Survival January 9, 2010
Posted by Graham in : General, collapse, survivalism , 6commentsAfter three weeks of sub-zero temperatures and snow and ice in many parts, Ireland, like much of the rest of Europe, is experiencing considerable difficulty in continuing its post-industrial lifestyle. Supplies of salt for the roads are stretched, and also gas supplies with industry being told to use coal or oil instead.
So far the main routes are being kept open and food supplies are getting through to all but the most remote households, but with ice storms on their way in the next few days from the east expected to worsen conditions in Europe and here over the weekend, shortages could become an issue. Already potato crops have been affected with thousands of tons of unharvested spuds destroyed in farms a round the country.
Water is also an issue in many towns and cities, with increased demand apparently caused by people staying at home more, and losses due to frozen pipes.
Some homes have also been without electricity as storms and snow damage lines and maintenance vehicles find it hard to reach them.
Already the schools have been closed for next week, and this includes my own college so Ill be grounded for the moment. Martin, who is from Chicago, thinks it is a joke the country is coming to a standstill. Hasn’t anyone here heard of snow tyres? Apparently not, Ive never heard mention of them.
It is 30-50 year events like these that test our mettle and preparedness- as a nation we are failing miserably, such disruption interferes with the Great Plan of Keep on Growing the Economy. We are just not set up for hunkering down and doing as little as possible- sledging and snowball flinging excepted.
What might have seemed fun for some up till now has been a real hardship for others, but the real question is, how long will it last? If they are already closing the schools it hardly looks like the authorities will be able to be more organised than they already are.
It looks highly likely to remain unchanged for the next two weeks but seemingly the last Big Freeze, sometime in the 1960s, lasted well into March, even April in some parts. Another 6-8 weeks of this is surely not something this country is ready for.
I’m someone who is supposed to be more prepared than most, but in truth I am only half way there. Ive spent some of the time coppiceing next winter’s wood supply, the perfect activity for this time of year and weather, the first warming from the cutting of the wood being very welcome.
I have left the van over the bridge because the steep hill up here has been so icy, so it is possible to drive carefully and slowly into town, but I have only been out once this week and am keeping journeys to a minimum.
The cabin really comes into its own with the low winter sun warming the interior to a cosy 18 degrees most days by 11am. I don’t really need to light the range until the evening. Current wood supplies are probably OK for another three weeks; I could stretch it out longer if need be.
Water will be the first to go. It currently freezes each night but thaws out by lunch time. However, my main supply is currently rain water off a shed roof in a 1300L tank. With careful use I only have another maybe 8 or 10 days if there is no precipitation. I havnt investigated the well yet but presumably can break the ice and carry buckets.
One thing I have ample of is solar electricity. The sun is warm on the rocks and dazzling each day. No SAD this year! The electric chainsaw is getting some use, but otherwise apart from the computer I have far more power than I can use- not a situation I ever envisaged at this time of year.
I had made no special preparations for food but have a stock that would see me through a couple of weeks at least if I couldn’t get out at all, including two sacks of Bantry CSA spuds, and a supply of rice and pulses. There is still a couple of large squashes in the store and a few shallots left, but very little in the garden- just some leeks and a little kale. Oh, and some artichokes for when all else fails!
Contact with the immediate neighbours has been more frequent which has been nice, otherwise very quiet, leaving one to dwell on what real survival conditions would feel like, and whether, if the weather continues for long, it will come to that, and if it will be anything like the scenes from Cormac Mccarthy’s novel, now just released as a film, The Road.
Peak Water December 18, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Food, Human Ecology, Overshoot, Population, book review, climate change, collapse, water , add a commentPeak Water Civilisation and the World’s Water Crisis
Alexander Bell
Luath Press 2009
Hardback 208 pp
If oil supply peaks and begins to decline times will be hard. Standard of living will decline and people may go hungry but they will be able to adapt by powering down and making do with less.
If water supply- for domestic use but also for irrigation- peaks and declines people have no option but to migrate.
UK journalist Alexander Bell spells out his thesis starkly in this fascinating and clearly written book: many of the world’s major regions are past or on the brink of peak water and face growing populations with declining supplies. (more…)
Now is the Winter of our Discontent November 26, 2009
Posted by Graham in : climate change, collapse , add a commentThe flooding was so bad around the city and county of cork last week that I was wondering whether I would actually be able to travel to Kinsale on Tuesday to do my comradely duty and picket the college.
Kinsale College staff on picket duty
As it turned out, the road through Bandon, which had been closed by the floods, was open by last Tuesday. In fact although I had traveled to the Tipperary Institute on Wednesday night, returning Friday afternoon, I saw none of the floods at all.
I was in two minds about the national day of action by public service workers: there are a lot of issues around the split between the public and private sectors and I am not yet convinced any union or political group has a coherent enough plan of action given the country is bankrupt.
The Celtic Tiger began in earnest around the time I first moved to Ireland in 1992. I watched through those years aghast at the sheer rate of change and development, not able to believe that it could last long, amazed each year that it continued. As an awareness of impending peak oil dawned, it seemed the party’s end would not be long coming, yet even after the collapse of Lehman Brothers the two-car Dublin commuters were claiming we were just “talking ourselves into a recession”.
Ireland has amassed one of the highest per capita debts in the world through a regime of cheap finance for houses and cars; the collapse was always inevitable and has now left us with a broken economy barely able to keep it social services going. Further cuts in health and education and welfare seem inevitable; the government has barely begun to adress the public finance deficit with what is currently proposed.
Of course we should be calling for the heads of the bankers and political leaders who exacerbated the crisis but the real problem has been a complete disconnect with reality caused by the fantasy world that cheap oil and finance had created. The ultimate cargo cult, the wealth was wasted rather than being used to develop resilience of any kind.
The floods bring a double whammy as all the chickens come home to roost for this small island nation. Rapid economic growth has meant Ireland has contributed more than its per capita fair share of carbon emissions during the boom years and the warmer than average sea surface temperatures are likely connected to the record breaking rainfall this month. In addition, unrestricted development on flood plains and lack of investment in flood prevention has hugely exacerbated the problems, with a larger population just meaning more people are effected.
As I write parts of Athlone and parts of Galway are still closed off and under water, and hundreds of people already struggling with their repayments have lost their homes or their businesses. Many already beleagured farmers have been decimated, and land and plant damaged or destroyed.
We have a way to go in this country before a Katrina-like disaster strikes but the confluence of debt, climate change and peak oil bring the possibility closer each year. In an environment of increasing industrial discontent and financial misery how long before we are simply unable to recover from repeated climate change events. Already there is serious discussion parts of Limerick and other towns becoming permenantly uninhabitable.
The need to plan for a general curtailment of our activities and retreat into more sustainable modes of existence is now an immediate necessity.
Five Years On: Oil Price Sweepstake October 6, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Peak Oil, collapse , add a commentTom has just blogged here about a sweepstake he initiated five years ago with myself, Rob Hopkins, Tom’s partner Ruth and a couple of other friends.
We each made a prediction on what we thought the price of oil would be in five years time.
My first thought when Tom told me the five years was up was blimey doesnt time pass quickly, but oddly enough it actually seems a long time ago looking back on those dim and distant days of Peak Oil initiation and endless late night discussions about the end of the world.
Astonishingly, Peak Oil seems to have passed, most likely a year or so ago, and although it has probably played a role in precipitating the current economic collapse , the price at the pumps has hardly changed- in fact it has only gone up 14cents!
Ruth won the sweepstake with the most conservative etimate of just 2euros while yours truly was way out at 10 euros a litre! Which just goes to show you shouldnt believe a word I say (you know that already of course…)
La plus ca change as they say, but five years did seem like a long way into the future in those days when anything could happen. In reality, price is not such a good indicator anyway, because demand destruction as a result of economic collapse could keep it quite low even in much more challenging times than we have currently.
A better indicator would be how much we are able to actually afford; I confess that in those early days when peak oil awareness was still quite new, the possibility of shortages and rationing did not seem out of the question.
There is still a lot of oil left, and although we may have passed peak, there may be a while to go before the system collapses, although as Dmitri Orlov so poignantly says, collapse when it does happen will be an intensely personal affair.
Let us not forget that the understanding of peak oil has given us a lot of impetus to redouble our efforts at building resilience and personal preparedness- and we have all, I’m sure, come a long way on those counts in the past five years.
So many congrats to Ruth and now I know who to go for when I need advice in the futures markets!
Orlov: Only Aliens Can Save us from Collapse July 5, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Peak Oil, Population, Transition Towns, collapse , 12commentsThe view expressed in recently reviewed books like Holmgren’s Energy Scenarios and Chamberlin’s The Transition Timeline is that peak oil will be followed by a long, slow decline- Energy Descent- rather than an abrupt collapse.
For an alternative view, Dmitri Orlov, author of the acclaimed Reinventing Collapse puts the case for sudden collapse very well in his recent post The Slope of Dysfunction
What, then, of our canonical Peak Oil scenario, which is that global crude oil (and natural gas condensate) production will rise to a lofty peak sometime soon, and then gently waft down, over several decades, until, by the year 2050 or some other distant date, less than half as much oil will be produced globally? Ever eager to present a hopeful vision, I will say here and now that I believe this scenario to be entirely plausible… but it requires alien intervention. As Russian oil production was saved by foreigners, so Earthling oil production must be be saved by aliens from outer space.
Orlov’s basic premise is that sudden collapse can only be mitigated once a country’s indigenous oil has peaked by making up the difference with increased imports, something that will not be possible after global oil peak.
The Soviet Union provides a historical model for this-
“There, production declined 43% between 1987 and 1996. The decline was arrested and reversed by the introduction of foreign investment and technology”.
It could be argued that the Soviet Union is not a good model because of other reasons such as its political system, but in fact, as he shows in his book, parts of the West, especially North America, are much less well placed to withstand abrupt declines in oil supply.
If Orlov is correct, our efforts at creating Energy Descent Plans and Transition Strategies would be better spent flashing SOS signals up into the night sky or hanging around those crop circles in the hope their alien authors will return with a few barrels of crude.
It will be very hard to mitigate any such sudden collapse, but Orlov links oil peak directly with financial collapse, which he predicts will be followed by political collapse, and then social collapse; these scenarios could be just around the corner, judging by the gathering speed of financial and political decline.
All is not lost however, and to read Orlov’s unique and side-ways look at how we might prepare (and how we might not) essential reading is here in his adress to last month’s Feasta Conference in Dublin Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation.
See especially slide no. 19 on this post “Collapse” or “Transition” ? for his sardonic view of the Transition movement.
Slide no. 2 helps explain why I take issue with Chamberlin’s views on population in my review of The Transition Timeline. On paper of course it may be possible to argue as he does that if we all did the right thing and reduced our consumption to, say, half of what it is now- the level of energy consumption of Cuba- reducing population might not be so urgent; in reality, it is incredibly difficult for us to voluntarily reduce our energy consumption. Most people living at the level of Cubans would love to increase their consumption and have an easier life!
I probably have a lower energy cosumption thatn average for ireland (not by much, mind you) and earn my living teaching how to reduce consumption, but the one thing I could do right now that would make a significant difference would be to get rid of the van, something that is not currently an option for financial reasons.
See also the comment from Andy Wilson at the end of the Transition Timeline review -we may be heading for just of 1/10 energy availability by 2040 which would be closer to the per capita consumption of India, not Cuba. Great for a gap year back-packing trip, but not something most of us would choose voluntarily no matter how motivated we are.
Future Scenarios June 11, 2009
Posted by Graham in : General, Human Ecology, Peak Oil, Permaculture, Powerdown, book review, climate change, collapse , 7commentsBook Review- 
Future Scenarios How Communities Can adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change
David Holmgren
Chelsea Green 2009
When I first saw David Holmgren’s Future Scenarios talk and slide at a permaculture design course in Slovenia in 2005 I was still quite new to the concept of peak oil and listened transfixed at what seemed to be a detailed vision of the future: not precise predictions but an outline of four possible scenarios that may unfold over the next generation and beyond as human societies adapt to the consequences of the peaking and decline of our primary energy sources, peak oil and natural gas.
A couple of years ago David continued his explorations of these issues first examined in detail in his earlier book, Permaculture- Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability (2002) with a new website Future Scenarios.
Now in book form, Future Scenarios provides one of the most succinct and lucid accounts of the possible paths that await us as we start the new era of energy descent.
Holmgren is in agreement with John Michael Greer that while much mainstream discussion about energy futures centres on the first two of his scenarios- “Techno-explosion” and “Techno Stability”, and the doomer/survivalist meme amongst the peak oil community tends to focus on the fourth scenario of “lifeboats” or versions of collapse, the more likely would be the third possibility of “Energy Descent”- a more gradual adaptation to diminishing energy supplies resulting in a contracting economy and reversion to technological simplicity that may play out over many generations.
This pathway of earth Stewardship is assumed by the permaculture agenda- an adaptive approach in which human scale design and general sustainability practices are progressively implemented and are informed by the energy flows through human society and ecology, and the energy base of our economies is clearly understood.
The real problem is that this more likely future is currently still marginalised as the mainstream culture refuses to abandon its faith in the myth of progress- a belief that rests on the mistaken assumption that gains in human welfare over the past few hundred years have been as a result of some teleological process propelling us forwards, or of a general increasing application of our genious for technological improvements and innovation, while ignoring the underlying reosurce base that has made all this possible: technology is merely different ways of using energy that is usually dug out of holes in the ground.
The likelihood that this transition will be to one of less energy is such an anathema to the psychological foundations and power elites of modern societies that it is constantly misinterpreted, ignored, covered up, or derided. Instead we see geopolitical maneuvering around energy resources, including proxy and real wars to control dwindling reserves and policy gymnastics to somehow make reducing carbon emissions the new engine of economic growth.
Holmgren categorises the scenarios according to the varying potential severity of peak oil and climate change and how these tow factors interplay:
- Brown Tech- slow oil decline, fast climate change;
- Green Tech- slow oil decline, slow climate change;
- Earth Steward- fast oil decline, slow climate change;
- Lifeboats- fast oil decline, fast climate change
These typologies may necessarily be too simplistic- so many other factors may also come into play, such as financial collapse which, while no doubt linked to both peak oil and climate change, may impact in ways as yet unforeseen. However, Holmgren provides a deeper analyses by showing how the scenarios may be “nested” one within the other- each acting on the different scales of the household, local, national and international economies; or may take a stepped form over time- attempts by governments to keep the system going a little longer by following a Brown Tech path may hasten an eventual collapse; equally, an attempt to switch to green tech may result in the adoption of Earth Stewardship further down the line as renewables fail to fill the gap left by oil. The scenarios may also play out differently in different parts of the world.
Throughout Holmgren’s analysis is informed by ecological systems, the foundation for his permaculture principles, as he sees how energy dynamics in nature may be mirrored in human socieites:
Natural ecosytems tend to maintain homeostasis under stress through the allocation of stored resources. if the conditions continue to deteriorate, then further stress can fracture the homeostasis. If the stress involves a reduction in energy availability, the system may collapse. But total collapse and system disintegration are rare, at least in the short term. More typically a restabalization occurs at a lower level of energy processing and organisational complexity. The new homeostasis will typically be stable for some time before declining energy availability precipitates another crisis. This may also be a model for how human societies respond to the crisis of resource and energy decline.
Holmgren is keen to paint a more positive vision of the future in the earth Stewardship scenario- “conditions for ordinary people may actually improve when resources devoted to maintaining societal complexity are freed for meeting more basic needs”- a reference to the diminishing returns provided by endless growth.
There is a desperate need to recast energy descent as a positive process that can free people from the strictures and dysfunctions of growth economics and consumer culture. This is now apparent to many people around the world and is far more fundamental than a public relations campaign to paint a black sky blue. It is a necessary [process to provide a sense of hope and connection to fundamental human values expressed by every traditional culture throughout human history, among them, that the prusuit of materialism is a false god.
No doubt materialism without bounds, as expressed in modern society in unending growth and the development of consumer culture, is a false god; however, I am not sure that an awareness of this has always been present in every traditional culture. Holmgren here seems to betray a romantic view of the past, at odds with the ecological basis for his work, which is itself of course fundamentally materialistic. What seems more likely is the insights of anthropology and evolutionary psychology: that we have as a species a fundamental propensity towards getting more stuff, as is evidenced by the ready emergence in traditional societies of cargo cults after contact with the west.
This weakness is apparent in his assessment of the corresponding ideologies and belief systems that accompany the scenarios: he seems to equate secular humanism with the materialistic ideology of “Brown Tech” and suggests that these beliefs systems are inherently negative, giving rise to dysfunctional behaviours;
While the elites continue to be driven by a commitment to superrationalist beliefs, a sense of hollowness and lack of purpose characterizes the shrinking middle class, while fundamentalist religions and cults play a stronger role in the lives of the working and unemployed classes, partly through genuine reaction to the failures of modern humanism and partly manipulated by the elites to deflect anger and disenchantment.
While this may be very true, he compares this to a shift in values in “Green Tech”:
Civic culture strengthens where further transition toward nonmaterialistic society combines with the maturation of feminism and environmentalism, and a resurgence in indigenous and traditional cultural values.
It seems to me that there is a contradiction between “traditional values” -many of which may be parochial and overly conservative or reactionary – with post-modern feminist and environmental values; it is far from clear that they would be the same or even compatible.
Similarly, under “Earth Steward” Holmgren suggests that a “simplification in the material domain is seen as the opportunity for growth in the spiritual domain. There is a resurgence in leadership by women and a celebration of the feminine in nature and people”.
But what is the “spiritual” domain? This needs to be defined here becasue there is a vast range of possible interpretations. For the same reasons I have always had some difficulty with Holmgren’s domain of “Health and Spritual well-being” in the Permaculture Flower. I interpret it to mean “Health and Psychological/emotional well-being”. However, it is abundantly apparent that permaculture has become almost synonymous with New Age religion in many quarters, a reactionary and delusional trend that all permaculturalists should challenge strongly. Holmgren’s loose use of the word “spiritual” in this context, and his “celebration of the feminine” will inevitably be seen by many to sanctify pseudo-science and the worship of spirits and nebulous “energies”.
(Again “the feminine” and “feminine values” really needs to be defined: we are presumably not talking about the feminine values of Sex in the City; too often “the feminine” is associated with “the spiritual” in a quite meaningless way which I feel is rather patronizing to women.)
Here, Holmgren looses an opportunity to call for a celebration of secular humanism and rationalism- the most important legacy of the modern world, which will need to be protected less we fall back into a new dark age of superstition and delusion with energy descent.
Nor is it necessary to embody any kind of “earth spirituality” in order to foster more sustainable lifestyles- these should come of their own accord, naturally emerging from a scientific understanding of ecology and our place within it, combined with a simple sense of beauty and wonder at the natural world, unfettered by ideological presumptions.
There is a great danger within the environmental movement as a whole to replace the delusion of unending growth with the delusion of narcissistic spirituality, part of a wider failure to acknowledge the real gains of modernity through science.
For all this, Holmgren remains one of the most significant of contemporary thinkers, and Future Scenarios is an important contribution to peak oil literature, and one of the clearest assessments of the kind of world that awaits us.
Powerdown Tookit #8 Energy Descent Pathways April 26, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Peak Oil, Powerdown, Transition Towns, collapse , 1 comment so farEnergy Descent Pathways – Post Carbon Cities, Transition Towns and Eco Villages
This is the introduction to week 8 of the Powerdown Toolkit 10-week community learning course created by the Cultivate Center in Dublin. It has an accompanying TV show with a 30-minute episode accompanying each week of the course, soon to be aired on Dublin Community TV
Subject
The concept of “energy descent” was first proposed by Howard Odum who recognized that the human economy is governed by the Laws of thermodynamics and energy and resource availability.
Odum believed that if we were guided by geologists and ecologists as much as by economists, we would be able to safely navigate our way across the inevitable peaking of world oil production and find “a prosperous way down”.
David Holmgren drew on Odum’s thesis in creating the permaculture concept in the 1970s, and more recently proposed a set of “Energy Future Scenarios” to allow us to peak into the future and gain an image of where we may be heading.
“I use the term ‘descent’ as the least loaded word that honestly conveys the inevitable, radical reduction of material consumption and/or human numbers that will characterise the declining decades and centuries of fossil fuel abundance and availability.” -Davie Holmgren
The ‘industrial ascent’ of Hubert’s curve over the past 150 years has given us a one-time energy bonanza allowing the industrialisation of almost every aspect of our life and the globalisation of our economies. Continual economic growth has required an assumption of continuing increase of energy availability, a myth we can now see as we sink into a post oil-peak world and the commencement of global recession.
Book Review: When Technology Fails April 5, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Food, Peak Oil, Permaculture, Science and Rationaltiy, book review, collapse, survivalism , add a commentWhen Technology Fails- A Manual for Self- Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency
Matthew Stein
Chelsea Green 2000, 2008
494 pp
Matthew Stein’s massive survival manual When Technology Fails packs into one volume everything you need to survive “The long Emergency”- (a phrase later used by Kunstler in his 2005 book of that name on peak oil and its consequences) from fire making and hunting, gardening and wild food gathering, technology and power, metal working and constructing simple shelters.
There is a detailed discussion at the start of the book on the environmental crisis, pollution and resource depletion, as well as climate change and peak oil- and the consequent need to learn many new skills to survive; perhaps this section isnt srictly necessary for such a book.
More of an encyclopaedia than a handy book to throw in your grab-and-run bag, it probably suffers from trying to do too much; nevertheless, there is a serious amount of information here to help survive emergencies, powerdowns, social collapses and energy descent transitions- most of it useful and well laid out, while some of it smacks of New Age-ism and gives advice which would be more of a hazard than a help in a survival situation.
The “When Hi-Tech Medicine Fails” chapter in particular should come with a severe health warning: a credulous mish-mash of a range of Quackeries from homeopathy and acupuncture through naturopathy, “energy healing” and even the Power of Prayer. Anecdotal “evidence” is offered about miraculous cures achieved through the services of members of the whacky Christian Science cult. He quotes Larry Dossey’s Healing Words as providing “numerous scientific studies ” which “now confirm that p[rayer does, in fact, have a positive effect on healing” when in fact it does nothing of the kind.
Futile of course to suggest that if you believed in the Power of Prayer you wouldn’t need a survival manual, but even worse is the section promoting the use of colloidial silver for a range of illnesses including some serious conditions.
Quackwatch surveys the evidence forand the dangers of use of colloidal silver here. Stein presumably thinks that if uncritical self-medication with such stuff lead to argyria, you always have the Power of Prayer as a Back-up.
The early section on Survivor Personality Traits is also tainted with pseudo-scientific nonsense. While stories of survivors of disasters are interesting and may provide useful insights, Stein seems to make he contradictory claim that your intuition is more useful than your rational mind- at least in emergency situations.
Now, there may well be situations where intuition is simply all you have to go on- and clearly we have evolved instinctive responses to danger which have allowed our species to survive as well as it has. This doesnt mean that intuition is superior to rational thought- after all, this is an emergency preparedness manual, the whole point is to use your rational ability to prepare for emergencies ahead of time. I dont see any scientific evidence tha shows people with New Age beliefs such as those promoted by Sein are more likely to survive an emergency.
These reactionary and dangerous ideas are enough to put me off he book entirely, and it is certainly a matter of concern that Peak Oil luminaries Richard Heinberg and James Howard Kunstler would endorse it.
Nevertheless, there is much to offer in the other chapters, which are oddly rational and practical in their approach(!)
Each section begins with a view of the global situation vis-a-vis current use of resources and environmental impact. There is then a survey of different techniques with a brief description, and a wealth of resources and further reading to conclude.
The section on food is wide-ranging, with good information on both gardening and wild-food gathering. Stein advocates Jeavons’ Bio-Intensive method; the section on permaculture is only a few paragraphs, with no mention of perrenial food crops or edible forest gardens, nor permaculture principles.
The sections on natural building, off-grid electricity and traditional methods of home-crafts such as soap-making, clothes-making, pottery etc provide useful introductions, though perhaps not much more than that.
In short, there are probably other survival manuals which are more useful as pocket-sized books for emergency situations; and specific permaculture books and building manuals would be more useful for long-term survival/powerdown scenarios.
Most worrying is the apparent unquestioning acceptance of the reactionary ideologies promoted here by at least some of the wider peak oil/permaculture community.
Book Review: The Long Descent December 11, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Human Ecology, Overshoot, Peak Oil, Science and Rationaltiy, Tools and technology, book review, collapse, consciousness , 12comments
The Long Descent- A Users Guide to the End of the Industrial Age
John Michael Greer
New Society Publishers 2008
John Michael Greer has written a fascinating and engaging, but also contradictory and perplexing account of how he sees the industrial age ending.
His primary thesis is that collapse will not come as a sudden, abrupt End Of Days or Die Off scenario- one minute thriving bustling affluent society with the universe at its feet, the next a crumbling pile of rubble with nothing but wisps of smoke to hint of its former glory- but will follow a “catabolic” process of progressive disintegration, over possibly a couple of centuries. In Greer’s scenario, short periods of abrupt and sharp downturns- the beginning of which we are experiencing now- punctuate longer periods of relative stability. Like an organism that begins feeding on itself, society will collapse in a series of stepped-down stages as it becomes progressively unable to meet maintenance charges with income.
One of the most interesting parts of the book is the chapter “Tools for the Transition” Greer has a most interesting discussion of the merits of the slide-rule over the pocket calculator, and explains why it is infinitely more suitable to a low-energy world:it is durable- a solid aluminum slde-rule could last nearly geological time-scales-, independent, dependable and perhaps most significant of all its use of transparent- a future archeologist would be able to work out exactly how to use it. I have never actually used a slide-rule, but this discussion has inspired me to get one, and even teach its use on permaculture courses as an example of durable technologies. There are many other insightful observations Greer makes in this chapter, including comments on salvage and organic agriculture, and what will endure into the post-collapse world.
What sets Greer’s book apart and make it really interesting is his focus on “The Stories we tell Ourselves”. He weaves his discussion of the Long descent around what he sees as two modern myths- the myth of unending progress and technological supremacy on the one hand, and imminent catastrophe and collapse on the other. Both are myths or stories that fail to see the much more likely outcome of catabolic collapse. (more…)
Reinventing Collapse June 27, 2008
Posted by Graham in : General, Overshoot, Peak Oil, Population, Powerdown, Yurts, book review, collapse, survivalism , 2commentsBook Review
Reinventing Collapse- The Soviet Example and American Prospects
New Society 2008
When I met Bill Mollison at the International Permaculture Convergence in Croatia three years ago, all he wanted to talk about it seemed was cannibalism. He had traveled in Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union and told me that, in Moscow, the joke was, if you go to the provinces, be careful what they serve you up for meat.
There had been widespread hunger and general hardship, resulting in a dramatic decline in life expectancy, an underclass of the homeless and unemployed and those unable to care for themselves, and a loss of hope in the future.
Despite this, things could get much worse in an even more energy dependent USA.
“Reinventing Collapse” is perhaps the most important and disturbing- as well as amusing- peak oil book you will read. A Russian emigre who had the opportunity to observe the collapse of the former Soviet Union from the vantage point of someone living in America, Orlov sees a similar process unfolding in an America all but oblivious to how quickly things may change there. Peak oil will result very soon in the vast nation beginning to fall apart at the seams as the lifeblood of its economy drains away with no backup available. Big systems like agriculture are so energy intensive that they will quickly collapse and there is barely any resilient, self-reliant communities left. (more…)
