you think it's "if") we actually hit a decline in a resource we rely on and that can't be substituted for at the same scale, cost and efficacy. You're right that running out of (though we really only need a peak) a resource that our way of life depends on will force us to change that way of life but you didn't read my point that having a non-declining such resource would make transition easier. So having a growing or plateauing supply of oil would make it easier, for example, to build sustainable infrastructure that doesn't need to rely on that oil for it's maintenance and further build out. Consequently, waiting until we're well past peak (we need to be well past before many will acknowledge that a peak had been reached) is not a wise move. But it appears to be a move that you would endorse.
There is no need for you to imagine some agenda. All you need to do is address the points raised.
I can't really figure out how you misunderstood my comment so spectacularly. I've never suggested that we can have a non-declining amount of some vital resource for ever. The point is that because we can see that consuming finite resources is one of our unsustainable behaviors, it would be better to address the coming decline of those resources whilst we still have either an increasing supply of those resources or at least a non-declining supply. To wait until the supply is declining is a pretty dumb way to act, unless you believe a miracle will occur.
Undoubtedly. However, I assume we are looking at this situation from a human perspective. At least I am; aren't you? I'm not sure you are, as you are even speculating that they might just possibly maybe be a law of physics that defines the earth will turn into a cyber machine. Why not think about even just the next millennia or two, before you fly off into the far distant future? It is the BAU that you advocate that has restricted your pleasure of nature to nature reserves and wildlife corridors. It is BAU that will whittle even those limited areas down even more to get at now scarce resources that are more important than the rest of nature, on which we depend more than some resources. Heck, the resources don't even need to be vital; if economic growth can be aided by mining conservation areas, BAU dictates that they will be mined.
Perhaps you misunderstood. I am suggesting that if we found an extremely large (if perhaps not "infinite") fossil fuel source, that would discourage us from transitioning to a "sustainable" or renewable resource. You seem to believe we can have some large supply of fossil fuel while forcing people (even if gradually) to start using something else. I am trying to tell you, "That won't work." And the reason it won't work is because the abundance of the fossil fuel will make it inexpensive compared to the sustainable/renewable alternatives, thus discouraging the conversion. The new, alternative "sustainable" energy source would also need subsidies to compete with the abundant fossil fuel, an action which will not be popular with those who do not want the government to spend money on seemingly unnceccesary things.
I also think you are underestimating the free market. If indeed oil is starting to become scarce (or at least expensive), the price will gradually rise, which will gradually make people think about using "something else." It goes without saying that people will use less gasoline at $5/gallon than at $2/gallon, and maybe they'll start to think about buying an electric car, or whatever. The "something else" could indeed be something renewable, or it may be we go through the series of Resource A, Resource B, etc. that I described above. But we would still get there eventually, and in the meatime the only signal people would need is the rising price of the nonrenewable sources.
I prefer to look at the bigger picture.
IF a vast source of fossil fuels were discovered then you're probably right. Heck, you're right even if we look like hitting peak soon, but that doesn't mean that addressing the issue is the wrong thing to do. However, again, you're falling into the dreamland of the future where some miracle occurs. Meanwhile, back to the present, it looks like there are plenty of resources in sight of peaking, and an ecosystem which is creaking at the seams. Those are the things that concern me and I'm amazed they don't concern you; that you'd rather place your future in the hands of fate than have humans apply their supposed intellect to the problem of inevitable resource and environmental limits.
You're referring to something Richard Heinberg calls the magic elixir. Why would someone buy another car rather than pay more for petrol? How is that economically justifiable, unless the payback time is very rapid or it is obvious that there are limits? And if limits are obvious, why would business as usual continue, if humans are supposed to be intelligent? You make the cornucopian assumption that the various transitions (temporary transitions, since limits will continue to hit in the future) will always be made in time and without too much pain (if there was likely to be a lot of pain, again, why would an intelligent species not do something well in advance of that?). Fortunately (since it would be most unpredictable) we don't live in a magical world. The longer we try to postpone limits, the harder it will be when they can't be postponed any more (and that time will come unless the world is magical or we change our ways).
Get where? We certainly don't get to sustainability that way. If you think so, please describe a sustainable world that doesn't consume resources beyond their renewal rates (which for many resources is zero or very slow) or damage its habitat, that is attainable via this gentle market action with no deliberate thought to where we're headed.
But you're doing the exact opposite. You're describing that we should act only on a daily basis, not giving much thought to our future on this planet, except, for some bizarre reason, the speculation that we'll all become cyber beings. That's not looking at the big picture, that's dreaming. The big picture is how we humans turn this thing round and recognize the experiment of the last few hundred years as failed, in the face of physical limits that can't be denied by wishful thinking.
However, you'd have to be absolutely 100% certain Resource X is certain to be running out soon before you ask society to make wholesale changes to adjust to that reality.
Why 100+% ?
20% to 30% would seem to be enough risk to ask society to make major changes.
For changes that are quite beneficial in multiple other ways and almost no long term downside, the "risk probability" can be quite substantially lower (i.e getting off oil by building efficient non-oil transportation alternatives with mature technology).
What was the risk from Iraq's WMDs for example ?
What was the risk in 1940 when the USA started the draft ?
etc.
Alan
Good point. There are probably plenty of examples, both momentous and mundane, of action being taking based on a risk, rather than waiting for the problem to manifest itself. I wonder what our societies would be like if the abundance.concept method of dealing with risk was followed. No doubt, in some cases, the society would have been better (especially if the risk proved unfounded), in some cases worse. I wonder why, in the case of unsustainable behavior, abundance.concept is so adamant that pre-emptive action should not be taken.
But you can prepair for problems you know will happen. About 15 years ago we had a financial crisis in Sweden and one of the conclusions of that crisis were that the pension system were unstable and could not survice such a crash in the 2020:s or 2030:s. And thus our politicians took a long term decisions to make the government pension worse for everybody and less of a pyramid scam to avoid a serious crists 1 or 2 generations later.
The "automatic" downwritings of pensions were triggerd by this financial crisis but only barely. They are not enough for a giant crash but it might be more robust then any other european country exept Norway that bathe in oil and gas money.
I expect the same to happen with peak oil and other large scale problems. If it is 100 % sure that it will be a disaster in a generation or two and it can be avoided with doable but not very popular decisions it will be done. The key is that corporations, institutions and niche politics already are adapting to such problems and there are ready made plans and half finshed projects when we get a trigger crisis.
The climate issue and the oil price spike and recovery are for instance right now giving a reaction in the form of serious plans for FT-biomass plants that in a few years could provide us with 10 % of the current aviation fuel use. The price tag is about a billion USD wich is well within reach for the local investors.
The government minimum goal is 10 % renewable fuel in 2020 and there are think tanks that argue that 15 % of BAU is fairly easy to reach from todays about 5 %. 15 % of BAU is quite close to being able to run farming and key services indefinately. More railways, trams, trolley busses, EV:s, scooters and bikes and we get a seamless transition from todays BAU to one that is every bit as good to live in. And the key investments in infrastructure and technology are already ongoing at a lower level that makes sense with other issues.
But we do of course depend on the rest of the world not going belly up and forcing us to take crazy risks by reinventing parts of our financial system etc.
Several airports, f.i. London Heathrow, are planning to expand or are allready expanding. That makes no sense. I doubt it if a lot of governments understand (the impact of) Peakoil. Besides a lot think that until 2030 oilproduction will rise slightly and then remain on plateau for a while. With thanks to EIA and CERA. The timescale is completely wrong, presuming that Peakoil started in 2005.
You are referring to Sweden's early 1990's crisis. As the article points out, it was a crisis in which the bills for Sweden's welfare state could no longer be paid after a real estate crash collapsed the economy. Ironically, the welfare state itself was the result of supposedly forward-thinking people back in the 30's through the 70's who decided to set up a generous benefit system to provide for the present and future prosperity of the people.
It is a classic lesson of, "You cannot plan for the far future." If you could take a time machine back to somewhere maybe around 1950 and told the policy-makers in Sweden that their plans would jeopardize Sweden's financial viability 40 years hence, they probably would have laughed at you for suggesting they were being so reckless with their own nation's viability. But they were. Now, you and several others in this thread are telling me we should plan for the future, when you've just cited an example of how impossible such an endeavor is, and how impossible it can be to see that far into the future.
You do not know it will be a disaster in a generation or two. I've got books from 30 and 40 years ago telling us there will be an environmental disaster, complete with Dieoff, within a generation or two. We were running out of resources. Etc etc. I'm still waiting. This is just more evidence that no one can see that far into the future, and that planning for that future is an exercize in futility.
Well, Peak Oil is a geological fact. The Dieoff stuff is sort of related due to industrial agriculture. Perhaps happy motoring will continue forever, but I don't see how we will be using oil to run our cars in 40 years time.
If fossil fuels aren't capable of influencing ultimate carrying capacity of the planet, availability of fresh water and arable land will.
I figure we are better off when the politicians of the 1950:s and 1960:s tried to make wise long term decisions. The pension system they implemented were not god but they also made numerous good investments. The problems realy started in the late 1960:s and 1970:s when ideological socialists took over and abandoned much of the long term physical thinking and instead focused on creating a socialist citizen and good over confident and proclaimed stuff like "politics is willpower". They got a lot of stuff done but little made a lasting positive impression and it drew down the physical and intellectual resources created by the earlier geneartion.
I am deeply convinced that ancoring everything you can in the physical reality and trying to make long term decions gives better decision making. You are never 100% sucessfull but even 10 % over the stupidity baseline is a significant improvement.
False alarms are not too bad as long as the reactions to the alarms are usefull even if the alarm are false. I am not worried about the dire consequences from excess resource efficiency, needlessly comfortable city cores to be able to recieve another wave of urbanisation, downsized administration and upsized physical investments, making investment in biofuels, phosphorous recycling etc a decade too early and missing out on some cheap consumption.
Lets build good houses and have small parties, not living in tents and have large parties.
Well said !
Alan
I certainly agree that the future will hold many surprises! If we took a betting pool on "What will be the maximum world population from 2100 to 3000," nobody would get the right answer and many people's guesses would be off by a factor of ten.
Was it here at TOD, but someplace recently I read a quote from Dwight Eisenhower, that in war, plans are useless, but planning is vital. I suppose it might be a logically coherent position, to hold that one does or should live moment by moment, totally in the present. But a more realistic perspective is that the present actually includes the future, i.e. our behavior is always "in order to", is goal oriented.
Thanks for the pointers to your PeakOil discussions, I will take a look. You might like looking at this RAND report, which deals with the inevitable uncertainties in forecasting:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1626/
Jim
Not to put too finer point on things, we are in DEAP shit!
Debt = All time Highs & Going Higher
Energy = Oil Production has Peaked, creating Economic stress points.
Aging Population = Baby Boomer Bust is here, now
Population Total = Already Beyond the Planets Capacity to sustain, but set to Peak within 20 years, before going into long term Decline
No matter what people say & do, the above WILL SET THE FUTURE COURSE OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY!!!
PS - Climate Change is also still set to play a major part and Innovation is still the "Wildcard"!
If you want to know why Heinberg is wrong, read Genesis 1 through 3. And no, I'm not a Bible thumper.
And, just how does Genesis (God), make Heinberg wrong, PRAY tell?
Maybe because ELOHIM says, "Be fruitful and multiply," but there's no caveat that says, "Stop when you reach one billion."
And if ELOHIM said it, that means we can be fruitful and multiply in perpetuity, thank God.
I am glad Mike looked this up so I don't have to. Besides, I didn't know Jeff Lynne was so powerful.
Thank goodness for Google. I'm now laughing!
It is obvious that Elohim meant "Stuff yourself with figs prior to performing simple arithmetical operations."
What the heck? You did just thump the Bible. And what does ancient mythology about a talking snake have to do with 21st century resource limitations? It is this kind of 'faith-based' (non) logic that keeps getting the world in so much trouble.
...read Genesis 1 through 3. And no, I'm not a Bible thumper.
He he, kinda like saying "I'm not one to say I told you so, but I did didn't I."
Ron P.
Most of the thinking about post-peak oil America is too limited. I am old enough to remember the 1950's and 1960's. We had less money then, one car, and no air conditioning in suburban South Florida. Most food, except grains, came from "truck farms" around the city. Red meat was rarely eaten. Bread was locally produced, even if it was Wonder Bread.
How far in energy decline does this standard of living take us towards what is needed immediately for post-oil civilization in the USA? Perhaps a return to the USA's 1960 standard of living would be enough to get through the initial shock.
Except that back then there were only about 3 billion people on the planet. We've more than doubled since then, as well as lost that infrastructure.
Of course, maybe more than that is the fact that we're used to being extremely spoiled. The Tea-partiers will show up with guns drawn if you take away their red meat and air conditioning.
What a Hot Topic! IMO the survivors will once again live like the Native Americans of this Continent. What really impacts my thought , is the constant "ECONOMIC CONCERNS" in peoples comments. Remember, Native Americans could never come to grasp the thought of "sell the land". They were a "gifting society." Not to say it was perfect, but it kept them in balance to nature. Sorry to those so addicted... the future will have no value for your gold, baubles and posessions. It will all be soul and gifting. May your passing be with minimal pain.