NOT just another doom-monger book
There are just too many books about peak oil and other imminent economic, social and ecological crises, which all seem the same. They go over familiar ground and display no new insight or real depth of thought. I'm tired of reading them. Too often the author is a recent convert to these views and lacks the authority or background to contribute anything new, concluding feebly that the reader should learn about gardening and drive a smaller car. Well, duh! as my kids would say.
What a refreshing change to read Orlov's quirky and thought-provoking book which takes the basic premise of looming crisis for granted, and gets straight into delivering his first-hand insight into the collapse of the Soviet economy in a fresh, non-mathematical way (there are no graphs or tables of data) and how most people survived it. Not only that, but all delivered with the wickedly dry wit of a native Russian, living in the USA, who is clearly tired of hearing Americans crowing that they won the Cold War.
To give an example from the introduction, Orlov mentions a survey of Americans which asked, "Will you be able to afford to retire?" (one third said no). Without stopping to go over familiar arguments, Orlov proceeds immediately to strip away the euphemisms and assumptions, and translate the question as "Will you survive when you are too old to work, if not, what are you doing about it?". From his Russian experience, he then adds "Here is a bad solution: get drunk a lot."
Although aimed squarely at an American audience, this book is just as valuable for Europeans, and I recommend it to anyone who realises that our high-consumption, supermarkets-and-jet-planes society cannot last much longer, and is interested in thinking right through what that really means. Orlov treats his readers as intelligent people who will reach their own conclusions, and do not need to be spoon-fed with fatuous recommendations. It's a treat.
M. Lyster, Oxford, UK
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Nicest review ever
A lot of people might miss this one, because it is only on amazon.co.uk, so I am posting it here. I like it, because, for one thing, just like my book, it is short and easy to read. The other reasons should be obvious. Cheers, M. Lyster!
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Questions for Economists
Let's take a hypothetical Joe Blow. He is married and has a teen-age son. Like many Americans, Joe likes to live big: a big suburban mansion, a gigantic SUV, and, pièce de résistance, a sportfishing boat with not two but three 325-hoursepower Yamaha outboards on the back! Joe sells vacation/investment properties: condo units in partially completed new neighborhoods overlooking scenic brackish swamps in a hurricane zone. I have some questions about the effects of macroeconomic shifts on the financial outlook of the Blow family.
1. Joe's savings and retirement funds are tapped out, and he doesn't seem to be able to get any more loans. Nobody wants accept his prized possessions as collateral. What effect will rising interest rates have on Joe's ability to borrow?
2. The condos that Joe is trying to move are dropping in value. He hasn't been able to move a single one in many months. What effect will continuing asset depreciation have on his ability to earn commissions?
3. Joe's wife's credit cards are maxed out, and she doesn't seem to be able to get any more. What effect will inflation in China have on her ability to continue buying those stylish Chinese-made outfits she likes to surprise Joe with?
4. Joe's wife has planted some potatoes and squash in the back yard. What effect will rising food prices have on the cost of the produce she is growing?
5. To keep warm in the wintertime, the Blow family plans on burning their furniture. What effect will the rising heating oil and natural gas prices have their family budget?
6. Joe's son hasn't been able to get the student loans he needed to go on to college, so his Plan B is to develop a heroin habit and spend his days sitting in his room nodding out to music. He plans to pay for his habit by dressing up in some of his mom's sexier outfits and turning tricks. What effect will the economic policies of the two presidential candidates have on his business plan?
I am guessing that, in tackling these questions, an economist would most likely want to discuss whether what we have should properly be called inflation or deflation. Joe's assets are decreasing in value, and that is deflationary. There is also a great deal of volatility in food and energy prices, which might look like inflation, but then Joe's wages aren't rising to keep up, so there is no wage inflation. So perhaps it's a wash. What then is the optimum interest rate? There will certainly be some short-term pain, but it will make the economy more efficient in the long run. What was the question again?
It seems to me that a perfectly reasonable answer to all these questions is "none at all," but then I am not an economist. I am an engineer by training. And so here's a question I should be able to answer. Joe's stereo system is on fire. It kept blowing fuses, so he wrapped the fuse in tin foil, and then rats chewed through the speaker wires and shorted them out. What effect will graphic equalizer settings have on the sound quality of his stereo system?
None at all.
1. Joe's savings and retirement funds are tapped out, and he doesn't seem to be able to get any more loans. Nobody wants accept his prized possessions as collateral. What effect will rising interest rates have on Joe's ability to borrow?
2. The condos that Joe is trying to move are dropping in value. He hasn't been able to move a single one in many months. What effect will continuing asset depreciation have on his ability to earn commissions?
3. Joe's wife's credit cards are maxed out, and she doesn't seem to be able to get any more. What effect will inflation in China have on her ability to continue buying those stylish Chinese-made outfits she likes to surprise Joe with?
4. Joe's wife has planted some potatoes and squash in the back yard. What effect will rising food prices have on the cost of the produce she is growing?
5. To keep warm in the wintertime, the Blow family plans on burning their furniture. What effect will the rising heating oil and natural gas prices have their family budget?
6. Joe's son hasn't been able to get the student loans he needed to go on to college, so his Plan B is to develop a heroin habit and spend his days sitting in his room nodding out to music. He plans to pay for his habit by dressing up in some of his mom's sexier outfits and turning tricks. What effect will the economic policies of the two presidential candidates have on his business plan?
I am guessing that, in tackling these questions, an economist would most likely want to discuss whether what we have should properly be called inflation or deflation. Joe's assets are decreasing in value, and that is deflationary. There is also a great deal of volatility in food and energy prices, which might look like inflation, but then Joe's wages aren't rising to keep up, so there is no wage inflation. So perhaps it's a wash. What then is the optimum interest rate? There will certainly be some short-term pain, but it will make the economy more efficient in the long run. What was the question again?
It seems to me that a perfectly reasonable answer to all these questions is "none at all," but then I am not an economist. I am an engineer by training. And so here's a question I should be able to answer. Joe's stereo system is on fire. It kept blowing fuses, so he wrapped the fuse in tin foil, and then rats chewed through the speaker wires and shorted them out. What effect will graphic equalizer settings have on the sound quality of his stereo system?
None at all.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
The Last Cars
An interviewer recently asked me whether I am a futurist. After all, in my book, I make many predictions about the shape of the future – a practice that is taboo among social scientists. What, the interviewer asked, would be my response to criticism from social scientists? I answered that my response would be to request that they put the book down and back away slowly. It was not written for them.
I am more of a “presentist” myself, and a reluctant one at that: I see the world around me, observe its general direction, and then make predictions about its destination, which, I hope, it will take a long time in reaching. In this I am often frustrated, and developments that I would wish to take the better part of a decade materialize in a mere year or two.
Still, the idea of futurism sounds lovely. I have enjoyed reading futurist writers, Olaf Stapledon especially. And so I see no harm in trying to channel Stapledon. In sincere imitation of his great work “The Last and First Men,” I present here “The Last Cars.” (As for the “First Cars,” should you find the subject interesting, I encourage you to visit your local public library.)
In the middle of the year 2008 C.E. information technology finally reached a point of development known as the Singularity. Beyond that point, the combined intelligence of networked computers made further technological developments fast and effortless. The Singularity had little or no impact on cars, which, being rather bulky and slow to replace, continued to move at or near the speed limit, which was usually much, much lower than the speed of light. Nor was the Singularity able to achieve much when it came to increasing oil production, in order to alleviate the gasoline and diesel shortages that were beginning to put the economy in a state of shock.
However, the Singularity did manage prove its worth organizationally, by enabling the swift and universal introduction of so-called “driving plans.” Fuel could no longer be purchased directly, but only by entering into a contract with one of the two remaining oil companies: ExxonMobilShellBP and RosNeftGazProm. A driving plan entitled a driver to obtain a certain number of gallons per month from a set of approved gas stations. Unused gallons became “roll-over gallons,” which could be used during one of the subsequent months, and which eventually expired. A driving contract could be cancelled simply by going to the nearst hospital and donating a kidney – a brilliant arrangement that made cancellations quite rare.
The introduction of driving plans likewise did nothing to improve the situation with regard to the availability of transportation, which by the autumn of 2008 was bordering on the disasterous. To remedy the situation using a quick, Singularity-powered techno-fix, American auto companies teamed up to quickly design and mass-produce much smaller cars. In this, they recruited the help of the Shriners – America’s secret weapon when it comes to small car design. After a kick-off prayer breakfast, the executives and the Shriners poured out into the parking lot, where they torched three effigies of America’s previous failed attempts at small car design: a Ford Pinto, an AMC Gremlin, and a Chevy Vega.
Again, thanks to the Singularity, the Shriner design team was able to produce a new product in less then a fortnight, and by Christmas America had a new car it could love: a NASCAR micro-racer. The enthusiasm of the early adopters was somewhat tempered by the realization that the new car could only turn left. This resulted from the design team’s use of a certain Rapid Development methodology which forbade impementing features that were not considered strictly necessary. In spite of such minor annoyances, millions of NASCAR micro-racers were manufactured in Japan, Chrina, India, and other countries where America did its manufacturing, and the Federal Reserve obliged by printing enough money for all Americans to be able to afford to import and purchase these cars. However, this strategy had the unfortunate side-effect of destroying what little value remained in the US Dollar, effectively cutting the country off from two-thirds of its oil supply.
Very little is known about the period that followed; apparently, the Singularity crashed when the power grid collapsed, and by the time it came back the one engineer who knew how to cold-boot it could not be found, and the page of instructions he taped to the side of the server rack could not be deciphered. And so nothing further is known about cars as we are used to thinking of them. But some information survives about some alternative meanings that the word "car" subsequently acquired.
For instance, the term "car" came to be applied to a wheeled contraption with straps used by obese Americans to paddle about, to position themselves in front of television screens. They made it easier for their Iraqi handlers to feed them, hose them down, and to push them into the liposuction pens when it came time to harvest the biodiesel.
Later on, the term "car" came to be applied to an ingenious confection, which emitted the "new car taste" when you bit down on it, and made exquisite "Vroom-vroom!" sensations when rolled about on the tongue.
I am more of a “presentist” myself, and a reluctant one at that: I see the world around me, observe its general direction, and then make predictions about its destination, which, I hope, it will take a long time in reaching. In this I am often frustrated, and developments that I would wish to take the better part of a decade materialize in a mere year or two.
Still, the idea of futurism sounds lovely. I have enjoyed reading futurist writers, Olaf Stapledon especially. And so I see no harm in trying to channel Stapledon. In sincere imitation of his great work “The Last and First Men,” I present here “The Last Cars.” (As for the “First Cars,” should you find the subject interesting, I encourage you to visit your local public library.)
In the middle of the year 2008 C.E. information technology finally reached a point of development known as the Singularity. Beyond that point, the combined intelligence of networked computers made further technological developments fast and effortless. The Singularity had little or no impact on cars, which, being rather bulky and slow to replace, continued to move at or near the speed limit, which was usually much, much lower than the speed of light. Nor was the Singularity able to achieve much when it came to increasing oil production, in order to alleviate the gasoline and diesel shortages that were beginning to put the economy in a state of shock.
However, the Singularity did manage prove its worth organizationally, by enabling the swift and universal introduction of so-called “driving plans.” Fuel could no longer be purchased directly, but only by entering into a contract with one of the two remaining oil companies: ExxonMobilShellBP and RosNeftGazProm. A driving plan entitled a driver to obtain a certain number of gallons per month from a set of approved gas stations. Unused gallons became “roll-over gallons,” which could be used during one of the subsequent months, and which eventually expired. A driving contract could be cancelled simply by going to the nearst hospital and donating a kidney – a brilliant arrangement that made cancellations quite rare.
The introduction of driving plans likewise did nothing to improve the situation with regard to the availability of transportation, which by the autumn of 2008 was bordering on the disasterous. To remedy the situation using a quick, Singularity-powered techno-fix, American auto companies teamed up to quickly design and mass-produce much smaller cars. In this, they recruited the help of the Shriners – America’s secret weapon when it comes to small car design. After a kick-off prayer breakfast, the executives and the Shriners poured out into the parking lot, where they torched three effigies of America’s previous failed attempts at small car design: a Ford Pinto, an AMC Gremlin, and a Chevy Vega.
Again, thanks to the Singularity, the Shriner design team was able to produce a new product in less then a fortnight, and by Christmas America had a new car it could love: a NASCAR micro-racer. The enthusiasm of the early adopters was somewhat tempered by the realization that the new car could only turn left. This resulted from the design team’s use of a certain Rapid Development methodology which forbade impementing features that were not considered strictly necessary. In spite of such minor annoyances, millions of NASCAR micro-racers were manufactured in Japan, Chrina, India, and other countries where America did its manufacturing, and the Federal Reserve obliged by printing enough money for all Americans to be able to afford to import and purchase these cars. However, this strategy had the unfortunate side-effect of destroying what little value remained in the US Dollar, effectively cutting the country off from two-thirds of its oil supply.
Very little is known about the period that followed; apparently, the Singularity crashed when the power grid collapsed, and by the time it came back the one engineer who knew how to cold-boot it could not be found, and the page of instructions he taped to the side of the server rack could not be deciphered. And so nothing further is known about cars as we are used to thinking of them. But some information survives about some alternative meanings that the word "car" subsequently acquired.
For instance, the term "car" came to be applied to a wheeled contraption with straps used by obese Americans to paddle about, to position themselves in front of television screens. They made it easier for their Iraqi handlers to feed them, hose them down, and to push them into the liposuction pens when it came time to harvest the biodiesel.
Later on, the term "car" came to be applied to an ingenious confection, which emitted the "new car taste" when you bit down on it, and made exquisite "Vroom-vroom!" sensations when rolled about on the tongue.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Interview on Radio Ecoshock
Yesterday, Alex Smith interviewed me for Radio Ecoshock. The interview can be downloaded here, and will eventually go out over actual airwaves on quite a number of local stations. We talked about things that the government could potentially do to make collapse survivable (but probably won't), why collapse is almost inevitable (not enough energy; downscaling means bankruptcy), what happens when foreign creditors and investors demand their pound of flesh, and how we can try to live our lives and do what we want anyway.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Traffic! Weather! Sports! Collapse!
This blog has been quiescent for a couple of weeks (although the comments still keep flowing in on the older posts) because I have been busy promoting RC by giving radio interviews, while simultaneously finishing work on the boat that is our home and getting it ready for re-launch. As of yesterday, the boat is in the water, and the interviews seem to be settling down to a pattern, and so here I am, once again, bringing you an update.
It is only fair to warn you that over the next few weeks, you may be driving to work in the morning, listening to the radio, and hear something like this:
"Next we have Dmitry Orlov, the author of Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects." Dmitry is a "leading Peak Oil theorist; [it actually says that on the back cover: yikes!] Dmitry, what does that mean, Peak Oil theorist?"
"Peak Oil is the theory that accurately predicted the all-time peak of oil production in the US in 1970, as well as what will probably turn out to be the all-time peak in global conventional oil production in 2005. But let me start by mentioning another theory: the theory of gravitational attraction. A physics professor I had in college once suggested that if we freshmen had any doubts about this theory, we could test it by jumping off a table while keeping our knees perfectly straight, and observe what happens to our spines. I would like to propose a similar test with regard to Peak Oil, but it's even easier: just keep driving your car the way you are used to doing for a few more years, and observe what happens to your bank account."
"But people have come on this show to tell me that we have plenty of reserves right in this country that we can't tap because of some very extreme positions of certain environmentalists. Isn't this just a political problem? Can't we solve it if only we wanted to?"
"If all the environmentalists suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth, there would be a tragic loss of colorful calendars full of pictures of cute and majestic animals... Supposing we could proceed full speed ahead with the exploration of ANWR in Alaska, the continental shelf, and various other hopeful places within the continental US, then it would take up to 20 years for these new provinces to go on-stream, and then they would add up to no more than a few percent of our current consumption level. In the meantime, depletion in existing provinces would continue to run its course, adding up to a lot more than that. Also, by then, we will have lost access to most of our oil imports, because oil exporting countries are depleting their resources as well, and will need all of the remaining oil for themselves."
"You compare the US to the Soviet Union, but didn't the Soviet Union fail because of its backward Communist system? We have the free market, we can innovate and solve our problems in ways that they just couldn't even imagine!"
"The central planning system in the Soviet Union was quite inflexible and inefficient, and caused hoarding and black market trading. It directly allocated resources to things like central heating for entire neighborhoods, public transportation and government services. Market psychology had nothing to do with it: these were all physical flows of energy. Our system is certainly better during normal times, but when key resources become scarce, it suddenly becomes much worse: people are priced out of the markets for the things they need to survive, hoarding and profiteering become the norm, municipalities are driven into bankruptcy while oil companies make record profits and find nothing better to do with them than buy back their own stock, and so forth."
"But still, can't we innovate our way out of this? I was shopping for a new car yesterday, and there are all kinds of new hybrids and electric cars appearing on the market... when there is a crisis, the free market system responds, and gives us products that solve the problem!"
"The idea that the problem of too many cars and too much car dependence can be solved by making more cars is preposterous. What makes the problem insolvable is that Americans have been conditioned to treat access to private automobile as a birthright, and taking away their cars is about as advisable as trying to take away their guns. The most commonsense thing to do would be to ban the manufacture, import, and sale of new vehicles, except for some specific fleet vehicles used for public services, as was done during World War II. But this problem will work itself out to some extent: it takes a lot of energy to make a car, and new cars are still affordable only because the new oil prices haven't percolated through the entire economy yet."
"Some people are concerned about the falling dollar and what the Federal Reserve is doing. What do you make of their policies?"
"They are making a strenuous effort to make insolvent financial institutions look solvent by lending them bushels of newly printed dollars. The effect is ever more US dollars chasing after same or smaller quantities of key commodities, such as oil and food, causing huge run-ups in prices. This is what the start of hyperinflation looks like. Eventually, this will ruin our ability to continue borrowing and financing our huge trade and budget deficits. It will also cut off our access to key imports, such as two-thirds of the oil we use, because nobody will want to continue stockpiling our worthless dollars. If that happens, the US economy will go into a state of severe shock.
"The economists have suddenly been thrust into a world they can't understand. They are used to thinking of energy in terms of money, and in terms of driving economic growth. They can't possibly be expected to turn around and learn to think of money in terms of energy, and of driving a gradual powering-down of the economy in ways that will provide the population with the essentials and avoid needless suffering. What it means to the rest of us is that we should stop looking to the economists for answers. There would be too much retraining involved to make them into competent practitioners of this new discipline."
"If you were sent to Washington to fix this, what would you do?"
"Please don't send me to Washington: it's not the place to go to get anything useful accomplished. Centralized, political efforts are about as likely to succeed as Gorbachev's Perestroika. There, there was the one Communist party, which killed all private initiative and entrepreneurship. Here, we have the two Capitalist parties, which kill all public initiatives that impinge on the prerogatives of private capital or the free market. This makes just about any good proposal politically impossible. The best thing to do about national politicians is to completely ignore them and wait until they go away. This approach worked really well with the Communists in Russia."
"If this is really the case, then what can you possibly hope to accomplish?"
"I am trying to help people prepare psychologically. An economic collapse is the worst possible time to have a nervous breakdown, but that's what typically happens. If people have a chance to think about it ahead of time, they will be better prepared for it. On top of that, they will lose access to a lot of comforts and conveniences they are used to, and if they are serious, they could try living without them ahead of time, just to make sure they have the stamina and the skills to survive. But the tragic thing is, to prepare for collapse, you have to start living as if it already happened, and very few people are willing to do that. They will wait until it is too late, and then expect somebody to come to their rescue.
"Boy, you must be a real hit at cocktail parties! It's all doom and gloom, isn't it?"
"Yes, there is that aspect to it, but my message is really quite hopeful. What I want people to walk away with is the realization that it is possible to live a rich, happy, fulfilling life even in the midst of collapse. All it takes is some preparation and a different attitude. It is hard to get started, and shift from looking at the big picture to leaving it behind and making your own arrangements, but once you take a few steps in that direction, life actually gets easier, because with each step, you gain some peace of mind.
It is only fair to warn you that over the next few weeks, you may be driving to work in the morning, listening to the radio, and hear something like this:
"Next we have Dmitry Orlov, the author of Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects." Dmitry is a "leading Peak Oil theorist; [it actually says that on the back cover: yikes!] Dmitry, what does that mean, Peak Oil theorist?"
"Peak Oil is the theory that accurately predicted the all-time peak of oil production in the US in 1970, as well as what will probably turn out to be the all-time peak in global conventional oil production in 2005. But let me start by mentioning another theory: the theory of gravitational attraction. A physics professor I had in college once suggested that if we freshmen had any doubts about this theory, we could test it by jumping off a table while keeping our knees perfectly straight, and observe what happens to our spines. I would like to propose a similar test with regard to Peak Oil, but it's even easier: just keep driving your car the way you are used to doing for a few more years, and observe what happens to your bank account."
"But people have come on this show to tell me that we have plenty of reserves right in this country that we can't tap because of some very extreme positions of certain environmentalists. Isn't this just a political problem? Can't we solve it if only we wanted to?"
"If all the environmentalists suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth, there would be a tragic loss of colorful calendars full of pictures of cute and majestic animals... Supposing we could proceed full speed ahead with the exploration of ANWR in Alaska, the continental shelf, and various other hopeful places within the continental US, then it would take up to 20 years for these new provinces to go on-stream, and then they would add up to no more than a few percent of our current consumption level. In the meantime, depletion in existing provinces would continue to run its course, adding up to a lot more than that. Also, by then, we will have lost access to most of our oil imports, because oil exporting countries are depleting their resources as well, and will need all of the remaining oil for themselves."
"You compare the US to the Soviet Union, but didn't the Soviet Union fail because of its backward Communist system? We have the free market, we can innovate and solve our problems in ways that they just couldn't even imagine!"
"The central planning system in the Soviet Union was quite inflexible and inefficient, and caused hoarding and black market trading. It directly allocated resources to things like central heating for entire neighborhoods, public transportation and government services. Market psychology had nothing to do with it: these were all physical flows of energy. Our system is certainly better during normal times, but when key resources become scarce, it suddenly becomes much worse: people are priced out of the markets for the things they need to survive, hoarding and profiteering become the norm, municipalities are driven into bankruptcy while oil companies make record profits and find nothing better to do with them than buy back their own stock, and so forth."
"But still, can't we innovate our way out of this? I was shopping for a new car yesterday, and there are all kinds of new hybrids and electric cars appearing on the market... when there is a crisis, the free market system responds, and gives us products that solve the problem!"
"The idea that the problem of too many cars and too much car dependence can be solved by making more cars is preposterous. What makes the problem insolvable is that Americans have been conditioned to treat access to private automobile as a birthright, and taking away their cars is about as advisable as trying to take away their guns. The most commonsense thing to do would be to ban the manufacture, import, and sale of new vehicles, except for some specific fleet vehicles used for public services, as was done during World War II. But this problem will work itself out to some extent: it takes a lot of energy to make a car, and new cars are still affordable only because the new oil prices haven't percolated through the entire economy yet."
"Some people are concerned about the falling dollar and what the Federal Reserve is doing. What do you make of their policies?"
"They are making a strenuous effort to make insolvent financial institutions look solvent by lending them bushels of newly printed dollars. The effect is ever more US dollars chasing after same or smaller quantities of key commodities, such as oil and food, causing huge run-ups in prices. This is what the start of hyperinflation looks like. Eventually, this will ruin our ability to continue borrowing and financing our huge trade and budget deficits. It will also cut off our access to key imports, such as two-thirds of the oil we use, because nobody will want to continue stockpiling our worthless dollars. If that happens, the US economy will go into a state of severe shock.
"The economists have suddenly been thrust into a world they can't understand. They are used to thinking of energy in terms of money, and in terms of driving economic growth. They can't possibly be expected to turn around and learn to think of money in terms of energy, and of driving a gradual powering-down of the economy in ways that will provide the population with the essentials and avoid needless suffering. What it means to the rest of us is that we should stop looking to the economists for answers. There would be too much retraining involved to make them into competent practitioners of this new discipline."
"If you were sent to Washington to fix this, what would you do?"
"Please don't send me to Washington: it's not the place to go to get anything useful accomplished. Centralized, political efforts are about as likely to succeed as Gorbachev's Perestroika. There, there was the one Communist party, which killed all private initiative and entrepreneurship. Here, we have the two Capitalist parties, which kill all public initiatives that impinge on the prerogatives of private capital or the free market. This makes just about any good proposal politically impossible. The best thing to do about national politicians is to completely ignore them and wait until they go away. This approach worked really well with the Communists in Russia."
"If this is really the case, then what can you possibly hope to accomplish?"
"I am trying to help people prepare psychologically. An economic collapse is the worst possible time to have a nervous breakdown, but that's what typically happens. If people have a chance to think about it ahead of time, they will be better prepared for it. On top of that, they will lose access to a lot of comforts and conveniences they are used to, and if they are serious, they could try living without them ahead of time, just to make sure they have the stamina and the skills to survive. But the tragic thing is, to prepare for collapse, you have to start living as if it already happened, and very few people are willing to do that. They will wait until it is too late, and then expect somebody to come to their rescue.
"Boy, you must be a real hit at cocktail parties! It's all doom and gloom, isn't it?"
"Yes, there is that aspect to it, but my message is really quite hopeful. What I want people to walk away with is the realization that it is possible to live a rich, happy, fulfilling life even in the midst of collapse. All it takes is some preparation and a different attitude. It is hard to get started, and shift from looking at the big picture to leaving it behind and making your own arrangements, but once you take a few steps in that direction, life actually gets easier, because with each step, you gain some peace of mind.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The book is out!
It is back from the printer's and is shipping. I talk about this momentous occasion (for me anyway) and many other things on C-Realm Podcast Episode 96; please have a listen.
I share this episode with James Howard Kunstler, who talks about his new novel, World Made By Hand. There was a time when novels had a large impact on society and I hope that their time will come again. There are aspects of reality that non-fiction cannot adequately reflect, but in a work of fiction one can capture anything.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Keeping Fed
My book is still at the printer's, and so it is time to publish another excerpt. Since food shortages are all over the news, I thought it fitting to make this excerpt about food. You can also listen to me read it on C-Realm Podcast, Episode 72.
The inability to feed their people stands as the Soviet Union’s most striking failure. In just a couple of generations, a country that was the breadbasket of Europe had been turned into Europe’s agricultural basket case, so that by the time the Soviet Union collapsed it was financially and politically hamstrung by its need to obtain grain import credits from countries that were hostile to its interests. In the 1970s, an oil boom made it complacent, but when the boom ended and oil prices collapsed it was left with no room to maneuver. Its oil provinces reached their all-time peak of production in the mid-80s; consequently, it was unable to further ramp up production and boost exports.
How does a country with more arable land than just about any other, an ancient and successful agricultural tradition complete with all-you-can-eat food festivals and a history of grain surpluses, produce such a dismal result? A short excursion into Russian history might be instructive here: small mishaps can be produced accidentally, but disasters on this scale take serious effort. Speaking of agricultural disasters as a class, it is worth noting at the outset that agriculture is seriously dull work, best done by decidedly simple people who do not mind bending down to touch the ground all day until they look like hunchbacks. Almost genetically predisposed to growing food, these hunchbacks are to be found in all traditional farming societies the world over. As they toil, they wear out the soil very slowly or, if they are not too stressed, and just a bit clever, not at all. In return for their humble servitude, they stay in daily and direct contact with nature in all of its fickle bounty, remaining part of it. As long as they do not resort to shortcuts, such as relying on just one plant, be it maize or potato, their numbers fluctuate naturally along with the climate. But try replacing the humble hunchback with a university-trained agronomist, her hoe with a tractor, her bag of heirloom seeds with some mass-produced hybrid and rainfall with an irrigation pump, and you soon find yourself on the road to environmental oblivion. While Russian agriculture presents us with a particularly frightening example, let us not discount American efforts in the same direction: with enough effort at subjugating nature, through chemical farming, genetic manipulation, pumping down non-replenishing aquifers, ethanol production and other weapons of mass desertification, anything is achievable, even starvation, right here in the US.
Up to the middle of the 19th century, the Russian empire operated something vaguely analogous to the plantation system in the old South, with an ever more distant, French-speaking nobility presiding over a multitude of illiterate, Russian-speaking serfs. Based on a more humane serfdom rather than outright slavery, it bound peasants to the land, giving the landowner control over its use and nominal responsibility for their welfare. As the 19th century wore on, the imperial throne found the perpetuation of serfdom increasingly embarrassing to its international prestige as a leading European power, and so, in 1861, less than a month before the outbreak of the American Civil War, serfdom was abolished by imperial decree, without any bloodshed and without any serious detriment to agricultural production. Some peasants were gradually able to acquire their own land, and by the early 20th century the more fertile parts of Russia and the Ukraine had many prosperous farming families. Pre-Revolutionary Russia was, by all accounts, a well-fed place.
Then came the man-made disaster, known as collectivization, the results of which can be plainly visible to this day to anyone who travels through rural Russia and the surrounding lands. The epicenter of this disaster is central Russia, and the further out one travels — to the Baltic states or to Western Ukraine — the less one sees of its enduring devastation. It is as if a series of plagues had swept through the land, leaving poverty and desolation in its wake. Under the revolutionary slogan “All land to the people!” the prosperous farming families were labelled as the class enemy and persecuted. Grain, including seed grain, was confiscated to feed the starving cities. The result was starvation in the countryside and a collapsing rural population. In place of the prosperous family farms, collective farms were organized, once again binding peasants to the land, but without the benefit of the old church-bound feudal traditions. The introduction of mechanized farm machinery, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and “scientific” farming methods did little to forestall the disaster: the best farmers were either dead or had escaped to the cities. Despite much government effort and some wildly creative solutions, such as attempts at broadcasting seeds using rockets, agricultural production never fully recovered, because fixing the problem involved undoing collectivization and this was not politically advisable.
Another thing not politically advisable was neglecting to feed the people. In particular, all areas at all times had to be supplied with bread, which, more than any other staple, was symbolic of the covenant between the Communist government and the subservient masses. Bread riots, which could not be repressed and could only be quelled by a serendipitous delivery of bread, struck fear into the heart of every local Communist functionary. To make such a scenario unlikely, there were local food stockpiles in every city, stocked according to a government allocation scheme, and staples such as bread were almost always available. And while the quality of other government-supplied food was sometimes questionable, the bread was always excellent — a reflection of its symbolic importance. But the right to be fed did not necessarily extend beyond the basic carbohydrates, especially in the outlying areas. Moscow was always the best-supplied city, with Leningrad a distant second, while in many provincial towns the store shelves were mostly bare except for bread, vodka and a few varieties of canned foods, and whenever some scarce item, such as sausage, suddenly appeared, lines would instantly form until it was sold out. Shopping was rather labor intensive, and involved carrying heavy loads. Sometimes it resembled hunting — stalking that elusive piece of meat lurking behind some
store counter.
Shortly before the Soviet Union’s collapse, it became known informally that the ten percent of farmland allocated to kitchen gardens (in meager tenth of a hectare plots) accounted for some 90 percent of domestic food production. During and after the economic collapse, with the government stores quite uncontaminated by food, and often closed altogether, these plots became lifesavers for many families. The summer of 1990 particularly stands out in my mind: it was the summer when we ate nothing but rice (imported), zucchini (grown by us) and fish (from a local lake, caught by some neighbors).
The dismal state of Soviet agriculture turned out to be paradoxically beneficial in fostering a kitchen garden economy, which helped Russians to survive the collapse. Russians always grew some of their own food, and scarcity of high-quality produce in the government stores kept the kitchen garden tradition going during even the more prosperous times of the 60s and the 70s. After the collapse, these kitchen gardens turned out to be lifesavers. What many Russians practiced, either through tradition or by trial and error, or sheer laziness, was in some ways akin to the new organic farming and permaculture techniques. Many productive plots in Russia look like a riot of herbs, vegetables, and flowers growing in wild profusion. In the waning years of the Soviet era, the kitchen garden economy continued to gain in importance. Beyond underscoring the gross inadequacies of Soviet-style command and control industrial agriculture, the success of the private kitchen gardens is indicative of a general fact: agriculture is far more efficient when it is carried out on a small scale, using manual labor.
While most families cooked and ate at home, institutional fare was also considered important. With salaries regulated and with nothing interesting to spend them on, how well fed one was at work took on added significance. Institutional food varied in quality: officers in the nuclear navy ate remarkably well, while privates in the infantry were fed unremarkable porridge and soup. Jobs at many government organizations, factories and institutes were valued for the quality of their commissaries. These sometimes stayed open even as the economy crumbled, production lines stood still, and salaries went unpaid for months, providing an important lifeline. Some factory cafeterias even went beyond providing a hot meal; there, workers could buy a whole uncooked chicken or scarce canned goods, all very reasonably priced.
Restaurants did exist, but were generally outside the budgetary constraints of most families. They always struck me as rather odd, because their menus were by and large works of fiction. Whatever it was you tried to order, the waitress would invariably respond with a laconic “Nyetu! ” (“We don’t have that”). After a few attempts at ordering something you might actually want, you would break down and ask: “What do you have? ” The answer to this mystery would be something like “Borscht. It’s good today.” Surprisingly enough, it often was quite good. Although restaurants were something of a rarity, there were always plenty of snack bars, ice cream parlors and refreshment stands.
In addition to small-scale farming, forests in Russia have always been used as an important additional source of food. Russians recognize and eat just about every edible mushroom variety and all of the edible berries. During the peak mushroom season, which is generally in the fall, forests are overrun with mushroom pickers. The mushrooms are either pickled or dried and stored, and often last throughout the winter.
In spite of the monumental failures of Soviet agriculture, the overall structure of Soviet-style food delivery proved to be paradoxically resilient in the face of economic collapse and disruption. The combination of local food stockpiles administered by politicians conditioned to treat bread riots as career-ending calamities, the prevalence of government institutions that attended to the sustenance of their employees and plenty of kitchen gardens, meant that there was no starvation and very little malnutrition. But will fate be as kind to the United States?
In the United States, most people get their food from a supermarket, which is supplied from far away using refrigerated diesel trucks, making them entirely dependent on the widespread availability of transportation fuels and the continued maintenance of the interstate highway system. In an energy-scarce world, neither of these is a given. Most supermarket chains have just a few days’ worth of food in their inventory, relying on advanced logistical planning and just-in-time delivery to meet demand. Thus, in many places, food supply problems are almost guaranteed to develop. When they do, no local authority is in a position to exercise control over the situation and the problem is handed over to federal emergency management authorities. Based on their performance after Hurricane Katrina, these authorities are not only manifestly incompetent, but also appear to be ruled by the ethos that it is better for the government to deny services than provide them, to avoid creating a population that is dependent on government help.
Many people in the United States don’t even bother to shop and just eat fast food. The drive to maximize profit while minimizing costs has resulted in a product that manipulates the senses into accepting as edible something that is mainly a waste product. Under strict process control procedures, agro-industrial wastes, sugar, fat and salt are combined into an appealing presentation, packaged, and reinforced by vigorous advertising. Once accepted, it beguiles the senses by its reliable consistency, creating a lifelong addiction to bad food. The chemical industry obliges with an array of deodorants to mask the sickly body odor such a diet produces. Immersed for a lifetime in a field of artificial sensory perceptions, dominated by chemical, man-made tastes and smells, people recoil in shock when confronted with something natural, be it a simple piece of boiled chicken liver or the smell of a healthy human body. Perversely, they do not mind car exhaust and actually like the carcinogenic “new car smell” of vinyl upholstery.
When people do cook, they rarely cook from scratch, but simply re-heat prepackaged factory-produced meals. When they do cook from scratch, the supposedly fresh ingredients come from thousands of miles away and are selected for ease of shipping rather than any actually desirable qualities, making them woody or pulpy and only barely edible. Since good taste is no longer on the menu, the focus shifts to quantity, resulting in appallingly sized portions of undifferentiated protein and starch drowned in fat, administered in national festivals of pathetic gorging, of which Thanksgiving seems to be the main one. But this is all good for business and keeps the cancer, diabetes and heart disease industries humming. This is all very unhealthy, and the effect on the nation’s girth is visible clear across the parking lot. A lot of the people, who just waddle to and from their cars, seem unprepared for what is coming next. If they suddenly had to start living like Russians they would blow out their knees. Most of them would not even try, but simply wait, patiently or impatiently, for someone to come and feed them. And if that food arrives and consists of a styrofoam box containing a puck of pseudo-meat between two pucks of pseudo-bread and a plastic bottle of water laced with pseudo-syrup, they would be satisfied.
But the food may never arrive. There is already a fair amount of hunger in the United States and many families are forced to choose between food and gasoline. Gasoline is the greater of the two necessities, because it is necessary for them to drive to buy food: their car always gets to eat first. In the future, the choice will be made for them: they will be priced out of the market, their food used to produce ethanol, so that the more fortunate can keep driving their cars a tiny bit longer. The process of starving them out might go by one of the euphemistic terms economists seem to favor, such as the somewhat sinister “demand destruction,” or the more bland “load shedding.” This process is already underway in Mexico, where corn masa producers who provide a staple purchased by the poor are squeezed out by the ethanol producers. The United States is next. Who is that skeleton driving a pickup truck? Let us hope it is not you, but someone else — someone less fortunate than you, with whom you are not acquainted.
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