Might be easier to follow with slightly different formatting, though. Italics for the questions, maybe? Or if they were just labeled Q. and A. It's kind of hard to follow what Mike is saying, and what Prof. Hatfield is saying.
This was one of the superb posts that makes it all worthwhile to keep TOD on my daily read list (despite the occasional flame wars). A historic post and a frightening one. Good job.
Alright everybody, so what are you doing? I have a location picked out that I think may have a shot of maintaining human dignity as the shit hits the fan. I'm visiting in 6 weeks for about 10 days.
Anybody else doing likewise? When somebody like Hatfield says "It's too late" does that not register somthing in your head? There ain't going to be no mitigation program unless you consider a nuclear war that wipes out hundreds of millions a "mitigation program."
You all do realize most of us are going to die if we stay put where we are? NA carrying capacity is 100 million and the positive feedback loops are going to keep a lot if not the majority of the second half of the global energy supply in the ground. (See Jeff Vail's post on Nigeria for an example of what I"m talking about.) so the fall from 300 million plus to 100 million is going to be swift, much swifter than I care to think about too much and that's before we even get to nuclear war. I hope to be the hell off the NA continent before the fall starts.
Yeah, yeah I know there are some hippie permaculturists who whill chime in and say "but we can feed 200 million with permaculture!" Yeah, if we do everything just right, sure. But we're not. We're doing everything completely wrong so if we fall to 100 million I consider that an optimistic scenario. Proably more like 50 million as we don't even have the skill set or psychology to produce enough food and get it distributed in order to feed 100 million.
Are you mixing amphetamines with your marijuana? Paranoid and speedy at the same time.
Relax.
There's plenty of time to transition to a sustainable food production system. In the meantime, the importance of agriculture to the US economy will ensure it's continued access to the small percentage of overall oil/gas consumption that it uses to actually produce and distribute food. Of course the amount needed to produce and distribute real food, as opposed to say, Cheeze Whiz, is even smaller.
The good professor cited above appears to miss at least one important point. And that is that the important part of the peak oil event, declining eroi, has been underway for sometime, has already driven up the price of liquid fuel as the marginal production cost per barrel has increased, and that fuel saving adjustments are already being made in the economy.
Even as the US economy slows, as evidenced in declining freight transportation, the number of containers transported by rail is increasing. This process will continue and eventually the fuel savings from this change alone will keep the current food production model humming.
Mind you, slowly and inexorably the permaculture system will come to dominate food production. it will be a market driven, and, sooner or later, public policy supported, process. What you and others of the same frame of mind seem intent on not understanding is that the increase in food production over the past century was wealth driven and is not dependent on fossil fuels. The adoption of fossil energy inputs was a market, and public policy, driven process. With the fossil fuel resource declining, the market, and public policy, will change tacks. The relevant social question has to do with the distribution of wealth. But make no mistake, people will hitchhike and move in with others, before they forego food.
Elsewhere, the number of vacant houses in tax arrears will increase. Painful, yes. But not without opportunity for scavengers, urban farmers and so on. The density per household will increase. As will the density per passenger vehicle, as more cars sit idle in driveways or in used car lots.
In general, people are no where near as stupid, or as selfish, as you appear to think.
people are no where near as stupid, or as selfish, as you appear to think
Do the words "Blackwater", "Halliburton" and "the Bush administration" ring a bell for you? Apparently not.
If your statement were based an a realistic appraisal of the facts - instead of wishful thinking - we would not be in the situation we are in now. Nor would Bush have been elected (twice), nor would the the U.S. have invaded Iraq or launched a global, perpetual war for oil .. . I could go on but hopefully you get the point.
It should not be forgotten that the situation the US (and not only the US) is in now has been made possible by rising, pre-peak oil production/consumption. Post-peak, the legitimacy of the current regime faces erosion. Some can scamper away in fear of the results of this loss of legitimacy. The brave will stand and fight for a better way of doing things.
I do agree that the people post-peak will have their mush and gruel and occasional greens. To suggest this will be a pleasure is naive.
What you may consider permaculture is more dependent on fossil fuel imputs then 'conventionial' aggriculture for inter- and intrafarm transport of compost, manure, rock phosphate, calcium, etc. This stuff is now carted around the world for the convenience and pleasure of the organic consumer.
Actual localized bioregional agriculture does not in fact exist in the United States and though it might use less fuel, it is much more dependent on physical labor, recycled human wastes, and especially solar and water access that is not available in dense cities and suburbs.
You believe that folks will simply 'change tacks' That is virutally impossible in places like Phoenix Arizona, Denver Colorado, or Long Island New York where rich bottomlands do not exist. People would need to migrate to the farmlands to create a permaculture paradise. Would the farmer like this? Probably not. Land redistribution is usually resisted by landowners and has usually led to riot, revolution, fascist takeover.
Continually watching life get poorer for ones self, and more emotionally for ones children, is hard to take. One the other hand, I could live on a tenth the wealth I now have. Yeah, very little health care, no long trips, lots of vegetables and little meat - oh well - what a sacrifice. Perhaps our greatest pleasures will once again be time and conversation with the ones we love. It is genetically programmed to be that way, even if the distractions and ego trips of modern society seem to suggest otherwise. Unless we decide to kill each other, a not unlikely outcome to resource depletion, I have no doubt we can live on much less energy than Americans currently do.
What you may consider permaculture is more dependent on fossil fuel imputs then 'conventionial' aggriculture...
(You can always tell when someone knows what they're saying about "Permaculture" when they capitalize it -- it's a registered trade mark, and thus, a proper noun. Trade-marking was done, not to make money, but to rule out people saying things like "what you may consider" in regard to Permaculture. If you have an opinion about Permaculture and have not earned at least a Permaculture Design Certificate, please refer to "organic farming" or anything else instead.)
Have you actually read Mollison or Holmgren? I didn't think so!
Permaculture is not at all dependent on fossil fuel, although the wise investment of non-renewable resources is not ruled out.
Before you start to argue, let me note that I am a Permaculture Instructor, and have studied under David Holmgren.
You don't appear to know how to cook. Onions, garlic, basil, wine vinegar, vegetable oil, chicken stock, a few ounces of meat, canned tomatoes, rutabaga, parsnip, lentils, a bit of cabbage, water, salt, and pepper made a great soup for my grandma in the 19th century, my folks in the twentieth, me now, and will be easily assembled five centuries from now, by my descendants, assuming they don't move to another part of the world where substitutes would be made.
One third of meals in the US today are fast-food take out, mostly tasteless reformulated industrial corn, sandwiched between nutrient deficient processed flour. One in five meals is eaten in the car, usually on the go.
Thanks for your post. Have you seen the article up now on contributing to energy policy?
Some Qs:
1) Any hint on the location of your spot? (Which continent is it on?) I'm just curious, actually.
(I'm not planning to go much of anywhere, though have some ideas and limited opportunity...if others were interested. I just X'd out details, but I welcome emails (in general, anyway)). Well, anyway, most likely staying put. But thanks for bringing this up. It's very tough to think about (depending on one's circumstances, it seems to me.)
More local food effort, is what I take home from what you're saying.
I'm curious as to what you think might work and why?
2) Did you ever happen to look at the end of the article by Catherine Austin Fitts - (the one you suggested I read)- where she makes proposals at the end for how to "take back" one's local economy? http://www.solari.com/
3) Did you notice that Prof. Hatfield seems to think people learning about "peak" is a good thing? (I wonder why that would be the case?)
4) Is anyone going with you? Or, are others already there? Honestly, I'm very curious about this. It seems to me that a lot depends on the ties one may (or may not) already have with other people. (Also, don't you live near Richard Heinberg? Isn't he planning to stay put?)
5) Re: North American food supply. Can you go into a little more detail on this? Do you expect immigration to be a factor? Lack of policies that are humane? Nothing at all to do? Or is it that the things that can be done you believe will not be done?
YEs, the nukes are going to come out. The only reason they didn't on the way up is because we were on the way up! The downslope is a whole another story.
Stuart, for instance, is fond of saying "for every hitler there is a roosevelt." This sort of statement about an oil war fought during the heydey of the upslope shows that even somebody as smart, analytical, etc as Stuart has perceptual and intellectual (political?) filters that prevent him from truly understanding the implications of a sharply and permanently declining per-capita energy supply.
More local food effort, is what I take home from what you're saying.
Yes, but remeber "the law of attraction". If you're area has enough food but is not physically isolated, it will simply attract people from other areas thereby destroying whatever the advantages are.
2) Did you ever happen to look at the end of the article by Catherine Austin Fitts - (the one you suggested I read)- where she makes proposals at the end for how to "take back" one's local economy? http://www.solari.com/
Catherine's stuff is GREAT. But it is way too late to "take back" anything, imho.
Furthermoe, even Catherine is not factoring in the coming nuclear war, at least as far as I know. She believes that the good guys win in the end. This is where our opinions differ. Where she forsees the good guys winning, I see a world plunged into permanent darkness with only small pockets of human dignity and reciprocal altruism existing. My goal is to make it to one of those pockets and try to make the best of a bad situation.
Geography will be the primary determinant of where the pockets develop, if and when they do develop.
3) Did you notice that Prof. Hatfield seems to think people learning about "peak" is a good thing? (I wonder why that would be the case?)
Who is learning?
Walk up to 1,000 people and ask them:
1. Do you know about Peak Oil?
and:
2. What are you doing to prepare, mitigate, etc?
Come on, lets' get real. People aren't learning about it. There are about 5,000-10,000 of us who check the blogs. That's it.
There is no peak oil "movement" and there never will be a movement to address peak oil or any other limits to growth beyond a handfull of activists getting non-funded resolutions passed in cities that are prime nuclear targets. (portland and sf)
Follow the money:
1. how much are we spending on oil, oil wars, and mindless consumption?
2. how much are we spending on anything remotely construed as "solutions"
When you do the math, you see the trajectory we're on.
Compare the budget of CERA to the budget of TOD. See a pattern?
4) Is anyone going with you? Or, are others already there? Honestly, I'm very curious about this. It seems to me that a lot depends on the ties one may (or may not) already have with other people.
Things are in the planning stages, the big X factor being finances.
Most of NA will be turned into a nuclear wasteland. Getting off the NA continent is priority #1.
Even if only I make it off well at least one of us will have half a shot of surviving. There is not point in all of us staying here in NA and all dying equally horrible deaths.
(Also, don't you live near Richard Heinberg? Isn't he planning to stay put?)
Richard is almost 60. My guess is he doesn't care if he dies in the ensuing chaos. Heck, if gets another 10 years he will have lived to be 70, a ripe old age by historical or global standards. (I have no doubt he realizes and appreciates this.)
Last time I talked to him (right as ODP came out) he said he felt there was maybe a 1/100 chance it would work and that the most likely scenario is total global war.
Whether he is more or less optimistic/pessimistic today I do not know.
I think he has quietly accepted whatever his personal fate might be. He has said that if he were 30 years younger he would be in an intentional community reskilling himself.
5) Re: North American food supply. Can you go into a little more detail on this? Do you expect immigration to be a factor?
When Mexico's oil production crashes, the country will be flooded with refugees.
When the rolling blackouts are instituted the criminal elements (MS-13, for instance) and plain old normal people who have become desperate (that is everybody else) will get more and more aggressive with each subsequent blackout. This is the sort of positive feedback loop that will keep much of the second half of the world's energy supply in the ground.
Lack of policies that are humane? Nothing at all to do? Or is it that the things that can be done you believe will not be done?
Dude come on. Look at the trajectory we are on. Perpetual war for diminsihing resources. ARe you paying attention to the news these days? Billions for things like renewable energy but trillions for perpetual war. I have trouble seeing how we won't be in a full blown nuclear war by the time we are half way down the per-capita energy production curve:
Talking of New Zealand, I've often thought Golden Bay (north-west corner of the South Island) would be the place to be if TSHTF.
The population density is a lot lower on the South Island and Golden Bay is very difficult to get to (by land anyway). Its a nice place too, geographically and culturally. It reminds me of north-eastern NSW, but a lot colder.
Kindly desist from bringing Golden Bay to folks attention. Its a back of the woods sort of place that is best ignored. As is the next bay along, Tasman..........
Terrible places to even contemplate moving to, kindly do not mention them again.
Thanks for your response. I looked at the link to fallout patterns, and they seem to be only NA, and that based not on incoming nukes, but on earthquake-related nuke power plant locations. Did I miss something?
Also, I didn't see info for world radiation fallout patterns. Does that exist?
What's the elevation above sea level of the location you're checking out? (Does GCC figure into your calculations, if so, how?)
"Good soil" and "very isolated" sound rather...hmnnn...contradictory, so I'm curious.
(Any more hints on the continent?) (If it's a big continent, no one will know.)
That was an interesting link to the communities site; some sweet(interesting) posts.
I looked at the link to fallout patterns, and they seem to be only NA, and that based not on incoming nukes, but on earthquake-related nuke power plant locations. Did I miss something?
Click on the individual states. Look at California, Richard and I are just north of what will be total glass:
The Mexican Mafia, another groups all together, recently put out an open hit on black people in Los Angeles. Not black gang members but black people in general. This is truly horrific.
aren't you ignoring the effects of climate change on any given location. that paradise in the woods may become a desert or covered by a glacier after serious gw and/or nuke distruction.
the dinosaurs that survived the end of cretaceous extinction were the smaller more mobile ones, to wit: birds
There is no peak oil "movement" and there never will be a movement to address peak oil or any other limits to growth beyond a handfull of activists getting non-funded resolutions passed in cities that are prime nuclear targets. (portland and sf)
Portland a prime target? Hardly. Seattle is, as the only deepwater port in the NW, and the location of a USN CVBG, SSBNs, the home base of all the EW squadrons, and naval radio facilities. So is San Fran, which houses additional naval facilities and is a major port. Portland, however, is not a major port (the area is a major grain export port, but the facilities are dispersed). The only real points of strategic value are the I-5 bridge over the Columbia River (which carries 20% of all truck traffic in the US) and the Columbia River Gorge (which has the only sea-level passage of the Cascade range, and 2 major rail lines. That's 2 points to nuke, neither of which is located at city center. Prevailing winds make it unlikely that the city proper will see much fallout from the couple of nukes sent that way. Portland has no manufacturing capability to speak of (compared to Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Pittsburg, Chicago, Gary, etc), and only a couple of minor military facilities. It's a secondary target at best. And if you nuke the Gorge, the resulting sediment makes the entire lower Columbia River useless to shipping for at least a year. (Mt. St. Helens made the river useless for months)
Seattle and San Diego are the prime targets on the west coast, with San Franciso, Portland and Los Angeles the secondaries. Hitting SF and LA would do more damage - there are millions more people there. Portland has barely more than 1.5 million in its metro area.
Portland's may be the best spot in the western states to be, at least until the fallout cloud from China gets here.
Living in North Portland I hardly think that a nuke over the I5 Columbia bridge is something to be casual about... prevailing winds or not.
The place to be in a nuclear war is far from a major city.
There are plenty of good strategic reasons to blow up Portland. How about all the grain terminals exporting wheat to Asia? How about 'cause you hate artists and young creatives? Who really needs a good reason anyway once your launching nuclear weapons and do you really think Russian guidance systems are so great that they can land on the I5 bridge and not over downtown? Come on now.
In the meantime Portland is the best West Coast major city to live in. Come the nuclear war, I doubt there is such a good thing as a good city to be living in.
From memory, Intel has a huge facility in Portland.
Microprocessors are the guts of an industrial civilisation, and especially the national security complex.
Also Portland is a big population centre, and a relatively dense one as American cities go. These you destroy on general principle, in an all out nuclear war.
oh yeah, that's another good reason to whack PDX town, plus the Bonneville dam is a nice sweet way to destroy post-apocalyptic energy generating capacity.... plus the riverine transport network can be contaminated too badly to use.
did you take into account the damage we have done to the environment here in na?
i doubt the current carrying capacity is 100 million.
60~70million seems more likely. though i personally think 50 million is were we will end up.
carrying capacity is not the average number a area can support. it's the absolute max in a good year.
Like I said, if we do everything correctly, NA can support 100 million. As we are doing everything WRONG, the capacity will be a lot lower. 50 million maybe, who knows.
I think all youngsters should be making detailed plans. Afterall, they are our future--Always will be.
Very Simplified: It is between [you, AngryChimp, Nate, Tate423, et al] versus [Tiger Woods, Justin Timberlake, Jeff Gordon, et al] postPeak-- figure out how to stay alive until plowing golf courses and racetracks is the dominant social value; stay alive until we transition to optimizing our decline, then become a biosolar warlord.
I think the critical inflection point will be when and if you and your future local Earthmarines can flip the Blackwater Mercs to your side: if you can convince them that defending biosolar living now offers greater benefits than continuing the marauding for the old and fading Detritus Paradigm. In short: survival success will depend on the stoppage of your habitat from further shrinking, then the rapid growth of inclusive, expanding biosolar territory; when Tiger's bodyguards would rather protect you.
Essentially, you need to first make sure you have sufficient reserve biosolar capacity that they can clearly see that life will be easier for them if they now switch sides. Then, using your best lawyerly, Machiavellian tactics plus food, beer, women, songs, and other inducements: convince them to join you and your Earthmarines to now expand sustainability.
All easier said than done, of course, with many cycles of rinse, lather, and repeat. But eventually a green forest, pasture, and garden will be preferred to a barren golf course.
matt
middle siberia will be over run by Mongols. second, setting up shop in the northern clines takes time and money (energy).
it's a real shame, people here can't read the writing on the wall, got habius corpus, hell my neighbors make a combined 200k/year working as prison guards, smart folks in the 70's were saying we've got about 30, 40 years of this life style left and yet here we are.that said. I'm stay'n put. this is the time to build communities. my own at-least.
better bail before I pissoff roger conner.
if you need any help email me
I'm not moving to another continent. For one thing, all my children, stepchildren, step-grandchildren, nieces and nephews are in North America. I might be of some help to them.
For another, the fall may not be that swift.
For another, I think the fall will be swifter away from America and China. I suspect there will be hardship in these two powers, but I think elsewhere will be worse, especially for newcomers (refugees).
For another, I like having oceans between me and all those Chinese.
There was an Iraqi family interviewed on the radio the other day. Every night they make the decision to either all sleep in one room or to sleep in separte rooms.
Their logic is as follows:
1. if we all sleep in the same room and a bomb hits the home we will all die together.
2. if we all sleep in different rooms and a bomb hits the home some of us might survive.
They go back and forth which option is preferrable. (it was very sad) You seem to have opted for option 1. I'm opting for option 2.
Neither option is "better" than the other.
As far as Chinese pirates showing up, just build yourself a "Savinar pirate tower". Yes, there was such a thing in Spain in the 1700s. From high up on the perch of the tower the occupants would repel pirates attempting to invade their land:
Rome had further to fall but the bulk of the world collapsed when Rome fell. And the parts that did not were xenophobic, physically isolated (at least in those days), living close to subsistence level already, and under heavy authoritarian rule anyway.
Ghawar Is Dying The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
2) If we are headed for population reduction my genetic survival is primarily a function of my children's choices (they are around 10, I'm in my 40s.) Assuming civillization holds together for the next 10 years, it is their choices that will matter for their survival and reproductive "success" and be the ultimate measure of my "reproductive fitness."
3) What set of choices would maximize their reproductive opportunities? This is a much more complicated choice than assuring my own personal survival, about which I have a certain level of detachment and lack of interest anyway, except as it relates to the first question of their opportunities for reproductive success, and for a happy life in every other realm.
4) Moving to rural environments could be an reproductive fitness disaster, and a happiness disaster, for me and mine relative to the next 2 decades, if already impoverished areas are hit extra hard by global depression, stunting my children's lives and even their physical development. Sure permaculture agriculture is the future.... but it could take its sweet time getting here, and in the meantime they could be living like Chinese intellectuals sent to the countryside and starving during the cultural revolution... or Cambodian intellectuals sent to the countryside under Pol Pot... and I'd be the one responsible for this.
5) Since I have no specific insight, only some vague theories and worries, about how social and economic change will play out, the only thing I can think to do to maximize by own children's survival and reproductive success and happiness is... pretty much exactly what I'm doing... educating them, exposing them to a diverse set of life experiences, and so on. I'm helping them become good generalists because... well what the future is is "unknown" more than anything.
6) I do suspect, to the extent that I have not achieved complete indifference to my own or my spouse's fate, that maintaining a good enough relationship with my children as they grow as is possible, might be a better old age insurance policy than my 401K plan or social security income, which may or may not provide any value.
7) Whatever will be will be.... spend too much time as an individual worrying about defending yourself from the marauding hordes of tomorrow, or of your imagination, and find yourself asking "where did my life go?"
8) Hug your children... they are your only hope of transcendence.
9) Yes, you could argue that far from being transcendent, children are pretty much a reflection of you... but I mean that they are your only personal hope of geneticly/biologically transcending your mortal body, which will die at the hands of the maurading hordes, or at the hands of poverty and disease, or just die in some routine way, when peak oil social collapse takes a little longer than we thought it would. No matter, death comes to us all, and it's the living that matters, not the dying.
10) If you really wanted to design a peakoil pedagogy... what would it look like? Steel working for swords? Permaculture? Knot tying? Bow and arrow manufacture and target practice? Cob construction techniques? When you start thinking about the world of the future in terms of your own children, who are the actual people who matter for the future of the world, instead of our own petty self obsessed selves, what conclusions do you draw? I conclude that the only thing that
Ah. I've been waiting for this one. Great stuff.
Might be easier to follow with slightly different formatting, though. Italics for the questions, maybe? Or if they were just labeled Q. and A. It's kind of hard to follow what Mike is saying, and what Prof. Hatfield is saying.
Was working on that when you commented, L. :)
Hit thee digg and reddit and your favorite linkfarms!
This was one of the superb posts that makes it all worthwhile to keep TOD on my daily read list (despite the occasional flame wars). A historic post and a frightening one. Good job.
Alright everybody, so what are you doing? I have a location picked out that I think may have a shot of maintaining human dignity as the shit hits the fan. I'm visiting in 6 weeks for about 10 days.
Anybody else doing likewise? When somebody like Hatfield says "It's too late" does that not register somthing in your head? There ain't going to be no mitigation program unless you consider a nuclear war that wipes out hundreds of millions a "mitigation program."
You all do realize most of us are going to die if we stay put where we are? NA carrying capacity is 100 million and the positive feedback loops are going to keep a lot if not the majority of the second half of the global energy supply in the ground. (See Jeff Vail's post on Nigeria for an example of what I"m talking about.) so the fall from 300 million plus to 100 million is going to be swift, much swifter than I care to think about too much and that's before we even get to nuclear war. I hope to be the hell off the NA continent before the fall starts.
Yeah, yeah I know there are some hippie permaculturists who whill chime in and say "but we can feed 200 million with permaculture!" Yeah, if we do everything just right, sure. But we're not. We're doing everything completely wrong so if we fall to 100 million I consider that an optimistic scenario. Proably more like 50 million as we don't even have the skill set or psychology to produce enough food and get it distributed in order to feed 100 million.
Are you mixing amphetamines with your marijuana? Paranoid and speedy at the same time.
Relax.
There's plenty of time to transition to a sustainable food production system. In the meantime, the importance of agriculture to the US economy will ensure it's continued access to the small percentage of overall oil/gas consumption that it uses to actually produce and distribute food. Of course the amount needed to produce and distribute real food, as opposed to say, Cheeze Whiz, is even smaller.
The good professor cited above appears to miss at least one important point. And that is that the important part of the peak oil event, declining eroi, has been underway for sometime, has already driven up the price of liquid fuel as the marginal production cost per barrel has increased, and that fuel saving adjustments are already being made in the economy.
Even as the US economy slows, as evidenced in declining freight transportation, the number of containers transported by rail is increasing. This process will continue and eventually the fuel savings from this change alone will keep the current food production model humming.
Mind you, slowly and inexorably the permaculture system will come to dominate food production. it will be a market driven, and, sooner or later, public policy supported, process. What you and others of the same frame of mind seem intent on not understanding is that the increase in food production over the past century was wealth driven and is not dependent on fossil fuels. The adoption of fossil energy inputs was a market, and public policy, driven process. With the fossil fuel resource declining, the market, and public policy, will change tacks. The relevant social question has to do with the distribution of wealth. But make no mistake, people will hitchhike and move in with others, before they forego food.
Elsewhere, the number of vacant houses in tax arrears will increase. Painful, yes. But not without opportunity for scavengers, urban farmers and so on. The density per household will increase. As will the density per passenger vehicle, as more cars sit idle in driveways or in used car lots.
In general, people are no where near as stupid, or as selfish, as you appear to think.
Do the words "Blackwater", "Halliburton" and "the Bush administration" ring a bell for you? Apparently not.
If your statement were based an a realistic appraisal of the facts - instead of wishful thinking - we would not be in the situation we are in now. Nor would Bush have been elected (twice), nor would the the U.S. have invaded Iraq or launched a global, perpetual war for oil .. . I could go on but hopefully you get the point.
It should not be forgotten that the situation the US (and not only the US) is in now has been made possible by rising, pre-peak oil production/consumption. Post-peak, the legitimacy of the current regime faces erosion. Some can scamper away in fear of the results of this loss of legitimacy. The brave will stand and fight for a better way of doing things.
I do agree that the people post-peak will have their mush and gruel and occasional greens. To suggest this will be a pleasure is naive.
What you may consider permaculture is more dependent on fossil fuel imputs then 'conventionial' aggriculture for inter- and intrafarm transport of compost, manure, rock phosphate, calcium, etc. This stuff is now carted around the world for the convenience and pleasure of the organic consumer.
Actual localized bioregional agriculture does not in fact exist in the United States and though it might use less fuel, it is much more dependent on physical labor, recycled human wastes, and especially solar and water access that is not available in dense cities and suburbs.
You believe that folks will simply 'change tacks' That is virutally impossible in places like Phoenix Arizona, Denver Colorado, or Long Island New York where rich bottomlands do not exist. People would need to migrate to the farmlands to create a permaculture paradise. Would the farmer like this? Probably not. Land redistribution is usually resisted by landowners and has usually led to riot, revolution, fascist takeover.
Peter
Continually watching life get poorer for ones self, and more emotionally for ones children, is hard to take. One the other hand, I could live on a tenth the wealth I now have. Yeah, very little health care, no long trips, lots of vegetables and little meat - oh well - what a sacrifice. Perhaps our greatest pleasures will once again be time and conversation with the ones we love. It is genetically programmed to be that way, even if the distractions and ego trips of modern society seem to suggest otherwise. Unless we decide to kill each other, a not unlikely outcome to resource depletion, I have no doubt we can live on much less energy than Americans currently do.
What you may consider permaculture is more dependent on fossil fuel imputs then 'conventionial' aggriculture...
(You can always tell when someone knows what they're saying about "Permaculture" when they capitalize it -- it's a registered trade mark, and thus, a proper noun. Trade-marking was done, not to make money, but to rule out people saying things like "what you may consider" in regard to Permaculture. If you have an opinion about Permaculture and have not earned at least a Permaculture Design Certificate, please refer to "organic farming" or anything else instead.)
Have you actually read Mollison or Holmgren? I didn't think so!
Permaculture is not at all dependent on fossil fuel, although the wise investment of non-renewable resources is not ruled out.
Before you start to argue, let me note that I am a Permaculture Instructor, and have studied under David Holmgren.
:::: Jan Steinman, Communication Steward, EcoReality http://www.EcoReality.org ::::
You don't appear to know how to cook. Onions, garlic, basil, wine vinegar, vegetable oil, chicken stock, a few ounces of meat, canned tomatoes, rutabaga, parsnip, lentils, a bit of cabbage, water, salt, and pepper made a great soup for my grandma in the 19th century, my folks in the twentieth, me now, and will be easily assembled five centuries from now, by my descendants, assuming they don't move to another part of the world where substitutes would be made.
One third of meals in the US today are fast-food take out, mostly tasteless reformulated industrial corn, sandwiched between nutrient deficient processed flour. One in five meals is eaten in the car, usually on the go.
Peak oil. Bring it on.
7% of caloric intake is from pop. Corn sweetner is our largest single source of calories.
Hi Chimp-formerly-known-as-AMPOD,
Thanks for your post. Have you seen the article up now on contributing to energy policy?
Some Qs:
1) Any hint on the location of your spot? (Which continent is it on?) I'm just curious, actually.
(I'm not planning to go much of anywhere, though have some ideas and limited opportunity...if others were interested. I just X'd out details, but I welcome emails (in general, anyway)). Well, anyway, most likely staying put. But thanks for bringing this up. It's very tough to think about (depending on one's circumstances, it seems to me.)
More local food effort, is what I take home from what you're saying.
I'm curious as to what you think might work and why?
2) Did you ever happen to look at the end of the article by Catherine Austin Fitts - (the one you suggested I read)- where she makes proposals at the end for how to "take back" one's local economy? http://www.solari.com/
3) Did you notice that Prof. Hatfield seems to think people learning about "peak" is a good thing? (I wonder why that would be the case?)
4) Is anyone going with you? Or, are others already there? Honestly, I'm very curious about this. It seems to me that a lot depends on the ties one may (or may not) already have with other people. (Also, don't you live near Richard Heinberg? Isn't he planning to stay put?)
5) Re: North American food supply. Can you go into a little more detail on this? Do you expect immigration to be a factor? Lack of policies that are humane? Nothing at all to do? Or is it that the things that can be done you believe will not be done?
I may disclose after my visit. Let's just say it has the following attributes:
population density under 50/mile
lots of sun and water
good soil
very isolated
not a nuclear target, and out of the fallout patterns. see:
http://www.ki4u.com/nuclearsurvival/list.htm
YEs, the nukes are going to come out. The only reason they didn't on the way up is because we were on the way up! The downslope is a whole another story.
Stuart, for instance, is fond of saying "for every hitler there is a roosevelt." This sort of statement about an oil war fought during the heydey of the upslope shows that even somebody as smart, analytical, etc as Stuart has perceptual and intellectual (political?) filters that prevent him from truly understanding the implications of a sharply and permanently declining per-capita energy supply.
Yes, but remeber "the law of attraction". If you're area has enough food but is not physically isolated, it will simply attract people from other areas thereby destroying whatever the advantages are.
Catherine's stuff is GREAT. But it is way too late to "take back" anything, imho.
Furthermoe, even Catherine is not factoring in the coming nuclear war, at least as far as I know. She believes that the good guys win in the end. This is where our opinions differ. Where she forsees the good guys winning, I see a world plunged into permanent darkness with only small pockets of human dignity and reciprocal altruism existing. My goal is to make it to one of those pockets and try to make the best of a bad situation.
Geography will be the primary determinant of where the pockets develop, if and when they do develop.
Who is learning?
Walk up to 1,000 people and ask them:
1. Do you know about Peak Oil?
and:
2. What are you doing to prepare, mitigate, etc?
Come on, lets' get real. People aren't learning about it. There are about 5,000-10,000 of us who check the blogs. That's it.
There is no peak oil "movement" and there never will be a movement to address peak oil or any other limits to growth beyond a handfull of activists getting non-funded resolutions passed in cities that are prime nuclear targets. (portland and sf)
Follow the money:
1. how much are we spending on oil, oil wars, and mindless consumption?
2. how much are we spending on anything remotely construed as "solutions"
When you do the math, you see the trajectory we're on.
Compare the budget of CERA to the budget of TOD. See a pattern?
Things are in the planning stages, the big X factor being finances.
Most of NA will be turned into a nuclear wasteland. Getting off the NA continent is priority #1.
Even if only I make it off well at least one of us will have half a shot of surviving. There is not point in all of us staying here in NA and all dying equally horrible deaths.
Richard is almost 60. My guess is he doesn't care if he dies in the ensuing chaos. Heck, if gets another 10 years he will have lived to be 70, a ripe old age by historical or global standards. (I have no doubt he realizes and appreciates this.)
Last time I talked to him (right as ODP came out) he said he felt there was maybe a 1/100 chance it would work and that the most likely scenario is total global war.
Whether he is more or less optimistic/pessimistic today I do not know.
I think he has quietly accepted whatever his personal fate might be. He has said that if he were 30 years younger he would be in an intentional community reskilling himself.
When Mexico's oil production crashes, the country will be flooded with refugees.
When the rolling blackouts are instituted the criminal elements (MS-13, for instance) and plain old normal people who have become desperate (that is everybody else) will get more and more aggressive with each subsequent blackout. This is the sort of positive feedback loop that will keep much of the second half of the world's energy supply in the ground.
Dude come on. Look at the trajectory we are on. Perpetual war for diminsihing resources. ARe you paying attention to the news these days? Billions for things like renewable energy but trillions for perpetual war. I have trouble seeing how we won't be in a full blown nuclear war by the time we are half way down the per-capita energy production curve:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/energy.html
Hey Matt, If you are visiting my neighborhood, drop by. We are on the passenger train route and I will buy you a delicious locally grown meal.
Cheers,
MH
Talking of New Zealand, I've often thought Golden Bay (north-west corner of the South Island) would be the place to be if TSHTF.
The population density is a lot lower on the South Island and Golden Bay is very difficult to get to (by land anyway). Its a nice place too, geographically and culturally. It reminds me of north-eastern NSW, but a lot colder.
Kindly desist from bringing Golden Bay to folks attention. Its a back of the woods sort of place that is best ignored. As is the next bay along, Tasman..........
Terrible places to even contemplate moving to, kindly do not mention them again.
I heard the place is loaded with homosexual pirates and cannibalistic tribespeople.
Hi Formerly AMPOD,
Thanks for your response. I looked at the link to fallout patterns, and they seem to be only NA, and that based not on incoming nukes, but on earthquake-related nuke power plant locations. Did I miss something?
Also, I didn't see info for world radiation fallout patterns. Does that exist?
What's the elevation above sea level of the location you're checking out? (Does GCC figure into your calculations, if so, how?)
"Good soil" and "very isolated" sound rather...hmnnn...contradictory, so I'm curious.
(Any more hints on the continent?) (If it's a big continent, no one will know.)
That was an interesting link to the communities site; some sweet(interesting) posts.
What is "MS-13"? (Yes, I'm under-educated.)
Click on the individual states. Look at California, Richard and I are just north of what will be total glass:
http://www.ki4u.com/nuclearsurvival/states/ca.htm
MS-13 is an absolutely horrifying Latin American gang, more like a terror group or death squad that is invading the U.S.
See:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gang30oct30,0,6717943.story?coll...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7244879/site/newsweek/
The Mexican Mafia, another groups all together, recently put out an open hit on black people in Los Angeles. Not black gang members but black people in general. This is truly horrific.
http://www.alternet.org/story/46855/
How bad is this sort of thing going to get when the economy is in the tank, rolling blackouts are the norm
The area I am visiting is way above sea level and one of the few spots that might actually benefit from GCC.
aren't you ignoring the effects of climate change on any given location. that paradise in the woods may become a desert or covered by a glacier after serious gw and/or nuke distruction.
the dinosaurs that survived the end of cretaceous extinction were the smaller more mobile ones, to wit: birds
Portland a prime target? Hardly. Seattle is, as the only deepwater port in the NW, and the location of a USN CVBG, SSBNs, the home base of all the EW squadrons, and naval radio facilities. So is San Fran, which houses additional naval facilities and is a major port. Portland, however, is not a major port (the area is a major grain export port, but the facilities are dispersed). The only real points of strategic value are the I-5 bridge over the Columbia River (which carries 20% of all truck traffic in the US) and the Columbia River Gorge (which has the only sea-level passage of the Cascade range, and 2 major rail lines. That's 2 points to nuke, neither of which is located at city center. Prevailing winds make it unlikely that the city proper will see much fallout from the couple of nukes sent that way. Portland has no manufacturing capability to speak of (compared to Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Pittsburg, Chicago, Gary, etc), and only a couple of minor military facilities. It's a secondary target at best. And if you nuke the Gorge, the resulting sediment makes the entire lower Columbia River useless to shipping for at least a year. (Mt. St. Helens made the river useless for months)
Seattle and San Diego are the prime targets on the west coast, with San Franciso, Portland and Los Angeles the secondaries. Hitting SF and LA would do more damage - there are millions more people there. Portland has barely more than 1.5 million in its metro area.
Portland's may be the best spot in the western states to be, at least until the fallout cloud from China gets here.
Living in North Portland I hardly think that a nuke over the I5 Columbia bridge is something to be casual about... prevailing winds or not.
The place to be in a nuclear war is far from a major city.
There are plenty of good strategic reasons to blow up Portland. How about all the grain terminals exporting wheat to Asia? How about 'cause you hate artists and young creatives? Who really needs a good reason anyway once your launching nuclear weapons and do you really think Russian guidance systems are so great that they can land on the I5 bridge and not over downtown? Come on now.
In the meantime Portland is the best West Coast major city to live in. Come the nuclear war, I doubt there is such a good thing as a good city to be living in.
correction: Come the nuclear war, I doubt there is such a thing as a good city to be living in.
From memory, Intel has a huge facility in Portland.
Microprocessors are the guts of an industrial civilisation, and especially the national security complex.
Also Portland is a big population centre, and a relatively dense one as American cities go. These you destroy on general principle, in an all out nuclear war.
oh yeah, that's another good reason to whack PDX town, plus the Bonneville dam is a nice sweet way to destroy post-apocalyptic energy generating capacity.... plus the riverine transport network can be contaminated too badly to use.
did you take into account the damage we have done to the environment here in na?
i doubt the current carrying capacity is 100 million.
60~70million seems more likely. though i personally think 50 million is were we will end up.
carrying capacity is not the average number a area can support. it's the absolute max in a good year.
TK,
Like I said, if we do everything correctly, NA can support 100 million. As we are doing everything WRONG, the capacity will be a lot lower. 50 million maybe, who knows.
Hello to The Chimp Who Can Drive,
I think all youngsters should be making detailed plans. Afterall, they are our future--Always will be.
Very Simplified: It is between [you, AngryChimp, Nate, Tate423, et al] versus [Tiger Woods, Justin Timberlake, Jeff Gordon, et al] postPeak-- figure out how to stay alive until plowing golf courses and racetracks is the dominant social value; stay alive until we transition to optimizing our decline, then become a biosolar warlord.
I think the critical inflection point will be when and if you and your future local Earthmarines can flip the Blackwater Mercs to your side: if you can convince them that defending biosolar living now offers greater benefits than continuing the marauding for the old and fading Detritus Paradigm. In short: survival success will depend on the stoppage of your habitat from further shrinking, then the rapid growth of inclusive, expanding biosolar territory; when Tiger's bodyguards would rather protect you.
Essentially, you need to first make sure you have sufficient reserve biosolar capacity that they can clearly see that life will be easier for them if they now switch sides. Then, using your best lawyerly, Machiavellian tactics plus food, beer, women, songs, and other inducements: convince them to join you and your Earthmarines to now expand sustainability.
All easier said than done, of course, with many cycles of rinse, lather, and repeat. But eventually a green forest, pasture, and garden will be preferred to a barren golf course.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Bob,
The place I am considering is so isolated, there will be no Blackwater contractors showing up.
matt
middle siberia will be over run by Mongols. second, setting up shop in the northern clines takes time and money (energy).
it's a real shame, people here can't read the writing on the wall, got habius corpus, hell my neighbors make a combined 200k/year working as prison guards, smart folks in the 70's were saying we've got about 30, 40 years of this life style left and yet here we are.that said. I'm stay'n put. this is the time to build communities. my own at-least.
better bail before I pissoff roger conner.
if you need any help email me
I'm not moving to another continent. For one thing, all my children, stepchildren, step-grandchildren, nieces and nephews are in North America. I might be of some help to them.
For another, the fall may not be that swift.
For another, I think the fall will be swifter away from America and China. I suspect there will be hardship in these two powers, but I think elsewhere will be worse, especially for newcomers (refugees).
For another, I like having oceans between me and all those Chinese.
Donal,
There was an Iraqi family interviewed on the radio the other day. Every night they make the decision to either all sleep in one room or to sleep in separte rooms.
Their logic is as follows:
1. if we all sleep in the same room and a bomb hits the home we will all die together.
2. if we all sleep in different rooms and a bomb hits the home some of us might survive.
They go back and forth which option is preferrable. (it was very sad) You seem to have opted for option 1. I'm opting for option 2.
Neither option is "better" than the other.
As far as Chinese pirates showing up, just build yourself a "Savinar pirate tower". Yes, there was such a thing in Spain in the 1700s. From high up on the perch of the tower the occupants would repel pirates attempting to invade their land:
http://www.fotosearch.com/AGE055/b20-444261/
the "fall" may be swifter elsewhere. then again it may not. amerika has further to fall.
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v
Rome had further to fall but the bulk of the world collapsed when Rome fell. And the parts that did not were xenophobic, physically isolated (at least in those days), living close to subsistence level already, and under heavy authoritarian rule anyway.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
Big thoughts.
1) Why be so afraid of death?
2) If we are headed for population reduction my genetic survival is primarily a function of my children's choices (they are around 10, I'm in my 40s.) Assuming civillization holds together for the next 10 years, it is their choices that will matter for their survival and reproductive "success" and be the ultimate measure of my "reproductive fitness."
3) What set of choices would maximize their reproductive opportunities? This is a much more complicated choice than assuring my own personal survival, about which I have a certain level of detachment and lack of interest anyway, except as it relates to the first question of their opportunities for reproductive success, and for a happy life in every other realm.
4) Moving to rural environments could be an reproductive fitness disaster, and a happiness disaster, for me and mine relative to the next 2 decades, if already impoverished areas are hit extra hard by global depression, stunting my children's lives and even their physical development. Sure permaculture agriculture is the future.... but it could take its sweet time getting here, and in the meantime they could be living like Chinese intellectuals sent to the countryside and starving during the cultural revolution... or Cambodian intellectuals sent to the countryside under Pol Pot... and I'd be the one responsible for this.
5) Since I have no specific insight, only some vague theories and worries, about how social and economic change will play out, the only thing I can think to do to maximize by own children's survival and reproductive success and happiness is... pretty much exactly what I'm doing... educating them, exposing them to a diverse set of life experiences, and so on. I'm helping them become good generalists because... well what the future is is "unknown" more than anything.
6) I do suspect, to the extent that I have not achieved complete indifference to my own or my spouse's fate, that maintaining a good enough relationship with my children as they grow as is possible, might be a better old age insurance policy than my 401K plan or social security income, which may or may not provide any value.
7) Whatever will be will be.... spend too much time as an individual worrying about defending yourself from the marauding hordes of tomorrow, or of your imagination, and find yourself asking "where did my life go?"
8) Hug your children... they are your only hope of transcendence.
9) Yes, you could argue that far from being transcendent, children are pretty much a reflection of you... but I mean that they are your only personal hope of geneticly/biologically transcending your mortal body, which will die at the hands of the maurading hordes, or at the hands of poverty and disease, or just die in some routine way, when peak oil social collapse takes a little longer than we thought it would. No matter, death comes to us all, and it's the living that matters, not the dying.
10) If you really wanted to design a peakoil pedagogy... what would it look like? Steel working for swords? Permaculture? Knot tying? Bow and arrow manufacture and target practice? Cob construction techniques? When you start thinking about the world of the future in terms of your own children, who are the actual people who matter for the future of the world, instead of our own petty self obsessed selves, what conclusions do you draw? I conclude that the only thing that