"Crash on Demand" or Mobilize at City/State Level? Holmgren vs Hopkins

[JimD]

Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism

April Sniper Attack Knocked Out Substation, Raises Concern for Country's Power Grid

Must be one of the followers of the Derrick Jensen philosophy.  But I would say it most likely is an ELF or Earth First type of attack and thus does qualify as terrorism and it seems surprising that the FBI is downplaying it.  Bring down the grid and you bring down the system.  And I note that they were targeting Silicon Valley.

The attack reportedly started when at least one person entered an underground vault to cut telephone cables, and attackers fired more than 100 shots into Pacific Gas & Electric’s Metcalf transmission substation, knocking out 17 transformers. Electric officials were able to avert a blackout, but it took 27 days to repair the damage.

My understanding is that the weakest link in the US grid is availability of replacement transformers.  The really large ones are made to order and are not stocked.  It takes about 2 years to get one delivered.  A concentrated attack that took out a number of the very large ones in an area would result in significant power problems for a very lengthy period of time.  Couple that with toppling selected towers on certain long distance very high voltage transmission lines and the effect could be crippling.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304851104579359141941621778?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304851104579359141941621778.html

Fox news link if you can't access the WSJ.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/06/2013-sniper-attack-on-power-grid-still-concern-in-washington-and-for-utilities/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmaing5%7Cdl4%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D439459

[JimD]

Terry

I certainly share your concern about this.  Foremost in my mind is that every technical attempt to solve large problems always results in other problems cropping up that were not foreseen.  And they are often worse than the one being fixed.  Global geo-engineering just strikes me as an insane undertaking and much more difficult and expensive than just addressing the core problem; that being reducing carbon emissions and population.  If we maintain BAU and play at geo-engineering we will certainly toast ourselves and could possibly dramatically reduce the chances of future generations to survive.

Every day we delay real solutions makes future difficulties worse.

[TerryM]

Jim


I have problems with accelerating and with decelerating the timing of the coming crash - but no reason for accepting the "natural" path toward destruction.
Trying to precipitate a crash may cause some FF to remain underground for a very long time, and while this is a worthwhile goal I'd hate to be involved with anything that causes death or at least extreme discomfort for such a huge number of people. Trying to artificially extend the BAU period may save some lives/discomfort for a period of time but will ensure that we'll extract the maximum amounts of FF and therefore the final results might be even more disruptive.
If I believed that we were working to somehow sequester the CO2 in the atmosphere or even showing signs of lowering our output then I might be able to support the geoengineering initiative, but it seems to me that if it worked it would simply be taken as proof that burning coal/oil was viable and that we should progress as rapidly as possible down that path.
The scary thing in the lecture was his <1$B figure. This is not just affordable for many nations, there are any number of corporations & even individuals who could do this, possibly covertly, and the world would have little say in the matter.
If the decision were entirely mine to make I have no idea what direction I'd want to go in. Procrastination has been a life long habit so I'd probably dither until things moved so far that the geoengineering option made no sense - but I'm not convinced that this would be a rational response.
Terry

[JimD]

Terry

I have problems with accelerating and with decelerating the timing of the coming crash - but no reason for accepting the "natural" path toward destruction.
Trying to precipitate a crash may cause some FF to remain underground for a very long time, and while this is a worthwhile goal I'd hate to be involved with anything that causes death or at least extreme discomfort for such a huge number of people. Trying to artificially extend the BAU period may save some lives/discomfort for a period of time but will ensure that we'll extract the maximum amounts of FF and therefore the final results might be even more disruptive.

In a sense I suppose one has to take some comfort in the reluctance of many folks to consider moving collapse forward to the present.  Even though a strictly rational and pragmatic approach to the problem (at least in my opinion) would point to doing that being by far the best choice among our rather limited options.  That reluctance perhaps shows that human compassion for others can at least be a major part of some peoples makeup. 

But it may also be interpreted as a selfish outlook (I've got mine and you're on your own) or one of cowardice (it is too horrible to contemplate so let's not talk about it).  It is perhaps easier to contemplate if one is older and a bit worn down by life.  And one could also say that it is easy to make such talk if one had a good life and not so easy if one is young and has their dreams still intact.  Not only should I have never made it this far I never dreamed I would.  So it is all a big bonus for me. 

It is interesting to juxtapose the similar views of Jenson and Edelman who reached similar conclusions (though their specific circumstances were clearly different).  Jensen grew up in such a horribly abusive home that it would not have been surprising if he turned out to be a serial killer, yet for all his talk of destroying the system he is non-violent.  Edelman chose to fight to the death but saw no meaningful difference in the choice to go either way since death was certain.

I am internally certain that there is no fix to the AGW/population problem.  Civilization is not and cannot be sustainable.   We will collapse.  But we can chose the timing and manner of it.  Logic says that the longer we drag BAU out before we tip over the less there is left for future generations (if any) to try and continue on with our future.  And I do believe in that possible future being a goal to continue to strive for.  While I don't often meet any humans I actually like I am totally committed to the aspirations of the human race.  We have great potential that I deeply want us to achieve.

We can make a difficult choice now and probably preserve that potential.  Continuing any form of BAU will likely dramatically lesson the chances of future generations being able to once again see if our reach and grasp can be compatible.  This current civilizational peak of human progress has clearly failed to rise to the heights we desired and is going to fall back down the slope of progress.  The story of all civilizations up to the present.  It is the story of history.  But we don't want to end that history. 

Thousands (millions?) of times in history the duty has fallen to someone to guard the river ford or to stand on the wall and turn back the enemy or all one loved would perish.  Most of these people knew that they would not survive and willingly took their place in the line and sacrificed themselves for those they loved.  As frightening as it is to contemplate and even more to actually do, history seems to have presented the opportunity to us once again.  The stakes could not be higher.  Will we take our place upon the wall or will we walk to our doom. 

[ccgwebmaster]

But it may also be interpreted as a selfish outlook (I've got mine and you're on your own) or one of cowardice (it is too horrible to contemplate so let's not talk about it).  It is perhaps easier to contemplate if one is older and a bit worn down by life.  And one could also say that it is easy to make such talk if one had a good life and not so easy if one is young and has their dreams still intact.  Not only should I have never made it this far I never dreamed I would.  So it is all a big bonus for me. 

Considering the number of older people I have heard express relief that they expect to be dead (having lived a long and naturally ended and comfortable life, I might add...) by the time things get really bad? Of course it's selfish...

It's that crowd who I expect to start pushing geoengineering and to start getting especially anxious to eke out another decade or two when the shit starts to splatter (presuming it does so ahead of their current expectations).

To me there is no benefit to doing so. I don't expect to live to be as old as such people anyway. If you're over 50, you're beyond my aspirational limit (though I'm not saying I wouldn't like to see 60...). People of my age can be fairly certain they will see these things come to pass whether it's within a decade or within three decades (although if it takes that long I would be in the camp of the older people today and I hope then graciously passing all my efforts off to someone younger and fitter and more capable of going forwards with them, rather than clinging selfishly on).

However many people of around my age also cling to the notion that we should prolong things as long as we can, even at the price of the future. Just a few more decades would be nice, wouldn't it? So we too can enjoy the destructive pleasures of our ancestors? Or even a few years - live life for the party today and the future be damned?

Actually some days I feel stupid for not subscribing to this viewpoint. The odds arrayed against one in this fight are so great it's easy to see why people think it's pointless to try, even though that very view in itself assures failure.

It's bad enough to have to face this future and everything that it implies - and yet strangely worse to have to do so from the context of the modern world, a world of plenty and yet filled with callous unnecessary cruelty and driven largely by greed and money. No matter how noble your objectives, you are still forced to fight in the gutter to work towards them. In a world with resources and knowledge and technology, one is still forced to try to build a future from left over scraps. Way to go, inhabitants of the modern world...

[TerryM]

As one of those that definitely fits into the older, but probably not wiser grouping I'd like to think that my age and longevity don't play too much of a part in my ponderings. I've lived a very full life & wouldn't be terribly upset if I learned than next week would be my last. That said I do think there is a case to be made for extending the life of civilization for as long as possible on the off chance that some as yet unimagined technology does come to our rescue.
Before the jet engine was invented it was understood by everyone that there was limit as to how high an airplane could fly. The jet changed everything & it wasn't an incremental improvement on the propulsion systems that preceded it. These breakthrough inventions can't be predicted, they just happen when someone's mind skips over what has gone before and lands us in a whole new place.
I can't see any way out of the fix we've put ourselves in, but this doesn't mean that there is no way out. If we shut things down immediately we've ruined any possibility of someone developing a carbon breathing, money making machine that will suck up carbon faster than we can replace it. The fact that we can't conceive of such a machine doesn't mean that one can't or won't be invented. The only way we can guarantee that it doesn't happen is if we close off all the avenues that might lead to it's discovery.
I don't think it's probable or even likely that such a thing will be developed, but I am sure that it's much less likely to be developed if modern civilization melts away.
Given the above I'd probably vote in favor of some form of geoengineering when things get to the stage where not doing so would guarantee the imminent disintegration of civilization.
Terry

[ccgwebmaster]

If we shut things down immediately we've ruined any possibility of someone developing a carbon breathing, money making machine that will suck up carbon faster than we can replace it. The fact that we can't conceive of such a machine doesn't mean that one can't or won't be invented. The only way we can guarantee that it doesn't happen is if we close off all the avenues that might lead to it's discovery.

Funny thing is, we already have machines that are capable of extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in very dilute concentrations and concentrating it nicely. They can even make money if you do it right and they're totally powered by renewable energy at virtually zero materials cost (although I grant there is a small opportunity cost by using space to site them, though the same space can produce food simultaneously).

They're called trees...

Forgive me for thinking it's actually a damning reflection on the views of people who believe in technology, that we use one technology to solve one problem, thus creating a bigger one that we will create another technology to solve... meanwhile the natural world already figured it all out itself before we even existed. To me - this view is the problem with technological optimism. It really should not be called progress to keep fighting this battle technologically - and I'm speaking as a fan of technology myself (as in I think we need and want it - but not when it's used this way). Technology should be used first and foremost as a means of getting more out of a sustainable lifestyle, which is to say doing more within the limits.

Furthermore I would argue the human race is squandering colossal amounts of resources and effort technologically speaking. Consider the financial and intellectual resources deployed to come up with new ways to design and sell combustion powered cars, for instance? Now compare to those resources deployed to resolve the problems we face? Compare even those to the resources deployed to provide some sort of long term future planning for our species? Humanity is not collectively deploying it's abilities in a manner that suggests it wants to survive en masse.

[werther]

In the line of posting, I'd recommend reading Jean Giono's 'The man who planted trees'.

[Neven]

Or watch the short animated movie:

[JimD]

Terry

I completely understand your thinking the way you do.  I think it is actually the most common approach to dealing with the probability of collapse. 

But I once again must point out that this approach is a version of playing the lottery or Russian roulette. It is choosing to bet on a miracle and if that miracle does not show up we end up in a far worse place than if we take our medicine now.  And then there is the moral dilemma of selecting the option which absolves us of that pain at huge risk to the future.  Which option do we think the 20 year olds of 2100 would vote for?  We have no option but to make the choice for them.  Or one could also ask since the choice falls to us is there any logical or moral option to choose anything but to choose to crash quickly?  Any other choice could not be divorced from personal self interest and thus corruption.  Hard questions.  Given the human track record I am sure we will chose personal self interest.  We seem to be programed to make decisions that way.

[JimD]

This could easily go in another thread, but it illustrates a point about crashing on purpose.  Many forms of BAU may as well be considered deliberate attempts to cause a crash when one examines their direct effects on system stability.  For instance:

Fracking is depleting water supplies in America's driest areas, report shows

From Texas to California, drilling for oil and gas is using billions of gallons of water in the country's most drought-prone areas

America's oil and gas rush is depleting water supplies in the driest and most drought-prone areas of the country, from Texas to California, new research has found.

Of the nearly 40,000 oil and gas wells drilled since 2011, three-quarters were located in areas where water is scarce, and 55% were in areas experiencing drought, the report by the Ceres investor network found.

Fracking those wells used 97bn gallons of water, raising new concerns about unforeseen costs of America's energy rush.

Half of the 97bn gallons of water was used to frack wells in Texas, which has experienced severe drought for years – and where production is expected to double over the next five years...

....But it warned the added demand for fracking in the Eagle Ford, at the heart of the Texas oil and gas rush, was hitting small, rural communities hard.

"Shale producers are having significant impacts at the county level, especially in smaller rural counties with limited water infrastructure capacity," the report said. "With water use requirements for shale producers in the Eagle Ford already high and expected to double in the coming 10 years, these rural counties can expect severe water stress challenges in the years ahead."

Local aquifer levels in the Eagle Ford formation have dropped by up to 300ft over the last few years.

A number of small communities in Texas oil and gas country have already run out of water or are in danger of running out of water in days, pushed to the brink by a combination of drought and high demand for water for fracking.

Twenty-nine communities across Texas could run out of water in 90 days, according to the Texas commission on environmental quality. Many reservoirs in west Texas are at only 25% capacity....

Couldn't happen in a better place as Texas is ground zero for the cultural, religious and political problems plaguing the US. 

We know BAU will crash the system eventually, but some aspects of it will get us there much quicker than others.  Fracking is a good example of one of them.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/05/fracking-water-america-drought-oil-gas

[TerryM]

Jim
Possibly we have differing visions of "The Crash". In my mind I'm seeing a very small percentage of humans surviving - and these are living in conditions that people of the middle ages would find appalling.
A few generations will get by in warrior societies by scavenging, but those days will be recalled as days of plenty when the spoils have been despoiled. Small groupings won't be able to practice metallurgy, chemistry, or even have the resources to produce paper. The Ik people had neighbors to raid and trade with, our ancestors won't have their advantages.
Hunter Gatherers had game to hunt and intergenerational knowledge of where and what to gather. With chaotic weather and extreme temperatures we'll find it easier to track other survivors than to track whatever large herbivores that remain.
I realize that my decision not to precipitate a crash is counting on something happening that has almost no chance of occurring, but when only one avenue appears, that's the road we have to take. I'll opt for almost anything to avoid the future that I see for coming generations, but I won't deprive them of the one slim chance they have of avoiding such an outcome.
FWIW I think the crash is happening in Somalia, Syria and probably other countries that we don't hear much about. As long as we have a grid that works we have an imperative to keep things running as long as possible.
Terry

[ccgwebmaster]

Jim
Possibly we have differing visions of "The Crash". In my mind I'm seeing a very small percentage of humans surviving - and these are living in conditions that people of the middle ages would find appalling.
A few generations will get by in warrior societies by scavenging, but those days will be recalled as days of plenty when the spoils have been despoiled. Small groupings won't be able to practice metallurgy, chemistry, or even have the resources to produce paper. The Ik people had neighbors to raid and trade with, our ancestors won't have their advantages.
Hunter Gatherers had game to hunt and intergenerational knowledge of where and what to gather. With chaotic weather and extreme temperatures we'll find it easier to track other survivors than to track whatever large herbivores that remain.

As I see it, this is exactly where the realistic battle lines ought to be drawn - this is where we should be fighting. I broadly agree with you about the outcomes we face, and yet in my opinion this is where people today could still make a tremendous difference.

Why will the small groups that make it necessarily not be able to practice metallurgy or make paper? Is this not an outcome that would be within the reach of people today to improve (personally I am quite comfortable with the thought of making soap, could at least try paper, and have no confidence on metallurgy - mostly with respect to identifying and extracting useable ores - the chemistry isn't a problem)? Is it impossible to preserve knowledge at the most basic levels for small groups - and even to influence which small groups have a chance to make it - and to try to define a pathway forwards for them?

Humanity came out of nowhere once already - and solved all the problems we take for granted today. That includes everything you are mentioning. It is not impossible that our species would not do the same again even without assistance - but it is a concern that the environment would be far more hostile and the resources far less plentiful. It is however very likely that it would take a very long time indeed to replicate all those discoveries that depended upon improbably good fortune, especially given a small population. This becomes most especially true if no efforts at all are made to build a "floor" (however primitive it may be) for collapse - and to define a viable strategy to accelerate recovery.

I'm not saying it is a wholly trivial problem - but I hold it to be an essentially soluble one - and not one that requires the powers of a nation state or billionaire to implement either (especially as the key commodity is knowledge).

Unfortunately, to even do this requires people to be prepared to step away from purely selfish modes of thinking. I had a conversation with someone a little younger than myself recently - someone who was very well informed on the key issues of the day - but their main concern (and hence priority) was the preservation of the masses for at least a few decades if possible.

This attitude (selfish in my view, albeit understandable) condemns those in the future to the conditions you describe.

Maybe I'm just biased though, as that's where I've drawn my battle line.

[SATire]

Unfortunately, to even do this requires people to be prepared to step away from purely selfish modes of thinking. I had a conversation with someone a little younger than myself recently - someone who was very well informed on the key issues of the day - but their main concern (and hence priority) was the preservation of the masses for at least a few decades if possible.

This attitude (selfish in my view, albeit understandable) condemns those in the future to the conditions you describe.

CCG, what you call "selfish" is a natural behaviour: For older poeple it is better, if the things stay as they are. For younger poeple a revolution might be the better choice. Therefore, both behaviours are similarly selfish. And sometimes it happens, that the age is wrong somehow - e.g. that an old mind is living in a young body or vice versa.

But running for a collapse (which is very harmfull for all of us and our children) could by no means called less selfish than any other behaviour. For me that sounds like calling Hitler an altruist. Remember he once performed a nice little collapse here? Actually it wasn't so nice and didn't help us very much, too.

Such things like a collapse are high risk and low gain tasks. By definition a collapse is not controlable. Therefore, you can not expect to reach any goal by it. The revolutionary romantic of todays talking will change into an ugly situation for everybody once the fiction gets closer to reality. I can see no reason to go for the collapse. For me it looks like "bla bla" of radical poeple: who is the most radical in the room is going to win the show. I can not see how such things could help us. Things that help are e.g. Amish BAU, green BAU and any other way of life we learned in human history which would not depend on holes in the ground and CO2 in the air. I think there is realy a lot of work to do for anybody of us and there is no valid excuse to start the work.

[wili]

The metallurgy issue is a telling one. Once every village of any size had at least one blacksmith that knew the basics of how to work with raw iron and forge it into different shapes...

Now machines do much of this work and only a few specialists and artisans have preserved the craft. It is hard to imagine, but this kind of specialization is why basic skills like writing and sewing (and a wide range of other practical techniques in, for example building domes) have been lost in past collapses such as those that lead to the Greek and European Dark Ages.

If just a few people really have practical knowledge of a skill, a plague that kills all those people wipes out the knowledge. And everybody else is scrambling around just trying to survive, not having lots of leisure time to reinvent such not-immediately-essential skills.

[Shared Humanity]

I think anything that extends the period when BAU is possible will simply add to problems down the line.....

Absolutely. Any attempt to sustain BAU (further growth) can have only one outcome. The inevitable collapse will be more horrifying. In the late 50's and early 60's as the world's population rapidly approached 3 billion, there were predictions of massive famine. The green revolution helped us to avoid the calamity and, with simultaneous improvements in worldwide health systems, allowed for a doubling of the population in 40 years. We have only postponed the collapse.

[Shared Humanity]

Terry

I certainly share your concern about this.  Foremost in my mind is that every technical attempt to solve large problems always results in other problems cropping up that were not foreseen.  And they are often worse than the one being fixed.  Global geo-engineering just strikes me as an insane undertaking and much more difficult and expensive than just addressing the core problem; that being reducing carbon emissions and population.  If we maintain BAU and play at geo-engineering we will certainly toast ourselves and could possibly dramatically reduce the chances of future generations to survive.

Every day we delay real solutions makes future difficulties worse.

I believe I read it on this website 1st that "Solutions are the root cause of all problems".

[TerryM]

SH
I share your concerns, but think the time has long past that anything like a soft landing is possible. The horrors that we'll face by 2100 aren't fundamentally different than those we'd face if the collapse happens in 2020.
Once the grid comes down we're left without water, fuel, food or sanitation. The EROI will be much higher for those that hoard munitions than those that hoard food & warrior raiders will be better fed than their agrarian brothers.
Those that don't hoard either won't make it through the first winter whether that winter is in 2100 or 2020.
It's far easier to steal a boat than to build one & any asset that is fixed in place is even easier to acquire by force than by industry. The burglars will live better than the burgers.
Imagine the difficulty in keeping anything larger than a village together.
Imagine the difficulty a village would have in building a saw, or a book, or a refrigerator.
I agree that another century of BAU will doom us, but also believe that without the grid we're already doomed.
Terry

[Bruce Steele]

Greer has said we should work on acquiring some of these fading skills ( forging iron? ). Red ochre or hematite is fairly easy to source so with a furnace, bellows, charcoal and some hematite smelting skills can still be reproduced or relearned. I am sure making weapons will be the desired outcome of recreated smelting skills but farm implements ,axes and trade items will help support those groups that can maintain themselves in the iron age.
 Collapse seems to be something people contemplate but actually preparing skill sets like smelting, stone knapping, zero ff farming techniques, net making , etc., are eccentric or lunatic fringe. Good to know where you stand anyhow.

[TerryM]

Bruce
I'm amazingly envious of those who have practiced the "lost arts" you've enumerated. I have some small skills re. metalworking & an ability to keep almost any mechanical thing working to at least some extent. I'd probably survive if there were lots of scrap piles about to build things from, but once they were gone I'd be pretty useless.
I've attempted flint knapping on a few occasions & decided I did much better with accretive technologies than with reductive. All I ever ended with was a small mound of gravel.
I gave away most of my library almost 10 years ago and now, like most, derive my information from the ephemeral internet. Without money I've few things that would be of value in a bartering economy & my longevity would probably be a matter of weeks, or possibly of months if some group saw value in a decrepit old man whose only value might be in his ability to tell humorous anecdotes.
Terry

[ccgwebmaster]

It's far easier to steal a boat than to build one & any asset that is fixed in place is even easier to acquire by force than by industry. The burglars will live better than the burgers.

Only short term. A boat being such a large capital asset to try to obtain and maintain, I considered that very question. Easy enough to get the vessel - most of them are owned by older people with relatively sound affluence (and hence not the sort of people well suited to coping with collapse). What you cannot easily get are the skills and knowledge you need to operate it, repair it, maintain it, etc.

Then of course, all you would have is the vessel. You wouldn't necessarily have numerous other things without having done quite a lot of long term planning and work. Plenty of tools and equipment that you need short term (or even food - not really hoarding if you're planning longer ocean passages - necessary to have stocks), plus of course things with specific relevance to collapse (and not to modern day sailing) that you wouldn't get with it. You'd also need to wait until the very last minute - the onset of collapse - as obviously there are legal implications to it (and you need a state of at least near lawlessness to do it).

Imagine the difficulty in keeping anything larger than a village together.
Imagine the difficulty a village would have in building a saw, or a book, or a refrigerator.
I agree that another century of BAU will doom us, but also believe that without the grid we're already doomed.

Another century of BAU or another decade of BAU - modern civilisation is doomed either way. Our species though need not be - and it seems far from impossible to raise the collapse floor such that saws and books might be doable in a few generations. We don't really need refrigerators - there are a host of older ways of storing and preserving food that can work just fine. They are a matter of convenience more than necessity. In any event, one suspects if you live in an area cold enough to reliably get ice in the winter you could build an icehouse just like the old days...

To do anything more than survive does of course require a group to have resolved the demands of survival with comfortable margin to spare for other activities. Furthermore, one must resolve the immediate demands of survival fast - within a generation - or else the loss of knowledge massively deepens as the next generation grows up knowing only that, and likely learning and valuing only that (how to survive).

[ccgwebmaster]

Red ochre or hematite is fairly easy to source so with a furnace, bellows, charcoal and some hematite smelting skills can still be reproduced or relearned. I am sure making weapons will be the desired outcome of recreated smelting skills but farm implements ,axes and trade items will help support those groups that can maintain themselves in the iron age.

So how do you find the haematite? That's my sticking point. From what I've read most of the worlds iron ore occurs in geographically specific (but widely distributed globally) locations in banded formations underneath the soil - sometimes as little as a few feet (very accessible if only you know it's there) and sometimes somewhat deeper.

Now if you had control over the terrain you were going to hang out around - you could just preselect an area where you knew you could dig for it (and people could work out how to find new deposits later). If you don't have that control though - what seems ideal to me is to be able to look at the terrain and identify if it's at least worth digging? How did people do this in more primitive times?

There is an awful lot of detail to all these processes in a modern context but my sentiment is that one only needs to be able to replicate the very crudest and most basic implementation - human nature is such that if you do only that and there is only one immediate use - over time the process will be improved and the technology advanced (which could be accelerated by retaining at least some focus on education and trying to get a ideology established that valued learning and knowledge and discovery).

To that end one need only retain the "discovery point" of key technologies, enabling a small group (or even individual) to focus on breadth of knowledge in favour of depth.

[ccgwebmaster]

Without money I've few things that would be of value in a bartering economy & my longevity would probably be a matter of weeks, or possibly of months if some group saw value in a decrepit old man whose only value might be in his ability to tell humorous anecdotes.
Terry

Notwithstanding the issues raised by the loss of modern medicine, one would do well to look at the past and see what role older people played in more primitive times? It seems to me that in a group without a strict initial head count constraint one can find plenty of things for even fairly decrepit older people to do:

• educate the young
• babysit
• hold a weapon in last resort (or a modern one anyway)
• (will think of more when older...)

While I grant I think collapse will have a high conflict stage, I also don't think that will last a long time - certainly not indefinitely. Fighting and burglary are not sustainable survival techniques (you need a perpetual supply of victims, at which point I guess you declare yourself king and farm your victims by moving to a regime of extracting tax in return for "security" - but even that step moves the social landscape into politics more than conflict).

In any case I've seen people the wrong side of 80 still racing sailing dinghies and gardening and so on... the old don't have to be disposable? If they choose to assume they are, I guess they'll not bother to do anything to make sure they can add value though?

[Bruce Steele]

Ccg, Red ochre has been used for rock art, burials, and body paint for a 100,000 years plus. We are lucky to have over 100 rock art sites locally( painted caves  ) and I have been to a most of them. For 30 years I have wandered about tracking down sites with my friends. Most sites are deep in the wilderness and I have kept track of ocher, both red and yellow, that I see while wandering about in search of rock art that was created with these mineral pigments. Usually it is small pieces but on occasion it outcrops with lots of ground scatter and an occasional baseball sized piece but just ground collected pieces would add up fairly quickly. The rock art sites are sacred and associated with perennial springs,  water being sacred here in the desert southwest. Chert and workable rock is more abundant and concretions for stone bowls are also available. Those raw materials that supported native culture are still available if you look for them.
 Even my friends that track down art sites with me don't have a lot of interest in bow making, flint knapping  bowl making, arrow making or for that matter smelting. These are survival skills to be sure but passing the knowledge along isn't a whole lot different than the problem the last survivors of any number of now lost tribes have suffered. For the tens of millions of people within 200 miles of where I live how many want to learn and pay their dues? Again it's lunatic fringe but in my opinion praying at the springs is important too. My list of apprentices is zero. To be honest I don't have any interest in telling the location of the springs but the rest of the knowledge base is just as useful. Post collapse local knowledge will be very important but it takes decades to walk the backcountry . It's important to know what your looking for. I have a saying that I share with my crew on bleak days fishing," you have to want it".

   http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/bog_iron.htm     

[OldLeatherneck]

............. if some group saw value in a decrepit old man whose only value might be in his ability to tell humorous anecdotes.
Terry

Terry,

Knowing you as well as I think I do, I certainly hope that you have no hopes of becoming the spiritual adviser in a refugee conclave of Southern White Evangelicals.

On a more serious note, the value of elders will vary, in the resulting conclaves depending on the predominant value system of that specific surviving group.  Some will by chance be more diverse in their ethnic, racial, religious, educational and skill set demographics.  The more diverse the grouping, the better the chances for long term survival, however initial frictions between opposing elements in the beginning will be very challenging as the group tries to organize into a viable community.

I'm concerned that so much of the knowledge that has been amassed in the past few hundred years will be lost to future civilizations.  I wouldn't know where to begin culling the libraries of the world's universities for those books most essential to pass on to a future society.

And now for a very scary thought;

A million years from now, archeologists will discovery a vault deep in a cavern. 
What they might find is the complete writings of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh!! ...Shudder the thought!!

[ccgwebmaster]

I'm concerned that so much of the knowledge that has been amassed in the past few hundred years will be lost to future civilizations.  I wouldn't know where to begin culling the libraries of the world's universities for those books most essential to pass on to a future society.

Simple? Flip the problem on it's head and start with an empty pile that you add books onto. Far more feasible. Inasmuch as every person that is born must start with nothing in terms of education and information that way it's more important to hold onto simple school text books than treatises on the finer points of MRI scanners as you not only need the information but the learning pathway to bring someone up to it. Then you choose the branches you think valuable and extend them as far as you think feasible for your assumed collapse floor (and group/resource capacity).

Even then no point being too book heavy - the books won't last forever and while useful cannot be assumed upon as there are plenty of ways they can get lost or damaged even setting aside the question of how long you expect to rely upon them for. Therefore the most important information must also be stored in peoples heads - the minimum framework, at least (noting that some knowledge has prerequisites to make it useful, eg why would people bother with the equations driving electrical systems if they don't have the means to produce electricity). Also, even with books - many people still need actively taught something to learn it.

James Lovelock had a decent idea with the premise of creating "durable stores of knowledge", but personally I can't say I've managed to think of any approaches cheap enough and fast enough to do that meet the truly durable requirement.

[JimD]

Appropriately I was off hiking in the mountains all weekend.  A few thoughts as always on the comments.

Metallurgy. This will not be an issue post collapse for at least 500-1000 years.  Why because the worlds is awash in mountains of dozens of different types of steel.  Scavenging and cannibalizing will dominate for hundreds of years.  Think how much metal of different kinds just sit in an auto junk yard.  If it rusts into a pile that is also your source of concentrated iron ore.  One is going to need piles of coal or charcoal to burn for forging though.

Skills.  I hand make weapons (my chosen field is edged weapons - knifes and short swords).  The quality I can make if taken care of properly will last hundreds of years.  The top quality firearms made today will also last hundreds of years.  Even when frequently used.  A top quality automatic 9mm or 45 cal is capable of being fired 20,000 times before it is worn out.   I still have my grandfathers WWI army rifle and it is perfectly usable and it is 98 years old.  The volume of ammunition existing today would last a very long time.  And we are making billions of rounds every year.  Reforging or reworking existing metal is not difficult and we will be able to make almost anything for quite some time.  In a friend of mine's knife shop there is a milling machine and a precision grinder that were built before there was electric power to run them (they were belt driven from steam engines).  They are accurate by a skilled operator to better than 1/ 10,000 of an inch.  One can easily use them to build any small arms parts needed from that huge pile of metal laying around.

Every farmer and village is going to be armed to the teeth and raiders will not last long.  War lords will however and the farmers will align with them and create feudal societal structures for self protection.  My ancestors (And likely yours as well) were all farmers when they were not soldiers.  Fighting was their 2nd job and no one is going to easily take anything from them.

We are not going back to the hunter-gatherer stage except maybe in the far north or islands in the Pacific.  There are not going to be any animals left to hunt.  We are going back to, IMHO, to a feudal agrarian society which will have many trappings of the modern world like our weapons and medium tech knowledge.  Much of medicine will survive as long as you do not depend on the very high tech stuff.  A reasonable large manor will be able to produce penicillin for instance.

While I don't agree with all of John Michael Geer's thinking along these lines I do agree in general with his stair step societal decline which takes place over hundreds of years.  We will lose a lot of capability at the crash and in the few decades thereafter.  From that time on it will be gradually down overall until we reach a stabilization point.  Depending on when the collapse happens and how far the initial fall is determines how the following years play out.  It is quite probable that we eventually stabilize at a low industrial level with trappings of medium technology.  If collapse is very deep very fast we could go much lower to the medieval level but still with a lot of modern knowledge and some modern technology.  But where ever the bottom turns out to be it will not be reached for hundreds of years most likely as we will be living off the detritus of our current world.  The big issue is total global population and how long it takes to get it down far enough that the climate and eco-systems stabilize.  With only a billion people left we can have a pretty capable level of technology (not sustainable but able to exist for millennia).  But we have to get down to those kinds of numbers quickly to achieve that.  If we run the table trying to keep this disaster afloat we will turn the Earth into a cinder and how many the Earth will be able to support and their level of technology will be greatly diminished.

SATire:

Such things like a collapse are high risk and low gain tasks. By definition a collapse is not controlable. Therefore, you can not expect to reach any goal by it. The revolutionary romantic of todays talking will change into an ugly situation for everybody once the fiction gets closer to reality. I can see no reason to go for the collapse. For me it looks like "bla bla" of radical poeple: who is the most radical in the room is going to win the show. I can not see how such things could help us. Things that help are e.g. Amish BAU, green BAU and any other way of life we learned in human history which would not depend on holes in the ground and CO2 in the air. I think there is realy a lot of work to do for anybody of us and there is no valid excuse to start the work.

I do not agree with your high risk low gain characterization.  Collapse is coming either way so that is not part of the calculation.  The choice is early or late in time.  Later collapse is a bigger collapse so that is worse I believe.  Which delivers the best result?  I say it is early so that is high gain and later is low gain.

Yes you can reach a goal by it.  Given that the longer we go before collapse the more resources we consume and the  more critical damage we do to the eco-system, it matters tremendously when that collapse happens.  If collapse happens in 2050 then we have 36 more years of destroying resources, raising carbon levels, higher eventual levels of equilibrium temperatures and sea level, a crash that happens from 9+ billion vice 7+ billions (vastly more death and suffering), etc.   And will almost certainly result post collapse in a lower level of survival and technology than if we triggered collapse sooner.  The goal is to have more resources and a less hostile environment with an early collapse.  Is there any argument that an early collapse would not satisfy that goal?  Developing skills for that feudal society is sound also, but not sufficient.

By choosing to drag things out as long as possible, as you advocate, and as I am equally convinced is exactly what we are going to do, is to deliberately choose the path that leads to MORE suffering (though someone else's instead of ours - a typical response) not less suffering.  One may as well acknowledge that reality if that is one's choice.

How is it more 'radical' for one person to want to choose a path that results in less total suffering while the person claiming not to be a 'radical' is choosing a path which results in more suffering?   

[wili]

Good insights, Jim. But I wonder how many people have the kinds of skills you have and how many people have the kinds of machines your friends have. Hundreds? Thousands? I rather doubt millions. If we imagine a not-too-distant future with increased diseases and violence, and decreased food security, chance could end up wiping out the few specific people who have these skills and these tools. I certainly do think that we will have some kind of scavenging society, but somethings are easier to scavenge than others. What will mostly be lacking, imo, is leisure...the free time to learn such skills and to teach them to others.

And having a lot of heavily armed villages is not necessarily a prescription for peaceful co-existence, imho.

I think the best case for passing on knowledge is that of the early Medieval Church--mostly intentionally very poor groups of monks in mostly fairly remote locations quietly devoting themselves to preserving manuscripts and knowledge. Not fail safe, by any means, but it is a strategy that has been 'road tested' after a previous collapse.

[Bruce Steele]

JimD, Hiking is nicer this time of year, no snakes, ticks or heat stroke.
  I suppose living within driving range of 15 million people limits ones choices. I just don't think I have the stomach for defending against the likely push out of L.A.   I have read before that the choices one makes will be driven by whether you have dependent children. So one alternative is to live a very primitive existence in a very remote place. Those choices will be water dependent and here on the West Coast those water resources are very limited. Even a very large arsenal won't help much if you can't pump water. Farming will likely return to dry land farming because the water infrastructure demands central control and that will be a big problem.
  If one stays a scavenger very long the knowledge base for a more vertically integrated infrastructure will IMO deteriorate over time. Thinking too much about ones personal survival is selfish to be sure but transmitting those bits of knowledge necessary for someone trying to rebuild 100+ years from now isn't. Like Wili says much of that knowledge isn't common knowledge even today and those individuals with a knowledge of skills like smelting will be greatly reduced post collapse. Armed encampments don't seem like a good option to me, getting near any such village will be dangerous and sharing what ever knowledge base remains will not be conducive to ones health. Very small groups that live very independently in harsh surroundings sounds preferable to me.
       

[JimD]

wili

But I wonder how many people have the kinds of skills you have and how many people have the kinds of machines your friends have. Hundreds? Thousands? I rather doubt millions. If we imagine a not-too-distant future with increased diseases and violence, and decreased food security, chance could end up wiping out the few specific people who have these skills and these tools.

Thus the whole point of having people learn the old skills and to try and spread the knowledge.  The more there are who know how to do things the better the chance of some making it through the bottleneck.  Of course the groups of people post collapse who end up with the best set of these people with knowledge will also have the best chance of success.

Everyone should stockpile books which contain both the practical knowledge of all the fundamental technical skills and how to do things from a low to medium technical  base, but also all of the academic knowledge we have developed over the years.  I sincerely hope there are a lot of people out there collecting all the school text books clear up to phd level.  Your new monks (and I expect people like that to exist) can maintain the existence of the esoteric stuff pending regeneration of the technology to be able to use that knowledge once again.   Large population groups should have teachers and education of the young should not stop and the knowledge should be preserved and passed down the generations to when it can be used again.  Hopefully with more maturity next time.

I have a very large set  of  books on gardening/farming, construction skills, metalworking, woodworking, the FoxFire books, math/engineering books up to graduate level, philosophy, history.  I will pass them on to my son if I can or someone else who would carry them forward.  Plus I have a mountain of tools.  I have already given my son a  big pile of them and will shift more to him every time I go see him.  I am also arming my children over time and have long ago trained them how to use weapons and to fight.  My daughter is a vicious little street fighter and has taken out male blackbelts in full contact fights as has my son in real fights.  Both are excellent with weapons and my son is gifted with a bow (his grandfather was on an NCAA champion archery squad) and his sister is near competition level with a 45 automatic (I trained her     One does what one can.

And having a lot of heavily armed villages is not necessarily a prescription for peaceful co-existence, imho.

And the contrary imho is that a village that is not heavily armed and capable will not be around long enough to have an opportunity to co-exist.

[JimD]

Bruce

I understand what you are saying.  You and I both live in the southwest which, as we all know, is one of the most non-sustainable places in the US.  If major collapse happened here (unlikely before you and I are long gone) the post bottleneck population would be a small fraction of what it is now.  You might be more likely to experience that if the great earthquake finally hits LA.  I would be more concerned about that than living through the collapse if I lived where you do.

Given the variety of climates and ecological niches in the world, and the wide distribution of people, I expect that when collapse comes every possible configuration of human groups and approaches to living will be tried.  Some which will work out in one place would  be certain to fail in another.  There will be no one size that fits all.  I expect feudal structures to dominate, but not to say that will be everywhere.  Island communities, in both a real and figurative sense, could easily end up with a variety of other forms of living.  But for those groups living in the remaining large fertile areas there will be serious competition for land and water.  Those who are unprepared to defend their place in it, even if they are not expansive by nature, will just be washed away by the press of competition.  Only when the population in a region has reached near a sustainable level with how much food can be grown will that competition wind down.  And it will wind back up again if they over populate again or over use their resource base.  I don't expect trade between different entities to go away at all.  In the past there was always trade and people figured out how to conduct it relatively securely and to mutual benefit.  But with the vast infrastructure available for scavenging some will not likely have to do to much trading till long after collapse.  Some will probably make their livings scavenging.  Caravans to the ghost town of Phoenix in the winter for goodies!

One has to be very careful on site selection if you are taking this approach.

Very small groups that live very independently in harsh surroundings sounds preferable to me.

Those most prone to gravitate to those types of locations are the least oriented towards coexistence and quickest to violence in my experience.  And harsh surroundings are likely to get harsher as the effects of AGW dial in over the next few hundred years. If I was of an age that it mattered I would be burrowing into a farming community in a place which has long term prospects of being a fertile region and plan taking my chances there.     

[ccgwebmaster]

Metallurgy. This will not be an issue post collapse for at least 500-1000 years.  Why because the worlds is awash in mountains of dozens of different types of steel.  Scavenging and cannibalizing will dominate for hundreds of years.  Think how much metal of different kinds just sit in an auto junk yard.  If it rusts into a pile that is also your source of concentrated iron ore.  One is going to need piles of coal or charcoal to burn for forging though.

I made a list of arguments against reliance on scrap from the old civilisation before - curious what your thoughts are:

• You are predicating the foundations of a future civilisation upon a finite resource that will run out leaving only problems later, see any similarities with fossil fuels?
• Most commonly used metals corrode or oxidise in timescales well under a thousand years, plus there is the logistical problems of working them
• Much of the existing infrastructure is going to be destroyed, whether by rising seas, sand dunes, modern weaponry, etc
• The ideal sites for long term survival and eventual prosperity may be very far removed geographically from those where people live today due to the scale of the climate shifts

We are not going back to the hunter-gatherer stage except maybe in the far north or islands in the Pacific.  There are not going to be any animals left to hunt.  We are going back to, IMHO, to a feudal agrarian society which will have many trappings of the modern world like our weapons and medium tech knowledge.  Much of medicine will survive as long as you do not depend on the very high tech stuff.  A reasonable large manor will be able to produce penicillin for instance.

Short term, perhaps (not sure I agree about penicillin though). I think medium to long term you need to consider the ongoing climate change context and long distance globalised supply chains. How will the farmers work the fields? How will they get weather forecasts? How will they handle changes in climate that gradually continue to erode the viability of a given region for a specific crop? (bearing in mind that if natural feedbacks come into play, decades or centuries hence a significant chunk of the planet - possibly even a majority of the currently inhabited area - will become uninhabitable due to web bulb temperatures becoming too high.

I don't think we have a path to orderly retreat to medieval feudal conditions personally. We might hang onto the margins of the scrap from the old civilisation for a while, living off the corpse - but to retreat backwards so far technologically? It seems improbable without serious effort in spreading the necessarily knowledge in the surviving section of the population.

[ccgwebmaster]

Very small groups that live very independently in harsh surroundings sounds preferable to me.

Those most prone to gravitate to those types of locations are the least oriented towards coexistence and quickest to violence in my experience.  And harsh surroundings are likely to get harsher as the effects of AGW dial in over the next few hundred years. If I was of an age that it mattered I would be burrowing into a farming community in a place which has long term prospects of being a fertile region and plan taking my chances there.   

I'm with Bruce on this one - self sufficiency in a remote (if initially inhospitable environment) seems to me to offer the most sure pathway forwards. I'm not sure why you think one needs to be quickest to violence to favour that strategy - for me - it's actually a key part of avoiding violence, but then and again you need to consider the thinking that takes me to that point.

I am from the UK and it is highly unlikely I should ever have the resources to afford land and housing etc in the right sort of area for this (let alone be able to find my type of employment to fund it all). It would be more challenging to acquire serious firepower (let alone use it in the grey period of collapse itself). The population density of the UK is astronomically high compared to probably carrying capacity post collapse. I would expect a very high incidence of violence there, and while I would like to think I wouldn't be entirely useless - I'm certainly not Rambo, and I also don't particularly want to have to fight.

To go to another country and integrate with a suitable farming community poses problems too. Firstly, as always - the matter of resources. Secondly language barriers and the integration question. Thirdly the legal aspect of immigration - if one has to be in the shadows even to start with (complicates doing anything else legal).

So what does that leave? As far as I can see - to have any say in the future - without submitting to the social order of my nation (which is already currently oppressing the poorer section of the population), I have to go elsewhere - to a place more remote than most people can or will get to. In that way one tries to avoid as much of the high conflict stages of collapse as possible and tries to maximise the chances to setup what you want to setup with a minimum of outside interference. In the process I may as well pick a location that has good long term prospects climatically (inasmuch as one can tell).

Many places will become more harsh - but centuries from now some places might actually be less harsh. Those are the places for future civilisation to flourish, rather than the old remnants scavenging whatever existence they can from the ashes of the modern world. I submit that it will be harder to revert to that sort of existence and to sustain it than one might at first think. Consider the simple question of land ownership and cultivation knowledge in developed nations, and work out how you get from here to there - and will the existing farming communities withstand that process?

My caution is most of all that people become very short term - as when starving peoples in Africa eat their seeds to survive. But in this case, there is no external assistance - nor real prospect thereof.

[SATire]

I do not agree with your high risk low gain characterization.  Collapse is coming either way so that is not part of the calculation.  The choice is early or late in time.  Later collapse is a bigger collapse so that is worse I believe.  Which delivers the best result?  I say it is early so that is high gain and later is low gain.

Yes you can reach a goal by it.  Given that the longer we go before collapse the more resources we consume and the  more critical damage we do to the eco-system, it matters tremendously when that collapse happens.  If collapse happens in 2050 then we have 36 more years of destroying resources, raising carbon levels, higher eventual levels of equilibrium temperatures and sea level, a crash that happens from 9+ billion vice 7+ billions (vastly more death and suffering), etc.   And will almost certainly result post collapse in a lower level of survival and technology than if we triggered collapse sooner.  The goal is to have more resources and a less hostile environment with an early collapse.  Is there any argument that an early collapse would not satisfy that goal?  Developing skills for that feudal society is sound also, but not sufficient.

By choosing to drag things out as long as possible, as you advocate, and as I am equally convinced is exactly what we are going to do, is to deliberately choose the path that leads to MORE suffering (though someone else's instead of ours - a typical response) not less suffering.  One may as well acknowledge that reality if that is one's choice.

How is it more 'radical' for one person to want to choose a path that results in less total suffering while the person claiming not to be a 'radical' is choosing a path which results in more suffering?

JimD - I think there is one big problem in your idea "early collapse = better than late collapse": The main risk of early collapse (next to all the dead poeple killed for that purpose) is, that society would bombed only to e.g. 1850 levels - Therefore it would pay us only a few hundered years until we reach the point we have now again. Only a wipe out of humans would guarantee that humans will not be harmfull again.

Each collapse is not a solution. It will probably not result in sustainable societies. And what I advocate is clearly not "choosing to drag things out as long as possible". Instead what I suggest is to head towards sustainablity right now, since we have the ability and the knowledge and the good reason for it right now.
This is the perfect time for us to get sustainable (of course). And there is no need for a fight between Amish way and renewables - booth fit together in a single society, a lot of poeple are living allready here together with both solar panels, hand-forging and bio-farming. We do not need suffering - we just need a reasonable frugality.

So - step out of that "growth-fiction" and start to do sustainable things that make sense. Stop fighting others that try hard to do sustainable things than make sense - we can do together instead. But please stop talking about killing poeple - that path is not sustainable and it probably will kill those poeple first, which want to kill others.
 

[sidd]

"And there is no need for a fight between Amish way and renewables - booth fit together in a single society, ... "

Quite. I know an Amish farmer (sometimes grows canola for us) who has an half an acre of solar panels. Depends on the local bishop and community.

[JimD]

SATire

I realize these discussions are unpleasant for you and I am not trying to make them harder.  But I have a problem with much of what you say.

JimD - I think there is one big problem in your idea "early collapse = better than late collapse": The main risk of early collapse (next to all the dead poeple killed for that purpose) is, that society would bombed only to e.g. 1850 levels - Therefore it would pay us only a few hundered years until we reach the point we have now again. Only a wipe out of humans would guarantee that humans will not be harmfull again.

I don't think this follows at all.  Humans will always be harmful.  It is the scale of damage that is the issue.  Following collapse would we once again repeat the growth into collapse mode again.  Perhaps as we always have before in history.  But it is also possible that the scale of this collapse and our better understanding of it would put us in a position to learn from our mistakes. Perhaps not.  But waiting for collapse does not effect that possible result in any meaningful way that I can see.  I don't understand this 1850 idea.  Technology is not going to disappear overnight.  It will, over time post collapse, become  less complex but it is highly unlikely we go back all the way to 1850.  At least not everywhere.  Do you see electricity disappearing?  I don't. 

You are absolutely fixated on this death thing.  But you only seem to see the immediate issue as it relates to a quick collapse.  Several of us have addressed why we think that a quick collapse results in fewer deaths and much less suffering than the long term option.  If you disagree with that assessment then please explain your reasoning.  Why do you think it is the other way around.  Or do you?

Each collapse is not a solution. It will probably not result in sustainable societies. And what I advocate is clearly not "choosing to drag things out as long as possible". Instead what I suggest is to head towards sustainablity right now, since we have the ability and the knowledge and the good reason for it right now.

A collapse is a solution implemented by reality.  We have been talking about accepting eventual reality and trying to better the long term result. 

Civilization (societies) are and never have been sustainable.  Through all of human history we have been very destructive to our environment and to other species.  I do not in any way expect that to change.  Why would you?  We do not have the ability to live sustainably any longer.  Once we left the hunter-gatherer life style it became impossible to do that.  Once we embarked upon an agricultural lifestyle our population grew beyond the local carrying capacities of our ecosystems and we had to start overusing the land and resources to survive and keep growing.  Industrialization made that much worse by orders of magnitude.  We can never live sustainably again as the land base has been so depleted it would now be impossible.  So the goal (unless you are an anarcho-primitivist) is not to live sustainably but to just dramatically reduce the destruction we impose upon the Earth to the point where we can exist for a very long period of time and perhaps work out this problem.  We do not have the knowledge or technology (an oxymoron in the sustainability sense) of living sustainably.

This is the perfect time for us to get sustainable (of course). And there is no need for a fight between Amish way and renewables - booth fit together in a single society, a lot of poeple are living allready here together with both solar panels, hand-forging and bio-farming. We do not need suffering - we just need a reasonable frugality.

The things you mention are not actually sustainable.  But we can live that way for millennia as long as there are not billions upon billions of us.  If there were a billion maybe.  500 million probably.   Population levels are critical and primary to all paths to survival.

So - step out of that "growth-fiction" and start to do sustainable things that make sense. Stop fighting others that try hard to do sustainable things than make sense - we can do together instead. But please stop talking about killing poeple - that path is not sustainable and it probably will kill those poeple first, which want to kill others.

Well I am about as anti-growth as you can get I think.  You ask me to stop talking about the benefits of an early collapse because you don't like what it implies.  But by advocating not doing that it means you are advocating the alternative, which is the later collapse, which I think results in even more of what you don't like than my solution.  How does that make sense?

[SATire]

JimD,

if you think this discussion is unpleasant or that the set-up of a sustainable society is to much of work, you are probably right. But I am sorry, it is the way to go.

You are also right, that in history human societies have not a good track record in sustainability (maximum understatement). But in future it must become sustainable - the environment will force us. We have the instruments, we have the examples of a lot of different ways to live and we are aware of all complexity and all simplicity of human life, thus we can do it now.

Why do I have problems with killing poeple? Because such collapse on purpose would put humanity per se in question. It is very unlikely that unreasonable behaviour would result in a reasonable society. E.g. how to explain that to Kant?

We still have a chance and we can do it - half of the countries are allready away from population growth, all the way from Europe, Russia, China to Japan we have less than 2 children per couple. Even in Iran reproduction felt from 6 to 2 in one generation. Typically education of women is enough for that task - not a big deal. In a 1850 world we had no such chance - Enlightenment was young and education much worse. Next to all the useless killing the destruction of education are reasons to vote against artificial collapse.

And to reiterate again - if you would call collapse to step away from mainstream way of life, from growth, digging holes and producing CO2, I am with you and would love to plan together with you the steps to go. It is hard work, but it is feasible.

[wili]

This seems somewhat relevant to the current drift of this thread:

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-10/come-on-home-ecological-agriculture-and-sixteen-wonderful-farms-that-point-the-way

>>Our industrial way of life is toast.  The way we live now in Industrial, USA will not last long.  It may persist anywhere from a few more hours to a few more years, but the faux stability we’re feeling now will end shortly.  Jim Kunstler summarizes the big picture nicely at his Forecast 2014 post: http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/forecast-2014-burning-down-the-house/.  And Chris Martenson does all the play by play at http://www.peakprosperity.com/.

>>The post-industrial transition will be damn hard.  While we can certainly expect much laughter, love, and beauty in the ‘collapsing’ times ahead, we’ll also be visited by a generous helping of much nastier stuff.  Here’s a sampling of some unwelcome things we’ll need to deal with over the coming years as our civilization unravels:  economic depression, broken supply lines, hunger and want, military opportunism, spasms of pollution, repression, homelessness & refugee camps, disease, random & directed violence, etc.  See Dmitry Orlov’s The Five Stages of Collapse for a general framework of what we might expect.  And see Kunstler’s World Made by Hand novels for a fiction take on the same ideas.

>>We’ll likely have trouble feeding ourselves in the coming decades.  As the fabric of fossil-fuel-based industrial agriculture unravels, we’ll be shocked to find that (1) the transition to traditional annuals-based agriculture is severely challenged by past erosion of the necessary capital (soil fertility, fossil aquifers, knowledge, skills, genetics, etc.) and (2) that really any sort of dependable agriculture becomes highly problematic due to a destabilizing climate.

But most of the article is a loving evaluation of 16 "Farms that Point the Way"--something that may be of interest, too.

[JimD]

SATire

I think your belief that we can create a sustainable way of living along the lines of what you describe and via the approach you advocate is a total fantasy and cannot be done at all.

Any form of civilization previously known in human history was not sustainable.  There is nothing we know now or are likely to ever know that will change that.  It is just a dream.  Any precise analysis of the resource requirements needed to live the way you are talking about will show that to be the case.  Industrial technologies cannot be sustainable basically by definition.  We have finite resources and the laws of thermodynamics to take into account.  GreenBAU approaches are doomed to fail as they are not sustainable either.

The ONLY WAY we can maintain a significant civilization long term (but not forever as it will not be sustainable) is to dramatically reduce population.  We     simply    have    no    choice!!!  IF we do not find start the process of a rapid reduction in population now as we desperately need to do then nature will do it her way (which is extremely brutal) when we finally consume the slack out of the system in a few decades.  Nothing you are doing will change that dynamic.  We deal with reality or it deals with us.  There is no other path to choose from.

The point you made about declining birth rates is just flat wrong.  With all of that taken into account we are looking at significant population growth for another 40 years, topping out at about 9.5 billion.  If we do this you destroy the Earth and most all of the chances for any future civilization.   Population will be reduced to well under what it is today by the end of the century via famine, disease, and war and will have to trend down for a long time after that to approach the Earths carrying capacity.

The data is there to see all of this.  Everyone wants to find a way to continue to live the basic lifestyle we have lived the last century.  As you argue for.  That will not be possible much longer.

It is very unlikely that unreasonable behaviour would result in a reasonable society.

If one steps aside from their fears and looks at the situation we are in I think it is you who exhibits the unreasonable behavior.  You choose a worse result over a better one because of that perhaps.  Humans have always been very selfish and I don't expect that to change.  We are moving past our last chance to act for the greater good.   

[TerryM]

Jim
My father was a brilliant man with no notion of how people would react, but once many decades ago we were reading a piece that said that So. California would need to bring in billions of gallons of fresh water within some time frame to sate the growing population, He just looked at the article & opined that it was BS because if they didn't bring in the water, the population wouldn't grow.
For once he had it right.
Overpopulation won't occur if there aren't the resources to feed them. It won't be nice to look at, but it will happen whether we look or not.
Sudan isn't seeing a population explosion, and left on it's own it probably won't for a very long time. The Have Nations aren't growing, it's the Have Not Nations that explode whenever there's a food surplus.
Climate change is here, and it's working as we speak to lower population density. I don't think anything we can do would be more, or less cruel than the way nature will deal with it.
Terry

[JimD]

Overpopulation won't occur if there aren't the resources to feed them. It won't be nice to look at, but it will happen whether we look or not.
Sudan isn't seeing a population explosion, and left on it's own it probably won't for a very long time. The Have Nations aren't growing, it's the Have Not Nations that explode whenever there's a food surplus.
Climate change is here, and it's working as we speak to lower population density. I don't think anything we can do would be more, or less cruel than the way nature will deal with it.
Terry

But we do have the ability to feed them and will for some time.  Thus we have the ongoing work to increase access and efficiency of the industrial food system (based of course on access to vast amounts of fossil fuel).  This system will be able to increase production for many years still.  We can debate how many, but it is good to keep in mind what we are capable of as we become desperate.  In the mean time the effects of AGW continue to build and population will continue to rise at about 75 million a year.  There will inevitably come a point when AGW depresses food production and the rising population's food requirements cross.  When that happens there is no fixing it.  And it may fluctuate back and forth across that intersection for a few years but AGW will be relentless and over time will severely constrain production.

I expect that vast use of fossil fuels will eventually be deliberately dialed down significantly when we are forced by AGW to capitulate.  One could expect that this event will also negatively impact food production.  Combine that with AGW and it guarantees big population declines.  The weak and the Have Not's, as always, will eventually be left to fend for themselves.

BTW some of the Have nations are growing.  The US population is growing strongly, Australia is growing strongly, China is growing some and dropping the one-child policy is likely to see a significant rise in growth, Brazil and India are growing fast (though they sort of fall in-between Have and Have Not).  Population growth is fairly fast at +75 million a year and is projected to rise by over 2 billion by 2050.  We are probably a realistic 5-7 times carrying capacity now.  Carrying capacity is degrading quickly and population is rising quickly.  It just can't end well.

[wili]

Again, much/most of the industrial ag system does not produce food to be eaten (directly) by people. So...much of it could disappear, and only some relatively high income meat and dairy eaters and ethanol users would notice.

[ccgwebmaster]

Again, much/most of the industrial ag system does not produce food to be eaten (directly) by people. So...much of it could disappear, and only some relatively high income meat and dairy eaters and ethanol users would notice.

That really isn't true, quite the reverse in fact - when it comes to who notices.

Much of it can disappear and most people will starve while said high income meat eaters and ethanol users continue to consume those things regardless. Look at what's happened so far? Ethanol from corn used in biofuel extensively - do you think it's the people burning it in their car engines who are noticing the high food prices - or those in countries such as Egypt who struggle to feed themselves as the additional source of demand pushes prices up?

For as long as the system works as it does, the poor will lose their food before the affluent lose their ethanol or their meat. Hence, the poor are the ones who will feel the pain and notice the loss of their food.

[SATire]

The Have Nations aren't growing, it's the Have Not Nations that explode whenever there's a food surplus.

Terry, that is close to the point but not exactly hitting it. Education level drives population down, especially education level of women. Wealth alone does not help and is not necessary. Also correlation between wealth and happiness is poor. Wealth is part of growth-fiction.

If poeple have enough to eat and a place to live education is all that is needed. If those basic need are satisfied you need extras like small spread in wealth, fairness and freedom to reach happiness - those things come at no extra costs or ressource needs.

But anyway - most poeple and JimD will call me idealistic or a fantast again. Still I have no other chance but to plant some apple trees. Discussions like this can not be won or lost but may get some poeple in a boat and some others out - left in search for a boat more suitable.
My place is in a boat in which different ways towards a sustainable future are tolerated, investigated and practiced. Personally I can act most efficiently the way I am able to act. So I need this possibility and by this I am forced to let other poeple try their ways - while staying open and learn from things that work. If you rule out some pathes in advance or plan to kill other poeple and thus their ways to act, then I have to be out.

I am sorry if I messed up this discussion with my strange/fantastic thoughts. I will try to contain myself. Probably I am not qualified for serious international networking and should stay local.

[TerryM]

SATire
Please keep posting your views. If anyone should be reclusing himself from the topic it's myself. I've a well developed brown thumb that's never allowed me to grow as much as a single producing tomato plant & had never heard of Holmgren or Hopkins until this thread was opened.
I'm very interested in what you and others have to say on the subject but my own conclusions have yet to be drawn.
I do have questions about whether there is any difference between killing people now with a gun or later through starvation. If we conclude that we have to lower population in less than a generation it's not going to be pretty no matter the method. Forced sterilization works over a longer time frame, but the blowback would be fierce & who decides who gets to be a "breeder".
We may be facing a Lifeboat Quandary on a massive scale & my inclination is to let everyone pile on in the  hope that she won't capsize & rescue is only moments away. On the other hand I'm torn about whether once we're fully overloaded we should make a concerted effort to search for others who have already capsized their lifeboat.
Terry

[ccgwebmaster]

Please keep posting your views. If anyone should be reclusing himself from the topic it's myself. I've a well developed brown thumb that's never allowed me to grow as much as a single producing tomato plant & had never heard of Holmgren or Hopkins until this thread was opened.

I can't say I had heard of either of them previously myself. I'm not really "in the scene" though, firstly by never having associated with the right sort of people and secondly being just as happy (if not happier) thinking through things independently without relying too much on others peoples views.

SATire - provided everyone is taking part in a rational and reasonable fashion (which generally seems to be the case here), different views are of value to discussion - particularly if backed up with rational arguments. If everyone holds the same views - discussion dies. The different sides of a debate can both benefit from being set against each other and that can help to inform not only the people taking part in it but anyone else who later follows it.

As an example from your previous posts, one thing I picked up on was the premise that if people were relatively equal within a society, there was a good chance they would (or could at least) work together cooperatively and coherently to deal with collapse (to at least some degree). All the more valuable a point as it was drawn from your experience and not anecdote.

[Bruce Steele]

SATire, on this side of the pond I wonder sometimes "why are we so screwed up". I wonder if anybody is thinking this through . A couple weeks ago you linked a "bio-lands" list of best practices that showed me at least on your side of the pond somebody really is putting together energy, agriculture and environmental solutions. Over here we have " organics " which are marketing oriented, go figure.
I wonder why Germany has progressed on these questions with renewables and agricultural solutions while we Americans/Canadians are hellbent on fracking and tar sands. We need global scale thinking and we need examples of working solutions. If this silly little box is good for anything?
  Largely we are old men talking. I wrote this for my father this morning.

If an old man, a good man, a dying man
dreams lucid dreams
And awakes, back into the present, and asks
Can we still go live my dreams?
You can only answer yes
While he is awake he knows he is dying
and
slips back into dream
and sometimes talks in his dream
And you listen

When he awakes again you ask him
Do you remember?
He does

[SATire]

I do have questions about whether there is any difference between killing people now with a gun or later through starvation. If we conclude that we have to lower population in less than a generation it's not going to be pretty no matter the method.

Terry - from technical view you are right, the difference is small. But in reality the difference is HUGE: If I would kill someone with a gun, I would have done it. The fact that I would be guilty would change my life and the life of other poeple significantly.

If I kill someone far away by consuming coltan/oil/coffee/... resulting in some "side effects" at that remote place, it would not be the same thing: I am not guilty of some specific kill there but of course I am responsible for that death. Similar with AGW effects. 

If someone is killed far away without any relation to my action my only relationship would be charity - that is very different from guilt and accountability.

Bruce, ccg and Terry - thanks for your warm words. I was not planning to leave this forum but this thread. The reason for that is that I am really pissed off by Holmgrens paper. Such ideas like "planned collapse" make it very difficult at my place to get more poeple towards sustainablity. Reason and sense are the only capital we have to get poeple (at this place here) while fear and pressure will drive them away. Holmgren destroys all our credit. Lost confidence kills the chance to get the majority. It reminds me of the eighties when green poeple were totaly busy in wing fights between fundamentalists and realists. Only the end of such silly fights brought them into government. At this place we have to work with the poeple and not against them - that lesson was learned and is now in danger.

[werther]

"
If an old man, a good man, a dying man
dreams lucid dreams
And awakes, back into the present, and asks
Can we still go live my dreams?
You can only answer yes
While he is awake he knows he is dying
and
slips back into dream
and sometimes talks in his dream
And you listen

When he awakes again you ask him
Do you remember?
He does

Bruce Steele on The Forum ASI 12 Feb 2014 "

Bruce, I never heard my father, 84 years old, talk in his dreams. Nevertheless, your poem reminds me, he remembers, for sure. And that supports me in doing whatever I can to share compassion. Thanks.

SATire,
I'm a bit shocked. As I posted some days ago, I don't think Holmgren is advocating violent disruption at all. I may have read wrong. But I read a strong case to bring down the perverted financial system through coordinated disconnection by 'the aware'. In the light of 'limits to growth' it does seem to have a chance to succeed. Just a percentage of people stepping out could do the job. No need for guns? Just courage to face less material wealth?

[wili]

New radio interview with Holmgren, along with Nicole Foss.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-11/radio-ecoshock-crash-on-demand-with-david-holmgren-and-nicole-foss