l. please pay attention. The complex evolved system is breaking down before our eyes. You know, ENTROPY. As some have said it's already started, it's just ain't equally distributed yet.

2. I am an old man. Mitigation? Just don't want to die like a dog in the street.

3. Please. Human nature is driving us off the cliff. Everyone I know is saying, "I will cut back when everyone else does."

Damn nice sunset here just north of the Cody Scarp.

Sorry, but this thing in the GOM has got this old man feeling a little melancholy.

1 Exercise kindness
2 Drum the exponential function into our kids heads.
3 Pay attention to Maslows hierarchy of needs.
4 Accept that we are organelles of a greater organism, and that our deaths, while a personal tragedy, are inevitable and apoptosis.

I add this as a value judgment.
Cane killed Abel.
Cane represented a settled agricultural mode of life. Abel's life was nomadic. Cane is forced to sweat in the sun for his sin.
We need both systems.
Cane is about to take a hit to make room for Able.

Oh, and remember, you were built tough by evolution.

Perhaps if the downslope is slow

This is the key statement.

If the downslope is slow it will be manageable with various mitigation procedures. Slow might mean over three or four generations. Civilization will move to a sustainable low population, low net energy future. The hope would be to perhaps maintain some high tech advantages such as local electricity generation, biofuel or solar farming tractors and medical technology such as antibiotics and anaesthesia.

If the downslope is fast it will be a chaotic collapse. Very few mitigation policies will be of use. Think Germany from 1937 to 1945.

Peaceful non violent transition as energy shortages worsen will be vital. All three of the above mitigation options will be applied by society as the energy and financial situation worsens. If nations or regions start fighting over resources or lifestyles collapse will be guaranteed.

Only a single reference to population.

Anything done today will be of little use in the long run, if the population issue is not dealt with properly - before nature (perhaps our own) shows us how to do it.

There have to be enormous, radical changes in lifestyle - this is much more the case for people in the first world than others.

For example - here is a simple change that would be revenue neutral for utility providers - do away with the "base" charge, and incorporate it into the unit charge of the item consumed. The immediate effect of this is to reward people that consume very little at the expense of people who choose to either waste, or be profoundly ignorant.

In the case of electricity and water, I would go further and make the first 1 CCF (that's a hundred cubic feet ~ 700+ US gallons) of water (per domestic household per quarter) free and the first 1 kWh of electricity per day per meter free. This could be made revenue neutral to the utility by making units in excess of those first units more expensive. This would introduce considerable incentive to economize.

These free units could reduce over time, and the price of the more expensive units increase over time - and drive down consumption.

The external costs of gasoline and all other fuels (including hydro) need to be incorporated into the price paid by the consumer - with one simple goal - drive down consumption.

I think we are mind-bogglingly overpopulated. If you look at modern groups that are living anything remotely like our ancestors, you notice there are much less of them, and they tend to move around more and utilize a wider variety of resources that are also generally wide spread.

Unless someone dreams up a deus ex machina, the mitigation will probably come about by the usual suspects, plague, famine, etc.

If there were less of us, with access to current technology, we might be able to cobble something workable together. But human nature being what it is, the resulting societal structure would most likely not be warm & fuzzy.

My household can't afford #1. I'd love to install a windmill and some solar panels, and buy a more efficient vehicle, but it ain't gonna happen.

We're working on #2 as part of a general push to be better able to weather crises of many kinds.

#3...We've crossed our fingers and are making a low-input farm, easy to maintain, producing enough surplus to sell or barter. We have good connections with our neighbors and community and are sharing what we learn with others.

I think any government with a grip on the facts would be thinking about triage. How to 'ark' the right amount of people and knowledge to restart things after the world as it is realizes there is no magic trick. There are too many issues to deal with to save us all....climate change, peak everything, overpopulation, food crises, etc.

Coming West over the Sierras on I-80 last year, the highway was nearly down to bed rock. In fact, in some places I think it was down to bedrock. Perhaps that situation has been remedied by way of the stimulus package. But even if it has, it just goes to show that it took an extraordinary event to motivate the powers that be to maintain what is one of the most heavily traveled portions of Interstate in the United States. Maintenance of not just that stretch of road but all roads needs to be virtually continuous, resulting in continuous dysfunctionality of what we like to call our outmoded transportation system.

Even with the recent and current abundance of energy, we are incapable of maintaining adequately the sytems we have, including the electrical grid. In these parts, the grid goes down several times a year every year and we don't even get snow or extreme cold. It just takes a little wind or rain storm to bring down the system. This is a wealthy part of the country with incredibly high electricity rates all the way up to 49 c per kWh for the highest tier.

Don't think many here would argue that our financial system is in very good shape. Even bribing the banksters with trillions still hasn't turned the situation around. Maybe we're good for one more recovery. I don't know but am not betting on it with my investments.

In summary, the current system is not being maintained, so the answer to the first question would be zero. We have reached the level of complexity and/or dysfunctionality that we are incapable of making what we have work to the people's benefit. I am being U.S. centric; things may be better overseas in Europe or China, for example. Singapore seems to be fairly well run if you like boring and anal.

I think we have the resources to do everything you mention but we won't do it regardless. After the dieoff, maybe whoever is left can regroup and figure all this out.

It ultimately comes down to overshoot, and as stated above, how steep the slope.
Until the twin opiates of Religion and TV (media in general) are faced, and either drowned in the bath tub, or made unimportant through education and awareness--- good luck!

If we could beam all humans off the Earth tomorrow to another planet, how long would we need to stay away to allow it to rest and recover?
Would it all ever recover. Co2 levels will continue to rise and deserts will expand, the oceans will rise and the glaciers disappear. There is a real and frightening possibility that the oceans will become uninhabitable to anything but worms and jellyfish.

I ask these questions because I think we don’t have an option to live sustainably anymore. The opportunity to get our act together probably passed a century or more ago.

In my opinion there is not a free solution we can make. We won’t choose collective suicide, hell we won’t choose to give up our TV.
Like beaming everyone from the Earth we need an “all in” approach. Choosing to reduce greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels means nothing, in 1960 we should have been reducing emissions to 1900 levels.

All we will ever do is rhetoric, we do rhetoric very well but it’s action we need. The problem with that is being human we are self aware. We each feel more entitled than the next person. Each feels that the people in the next, house, next street, next town, city, state or country should do the suffering.
We have divisions along family, creed, ethnic, patriotic and personal beliefs let alone collective beliefs which hinder our motivation and willingness to change.

I really don’t grieve for the human race, we get what we deserve but we had no right to take everything else with us.
By the way I have done all of option two. I'm only human.

Well, I'll offer a #4.

Personally, I think that the most important thing is the options we can preserve for the future roughly half-billion years of the planet's life as a living oasis in space. This means options for humans and whatever we might evolve into, as well as currently-evolved complex species.

We have a bottleneck of converging crises, of our own making. Many possible futures are already foreclosed, but there remains a huge degree of freedom in the possible outcomes. Those outcomes, in turn. will determine what "life" has to work with over countless millions, probably hundreds of millions, of years into the future.

Seen from that admittedly unusual perspective, the extending of human overshoot and creature comforts for a few decades or even a few centuries may be a wildly sociopathic concept by any objective standards of planetary citizenship and even species self-interest.

I'd suggest that the existence of the trillions of humans who have yet to exist in the future - as well as their cohort species and environment - is what is most immediately in jeopardy, and should be the overriding concern to any sane species. That's where "mitigation" would have deep meaning.

my 2 cents' worth, in passing, on a sleepy saturday.

I don't think there is time to try all three strategies, although some of the more powerful nations will be able to try this longer than the less powerful nations.

I think for most of the world the current global economic system will fail them either BEFORE or shortly after oil production starts to seriously decline (between now and 2013).

As for your list of mitigation steps, I lean toward:

2. Doing things that might help our immediate families survive for some period of time--a few weeks up to 40 years (resiliency planning).

3. Doing things that would truly be helpful for several generations in the future, if we need to go to a much lower energy life style.

I think our governments will continue trying to prop up BAU. We have had 3 presidents in a row now who chose using the military to "secure oil supplies" rather than make any serious changes at home.

It has to be #3.

I imagine the majority here are all about peak oil, but ultimately climate is the biggest deal.

I just read James Hansen's Storms of my Grandchildren, and the worst case scenario is a Venus-like atmosphere after all the fossil carbon plus clathrates. Can't take that risk.

Gale, perhaps the deepest wisdom is -- as Carolyn Baker suggests -- to prepare for utterly tragic events sweeping over us all, with, probably, no-one anywhere exempt. Maybe we just have to accept that we, the species, have blown our brilliant chances so comprehensively that now there is certain to be a hellish time of widescale destruction of many of the things which we love, with near-unbearable despair to be suffered, as we see them go.

We should do everything we can to mitigate this, and we will of course. And we should struggle to keep ultimate despair at bay, always. And we will. But we do need to start preparing ourselves for the reality that -- pretty certainly -- there is no unscathed, relatively happy outcome left available for us. We're booked now for our descent into hell. With reasonable luck, regarding mainly the survival of the living planet itself, some of us, or our descendants, will make it out to something tolerable at the other side. In the very long run, the planet will heal itself, probably, and refecundate its life, as it has done after global catastrophes several times before. We may or may not be around to see that.

Another old man's resigned, accepting estimate of what's happening.

The goal should be the 2000 Watt Society(17.5 Mwh per year per person or 23.3 quads/yr for the USA(2050) down from 99 quads/yr).

1.) End personal transport(60% of transport energy) Save 20 quads.

2.) Cut oil industry by 60% Save 6 quads.

3.) Do business by internet.
Close retail, service, business and government offices .
Save 7 quads.

4.) Go paperless. Save 2 quads.

5.) Phase out single family homes unless Passive Houses. Save 11 quads.

6.) Increase renewable electricity to 15% of grid while holding output constant thru conservation, not counting rooftop PV and distributed generation like home microturbines or fuel cells.
Save 11 quads.

Total savings 57 quads. Down to 42 quads.

If we manage to get this far I expect Yankee ingenuity get get us down another 50% in the next two generation or so it would take to implement steps 1-6.

Everyone did read this news bit, right?

http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2010/05/odds-of-cooking-grandkids.html

Only a single reference to population

I think we are mind-bogglingly overpopulated

It ultimately comes down to overshoot

Population of course is the gorilla hiding in plain sight. Population plus consumption.

The poor under-consuming overpopulated countries destroy their environment locally. The rich moderately populated countries destroy globally. Each blame the other for the resource depletion and the ecological catastrophes now unfolding.
IMO there will be no reconciling.

Population control and consumption control will be forced on humanity by events. Due to religous, social and political dogma, there will be no hope for controlled depopulation.

A low population low net energy future is inevitable in the coming years and decades.

Mitigation will only be effective if the downslope is gentle. Rapid depopulation or rapid decline in the system will be catastrophic.

The longer human political and religous systems ignore the population and consumption problems then the more likely there will be catastrophic overshoot & collapse.

Not one country in the world has taken any genuine steps to address real and proper sustainability in their systems. Ad hoc solutions to deteriorating economic, environmental and resource problems will do nothing to solve the bigger issue of too many people consuming too many resources and causing calamatous environmental deterioration.

The future is not looking good. Strong action on mitigation procedures will be essential.

Gail
"1. For how many years do you think the world can maintain its current complex system (financial, electric, industrial agriculture, Internet, paved roads, etc) after energy availability begins to decline?"
This is a false dichotomy driven by assumptions.
We need to separate out near term peaking of light oil from heavy oil/bitumen and coal.

We need to identify and rapidly develop renewable energy conversion methods with high EROEI, while bridging with heavier fossil fuels.
e.g. Solar thermal power and and solar thermochemical fuels appear to have much higher EROEI than PV or conventional biofuels.

"2. How does your view of (1) influence what your view of the most important mitigation approaches?"
Again a false dichotomy that assumes greenhouse mitigation is needed, rather than adaptation (if that).

Idur Golkany in "Living Longer in a Warming World" at the International Climate Change Conference 2010" showed detailed data on excess cold weather deaths indicating that global warming will likely reduce death rates, while the major concern is global cooling driven by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) as predicted by Don Easterbrook. Consequently global cooling is much more dangerous than global warming. Climate mitigation typically ranks dead last on any international health care evaluation. Any climate "mitigation" that increases costs will itself cause far greater deaths in the developing world than global warming, directly because of depriving the poor of funds and harming their economy.

Developing countries are generally deemed to be most vulnerable to climate change, not necessarily because they will experience greater climate change, but because they lack adaptive capacity (that is, financial and human capital) to acquire and use the technologies necessary to cope with its impacts. Hence, another approach to addressing climate change would be to enhance the adaptive capacity of developing countries by promoting broad development, i.e., economic development and human capital formation, which, of course, is the point of sustainable economic development.

Golkany confirms the overall Copenhagen Consensus ranking. (For global warming enthusiasts see: Copenhagen Consensus on Climate)

"3. Do we have resources to do all three mitigation approaches simultaneously? If we need to scale back on one, what would it be?"
1) Focus all attention on alternative liquid fuels for transportation on a war time footing.
2) Focus on high EROEI fuels for transportation.
3) Put climate mitigation dead last as burying money in the ground with negligible benefit while causing great harm to the poor.

Spending any substantial resources on climate mitigation will seriously harm the global economy by robbing funds from critically needed transition to alternative fuels. Diversion of critically needed investment into alternative fuels will cause severe shortages of transport fuels and high prices which will very likely very severely harm the global economy. See publications by Robert L. Hirsch

We will all be held accountable for our choices, as the cries of the poor rise up to the Supreme Judge of all the world.

I am seeing cycling in our future. "If China keeps buying cars, America will be on bicycles".

Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.
~Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity, 1974
http://www.brseattle.com/bikes2.htm

For instance, the bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon. ~Bill Strickland, The Quotable Cyclist

Or, as I have heard it, "A man on a bicycle is more efficient than a bird in flight"

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. ~H.G. Wells

1. We are already on the road to complex collapse due to extreme population overshoot and the peaking of a critical resource, oil. I think the current system can be maintained while oil production declines less than 30% from its peak, and I'm using 30% as ballpark maximum based on how much blood a person could lose before collapsing into a coma or dying. .7 * 75 is 52.5. Depending on decline rates and how they are affected by our existing compounding system issues, we can keep oil production high enough for 2 to 6 years. But after oil production falls below some critical level, then social service, electrical, financial, governmental, and transportation systems start rapidly shutting down.

I think 2 to 6 years is the best case, because beneath the oil production is its net energy contribution to the rest of the system. Net energy has already been falling, and will fall more rapidly than production itself.

2. If you are going to try to mitigate the effects of collapse, then concentrating most effort in #2, local preparations for family and community, has the best chance of yielding benefits.

3. We don't have enough resources to do all three simultaneously. Definitely scale back on trying to modify the current system. The cancer is too vast.

Also, expend some energy enjoying yourself and having some fun.

The question is more one of priories since we don't have infinite resources for mitigation

Unlimited resources are available for mitigation in the USA, although not "infinite".

The common number for consumption in the USA is 2/3rds of GDP.

Cut consumption as much as need be to fund whatever mitigation is needed.

And since investments in long lived energy producing and energy efficient infrastructure pay "dividends", they start to self finance after the first year and 100% self finance in a couple of decades.

Instead of a cruise or a trip to Vegas, or a new SUV, buy insulation and more efficient appliances. Different people get employment, but the economy still "works".

Raise gas taxes and fund Urban rail. A shift from consumption to investment to the extent people use less gas and have less disposable income.

Instead of buying a new McMansion, rent an urban apartment and invest the difference in railroads and wind farms.

I could go on and on.

CONSUMPTION is a ENORMOUS fat pig that can supply ALL of our mitigation needs !

Alan

Hedgerows rather than electric fences??? I'd like to see you try to grow a hedge in most of Texas.

Solar electric fences are commonly available and cheap, $100 range (seems there's never an electric outlet where you need one out on the farm).

One should not make simplistic assumptions that nothing technological will be available when there are oil shortages.

I'm going with 1, business as usual. I recently worked out some scenarios that cut CO2 emissions, and I came up with one that got along just fine without any oil at all. Most things that you need oil for, you can do with natural gas. The cars cost more , but...

Getting by without any fossil fuel would definitely be more expensive. For certain things, like aviation, you really need a chemical fuel. You are reduced to using biofuel, which is only available in limited quantities. Converting all sugar, edible oils and corn gets me about 7 Mbbl/d worldwide.

The main consumers of oil are road transport and aviation, so that's what gets squeezed. Electric cars are only marginally affordable for American families, but cutting the required range to 40 miles and restricting the power should get the cost down to something not too painful.

Gail seems to be under the impression that fertilizer supplies will stop. I don't agree. Fertilizers are based on the ammonia molecule. You make ammonia by reacting nitrogen and hydrogen in the Haber process. The question is where do you get the hydrogen from? Electrolysis of water driven by hydroelectricity is one possibility. Another cheaper method is gasification of biomass.

Rebuilding our economy will take time, so we can get into trouble if oil supplies drop too quickly.

"Building a farm using hedge rows instead of electric fences, "

Many electric fences now run off of solar cells. So that one doesn't help. Electric fences are easily moved to adjust with the crop rotations. Hedge rows are not portable.

Great thoughts. We are learning how interconnected things really are. Becoming conscious of our energy use is important for no other reason than realizing how little we could really consume and be just fine.

I live in a building originally built in 1905 in the deep south, when there was no electricity. As a result it has a lot of single pane, double hung, 36"x 84 windows. There are some natural cooling features that are amazing, and the minimal heating is provided by low angle sun exposures to the south and small, wood stoves for the north sections.

Thick concrete blocks ( not like todays) moderate temperature variation. Sure the hard wood floors sag a bit after 105 years, but that is part of the charm.

Our ancestors had comfortable, low energy, living down-pat. Reading about their techniques is not taking civilization backwards, just adding to some wisdom developed over the centuries that works, to solar heating and underground cooling things we have today, and judging from the copious pictures and writings, they were having a fine life back then.
BTW, current wisdom (LEED) says tear it down and build a new building. However, EnergyPlus modeling of this building in my latitude, totally unmodified ( except for electricity ), shows it is superior (+6 KW/YR.Sq FT) to a NEW LEED certified construction of substantial cost.

Many of our energy problems have been solved, mankind just forgot about the solutions. Maybe just ignored them because they are too "simplistic".

Hi folks,
I will be working on strengthening my families chances,as well as my own...I burned way too much time and treasure talking at people who still "don't get it". M.Ruppert has the right Idea.If they are too boneheaded to see with their own eyes,the rapidly disintegrating life of petro-man,as well as the continuing collapse of our "economy"...move on.And don't mention how much loot you have squirreled away in the basement.

My goal now is filling the last few places on my "liferaft"with passive food producers,and working at getting the highest quality bees I can find...[if you want a true challenge try raising bees w/o chemicals,or antibiotics.]

I think in order to be effective at either of the other goals is to make your own,and the ones you feel responsible for as independent as possible...this keeps you in a position of strength when dealing with "the BAU"crowd ,as well as having the greatest effect on how the future plays out...

Bee Good
Or
Bee careful

snuffy

I find the analysis flawed and quite unrealistic.

One cannot, in general, "prepare" for #3 because it requires a massive dieoff and the social (and economic) disruption that goes with it.

One of the few examples of infrastructure that can make it through to #3 (and #4) are railroads.

I will use the genocidal (>1/3rd population dies) civil wars of Cambodia and Liberia as illustrations.

In both cases, homemade rail cars were used for transportation and were highly valued. Villages in Liberia kept their rail line from being sold for scrap.

Rail infrastructure can last for centuries. Ties are the least durable (40+ years) and ties can be made out of wood.

Hydroelectric is another that will make it through. North Korea and Albania (when it was isolated from the world except for China) both managed to keep their hydroelectric plants going. Afghanistan had a hydro plant that kept going for almost 50 years with minimal maintenance (they were using barbed wire covered in used tire rubber in places, but it was producing power).

Hoover Dam is currently undergoing a major overhaul, the first since it was built in the 1930s. Generation for given water will go up +7%. But it could have produced significant electricity without the overhaul for another 50 to 70 years.

Niagara (US side) just finished (three years ago) an overhaul (increased efficiency a few %) of 13 identical generators. In a pinch, and by using parts from one to repair another, Niagara will be producing power in 2110.

Quite a few 1890/1900 era small hydroelectric plants scattered around the world.

I frequently use streetcars built in 1923/24. They just replaced the 1930 era DC rectifiers that supplied the power to the trolley wires.

In summary, rail and hydroelectric are good for both #1 and #3 per your definitions.

Alan

Another point. You say "the world". Only one island of highly organized western industrial civilization is required to supply the world with rail, hydroelectric, wind, solar PV, etc. industrial goods and can trade these for whatever materials they want from the rest of the world, which may be in varying degrees of chaos.

Probably more than one island will and can make it.

Some possible islands:

Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark & (optional) Iceland/Greenland.

Germany & France axis with a mix & match possibility of all or part of neighboring nations (Switzerland should be able to stand on it's own if need be and trade for food). Note: Next door to Nordic block with direct rail connections.

Brazil

Large parts of the USA & Canada

Japan (trade organization that can produce for raw materials)

Parts of Russia

And so forth.

Rail over Eurasian land mass and coal fired, heavy oil (Venezuelan heavy oil can supply the world's fleets for 1,000 years) or sailing ships for rest.

JUST ONE ISLAND IS NEEDED !

I heard on the radio this morning that countries such as Uganda are no longer getting the financial support they need to treat AIDS cases, and many are just being turned away from the clinics.

I will leave it to the reader to decide whether that is a good or a bad thing.

Furthermore, Jacob Zuma, South African President, a man with five wives and more than 20 children, who famously stated that you couldn't get AIDS if you shower immediately after sex, was finally tested and the test came back negative.

I won't pass judgement on that one, either. Except to say that denial is alive and well all around us, and what is happening in Africa should be an abject lesson for us all, specifically when it comes to choosing leaders.

I've been too busy working on #2 to add to this discussion, then was too tired from working on #2 to add to this discussion. Shortly, I'll be back to working on #2, so won't be adding much to this discussion. I've already done a lot on #3, which overlaps with #2, at least for me.

Given up on #1 for the most part.

I agree with Greenish, #4 matters.

Back to planting spuds and beans.....as it may rain tomorrow....

BTW, Gail, hedgerows? We have barbed wire fences that are over 40 years old. Doing fine with regular maintanence. I just replaced the battery in one of my solar fence chargers. The last one lasted 19 years. Wow! With no maintanence (except for washing bird crap off of the panel). Best hopes for another 19 years. I'll let the grandkids worry about the hedgerows.

Yet this is what the "News" thinks is important.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/8699070.stm

It is about the cultural ethos which is shaped almost exclusively by the television.
Harness that and you have your "Top Down" and "Bottoms Up" momentum.
Carter tried the only way that could have worked and that is trying to change what people focus on and what they think is important.
Putting the solar panels on the White House was the ultimate Lead by Example and taking them down was also the ultimate Lead by Example.
We squandered our only chance with Reagan the f#cking IDIOT.

A plan to orderly reduce population through lower birth rates and natural attrition coupled with minimizing energy use per capita will make the decline more tolerable.

I am currently surrounded by beautiful, light hearted graduates of University and High School. Their lightness of being is infectious.

I occasionally eves drop (earned the right to be here by inviting my children to gather friends at our place and serving tasty Pupus and soups) They, just like every generation before them, believe that the world is there oyster. They talk about money, travel, cars, houses, technology, some even talk about family.

As soon as the realities of the convergence of constraints becomes impossible to ignore for the majority of the population, as it already has for many around the world...

The World will become a living hell.

I have read nothing that changes my feeling that this is true, not even remotely.

I also have not read anyone coming close to what that scenario might be like.

IMO the most important issue to address is our humanity which is what will determine whether or not we get hell on earth or just plain really bad.

What we have going on now is lies, corruption, deceit, out right criminal activity, and other INHUMANE acts and this is all being done by those who are in control.

P.S. jobs is not the answer. We must get way more creative than that.

I think we can take it as a given that in an increasingly resource-constrained world, something will eventually have to give. The question is: what will that be, and who is going to be on the short end of the stick?

Or to put it another way: in this game of resource musical chairs, who is going to be left without a seat, who will be sitting in the remaining seat and how will he/she go about getting it?

In the US one incredibly large source of untapped resources that I have not seen mentioned in this thread is the vast amount of money currently being spent on our gargantuan defense and security apparatus plus our various ongoing military adventures. The total price tag for our Department of Defense, Department of Energy (a large part of which has to do with nuclear weapons), CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, Homeland Security and no doubt some other alphabet-soup agencies I've overlooked, plus our military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan (and maybe soon Pakistan and/or Iran) is now pushing one trillion dollars annually. And most of that is being paid for with 'plastic'.

Gail has, quite rightly, continually hammered on future constraints to mitigation efforts due to our growing financial problems, i.e, unsupportable debt. But the concern I have, is that no matter how bad things get in the US, money for our defense and security apparatus will always have a way of magically appearing. Even if people have to live in their cars rather than drive them and have to scrounge for food, I have a hard time seeing the military/industrial/congressional complex in the US ever doing without the goodies it wants, much less cutting back to a fraction of current spending. The model that comes to mind is North Korea. It's ruler don't give a damn about how bad things are for the general population but have managed to build and maintain an incredibly advanced military machine for a country that probably has GDP less than than of Pennsylvania.

So, unless we get this money black hole under control, I find it pointless to talk about things like planting hedgerows or home gardens. First things first.

I still subscribe to the punctuated, painful fall hypothesis. Sometime in the next 5-10 years it will become obvious to all but the most dense, narcissistic individuals. When people(generally) finally figure it out it will be far too late. However, the fall has already begun. Each day my belief that we will destroy all that is good is reinforced. Case in point:
I have 5 house mates and all but one is too stupid to make the connections. No matter how many times I explain it, they still do nothing to curb their behavior. I took my stereo out of public household use the other day, and instead of using a perfectly good stereo already in the house the house mate with the least money went out and bought a new one. So much effort just to play video games! He owes tens of thousands in student loans, his parents are raising his defective child, and he can't pay his phone bill or fix his rotting, fetid mouth, and buy $10 cigarettes, but he CAN spend a few hundred to keep his XBOX Call of Duty addiction going.
Meanwhile I have saved more $$ in 3 years than he has made pouring drinks and avoiding taxation/bills. About to buy a house by a little lake(oh yes I know the risks!) and put in a garden.

Failure to make the connections...lack of understanding of the exponential function. These are the people that will just try to take what they want when they realize how badly they F'd it all up.

mr.fixie

Like your choice of comments and topics.Mitagation,imagination,friendship and barter and some deep thought.

Good palaver for for the long-run: ideas, dreams, discussions. Here in South Louisiana we're looking at the ugly short run end of the stick. What are its mitigation priorities?

Cajuns and Creoles don't know what a garden path is, much less that they're being led down one. They no longer think it's a conspiracy, or a complexity. Thinking that has got them to take the bait, and only added to the feints and sideshows. Same for their outrage against foot dragging and deception, which merely changed the subject, extending the dodge plays.

Incompetence is what's being covered up. Dorothy, Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Cowardly Lion will not be allowed pull the curtain away from The Wizard of Oil. Power-holders know how much we need it. They have this tiger-shark-vampire-squid by the tail and will apparently have to sacrifice Louisiana's coastlines.

The solution to the energy problem will initially come from improved efficiency in resource utilization, and later from renewable energy mass production, due to high demand in the emerging economies. The key player in the first case is the US as it is not only the largest but the most inefficient user of energy. The key question here is why should the per capita power consumption in US be twice of Britain or France. Are lifestyles so different? Or is it the lifestyle management?

The key players in the second area are China and India. With 2.5 billion people between them, they will provide both the market as well as the disruptive technologies that will crash land the price of renewable energy products in 5 years time. It is not only the cheapest computer or the cheapest car that will be produced by China and India but the cheapest wind and solar energy products, not due to brilliance but due to market dynamics.

No wonder all major renewable energy companies have already set up there plants in the subcontinent even though political leaders struggle with fruitless climate change discussions.Come what may the answer to sustainability lies in improving efficiency and lowering cost be it oil, coal,nuclear power or renewable energy.

Being 30 years in the industry, I do not believe in any peak energy crisis. The current panic has been created by speculators over the last decade but should be over by next 5 to 10 years. Oil demand by 2050 will be negligible due to market innovations which are taking place at the grass root levels in several fields. So let us not even think of 'peak oil', but try and achieve 'flat oil' by streamlining demand, better stockpiling and reducing market volatility, in the immediate future.

We need to work the problem on all three fronts. Resourceful folks with limited means and/or time might form transition teams or "micro-tribes" for the express purpose of transitioning to more sustainable lives (#3). They could double up to live under one roof and thereby free income to invest in land and alternative infrastructure for sustainability. Too many of us get stalled out as soon as we see that we can't get where we need to be on our own steam. The fact is that individualism has limited usefulness given the scope of the challenges we face.

1, Roads will be around for 50 years, if they are traveled enough, Some bridges will go away, others will have old school ferry boats taking people across. Not all roads are built the same way, Germany has thicker road beds than the USA does for example. Railroad tracks can be traveled on by any number of wheeled carts either pushed by hand cranked devices or by small enignes. Look to several third world conutries that have been doing so for a while now.

We don't have to reinvent the wheel, most people know how to make one of those, and people will learn the old ways to making them and use the roads even as they decline in pavement. So even in a deep collapse roads will be used still.

I have no clue how far down they will go though, as how far down the slope we will go is a matter of guess work.

Electrical systems require a lot more work than roads do, as every pole in the power grid can stop the flow of power, if only one of them falls down. As we see in several other countries the power grids have a bad habit of failing with just a little bit of stress on them.

The internet could be just between a few locations and still be called the internet, but as the server farms fail, the over all structure of the internet will degrade, so it all depends on who will be left to maintain the system as to how long it stays afloat.

2. As to how I am planning for the future in regards to my ideas in #1. In my designs for houses and gardens I am trying to steer clear of depending on life as we know it today. Basics of home construction and using passive solar heating and lighting, so that if the ability to produce batteries or LED's dies with the collapse, the people living in the houses, don't have to abandon the dwelling.

If you build into the design of a house, protection from floods, and storms, or earthquakes, you can extend the usable lifespan of the dwelling. We have all those technologies today, and they don't require continual imputs of energy. They arn't going to be castles, and living within a basic framework is not going to be for everyone, unless they know the world that might be in the next few years to decades.

It is like trying to get people to give up their SUVs if they see no reason to do so, then convincing them is that much harder. My designs aren't for the BAU folks, they are to simple minded.

3,
Currently we have the energy to do most of our downsizing, but we likely don't have the willingness to do so. Too many people still do not see a need to lessen the load on our systems. When it becomes known in the general public it'll be to late to get most of it done.

Though I have had conversations with some folks that love the idea of a CSA that just opened it's doors in downtown North Little Rock, they were talking about how neat it was to have locally grown foods available. But they were both older than your average person, and remembered the days when locally grown foods were available for sale, country girls from before world war 2.

I see things changing, but is it fast enough? I don't know.

I planted wheat this spring and most of it did not make it, I'll need to plant earlier and protect it from the birds and bugs, and plant more of it. It's an experiment in seeing if I can grow wheat in a home garden. I have several other experimental crops growing, some might or might not do as well. It would be nice ot have a few more years of downslope before everything crashes, just so I can say I grew this or that new plant, but I guess I won't get statisfied either.

charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed future.

I chose a variation of #3. Setting up quasi-monastic communities which have the mission of preserving certain technologies that will be needed in the 22nd century. Those who participate in these communities must see the mission as their sacred duty and not as a way of generating personal or community wealth. There are 7 categories which need preservation; electricity generation, radio communication, energy efficient aviation, basic health care, preservation of patent records, basic literacy and numeracy of nearby populations, and preservation of a wide range of crop varieties.

Electricity is more important for the continuance and rebuilding of civilization than the availability of liquid fuels. Electricity is just too useful to let knowledge of it to perish. The methods used are dependent on location. Solar, wind, hydro, and biomass methods would be used by the communities based on local resources.

Radio is an energy efficient way of communicating over long distances. A morse code signal from a one watt transmitter can be detected anywhere in the world by the right receiver. A simple crystal receiver can detect a strong enough signal from many miles away. Radio must be preserved for both communication and navigation systems since society may lose the ability to replace aging satellites over the next several decades.

Aviation using energy efficient bush planes will be easier to maintain than our complex interstate highways and railroads over long uninhabited stretches. It doesn't take much energy to maintain grass strips and docks for seaplanes. I envision planes like the amphibious Catalinas of WW II but with diesel engines using biomass derived fuels.

Basic health care services is how I see as a way of trading with local neighbors. Relieving pain, setting broken bones, stitching up wounds, minor surgery, and cultivation of medicinal herbs would make the monastery something the neighbors would protect from roving bandits or regional warlords.

Out of the over 7 million patents issued by the US government about 20,000 are truly useful for the rebuilding of civilization. Future engineers do not need to reinvent these devices and manufacturing methods. Deciding what patents to preserve on long lasting paper or parchment is something cloistered monks ought to be good at. Translating them out of patent-legalese would be a useful activity during periods of inclement weather.

The basic education of future generations will be essential for maintaining and restoring civilized society. Most folks need to know the 3 Rs and the best methods of teaching them need preservation by continual practice.

We may not be able to predict which plant varieties will thrive in the warmer climate of the 22nd century. One seed repository has been established in a frozen mountain in Spitzbergen. Many other repositories need to be made. Experimental breeding needs to continue on some of the farmland instead of using it all for profit making. We learn as much from what fails as from what succeeds and some land must be dedicated to repeated failures as the climate changes.

We cannot survive as isolated individuals or families and we cannot save everyone from the future hell of the mid to late 21st century. Dedicated lifeboat communities could not only survive but maybe thrive as examples and a model for the future.

At some point, creditors will not want to offer more debt, or will require higher interest rates. And taxes must be raised to bring receipts in line with expenditures. Even if not all of the taxes are personal income taxes, the impact will still indirectly be felt by consumers through higher prices for products. The net effect on consumers is likely to be less after tax income, in "real" dollars.

There's a lot here that's confused, at least for countries such as the US that are sovereign in their own currency.

Govt spending creates money. Taxation destroys money. The purpose of taxes is not to "fund" government expenditures, it's to drain some spending power from the private sector so that aggregate demand doesn't exceed supply capacity (which would be inflationary). If the govt runs a deficit -- creates more money by spending than it destroys by taxation -- then the private sector will have more money (lumping together the foreign sector with domestic private, actually). We also call this "saving", and it's not, in general, a bad thing (so long as destructive inflation is avoided). During a recession, private demand for saving goes way up due to income insecurity, loss of wealth as asset prices fall, tighter credit, and reduced business investment. At such times, it's appropriate for the govt to run a substantial deficit to accomodate the private sectors desire to improve their (collective) balance sheet. On the whole, averaged over business cycles, it's reasonable to expect that the amount of savings people will desire to hold will roughly scale with the growing economy. The national debt should never be "paid off", as doing so would force the private sector into dangerous dis-saving, resulting in precarious private sector balance sheets.

Traditionally, deficits are "sterilized" by issuing an approximately equal amount of interest-bearing fixed-term securities, also known as T-bills, notes, and bonds. The Federal govt is not "at the mercy of the bond markets", and deficits do not drive up interest rates (unless they raise inflation expectations -- though at present inflation is under 1% and still falling). The money has already been spent into existence. Someone in the private sector now has a big pile of dollars, more than their current consumption needs, and wants to save. They can buy govt bonds and get interest. Or, I suppose, they could sit on their pile of money and not get interest, but that would be irrational. Any individual can choose to buy stocks or real estate or gold or foreign currency or corporate bonds, etc, from another private sector individual. But this doesn't change the aggregate-level situation, it's now just a different individual with a big pile of dollars and the option to exchange them for govt bonds. The Federal Reserve sets the short-term rate by buying or selling securities to adjust the "base money" supply, and longer-term rates reflect expectations about future short-term rates and inflation.

I recommend http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/ to learn modern monetary theory. Many common misunderstandings happen when people assume that individual-level logic applies to sector-level aggregates. And many "intuitive" ideas are leftovers from the gold standard and fixed exchange rate eras, that don't apply to floating fiat currencies.

Since none of us individually have control of the levers of government I think we should focus on what we can do individually and in small groups. As individuals we should:

- Lower our living standards before we have to. Use the extra money to either invest or upgrade our households for efficiency or to move to a place with lower energy needs (smaller, closer to stores, etc) or buy more energy efficient vehicles.

- Think about our career paths in light of Peak Oil. Get retrained and try to move into positions more suited to what is in store.

- Develop products and services that cut energy usage.

We can do lots individually.

If I was up there with hands on levers of power I'd focus on energy efficiency and shifting infrastructure from dependency on oil to dependency on electricity. The area of energy efficiency covers a huge amount of ground including building design, building location, and appliance efficiency.

I try to incorporate all three mitigation approaches as part of my lifestyle, within my financial means. Switching to alternative energy sources is well within our technology, but our society is not structured to enable/support that change for the vast majority of its members.

As many posters in multiple discussions on TOD have pointed out, the GoM is a highly complex system within its own right, and when considering it as a component of a much broader dynamic, it becomes apparent that the effects of the contamination of the Gulf will be irreversible, long term and deleterious to the quality of life for a significant number of persons in a very large geographical area. This fact will produce change, but how that change is to be effected-and what that change will entail- is not clear.

Three quotes:

"Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by What is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him?" ~Pierre Troubetzkoy

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." ~Richard P. Feynman

"The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles; hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors; worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages... And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet... the planet... the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE! The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance." George Carlin (transcript available http://www.climatechangefraud.com/videos/130-george-carlin-saving-the-pl...)

Thanks, Gail.

The National Academy of Sciences could do an immediate investigation into global oil supply "peak oil" facts, impacts and policy options.
For an explanation, please see www.oildepletion.wordpress.com

People contact either their Congresspersons or the President *or* their State reps to get this in motion.

This way, we would have the Academies weighing in: to present the facts, so that States, municipalities and communities can plan.

The current NAS energy study omits the critical topic: peak oil.

In my area, two different churches are planning to build on prime farm land (sigh), a local non-profit is putting in an ice skating rink - (????) - it seems planners of large projects are in the dark.

A couple of modest suggestions:

1. "First, do no harm." -Hippocrates.

This is the "prime directive" for physicians, but there is no reason why it should not have more universal applicability. It is also scalable. There is harm done by individual actions, and there is harm done all the way up the scale to the very largest human organizations.

Each of us may feel tiny and powerless. However, we can do what we can do. Each of us is responsible for our own actions, especially where they are harmful to people present and future, and to the environment and ecosystem. To the extent that we are involved with and benefit from larger systems and organizations, to that exent we are also responsible for their harm. Maybe we can push them in a less harmful direction, or maybe we need to just disconnect ourselves; maybe the only hope of eliminating the harm is to just hasten the demise of the harm-causing entity or system.

2. "Be the change you want to see" - Gandhi.

We can spin all of the nice theories we want about how to re-construct the world from the top down, but let's get real, it isn't going to happen. If "they" - the top dogs - were seriously going to be change agents, they would already be at work on the project. They aren't, and they aren't going to be. If you want to see any meaningful and effective change at all, you are going to have to look for it starting at the bottom and working its way up, not from the top down. Since change is going to have to start at the bottom, at the grass roots, why not start with yourself? I don't know if Gandhi's model will "work" or not, but I really doubt that there is anything else out there that has even a prayer of a chance.

Taking these two together, this suggests to me that a basic starting point is a personal dedication toward living a lifestyle that minimizes one's consumption of resources of all types, and strives for a minimal "ecological footprint" or minimal harmful impact upon the ecology. Call it "voluntary simplicity" if you want, or "frugal living'. or anything else; a trendy name is far less important than the actual doing thereof. Again, I don't know if that, in and of itself, will "work", but I can't imagine any strategy that can possibly hope to be successful that does not include this as a foundation.

I found out today that I have a very cruel disease called Slow Death Syndrome. SDS can take up to 100 years to kill.

If global warming proves to be a significant driver of humanities problems, then rest assured it will be our problem. The earth will be eventually be fine once we are purged.

People won't change. If they are forced to change, then half will die from... whatever... violence, most likely.

Some will think they are doing God's work never suspecting for one instant the truth: they are doing the work of the biosphere, for we are all subservient to the biosphere.

Life fills up every nook and cranny because the biosphere employs an adaptive strategy. It supplies great pleasure to induce us to have sex, and then it compels (some of us) to grow roots and stick around until our offspring are nurtured to independence. Love is a chemical with a purpose, as are many other emotions and instincts.

Something in our past mutated to where its neural topology employed some combination of feedback and feedforward that allowed it to run simulations on remembered scenarios and alter the terms to seek a more gainful outcome. Since then, man spends almost all his time living in the future, plotting and planning ways to gain and to hold gains.

We are goal oriented, and the goal is gain - it's our survival strategy. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that you are the clever bastard, because you are merely a biological automaton running a survival program. The biosphere wants you to survive, but it wants you to thrive even more. That's why you will take a bullet for your child, and why you voluntarily give up half of your id, consciousness, and free will to start a family.

We have that ability within us, but that gain thing is such a powerful subroutine/narcotic. You want my SUV? You can't have my SUV, mofo; I'd rather die/kill/whatever than to be forced to whatever.

And so many of us will, and that will leave more for the rest. It's a very clever trick.

B.T.W. I live in Oregon and I know how to make a steam engine. I'm so sitting pretty, but you are too because I'd love to help you in any way that I can.