ClubOrlov

Perfectly Comfortable

2012-01-26T18:00:00.017-05:00

I don't particularly like cars. I don'tlike the way they smell, on the inside or the outside. I don't likethe feeling of being trapped in a sheet metal-and-vinyl box, my bodyslowly warping to the shape of a bucket seat. I don't enjoy thevisually unexciting and inhospitable environment of highways or theboredom of spending hours gazing at asphalt markings and highwaysigns. I particularly dislike the insect-like behavior that carsprovoke in people, reducing their behavioral repertoire to that ofants who follow each other around, their heads in close proximity tothe previous insect's rear end. Nor do I enjoy having a mechanicaldependent that I have to feed and house all the time, even though Irarely have need of it. I do sometimes need to use a car, and then Irent one or use one from a car-sharing service that charges by thehour. The most enjoyable parts of that exercise is when I pick it up and when I drop it off. Cars end up costing me a few hundred dollars each year, whichis a few hundred dollars more than I would like to spend on them.

I do like bicycles. They are about themost ingenious form of transportation humans have been able to inventso far. I especially like mine, which I bought second-hand, from afriend, for something like $150. That was about 20 years ago. Itstill has a lot of the original parts: frame, fork, chainrings andcranks, bottom bracket and hubs. The spokes and rims werereplaced once; the cables twice; the freewheel and chainfive or six times; the tires a dozen times or more; I've lost countof the inner tubes, which don't last long thanks to all the brokenglass on the road from cars smashing into each other.

Over time, I'veupgraded various bits. Nice titanium break levers from a used partsbin at a local bicycle school set me back $10. One of the down-tubeshift lever mechanisms fell apart (it was partly made of plastic),and I replaced it with an all-metal one from a nearby bin at the sameestablishment. The original rear derailleur was by Suntour, which nolonger exists, and so I replaced it with a Shimano part, for $60, Irecall. Ruinous expense, that! (The front derailleur is still theoriginal Suntour.)

The frame is made of very high qualitychrome-molybdenum alloy of a sort rarely encountered today. Chromeand molybdenum prices have gone up by a lot since then, andsteelmakers have found new ways to cut corners. It survived a ride upand down the East Coast aboard a sailboat, exposed to the elements,without a problem. It looks like a beat-up, rusty old road bike—notsomething bicycle thieves normally find interesting—and that'sexactly how a bicycle should be made to look even when it is new.

I ride something like 7 km just aboutevery weekday of the year. Sometimes I ride quite a bit farther,spending half a day meandering through the countryside or along thecoast. I've ridden as much as 160 km in one day; that was a bittiring. I rarely take the shortest path, preferring meandering bikepaths that go through parks and along the river. I do ride throughtraffic quite a bit of the time, and have developed a style forkeeping safe. I pay minimal attention to traffic signals and lights(they wouldn't be needed if it weren't for cars) and mostly just payattention to the movements of cars. (Traffic lights are sometimesuseful in predicting the behavior of cars, but not reliably, and notso much in Boston.) I also tend to take up a full lane whenever abicycle lane is not available (cars are not a prioritized form oftransportation, to my mind). A person who is in a hurry, here inBoston, would get there sooner by riding a bicycle. I understand thatthis annoys certain drivers quite a lot, raising their bloodpressure. Perhaps the elevated blood pressure will, in due course,get them off the road, along with their cars, freeing up the spacefor more bicycles.

In the summer, my riding attireconsists of a tank-top, shorts, and flip-flops. I've tried variouscombinations of pedals with toeclips, clipless pedals and bicycleshoes with cleats, and eventually settled on the most basic pedalsavailable and flip-flops. I've also experimented with paddedbicycling shorts and jerseys made of Lycra, and found them tooconfining. Also, I just couldn't get over the feeling that Ishouldn't wear such outfits, no more than I should be going around intights and a tutu, and so I went back to wearing hiking shorts. Butit can be a fine show when Balet russe comes rolling through town.When it rains, I put on a Gortex bicycle jacket that evaporates thesweat while keeping the rainwater out. The hood goes under thehelmet, keeping my head dry as well.

The bicycling outfit gets morecomplicated in wintertime. The Gortex jacket is still there, butunderneath it is a hoodie, under that a wool shirt and thermalunderwear (microfiber works best). The shorts are replaced withjeans, with Gortex zip-on pants over them for messy weather. Theflip-flops are replaced with insulated, waterproof half-boots, withtwo layers of wool socks. Add ski gloves and a ski mask, and theoutfit is complete.

Oddly enough, bicycling on a frosty butdry winter day is even more enjoyable than on a balmy summer day.Firstly, in the winter cooling is not an issue, so I can ride as fastas I want without breaking a sweat. If I start feeling too warm, Ican unzip the jacket partway and get all the cooling I want.Secondly, there is the realization that bicycling in wintertime ismore comfortable than walking, since I can generate as much heat as Ineed to keep warm simply by going faster. The one somewhat unpleasantpart of winter riding is the wind: cold winter air is a lot denserthan warm summer air: a 20 km/h headwind is hard to pedal against inthe summer, but much harder in the winter. (I recently rode acrosstown in a gale, and it was not unlike a mountain climb, grinding awayin the lowest gear. The ride back was all downwind, and I was flying,riding the brakes the entire way.)

Snow and ice present an interesting setof challenges to a two-wheeled vehicle. I've experimented withstudded tires, fat cyclocross tires with deep treads and regular roadtires. Road tires won. Studded tires on both front and back are ahuge performance killer, making a fast road bike into more of astationary exercise bike. Putting the studded tire just on the front(which is where it is really needed the most, since the rear canfishtail all it wants without compromising stability) helps quite alot. But overall, studded tires create a false sense of security; itis better, I have found, to keep the regular road tires on and simplylearn to recognize and adjust to the conditions.

High-pressure road bicycle tires havetiny contact patches, and apply tremendous pressure to the roadsurface—enough to indent packed snow, creating side-to-sidetraction. It's still not possible to bank steeply, but it is quitepossible to keep balance by slowing down. Fore-and-aft traction isnot quite as good, making rapid acceleration and braking unlikely. Ona slippery surface, the game becomes to avoid breaking frictionbetween the road and the tire. Tires with a deep tread seem to workwell on mud, but do not seem to help at all on snow, because thetread becomes packed with compacted snow, causing a lot of rollingresistance but not much traction. With regular road tires, the onlytruly frictionless surfaces I have found so far are smooth icecovered by water and oiled steel plates. When I encounter either ofthese, I get off and walk, having once wiped out quite badly on anoiled steel plate, in the middle of summer, in fine weather.

If any of this seems strange to you,then there may be something funny going on inside your head and youshould get it checked out. Around the world, for over a century,people everywhere have used the bicycle to get around in every kindof climate and weather. There are year-round bicyclists in theSahara, as well as in Edmonton, Alberta. Bicycling year-round is verymuch a solved problem everywhere. Here in Boston I know dozens ofpeople who commute by bicycle year-round, and I see hundreds ofpeople out on bicycles, every day, at all times of the year.

And yet with just about any randomgroup of people I encounter the idea of bicycling through winter isregarded as very strange: somewhere between suicidal and heroic. (Thefact that driving a car is far more dangerous, and suicidal onmultiple levels, does not seem to register with most people.) Whatcan I say? To each his own. As for me, I am perfectly comfortableriding a bicycle year-round.

Dance of the Marionettes

2012-01-08T14:21:00.004-05:00

It's election season in the US, whichmeans that I have the unwelcome task of wading throughwell-intentioned though off-topic comments devoted to thingspolitical: who might be the next president, and whether or not itmatters who the next president is (it doesn't). And rather than bearit quietly, I thought I'd say something about it.

Electioneering in the US is steadilyexpanding to fill more and more time and space even as it providesworse and worse results with each election cycle. The Congress ismade of some of the least popular people on earth, who are manifestlyincapable of achieving anything useful. They do seem quite ready andwilling to pass laws that erode human rights and enhance the powersof the police state, but this is because they are paranoid. Perhapstheir one point of consensus is that sooner or later theirconstituents will want to open fire on them.

Still, the elections provide aspectacle, the media are conditioned to lavish attention on thecandidates, and the people, being weak-willed, are once againbeguiled into thinking that it matters who gets elected. A few yearsof Obama impersonating Bush should have taught them that it doesn'tmatter who the Prisoner of the White House is. Likewise, watching thesad spectacle of Congress trying to raise the debt limit or to reignin runaway deficit spending should have taught them that thisinstitution is no longer functional. (The US is about to bump upagainst the debt limit again; does anyone even care?) All of thisshould have been enough to make it clear to just about everyone thatwondering what might be different if, say, Ron Paul got electedpresident, is like wondering what might be different if the moon weremade of a different kind of cheese—your favorite kind, of course.

Leaving aside the meaningless questionof who the next Figurehead in Chief might be, let's look briefly atwhat is perhaps the most corrupt institution the US has: the USSenate. Everyone knows that senate seats are for sale: as soon as asenator gets elected, he starts fund-raising, to finance hisreelection campaign. Since each state, whether huge or puny, gets twoseats, these are variously priced: the two seats for a large, populousstate, like California or Texas, are very expensive, while the two seatsfor the puny State of Potatoho or some such, with its zero millioninhabitants, are more reasonably priced. Since the senatorsthemselves decide nothing and are simply mouthpieces to the moneyedinterests which buy their seats, and since this is a very dividedcountry, they are unable to achieve compromise, making the Senatecompletely useless as a deliberative body.

Let's face it: the senators are justmarionettes controlled by giant bags of money. Their seats aredefinitely for sale, all of them, all the time. But then an odd thinghappened about a month ago: the ousted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevichwas sentenced to 14 years in prison for allegedly attempting to sellthe senate seat that was vacated when Obama was elected president. Itseems like a stiff penalty for something that is a routine, dailyoccurrence, does it not? It is especially odd since other miscreantswho actually caused serious damage, like former senator Jon Corzine,who looted investors' accounts to cover his gambling debts in thefutures market, are still at large. What set Blagojevich apart is that heviolated a taboo. Just like any normal criminal syndicate, the USSenate has rules by which the members preserve their positions andkeep each other in check. As with a criminal syndicate, these ruleshave nothing to do with serving the public interest. One of theserules is that it is not allowed to sell a senate seat if it isunoccupied. Essentially, senators get to sell senate seats, governorsdon't. It is a tribal taboo: “Of course we can have sex with ourunderage daughters—we all do it—but not when they aremenstruating! We are all good decent God-fearing Troglodytes!” Rod Blagojevichis the exception that proves the rule: senate seats are for sale.

It stands to reason, then, that the wayto influence this political system, in its current advanced state ofdegeneracy, is not through the political process, which is just a proforma activity that determines nothing. Armed with the understandingthat it doesn't matter who gets elected, we should ignore theelections altogether. To get the government to respond, it is far more effective to organizearound issues, pool resources, and hire lobbyists.

As for the rest of us, who do not havethe means to hire lobbyists, there are still a few things we can do:we can starve the system by withholding resources from it, and we canbleed the system by extracting payments from it. If we are clever, wecan also find ways to frustrate the system by artificially generatingcomplexity. The system has been gamed to our disadvantage. We are notgoing to win by playing along. But we all win whenever we refuse toplay the game.

If you simply can't resist thetemptation to play the game, don't play it to win. Play it strictlyfor the entertainment value. Ignore the front-runners and focus onall the amusing types that have zero probability of being elected.Encourage them, give them airtime and attention. And if anybodywonders why their candidacy matters, use the opportunity to explainto them why none of these political marionettes matter at all.

Where did the money go?

2012-01-06T20:00:00.007-05:00

[A timely guest post from Gary, with all the anti-Iranian sabre-rattling going on. Spurred on by its political parasitic twin Israel, Washington seems poised to shoot itself right in the wallet. I believe that's called a "beauty shot."]

The lesson that the United States desperately needs to learn is that their trillion-dollar-a-year military is nothing more than a gigantic public money sponge that provokes outrage among friends and enemies alike and puts the country in ill repute. It is useless against its enemies, because they know better than to engage it directly. It can never be used to defeat any of the major nuclear powers, because sufficient deterrence against it can be maintained for relatively little money. It can never defuse a popular insurgency, because that takes political and diplomatic finesse, not a compulsion to bomb faraway places. Political and diplomatic finesse cannot be procured, even for a trillion dollars, even in a country that believes in extreme makeovers. As Vladimir Putin put it, “If grandmother had testicles, she’d be a grandfather.”

Reinventing Collapse, 2nd ed., p. 41

Military Keynesianism and America’s Declining Infrastructure

In August 2007, the nation was stunned by the collapse of a major Minneapolis bridge, killing thirteen. The bridge had been rated structurally deficient by the U.S. government as far back as 1990, and it was only one of 72,868 bridges (12.1%) across the country with that rating. They also rated 89.024 bridges (14.8%) as functionally obsolete. Here closer to my home the eighty year old Champlain Bridge, also known as the Crown Point Bridge, was closed in October 2009 due to extensive corrosion of two structural piers. At least it was condemned before it fell down. Two years later a replacement bridge has been completed, but not without substantial inconvenience and economic loss to business and workers on both sides of the bridge. People were forced to take a ferry during reconstruction. The DOT states the average design life of US bridges is 50 years with an average current age of 43. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it would take nearly $930 billion to fix the country's failing bridges and roads over the next five years. With estimated spending of $380.5 billion, they predict a shortfall of $549.5 billion.

Where did all the money go? The recently deceased Chalmers Johnson called it "Military Keynesianism". For those who don't follow arcane economics lingo, Keynes was a British economist who said that in a period of slow or declining economic growth (recession or depression), that government spending was needed to "prime the pump" of the economy. The US recovery from the Great Depression with help from WWII military spending gave credence to this analysis. Except now we have permanent Military Keynesianism.

Johnson cites an incredible statistic from the late Seymour Melman, the Columbia University advocate of military conversion, and the "peace dividend". "By 1990, the value of the weapons, equipment, and factories devoted to the military was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment in American Manufacturing. From 1947-1990 the combined US military budget amounted to $8.7 trillion...Military industries crowd out the civilian economy (ed-and other government spending like bridges) and lead to severe economic weakness.” Consider that the US military is now spending over $1 trillion per year including all black and related expenses, which is more than the entire rest of the world combined. The next biggest spender is China at $91.5 billion according to Chinese figures. Johnson summarizes, “Devotion to military Keynesianism is, in fact, a form of slow economic suicide."

But isn't war good for the economy as former President George W. Bush told Argentine President Kirchner in Oliver Stone's recent movie "South of the Border?" Johnson quotes historian Thomas Woods, "According to the US DOD, during the four decades from 1947 through 1987 it used (in 1982 dollars) $7.62 trillion in capital resources. In 1985 the Dept of Commerce estimated the value of the nation's plant and equipment and infrastructure at just over $7.29 trillion. In other words, the amount spent over that period could have doubled the American capital stock or modernized and replaced its existing stock."

Johnson cites a study by economist Dean Baker of CEPR in 2007 that concludes, "In fact most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment." Why would this be? Think about nuclear weapons. The best possible use for them is not to use them at all. At the peak the US had 32,500 nuclear weapons. Think about the massive cost of something that then (thankfully) sits on the shelf and provides no use to anyone.

Finally Johnson quotes Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman, "Again and again it has always been the world's leading lending country that has been the premier country in terms of political influence, diplomatic influence, and cultural influence...we are now the world's biggest debtor country, and we are continuing to wield influence on the basis of military prowess alone." Think about that when you pay your family's $10,000 per year contribution to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Back in the 1980’s Gorbachev cut Soviet military spending, and predicted that the US would continue to spend itself into oblivion. Who will stop the madness of military Keynesianism? Obomber or Romney? LOL. Johnson concludes, "Our short tenure as the world's "lone superpower" has come to an end." All that's left is for the fat lady to sing, when the US goes broke. It won't be long now.

All quotes from Dismantling the Empire, by Chalmers Johnson, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Co. 2010

The Rise of Tricycle Pushcarts

2012-01-04T20:00:00.033-05:00

[Guest post by Albert. I spent some time as Albert's guest on the little island of which he writes. It is one of my favorite places in the world.]

"Even in backward mining communities, as late as the sixteenth century more than half the recorded days were holidays; while for Europe as a whole, the total number of holidays, including Sunday, came to 189, a number even greater than those enjoyed by Imperial Rome. Nothing more clearly indicates a surplus of food and human energy, if not material goods. Modern labor-saving devices have as yet done no better.

Lewis Mumford, Myth of the Machine : Technics and Human Development, 1967.

In rural México, the number of holidays competes with the number of workdays to see which will find more space on the calendar. Not that the people don’t work, mind you, just that they like to keep hours at any given task as brief as possible, to maintain perspective. As in most agricultural regions of the world, diversity and entrepreneurship is ingrained. When times are especially tight, this instinct goes into overdrive.

I have been wintering in a small Mayan fishing village that is part of a natural reserve and like most villages in México it is laid out on a New England-style town grid. There were no ancient Roman master planners or 1950’s city engineers that surveyed these grids. Nearly all were spontaneous extensions from a single spine road that sent off perpendicular ribs at regular intervals, and those sent off cross-lanes at approximately the same intervals—usually 6 or 8 homes on a side—that created the matrix. Grids like these, as the Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese and Romans understood, enhance the interactions amongst people and encourage a free flow of products, services and information.

Living on one such street, all of them unpaved here, I have noticed a discernible uptick in the number and variety of pushcarts. Here they are called tricyclos. In other places—Denmark or Holland, for instance—modern pushcarts are “cargo cycles.” They can take different forms but the most common is what is known in the bike world as tadpole or front-load trike—2 wheels in front and 1 wheel in the back. These are ideal for food vendors or pedicabs which require frequent interactions with the scene on the street.

A world leader in trike evolution is Christiania, the 800-member urban ecovillage in Copenhagen. Their company, Christianabikes began in 1976 as a small cottage industry to support the alternative community. Today Christianabikes is transnational in reach and constantly improving its designs. For long-hauls, it has low-slung cargo bikes. For vendors like those in Mexico, it has a simple tadpole design that can be customized to meet virtually any use. What we see in Mexico are mostly Chinese-made clones of Christiania’s original design, or Mexican fabrications of the Chinese fabrications tacked together in local welding shops. Creations like these, which date back a century or more, should be acknowledged to be ‘open source’ by now.

What struck me is that I cannot recall a time in the past decade that I have been observing these vendors when there were more of them. Call it a sign of the times, but every few hours another passes by the front of my house, shouting out what he or she is selling. In the morning its newspapers and fresh, hand-made tortillas. Around lunchtime is it fresh garden vegetables, epizote, bread and other kinds of unprepared food. There might be a tricycle for fruits and juices, another for tomatoes, onions and peppers, another for potatoes, beans and rice. By late afternoons they may pass by with fresh sweetbreads, steaming hot tamales, or corn on the cob.

A man with his tricycle grinding stone offers to sharpen machetes, knives, scissors, shovels, or any other sharp objects. A man with a blender (12V but it could as easily be pedal-powered) makes cups of shaved ice with sweet corn or coconut.

You can buy a tricycle brand-new, assembled, already painted in taxi colors of orange and white, and be ready to take a fare straight from hardware store to wherever they are going. The price of a new Chinese-built trike is 3200 pesos, about US$229.32 at today’s rates. The board that goes across the bars for a seat was salvaged from the trash at no cost, but perhaps some cushioned fabric is sewn over to help you through the potholes. Typically a fare pays 20 pesos ($1.43) for up to a 10-block ride.

I asked a tortilla vendor who plies a regular daily afternoon route how much he sells in an average day. “100 kilos” is what he said. His corn tortillas sell for a 3-peso mark-up over the tortilla factory (and there are three of them within a 5-block radius). So if he sells 100 kg, he makes 300 pesos per day, enough to pay for the tricycle in just under 11 days. Perhaps his wife has a masa roller and automated oven at home and he makes his own tortillas and the margin is even better.

Stopping by the largest of the tortilla factories in town — a one-room addition to a family home, which now employs three women from outside the family to turn corn meal masa into machine-stamped tortillas — I inquired how many tortillas they make in a typical day. “Ocho o nueve,” she said, meaning eight or nine metric tons — 8000 to 9000 kilos — and remember, this is just one of three within a short distance, and many people prefer to make their own at home. The entrepreneurial drive explores for available niches and fills them. Many of these factories supply restaurants and grocery stores. Retail home sales pass through bulk buyers at the tortilleria, like my local trike man, who do just fine with the small margin people are willing to pay for the convenience of not walking around the corner.

I noticed that my man sometimes gets lucky and lands a really big sale, however. Maybe someone is throwing a big party (and this happens often) and needs 20 kg. Or a tendajón finds itself short on a holiday weekend and buys 50 kg. His route is pretty small, just a few blocks, but if his son could run his trike in the mornings, or a second trike in the afternoon when he is making his rounds, perhaps he could extend his family’s range and double their earnings. Then again, as I’ve seen, he’s not interested in that, preferring to live quite adequately on 300 pesos per day ($21.50) in a town where the average unskilled worker makes even less than that. Or perhaps he has another job already and is just enlarging the family’s income by putting in a few extra hours while schmoozing with his neighbors.

For me, I’d rather save 3 pesos and ride my bike a couple blocks to the tortilleria, but that’s mainly because, being a writer, I need excuses to force myself out of my chair. As times have become tougher for average people, I’ve also noticed more homes along my bike route opening their front rooms to make tendejóns or comidas economicas. A comida economica provides a home-cooked meal with table service, giving the buyer a plate of whatever the family is making that day. A tendejón is an informal home store. It might have home-grown pigs, chickens or eggs for sale, or garden produce. It shares the same root word, tener (to have), as the more formal store or mini-mart (tienda), but whether for legal reasons or just wanting to keep it more neighborly, a tendejón is an unpredictable collection of wares in someone’s living room, next to their Christmas tree and fluorescent blinking statute of the Virgin of Guadelupe.

Between the tendejón and the tienda lie the more formal abarrotes, or package stores, which usually sell cold beer, insect repellent and junk food. These are usually under a residence or in an adjoining building to the family’s principal dwelling. There are one or more abarrotes, tendejóns and tiendas on nearly every block.

Tricyclos are a common sight in much of Yucatán Peninsula, as they are in Asia, Africa, South America and other parts of the two-thirds world. In the United States you mention a tricycle and people think of Monty Python or Laugh-In. In the global south they are multifunctional and ubiquitous. You see them as fishermen’s friends, beach-roving gear-buckets for surfers, portable crepe parlors, bellhop cabin service, and the poor man’s moving van.

Low-tech Magazine, an on-line compendium, describes many novel uses for pedal power, from archival scans of Sears Catalog pages circa 1892 to a modern recumbent cargo quads. Corn grinding, water pumping and sewer-system cleaning are all potentially portable, pedal-powered services. These are niches that will likely be explored in the South far sooner than when people in North finally decide to come down off of their high horses and get a third wheel.

A Dismal Public Affair

2012-01-02T20:00:00.008-05:00

This morning I was honored to participate in a panel discussion [transcript] on what the near future holds with an illustrious panel: Richard Heinberg, Nicole Foss, James Howard Kunstler and Noam Chomsky. And it turned out really dismal, if you ask me! The overall message seems to have been that it doesn't matter what any of us say, because so few people are able to take in such bad news without becoming despondent, so we might as well just let Chomsky ramble on like he always does, as a sort of case in point. And of course the moderator just had get up Kunstler's nose with the usual "so this is all doom and gloom, isn't it?" sort of comment. The one funny bit is around 51:26 where Chomsky calls Daniel Yergin "a very serious analyst" right after Kunstler calls him "the oil industry's chief public relations prostitute." Perhaps this will make Yergin an even better prostitute. And Chomsky is a very serious linguist. Think positive!

Do you want some good news? Here it is: Russia's GLONASS satellite navigation system is fully operational, finally, so we no longer have to rely solely on the Pentagon's GPS to tell us exactly where we are. In fact, the two systems work and play well together. 100% redundancy for 99% of us!

A Conversation About Europe

2011-12-15T21:57:00.011-05:00

[Première publication sur Orbite.info]

I came upon Dmitry Orlov's writings—as with most good things onthe Internet—by letting chance and curiosity guide me from link tolink. It was one of those moments of clarity when a large number ofconfusing questions find their answer along with their correctformulation. For example, the existence of fundamental similaritiesbetween the Soviet Union and the United States was for me a vagueintuition, but I was unable to draw up a detailed list as Dmitry hasdone. One must have lived in two crumbling empires in order to beable to do that.

I must say that my enthusiasm was not sharedby those around me, with whom I have shared my translations. It'sonly natural: who wants to hear how our world of material comfort,opportunity and unstoppable individual progress is about to collapseunder the weight of its own expansion? Certainly not the post-wargeneration weaned on the exuberant growth of the postwar boom (1945-1973),well established in their lives of average consumers since the 1980s,and willing to enjoy a hedonistic age while remaining convinced thatdespite the economic tragedies ravaging society around them, theirgrandchildren will benefit from more or less the same well-padded,industrialized lifestyle. The generation of their children is morereceptive to the notion of economic decline—though to varyingdegrees, depending on the decrease of their purchasing power and how lethally bored they feel at work (if they can find any).

It would be wrong to shoot the messenger who brings badnews. If you read Dmitry carefully, scrupulously separating thefactual bad news, which are beyond his control, from his views onwhat can be done to survive and live in a post-industrial world, youwill find evidence of strong optimism. I hope that in this he isright.

Whatever our views on peak oil and its consequences—orour distate for scary prophecies—we can find in Dmitry Orlov freshideas on how to conduct our lives in a degraded economic andpolitical environment, reasons to seek fruitfulrelations with people you might not normally cherry-pick, or the most effective approach to thefrustrating political and media chatter and the honeyed whisper ofcommercial propaganda (shrug, turn around and go on with your life).

Tancrède Bastié

TB: What difference do you seebetween American and European close future?

DO: European countries are historicalentities that still hold vestiges of allegiances beyond themonetized, corporate realm, while the United States was started as acorporate entity, based on a revolution that was essentially a taxrevolt and thus has no fall-back. The European population is lesstransient than in America, with a stronger sense of regionalbelonging and are more likely to be acquainted with their neighborsand to be able to find a common language and to find solutions tocommon problems.

Probably the largest difference, andthe one most promising for fruitful discussion, is in the area oflocal politics. European political life may be damaged by moneypolitics and free market liberalism, but unlike in the United States,it does not seem completely brain-dead. At least I hope that it isn'tcompletely dead; the warm air coming out of Brussels is oftenindistinguishable from the vapor vented by Washington, but betterthings might happen on the local level. In Europe there is somethingof a political spectrum left, dissent is not entirely futile, andrevolt is not entirely suicidal. In all, the European politicallandscape may offer many more possibilities for relocalization, fordemonetization of human relationships, for devolution to more localinstitutions and support systems, than the United States.

TB: Will American collapse delayEuropean collapse or accelerate it?

DO: There are many uncertainties to howevents might unfold, but Europe is at least twice as able to weatherthe next, predicted oil shock as the United States. Once petroleumdemand in the US collapses following a hard crash, Europe will for atime, perhaps for as long as a decade, have the petroleum resourcesit needs, before resource depletion catches up with demand.

The relative proximity to Eurasia'slarge natural gas reserves should also prove to be a major safeguardagainst disruption, in spite of toxic pipeline politics. Thepredicted sudden demise of the US dollar will no doubt beeconomically disruptive, but in the slightly longer term the collapseof the dollar system will stop the hemorrhaging of the world'ssavings into American risky debt and unaffordable consumption. Thisshould boost the fortunes of Eurozone countries and also give somebreathing space to the world's poorer countries.

TB: How does Europe compare to theUnited States and the former Soviet Union, collapse-wise?

DO: Europe is ahead of the UnitedStates in all the key Collapse Gap categories, such as housing,transportation, food, medicine, education and security. In all theseareas, there is at least some system of public support and someelements of local resilience. How the subjective experience ofcollapse will compare to what happened in the Soviet Union issomething we will all have to think about after the fact. One majordifference is that the collapse of the USSR was followed by a wave ofcorrupt and even criminal privatization and economic liberalization,which was like having an earthquake followed by arson, whereas I donot see any horrible new economic system on the horizon that is readyto be imposed on Europe the moment it stumbles. On the other hand,the remnants of socialism that were so helpful after the Sovietcollapse are far more eroded in Europe thanks to the recent wave offailed experiments of market liberalization.

TB: How does peak oil interact withpeak gas and peak coal? Should we care about other peaks?

DO: The various fossil fuels are notinterchangeable. Oil provides the vast majority of transport fuels,without which commerce in developed economies comes to a standstill.Coal is important for providing for the base electric load in manycountries (not France, which relies on nuclear). Natural gas(methane) provides ammonia fertilizer for industrial agriculture, andalso provides thermal energy for domestic heating, cooking andnumerous manufacturing processes.

All of these supplies are past theirpeaks in most countries, and are either past or approaching theirpeaks globally.

About a quarter of all the oil is stillbeing produced from a handful of super-giant oil fields which werediscovered several decades ago. The productive lives of these fieldshave been extended by techniques such as in-fill drilling and waterinjection. These techniques allow the resource to be depleted morefully and more quickly, resulting in a much steeper decline: the oilturns to water, slowly at first, then all at once. The super-giantCantarell field in the Gulf of Mexico is a good example of such rapiddepletion, and Mexico does not have many years left as an oilexporter. Saudi Arabia, the world's second-largest oil producer afterRussia, is very secretive about its fields, but it is telltale thatthey have curtailed oil field development and are investing in solartechnology.

Although there is currently an attemptto represent as a break-through the new (in reality, not so new) hydraulic fracturingand horizontal drilling techniques for producing natural gas fromgeological formations, such as shale, that were previously consideredinsufficiently porous, this is, in reality, a financial play. Theeffort is too expensive in terms of both technical requirements andenvironmental damage to pay for itself, unless the price of naturalgas rises to the point where it starts to cause economic damage,which suppresses demand.

Coal was previously thought to be veryabundant, with hundreds of years of supply left at current levels.However, these estimates have been reassessed in recent years, and itwould appear that the world's largest coal producer, China, is quiteclose to its peak. Since it is coal that has directly fueled therecent bout of Chinese economic growth, this implies that Chineseeconomic growth is at an end, with severe economic, social andpolitical dislocations to follow. The US relies on coal for close tohalf of its electricity generation, and is likewise unable toincrease the use of this resource. Most of the energy-denseanthracite has been depleted in the US, and what is being producednow, through environmentally destructive techniques such asmountaintop removal, is much lower grades of coal. The coal is slowlyturning to dirt. At a certain point in time coal will cease toprovide an energy gain: digging it up, crushing it and transportingit to a power plant will become a net waste of energy.

It is essential to appreciate the factthat it is oil, and the transport fuels produced from it, thatenables all other types of economic activity. Without diesel forlocomotives, coal cannot be transported to power plants, the electricgrid goes down, and all economic activity stops. It is also essentialto understand that even minor shortfalls in the availability oftransport fuels have severe economic knock-on effects. These effectsare exacerbated by the fact that it is economic growth, not economicdécroissance [Fr., "de-growth"] (which seems inevitable, given the factors describedabove) that forms the basis of all economic and industrial planning.Modern industrial economies, at the financial, political andtechnological level, are not designed for shrinkage, or even forsteady state. Thus, a minor oil crisis (such as the recent steadyincrease in the price of oil punctuated by severe price spikes)results in a sociopolitical calamity.

Lastly, it bears mentioning that fossilfuels are really only useful in the context of an industrial economythat can make use of them. An industrial economy that is in anadvanced state of decay and collapse can neither produce nor make useof the vast quantities of fossil fuels that are currently burned updaily. There is no known method of scaling industry down to boutiquesize, to serve just the needs of the elite, or to provide lifesupport to social, financial and political institutions thatco-evolved with industry in absence of industry. It also bearspointing out that fossil fuel use was very tightly correlated withhuman population size on the way up, and is likely to remain so onthe way down. Thus, it may not be necessary to look too far past thepeak in global oil production to see major disruption of globalindustry, which will make other fossil fuels irrelevant.

TB: How is post-collapse Russiadoing ? Ready for its second peak ?

DO: Russia remains the world's largestoil producer. Although it has been unable to grow its conventionaloil production, it has recently claimed that it can double its oilendowment by drilling offshore in the melting Arctic. Russia is andremains Europe's second largest energy asset. In spite of toxicpipeline politics (which have recently been remedied somewhat by theconstruction of the Nordstream gas pipeline across the Baltic) it hashistorically been the single most reliable European energy supplier,and shows every intention of remaining so into the future.

TB: Is there hope for a safe,harmless European decline, or is any industrial society just bound tocollapse at once when fuel runs out?

DO: The severity of collapse willdepend on how quickly societies can scale down their energy use,curtail their reliance on industry, grow their own food, go back tomanual methods of production for fulfilling their immediate needs,and so forth. It is to be expected that large cities and industrialcenters will depopulate the fastest. On the other hand, remote,land-locked, rural areas will not have the local resources to rebootinto a post-industrial mode. But there is hope for small-to-middlingtowns that are surrounded by arable land and have access to awaterway. To see what will be survivable, one needs to look atancient and medieval settlement patterns, ignoring places that becameoverdeveloped during the industrial era. Those are the places to moveto, to ride out the coming events.

TB: I remember my grandmothertelling me about the German occupation, when urban and suburbandwellers flocked into country towns every Sunday with empty cases,eager too find some food to buy from the local farmers, hopping backin a train the same day. Is there any advantage in living in a city,in a post-collapse era, rather than in the countryside?

DO: Surviving in the countrysiderequires a different mindset, and different set of skills thansurviving in a town or a city. Certainly, most of our contemporaries,who spend their days manipulating symbols, and expect to be fed fordoing so, would not survive when left to their own devices in thecountryside. On the other hand, even those living in the countrysideare currently missing much of the know-how they once had forsurviving without industrial supplies, and lack the resources toreconstitute it in a crisis. There could be some fruitfulcollaboration between them, given sufficient focus and preparation.

TB: Can we grow sufficient food withlow technology, low energy methods, out of highly exhausted, highlypolluted farmland ? It seems we might end up in a worse farmingsituation than our ancestors just two or three generations ago.

DO: That is certainly true. Add globalwarming, which is already causing severe soil erosion due totorrential rains and floods, droughts and heat waves in other areas.It is likely that agriculture as it has existed for the past tenthousand years will become ineffective in many areas. However, thereare other techniques for growing food, which involve setting upstable ecosystems consisting of many species of plants and animals,including humans, living together synergistically. What will ofnecessity be left behind is the current system, where fertilizers andpesticides are spread out on tilled dirt (rather than living soil) tokill everything but one organism (a cash crop) which is thenmechanically harvested, processed, ingested, excreted, and flushedinto the ocean. This system is already encountering a hard limit inthe availability of phosphate fertilizer. But it is possible tocreate closed cycle systems, where nutrients stay on the land and areallowed to build up over time. The key to post-industrial humansurvival, it turns out, is in making proper use of human excrementand urine.

TB: If cities or big towns survivecollapse, what will be their core activities? What do we need citiesfor?

DO: The size of towns and cities isproportional to the surplus that the countryside is able to produce.This surplus has become gigantic during the period of industrialdevelopment, where one or two percent of the population is able tofeed the rest. In a post-industrial world, where two-thirds of thepopulation is directly involved in growing or gathering food, therewill be many fewer people who will be able to live on agriculturalsurplus. The activities that are typically centralized are those thathave to do with long-range transportation (sail ports) andmanufacturing (mills and manufactures powered by waterwheels). Somecenters of learning may also remain, although much of contemporaryhigher education, which involves training young people foroccupations which will no longer exist, is sure to fall by thewayside.

TB: Some Americans view peak oil andcollapse as another investment opportunity. You already wrote on thefallacies of the faith in money. That leaves a more useful question:what can people do with their savings during or preferably beforecollapse? What can you buy that is truly useful? I assume the answervary greatly according to how much money you still have.

DO: This is a very important question.While there is still time, money should be converted to commodityitems that will remain useful even after the industrial basedisappears. These commodities can be stockpiled in containers and aresure to lose their value more slowly than any paper asset. Oneexample is hand implements for performing manual labor, to provideessential services that are currently performed by mechanized labor.Another is materials that will be needed to bring back essentialpost-industrial services such as sail-based transportation: materialssuch as synthetic fibre rope and sail cloth need to be stockpiledbeforehand to ease the transition.

TB: You don't mention arable land orhousing. Do you think some kind of real property may turn out avaluable post-collapse asset, assuming you can afford them withoutdrowning into debt, or is it too much financial and fiscal liabilityin our pre-collapse era to be of any use?

DO: The laws and customs that governreal property are not helpful or conducive to the right kind ofchange. As the age of mechanized agriculture comes to an end, weshould expect there to be large tracts of fallow land. It won'tmatter too much who owns them, on paper, since the owner is unlikelyto be able to make productive use of large fields without mechanizedlabor. Other patterns of occupying the landscape will have to emerge,of necessity, such as small plots tended by families, forsubsistence. Absentee landlords (those who hold title to land withoutactually physically residing on it but using it as a financial asset)are likely to be simply run off once the financial and mechanicalamplifiers of their feeble physical energies are no longer availableto them. I expect several decades more of fruitless efforts to growcash crops on increasingly depleted land using increasinglyunaffordable and unreliable mechanical and chemical farmingtechniques. These efforts will increasingly lead to failure due toclimate disruption, causing food prices to spike and robbing thepopulation of their savings in a downward spiral. The new patterns ofsubsisting off the land will take time to emerge, but this processcan be accelerated by people who pool resources, buy up, lease, orsimply occupy small tracts of land, and practice permaculturetechniques. Community gardens, guerilla gardening efforts, plantingwild edibles using seed balls, seasonal camps for growing andgathering food, and other humble and low-key arrangements can pavethe way towards something bigger, allowing some groups of people toavoid the most dismal scenario.

TB: How can people make preparationsfor collapse or decline without losing connections with their currentsocial environment, friends, relatives, jobs or customers, andeverything around them that still function as usual. That is aquestion about sanity as much as practicality.

DO: This is perhaps the most difficultquestion. The level of alienation in developed industrial societies,in Europe, North America and elsewhere, is quite staggering. Peopleare only able to form lasting friendships in school, and are unableto become close with people thereafter with the possible exception ofromantic involvements, which are often fleeting. By a certain agepeople become set in their ways, develop manners specific to theirclass, and their interactions with others become scripted and limitedto socially sanctioned, commercial modes. A far-reaching,fundamental transition, such as the one we are discussing, isimpossible without the ability to improvise, to be flexible—ineffect, to be able to abandon who you have been and to change who youare in favor of what the moment demands. Paradoxically, it is usuallythe young and the old, who have nothing to lose, who do the best, andit is the successful, productive people between 30 and 60 who do theworst. It takes a certain detachment from all that is abstract andimpersonal, and a personal approach to everyone around you, tonavigate the new landscape.

Seasteading!

2011-12-12T07:00:00.008-05:00

The "Seasteading" t-shirts are at the printer's. If you order yours by Friday the 16th, we will get it to the post office on Saturday, and you will receive it before Christmas.

These shirts are printed on good quality cotton using an advanced full-color digital process, which isn't cheap. But they will look good for a long time, even after many washes. Only 300 of these will ever be made.

Many thanks to Mark, who turned my clumsy sketch into a real work of art. The project started out as a crew shirt for our boat, and then took on a life of its own.

Yes, that's the boat on which we live, and yes, that's me and my wife hanging off the mizzen mast, and yes, that's a shark's fin in the water behind us. See if you can find the cat.

Our boat is rather unique: it is a sharpie designed and built by Chris Morejohn: a flat-bottom, shoal-draft ocean-going cutter and/or yawl. It's been to Maine and the Virgin Islands, and many points in between.

(For the strange people who believe "Seasteading" implies building private artificial islands for rich people to hide out on, and who might also think I am infringing on their trademark: in my case it is about selling t-shirts that happen to say "Seasteading" on them. We are in different industries, see?)

Party of Swindlers and Thieves

2011-12-08T07:00:00.046-05:00

[Update two days later: Medvedev announces an inquiry into election results.]

[Update a day later: The demonstrations in Moscow and around Russia were well-attended and largely peaceful. Best slogan so far: I didn't vote for these bastards. I voted for the other bastards. Sums it all up adequately. Very few people seem to think that Zyuganov (Communists) or Zhirinovsky (Lib Dems) is a viable alternative to Putin. (The rest of the opposition is comprised of midgets.) This is all about the process of sending a message and making sure it is received and, most importantly, processed adequately. It's this last bit that bears watching (sorry about the bear pun).]

Russia has recently held parliamentary elections, which were, by most accounts, riddled with fraud. In the aftermath of the election, protests have erupted in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other parts of Russia. In the run-up to the elections, Putin's United Russia party was characterized as "Party of Swindlers and Thieves," known for phenomenal levels of corruption and for enshrining a new, untouchable bureaucratic aristocracy, bloated on siphoned-off oil and gas revenues, who refer to the commonplace bribes as "gratitude." In polling prior to the election, United Russia was garnering only some 15% of the vote, behind both the Communists and the Liberal Democrats. But thanks to rampant ballot stuffing, vote miscounting and other types of forgery, often carried out quite openly, it came in with a majority. The number of votes for United Russia was roughly doubled. Now it seems that the fraudulent tallies will be disputed in the courts. The word "revolution" is being bandied about only half-jokingly.

United Russia

Public disillusionment with Putin was already quite profound before the elections, but the ensuing protests are something new in Russia's recent political experience: people who were not likely to protest up until this point have decided to turn up. Many of them have clearly decided that enough is enough. But I feel that they are being misread, both in Russia and in the West. In Russia, commentators from the official media are eager to paint them orange: they are stooges propped up by operatives and money from the US State Department, which wants to strip Russia of its sovereignty and turn it into another Libya. Western commentators, meanwhile, seem to believe that Russia is, variously, about to revert into the USSR, or to go through another revolution. All of this is pretty much nonsense. Whether their demand is voiced in exactly these terms or not, what will make these protesters go home, and then peacefully show up and vote the next time, is full and immediate enforcement of Chapter 141 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: "Obstruction of voting rights or work of election commissions: ...punishable by a fine from 200 to 500... [minimum monthly] wages... or correctional labor for a term of one year to two years, or imprisonment for up to six months, or imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years." The operatives in the field would get a stiff fine, the middle-managers of this election fraud extravaganza would get to cool their heels, and the masterminds and orchestrators of the fraud would get five years in the slammer. This would placate the electorate, and also make a replay highly unlikely.

The Communists

But just how far gone is Putin's government? The evidence so far is that they are still feeling invincible, and are willing to resort to repression in order to make the election results stick. But the Russian people want to express themselves; they want to be heard; they want those who hear them to make the required changes in response. Immediately after the election Medvedev was quick to start talking about coalition-building, but then the inertia of the party apparatus took over. Everybody wants to keep their seat, votes be damned. And now arrests are being made, troop carriers are rolling in and helicopters are circling overhead: these are not the right moves for opening a dialog and offering to make amends. Tomorrow, 10 of December, is likely to see large demonstrations. Perhaps it will turn out to be a date for the history books. Or perhaps the government will come to their senses in time, and start clawing back the legitimacy they have so foolishly squandered.

Liberal Democrats

If they fail to do so, they would be setting the stage for, if not a revolution, then at least a rebellion. The outraged but well-meaning and peaceful crowds of protesters of today would, over a period of months or years, morph into a surly, implacable, vicious mob ready to drown the government in their own blood. In due course, their instinct for self-preservation will become suppressed, as other, opportunistic, idealistic or heroic motivations move to the forefront. The progression is the same everywhere: first the people ask, then they demand, then they come and they take. For now, talk of revolution is restricted to those, both in the West and in Russia, who use it to justify their budgets for fermenting or suppressing revolt, respectively. They are, in both cases, a waste of public money.

The Future is Ours!

But if this dynamic were allowed to develop, then much more would be lost. Under Putin, Russia has become more stable and more prosperous. The cities have become more vibrant, and life has become better for many people, not just the ones at the very top. In striking contrast to the USA or the European Union, Russia is solvent rather than bankrupt. Putin gets the credit for these achievements. The slogan of his "United Russia"—"The future is ours"—is overweening and pompous (and, inadvertently, reminiscent of the Third Reich!) but, in some part thanks to his efforts, Russia does have a discernible future in a way that the US and the EU do not.

The Future is... Oops!

Given that this is the case, one would expect the more thoughtful people in the US and in Europe to simply stand back and watch, hoping to learn something. Yet mindsets are slow to change, and some of them are still operating with their illusions of imperial power intact. Some of them are seeing orange, and thinking that there might be an opening to smuggle a neocon like Gary Kasparov into the Kremlin. But to a great many Russians their ruse of promoting "freedom and democracy" is already transparent: what they want to do is to destroy Russia's sovereignty. They almost succeeded in destroying it in the 1990s; they won't get that chance again. Now is not their time to try to influence Russian politics; now is their time to shrivel up.

Occupy the Million Dollar View

2011-12-02T07:00:00.003-05:00

Now that the current phase of the Occupation movement—one that involved camping out in public places—is drawing to a close, thoughts turn to other, even more effective venues and exploits. Occupying the front lawns of mansions owned by the 1% would certainly send a message, although a very brief one, since trespassing happens to be illegal.

And then it hit me: it just so happens that the 1% own, roughly speaking, 99% of the really desirable beachfront properties, while the 99% have to make do with the 1% or so of the coastline that is reserved for public use. The 1%ers really like that “million-dollar view,” and the seaside mansion is one of their ultimate status symbols. Try to approach them from land, and you will quickly get spotted by vigilant local police and private security and won't make it very far—well shy of making any sort of statement, or even getting on the 1%er's radar.

But it just so happens that, according to US Federal law, they can only own property down to the low water line. In absence of specific regulations (marine sanctuary, public beach, municipal harbor, shipping lane, military reservation and so on) everything below the low water line is considered public anchorage. (It is everything below the high water line in Canada, which means that you can even occupy the beach at low tide and still not be trespassing.) Any vessel can anchor within a few meters of the 1%ers property, entirely spoiling their precious view with gigantic protest signs hanging from the mast, but if the boat is manned and is legal, then there is not a thing that they can do about it. On a calm evening, you can sail up, anchor, raft up, put up a big sail to use as a screen, and project a movie onto it. Eat the Rich, anyone? Then film their reaction, and project that next, with subtitles.

You might think that getting a sailboat flotilla together takes a lot of money. The boats that 1%ers such as Senator John Kerry prefer certainly are super-pricy, but then there are also many boats that can be had for free or for $1 (provided you agree to sail it away), or for a very small sum. For most people, sailboats are luxury items, and in these hard times many owners can't afford to keep them. They would like to get what they think their boats are worth, but since they can't, and since the boats are costing them money they don't have just sitting there, they are often willing to part with them for very little money. The trick is to make a ridiculously low offer sound non-insulting.

If a sailboat is engineless or has an outboard engine of 9.9 horsepower or less (which doesn't count as a real engine) then it is automatically grandfathered in and doesn't even need to be registered: just paint a name and a port of call on the transom, and it is legal. If it has an inboard diesel that runs, pull it out and sell it, and use the proceeds to finance the purchase of the boat itself, sometimes with money left to spare.

Would you like a more permanent occupation? Rotate vessels through the anchorage, going on an overnight cruise to nowhere every fortnight or so, keep all of the boats occupied at all times, and you are still legal. To establish a permanent base of operations that doesn't move, buy a mooring (a stationary mushroom anchor with a buoy chained to it) and use it to park a habitable but non-seaworthy vessel such as a houseboat.

There are some safety requirements, but they are minimal: life jackets and life preservers, sanitation (a composting toilet works well), functioning navigation lights, fire extinguishers and flares (unexpired ones), and an anchor. Land cops can't touch you. It helps to have a marine VHF radio. When hailed, you have to know radio protocol and marine terminology, and use it. If boarded, you have to cooperate. Some things are stricter than on land: get caught with any drugs, and the vessel gets arrested (as well as you). Neglect boat maintenance in a serious way, and it will be declared “manifestly unsafe” and scuttled, and you will be set ashore. But the water is generally free of riffraff as well as police brutality. Everyone tends to be polite, safety-conscious and just does their job.

You might have some issues with private security, who might not be particularly interested in following the law. But then sailors in pirate-infested waters have found a neat trick that really works: shooting skeet. It's quite challenging to hit a clay pigeon from a boat, so you will need to bring plenty of shotgun shells. It is good sport, and also a peaceful yet effective show of force that works on pirates, and will certainly make the private Mickey Mouse cops think twice about challenging you further.

For something more to do, why not join a yacht race? Yacht races are organized for and by some of the wealthiest 1%ers, who like to show off before each other. Join them just for the downwind leg (their fancy racing sloops are all about tacking upwind and actually don't do that well downwind) and unfurl a gigantic square sail with a protest sign painted on it. You might even win (that leg).

And so I hope that come next summer there will be Occupy flotillas floating up to crash swank exclusive seaside gatherings by planting themselves directly in the middle of the million dollar view and doing what Occupy already does very well: trolling the 1%ers really, really hard, 100% legally, and giving the 99%ers a chance to start thinking about getting out of that tired old pantomime sheep costume and into something a bit more fashionable.

A Million Gardens

2011-11-27T16:37:00.000-05:00

[Stan has graciously agreed to let me share this article with you. The solution he proposes is one that should be put into practice immediately: unlike other post-collapse solutions that will only become competitive after collapse has largely run its course, opting out of industrial agriculture is something that doesn't have to wait.]

I love OWS and the Slogan “99%”

It is a great slogan that puts in bold relief the immense power of the one percent of humanity that exists parasitically on the rest. “We are the 99%.” It is a declaration that in some significant way, people are more awake to their circumstances than they were. Around this slogan, we have seen courageous and principled people take to the streets in a great shout of “No!” at the powers and principalities of late neoliberalism; and we have seen that this outburst resonates with far more people than the ruling layer of society expected. We have seen the protestors demonstrate with their bodies that under their façade of civility, this ruling layer relies in the last instance on truncheons, teargas, guns and jails. This unmasking is more important in many ways than what will come afterward, because without it, we accommodate – and we all accommodate in one way or another, even those protesting – without any clarity. Let these thousand flowers bloom.

Still, the 99% are not actually protesting. 99% of the 99% are just doing what they do to get by in the world the best they know how, far from the demonstrations. We know this is true, and we know the reasons are as numerous as the people who do not protest in the street. And so we are required to acknowledge that the movement, such as it is, is representative of its claim, not the number 99’s actualization. And therein is one seed of mischief.

In Latin, it was once said, perversio optima quae est pessima. The perversion of the best is the worst. Some protesters will come to believe they are representative of those they do not know. Some will try and formalize that representation as power. Many are already spinning out programs (God, save us from parties and programs!) that purport to represent the 99%, though they are mostly utopian projections cobbled together by handfuls of people who still believe something called the “future” can be subordinated to human management schemes. Some will begin to articulate what it means to be an “authentic” representative; and the divisions will begin. Nothing stays the same, and this won’t either. Lord, have mercy.

I am one of the 99% of the 99% this time around. I had my day in the sun as a protestor; and if I’d have stayed a day longer, I would have taken up more room than one person should, because movements privilege clever talkers and angry writers more than they ought to. Now I am one of the 99% of the 99% who is restricted in my movements by personal duties and obligations, the lack of money, and the lack of time. I am far from any urban center, far from the big schools, far from the cohorts and committees, far from those places where people debate social theory and movement strategies. And I love it out here in the sticks.

I love the Occupy movement, too. I repost everything I see on Facebook that is not downright offensive (thickheaded sexism in this movement is alive and well, sorry to say). I promoted the movement in my church with a supportive article in the bulletin, which generated a whiff of controversy that promises a dialogue about this thing we have named “economic inequality.” I attended a rally in Lansing, though the mayor there agreed with the protest, so we didn’t generate any hostility from the police. Sherry sports bumper stickers that say “OWS” and “99%.” This is what we can do right now, so we are glad the demonstrators (I like the Spanish term “manifestantes” better) are out there keepin’ on. In so may ways, you are speaking for us. I get a little giddy at how long it has already lasted.

I love the movement’s sense of satire. My favorite video was a bullfighting spoof around the Wall Street bull statue, with two capering clowns and a matador who mounted a police car and snapped his cape at the 7,100 pound bronze bovine.

I love the energy, and the courage, and the general understanding that the power of the movement is pacific. Movements succeed when they inspire violence, but only when they inspire the violence of the oppressor that accomplishes this unmasking.

Whether the vandalism and violence of a few protestors is from fools or police provocateurs (probably a measure of both), it has been thankfully minimal. Those youngsters who got pepper sprayed at UC Davis were more morally effective in their non-resistance than 10,000 macho-boys throwing rocks and setting fires.

I love the way OWS stays unpredictable. That is absolutely this occupy-thing’s greatest strength.

I have questions, and ideas, however, about what happens next, about follow-up, about what the 99% of the 99% can do and, more importantly, should do. I’m not proposing, as many leftists will, that the movement “get itself organized,” select leaders, develop a strategy, etc. In fact, I vigorously oppose strategies on principle, because I believe most of them are simply designed to put a few people in charge of a lot of people who are then charged to carry out the strategy. More on that further along.

Before I can explain myself, I need to at least describe the premise for these ideas.

Premise

The premise begins that all the changes that are implied in the demands – such as they are – of the movement are not applicable to all people in all places at all times. The greatest value of this movement is not in its ability to expose certain sufferings and change certain policies, but in its ability to expose – with no unified intention to do so – all the reasons we need to abandon the entire system of which “policy” is only one essential working component.

This is an argument that is not won in this movement yet, because many people who are supportive of OWS et al still maintain the sincere and good-willing belief that governments and other policy-making institutions are somehow independent of their actual actions, like machines, and they can be taken over – like exchanging a bad driver for a good one in an automobile.

I respect that belief insofar as it is a belief people cleave to out of genuine good will. These people are not collaborators or sheep; and those who characterize them that way are both wrong and mean. I love the people who want to change the policies, because I am convinced that they want to do it out of a genuine sense of care about others.

My argument: Even machines cannot be made independent of their makers and users. The problem with the system is not the driver. It is the car.

This is my premise. If I am wrong, then ignore everything hereafter.

Failure of the Future

I think this car that is breaking down might be named “The Future.”

The deeply-parasitic infrastructure of society is coming apart, not temporarily, but in the face of some real trends that put real limits not only on the autocratic futurism of the right, but the “progressive” futurism of the left, too. I ripped off Ivan Illich above with his reference to perversio optima quae est pessima. I’m quoting him again when he said, “To hell with the future. It is a man-eating idol.”

I agree with that. A lot. This car is breaking down and there is going to be a wreck.

Illich wrote in 1973 about the energy infrastructure crisis. What he said has proven prophetic in both senses of the word. Prophets are wrongly believed to be people who simply foretell the future. In fact, prophets are those who speak truth to power and who have visions, not predictions, that forewarn us of dangerous possibilities in the future.

Every generation has some. Illich showed in 1973, in a pamphlet entitled “Energy and Equity,” that our faith in technology as redeemer of humanity is a terrible mistake. Now we see the big secular trends that prefigure the collapse of many infrastructures. Climate change. Peak resource extractions. The very economic crisis that spawned OWS. War for the fuel to make war. That’s next, and not far off either.

This crisis is not short-term, and it will force people to adopt new tactics for everyday life. It represents both a trauma and an opportunity; but that opportunity, in my opinion, is not available through policy. Policies may alter and change in response to material changes. What has to change is not policy, but our entire built environment based on some more personal and less abstract narratives than Progress and The Future.

This is where the 99% of the 99% can do something, and they can begin doing it right now, without leaving their hometowns. Let’s put this in another context before explaining why and how the 99% of the 99% can make some of those changes.

Devolution & Design

All social orders eventually devolve and are forced to reorganize, and the globalized world we live in is witnessing the devolution of the social order. These periods of discontinuity never last forever, because society eventually self-organizes out of these devolutions, and a new order is established. When an order collapses, there is an accompanying crisis of ideas. More and more in our own period, we are seeing the de-legitimation of our ideas not only about capitalism and socialism, or their ugly merger into neoliberalism, but about what they held in common that have proven to be dangerous idols. Progress. The Future. Technological Salvation.

When I was part of the organized activist left, I cooked up an alliterated recipe for resistance: de-legitimate, disobey, disrupt. For the present, I will add a fourth D. Design.

We are not going to force policy-makers to remake the world. We have to do it ourselves. We have to take our entire built environment, one piece at a time, and re-design it. This will take everyone, because where you live is different than where I live; and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. To hell with policies. They are people-eating idols.

The Money Grid

One nub of the whole situation at the end of 2011 is a longstanding fact. People have been captured by their dependency upon a vast, technocratic apparatus that has de-skilled them and rendered them 100% (not 99%) dependent on money. The technocratic apparatus makes all our stuff, controls our climate, fixes our boo-boos, educates us, feeds us, moves us around, lights our homes, and puts us to work – all inside our most excellent technocratic life support system – and the only thing that makes the system respond… is money. As it is in 2011. As it was in 2010, 2000, 1990, 1980… it just got worse with time.

Money is generated by banks and printed by the government. It is designed to work a certain way to benefit governments and banks, which are run by the rich. Governments and banks are never going to be the ally of any movement like OWS, so there is little likelihood that activism will change the nature of money any time soon. Money is designed to transfer power; and it does it very well. Money is not a morally-neutral sign any more than a gun is a morally-neutral tool. Each is designed for a purpose. Guns are designed to kill. Money is designed to commodify, that is, to make everything into a thing for sale. Including you.

The anthropologist Alf Hornborg said that money dissolves cultural and natural systems in an ecosemiotic process. “Viewed from outer space,” says Hornborg, “money is an ecosemiotic phenomenon that has very tangible effects on ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole. If it were not for money, nobody would be able to trade tracts of rain forest for Coca-Cola.”

That’s a lot to think about. Think about it.

The Institutional Grid

Institutions are required to administer the technocracy upon which we all abjectly depend. Institutions are always somehow imbricated within the system of money that benefits banks and government. There is probably nothing controversial about saying that institutions can be corrupted by money. What I am about to say is that institutions – all of them, even your favorites – are inherently and unavoidably corruptible.

If OWS develops “lists of demands” and programs and the like, there will be predictable appeals to target institutions for particular policy changes. Money controls the institutions. Money controls the policies. Money will come to control the institutions that are created to fight the institutions. As it ever has been and ever shall be. The movement will become “focused,” it will deploy a strategy, and let the games begin. The movement will be placed under management to oversee and coordinate the strategy. The movement will come to depend on money.

Policy games controlled by money will be able to frustrate the original objectives of activists, either by crushing them or co-opting them. Then the demoralization will start anew, amid more nihilism because the devolution will have advanced throughout the process.

If OWS itself begins to unravel over time, which it hasn’t so far but certainly may eventually, the follow-up options may appear to be (1) play by the rules for scraps or (2) to argue for more direct force against the system. The latter will increase the probability of outright destruction, and the former might lead people to believe that nothing, in fact, can be done.

Welcome to the institutional grid.

Relations On and Off the Grid

I believe there is a way out of that impasse. To explain it, I need to make reference to an anthropologist named Robin Dunbar. He calculated that human beings have the cognitive capacity and the time to sustain a very finite number of caring relationships. His guess was around 150. I give this a lot of leeway, but I accept the general idea. Finite brain. Finite time. Finite capacity. Got it.

These primary relationships are built on trust and empathy, requiring no formal agreements, no contracts, no administration by a third party. Most close family relations fall into this category, as do friends. My own trick for categorizing these relations is to think of them as covenantal as opposed to casual or contractual. Your relation to your boss is contractual. Your relation to a grocery clerk you see once a week is casual. Your relation to your friend, lover, child, mother, etc, is covenantal. These covenantal relations are built on care, on trust and empathy. They imply certain non-monetized, highly personal duties and obligations to one another that are accepted out of love. These relations do not require formal rules; and in fact, formal rules would have a deleterious effect on these relations.

“A contract is an agreement made in suspicion. The parties do not trust each other, and they set “limits” to their own responsibility. A covenant is an agreement made in trust. The parties love each other and put no limits on their own responsibility.”
-Wambdi Wicasa

Once a group exceeds this fuzzy cognitive limit, this “Dunbar’s number,” it begins to require third parties to administer, manage and resolve conflicts. This is the genesis of administration and management, and it becomes inevitable with greater scale, more people. This new layer of relations is more impersonal, first by some small degree. With more people and more administrators come greater degrees of impersonality. The uprooted impersonality of administration is inevitable. The tendency of these social formations is summed up in the way we can refer to administration as an “apparatus.”

A remarkable moral shift occurs with the emergence of this apparatus. Doing the right thing because you care for someone is superseded by doing the correct or legal thing because of an impersonal rule. The rules are necessary because the third parties of these apparati have to be seen as disinterested parties. In this single moral shift, those who administer the rules gain a new kind of social power that makes them inherently corruptible.

This applies to a corporation, a club, a rifle platoon, a progressive non-profit, a church, a school, a hospital, a town, the water supply system, the food system, everything… because our technocratic society is administered by an apparatus that is approaching perfect impersonality. Plain size can begin this pernicious process, so small “organizations” beware. Simply calling yourself an organization carries this risk of impersonality. The corruptibility of these institutions inheres in the enormous power they accumulate purely through the authority to administer and manage.

The Fetishism of Bureaucratic Competence

So while we are unmasking ideologies – those constellations of ideas that simultaneously conceal and reproduce power – let’s look at this ideology of “progress” and the “future.” It is entirely built on force, and that power has accrued to the one percent, and we have not unmasked what Alasdair MacIntyre calls the “fetishism of bureaucratic skill,” part of the ideology of progress that both reproduces and conceals this administrative power. Most of the left and the right have fallen prey to this fetishism.

“The modern American is culturally conditioned to think of nature as nothing more than matter-in-motion, as a standing reserve that through technological and entrepreneurial prowess is converted into a consumer’s cornucopia.”
-Max Oelschlaeger

To this adds MacIntyre:

“The fetishism of commodities has been supplemented by another just as important fetishism, that of bureaucratic skills… the realm of managerial expertise is one in which what purport to be objectively grounded claims [e.g., to the knowledge of the good society and how to achieve it] function in fact an expression of arbitrary, but disguised, will and preference.”

Power. His qualification is at the heart of it, “to the knowledge of the good society and how to achieve it.” This is a delusion of the ideology of progress, this notion that people can render the future predictable and manageable. Experts, managers and administrators take full advantage of this ideology to exert will and preference behind a mask of special competence.

MacIntyre continues, in 1984, that “we know of no organized movement towards power which is not bureaucratic and managerial in mode, and we know of no justifications for authority that are not Weberian.”

As the power of administrators grows, an ethic of care becomes more and more antithetical to the rules-regime of administration. Impersonality metastasizes, and we wake up to find ourselves not living in the world but moving plugs around on a switchboard to get what we need from the technocratic grid.

Management makes rules that help management. Management is the administration of administrators. Administration makes rules that benefit administration. As Haitians say, ti tig se tig. “The child of a tiger is a tiger.”

The original purpose of a rule – often created out of good will – is subverted by the administrative application of the rule. In common parlance, “the tail starts to wag the dog.” The letter of the law is administered against the spirit of the law. This dog-waggery leads to the incomprehensibility of the rules and resentment of administration and management, which in turn becomes defensive, setting up a power struggle in which administration is already advantaged by the growing dependency of the administered on administration. Remember that Stalin accrued his immense power through control of an administrative apparatus.

One of the reasons we have so little power to act creatively in the face of so many crises is not just that we are fragmented, but that we’re cut off in a much deeper way by the lack of social cohesion that can only happen in the small, intimate group. Covenantal relations are strong bonds. Contractual relations are weak bonds.

Every infantry squad leader knows that. Every good mother knows it. The rest of us ought to, too.

Management is the enemy of social cohesion, because it substitutes secondary (weak) bonds for primary (strong) ones. By re-strengthening primary bonds, we develop a greater capacity to resist power, but also to creatively adapt to (without direct resistance) rapidly changing circumstances.

Strategy and Tactics

Strategy and tactics as they are commonly understood are war terms, and they can’t escape their conflict implications. Michel De Certeau, however, draws a distinction between them that leaps over some of the martial interpretations of these ideas.

In military parlance, strategy is the identification of key campaigns that are necessary to accomplish the main objective – in most cases, winning the war. Operations is a level of planning that determines key battles necessary to win campaigns. Tactics are those techniques that are required to win battles. So the tactic is subordinate to the campaign, which is subordinate to the strategy. In other words, “In the beginning, there was Strategy, and without it the world was shapeless and void.”

De Certeau wrote about people in their everyday lives, not conditions of extremity and conflict, in a book entitled oddly enough, The Practice of Everyday Life.

Strategy, notes De Certeau, is always the purview of power. Strategy presumes control. Strategy is self-segregating, in the same way administration and management is self-segregating, setting itself up as a barricaded insider. The strategic leaders become the Subject; and the led become — along with any enemies — the Objects. Strategy presumes an in-group that executes the Strategy.

“Strategy is the calculus of force-relationships; when a subject of will and power can be isolated from an environment.”
-De Certeau

The financial masters of the universe at Wall Street oversee the strategy. They are the institutions. In many ways, the rest of us cannot escape their Grid. They are the subject, and the rest are the object. They are inside; and we are outside. They live behind guarded walls.

De Certeau calls tactics, on the other hand, the purview of the non-powerful. His version of “tactics” is not as a subset of Strategy, but adaptation to the environment (which has been structured by A Strategy).

The city planning commission may determine what streets there will be, but the local cabbie will figure out how to take best advantage of lived reality of those streets. This making-do is what De Certeau calls bricolage, and it often implies cooperation with others as much as competition with others.

While the masters of the financial universe at Wall Street protect their guarded walls and ensure the system keeps paying the imperial tribute, we are making do. We do things that they can’t control or fully account for. We barter, clip coupons, work under the table, trade labor, share tasks and expenses with friends… all those little cheats to bypass the more disadvantageous routes along the Grid. Making do. Bricolage.

Bricolage is so detailed, so numerous in instance, so adaptable, that much of it escapes the notice of the Big Strategists; more importantly, it is beyond their power to control.

Agility

Strategy makes two presumptions: control and an in-group. The contradiction of strategy is that the control is never perfect and the situation upon which the strategy was constructed is always changing, making aspects of the strategy obsolescent. The self-segregation of in-groups magnifies these myopic aspects of strategy, because the walls that keep others out also obscure their view of the outside. Strategy becomes self-referential.

Tactics, on the other hand, or bricolage, is action in a constant state of reassessment and correction based directly on observations of the actual micro-environment. Tactical theorist John Boyd rather schematically diagrammed this process as an OODA-loop, meaning people observe their surroundings (O), orient on the most important developments in the environment (O), decide on an immediate course of action (D), take that action (A), then revert immediately to observation (O) of the environment to see how their last action might have changed it (orienting again, deciding again, acting again…and again). There is no presumption of how things will turn out, as there is in strategy. There is, in fact, readiness to take advantage of unpredictable changes; this is called tactical agility.

Ignore that Boyd studied aerial combat for a moment, and we see that this is sense in many other scenarios. It just requires recognizing the radical limits on our ability to control something called “the future.” That future has always and always will remain unpredictable. As it should.

Strategies are undermined by unpredictability. Tactics (bricolage, OODA-loops) can make an ally of unpredictability.

The intrepid street manifestantes of the Occupy movement can benefit from the OODA-Loop. They are in a tactical contest with the authorities to perform their prophetic tasks. For those among the other 99%, what kinds of bricolage can begin to directly and intentionally reduce our degree of dependence on the technocratic grid?

Strategic Without Strategy

Nero – both an emperor and a sadistic misanthrope – is said to have wished humanity had one throat so he could have the pleasure of cutting it. This is the statement of a strategic principle. The centralized structures of one’s enemy are considered strategic targets.

Sherman’s great arson campaign was principally aimed at Atlanta, where both the railroads and telegraphs of the Confederate forces converged. His march to Atlanta prefigured what would later become strategic bombing.

As the United States Armed Forces, to their chagrin, discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan is that when there were no longer centralized political structures to attack in Iraq, there was a complete loss of tactical initiative. The US forces were metaphorically reduced to fighting off a swarm of hornets. Their strategy became incoherent. The problem was further magnified in Afghanistan, because there even the material infrastructure lacked centralization. Rumsfeld’s first complaint about Afghanistan, when the Bush administration was preparing its war, was that Afghanistan presented the US with “no good targets.”

One thing this might be telling us, if we are listening, is that we are safer from the strategies of ill-wishers in decentralized groups. The more the merrier.

In nature, decentralized diversity generates resilience. Centralized monoculture, on the other hand, is vulnerable precisely because it is centralized. One electrical failure can plunge 50 million people into opaque helplessness. One new fungus can wipe out a monocropped food staple.

I bring this up, because I want to suggest a mode of strategic decentralism. Being strategic without developing A Strategy. The 99% of the 99% need to have some answer to the question, “What can we do?” My answer is make new facts on the ground. Start re-designing the built environment, especially in those spaces that are being ignored or abandoned during the process of devolution.

I want to propose a strategic goal without any general staff, without any hierarchy of any kind, part of which almost anyone can accomplish. No requirement for management, and no implied requirement for conflict (some will always find you), and no one-size-fits-all instructions on how to get it done.

I want to propose that we begin a systematic effort to reduce our dependency on the technocratic grid, by a lot of people working at or near their homes. One of the most powerful dependencies we have on the grid is food. The power of the food institutions is already well known and well understood, from Monsanto, to ADM and Cargill, to the Food and Drug Administration. Our very survival has been lashed to this grid by food-production monopolies. The entire world is groaning under the depredations of the food giants.

I have witnessed food riots firsthand. It is an unforgettable experience. Our dependency on food is a terrible weapon in the hands of the one percent.

I want to propose we build a million food gardens. Two million. However many. However many conditions. However many designs. There is the strategic direction: make food, and not just for the same reasons Gandhi made salt. Make food because it puts that much of our lives back into our own hands, and the hands of our communities. Into the hands of our friends, our families, our covenantal relations. We can meet one of our own needs without any bureaucratic apparatus.

Making Food

In the town where I live, with around 20,000 souls, we built a garden this year. A group of people built the first of several food donation gardens on what the city has called “orphaned properties.” The city owns them, but they have no particular use for them during this devolutionary contraction. Next Spring, we want to make two more gardens. A friend from church just offered the use of a portion of her country property for garden cultivation. We have around a million maples worth of leaf mulch and compost, mountains of chipped wood (from ice storm damage last year), and those long Northern summer days of sun. We have barely begun to learn how much food we can grow here… off the commercial food Grid.

I, for one, do not intend this to be some strategy to force new policies into the commercial food grid. Speaking for me, I see this as a way of serving divorce papers on the commercial food grid. And no one has figured out a way to call helmeted, militarized police out to stop anyone working in the gardens. The cops I talked to this year said it was a good idea, the garden.

Multiply this by a million, then instead of a quarter acre of re-designed facts on the ground, you have 250,000 acres of re-designed facts on the ground. These are easier to defend than a policy, and it presents no strategic targets. Certainly there are threats and potential threats, but there is no one neck so Nero can have the pleasure of cutting it. Instead there is an accumulation of intimate victories, accomplished by convenantal communities, communities made that much stronger by the reduction of their dependency on the technocratic grid and the recognition of their very personalized interdependency on each other.

Walking on Two Legs

Demonstrating in the street, this unmasking work that OWS has done so incredibly, inspiringly, lovingly well, is not done yet. I am not by any means arguing that anyone ought to return from the street. Those of us who can’t be there do need you to represent. You are the allies of unpredictability, the agile OODA-artists of the street, the magicians who can abracadabra bits of stunning clarity out of your hats. Your job is exhilarating, exhausting and crazy risky sometimes. If you can do it, that is where you need to be.

There will never be more than a fraction who have the flexibility at a particular time to be manifestantes. We love you, and we want you to go on, and we have been both instructed and entertained by your courage, creativity and endurance.

When you can no longer do it, there is something you can do, and so can the 99% of the 99% who can’t be those shock troop manifestantes, right now.

What can be done, and without any strategies involved, is a straightforward and strenuous effort by 99% of the 99% who are at home to make food. If there are 500,000 OWS protestors, then there need to be 1,000,000 more people who are making food in their yards, their neighborhoods, their churches, temples and synagogues, their workplaces, their schools, their land trust plots, their fallow fields, their empty lots, their apartment decks, their patios and their kitchen windows.

Even when the demonstrations end – and they will end – we are not left with nothing to do to continue dissolving that power. Every square yard of land recovered for food is a material victory in the face of little resistance, and that same square yard is a square yard of independence from the Grid.

Do not pit your weakness against their strength. Exercise your strengths where they are weakest, where you live. The system is falling apart, and nothing will stop that. More and more niches will appear.

Even more important to me personally: gardens are peacemaking. Peacemaking is still the most important form of resistance.

Let a million gardens bloom.

Swadeshi.

Shanti.

The Russian Soul and the Collapse of the West

2011-11-07T17:09:00.000-05:00

[Guest post by Sandy, ClubOrlov's Siberia correspondent. A version of this article was run in late October in the newspaper Business Biysk, in the Altai Region of Russia.]

The earliest stirrings of modern industrial society can be traced back to some 6,000 years ago, to the emergence of the first cities, the emergence of agriculture and storage of food surpluses in the Near East. A bit later, analytic and linguistic keys to the forward march of civilization found critical refinement in Aristotle’s syllogistic logic and the founding of the sciences. The current trajectory of the West burst into full self-consciousness during the period of European Enlightenment, with the birth of rationalism and the elaboration of the modern scientific method. These, in turn, eventually gave rise to the industrialization, hyper-specialization, technological innovation and increasing commodification of just about everything that we are witnessing today.

With Europe and, more recently, America leading the way, the path charted and engineered by Western civilization spawned a mindset that is rapidly overtaking the globe, socially, economically, and culturally. This ascendancy has unleashed a domination of values, which, unlike political hegemonies of the past, are spreading with lightning speed, virtually unchallenged, and artfully enabled by the very technologies it has spawned.

Many Americans are convinced that their culture represents the apex of this historical legacy, the best in scientific and technological advancement, as well as political and economic leadership. What America has achieved, so they believe, is a dream come true. It was this “American Dream” that has been held out to (or thrust upon) the rest of the world as the ultimate expression of the “good life”—the proper locus of human happiness. However, it was cheap energy, in the form of fossil fuels, that has enabled this cultural and industrial progress, and the recent recognition that world oil extraction has peaked surely signals the prospective collapse of industrial economy, and, with it, the dissolution of its core institutions. The trajectory of Western civilization, now characterized by accelerating energy decline and global climate change—a trajectory that Homo sapiens had set in motion upon excavating the first coal pit—is nearing its end.

There are yet some dreamers and wishful thinkers who tell us of oil extraction technologies and spectacular discoveries of new supplies that will power our future. Overlooking the insidious exaggeration of these claims, the unintended consequences of technologies needed to deliver on them will surely bring substantial ecological fallout, further limiting our access to survival necessities such as clean air, fresh water, and healthy flora and fauna. Likewise, alternate sources of energy will never replace industrial civilization’s continuous and ever-growing need for transportation fuels. We are living within an unsustainable bubble that is already deflating, slowly for now, more quickly in the near future. Sustainable human existence will require smaller-scale and more local approaches to just about everything.

With the globe facing epic crises—ecological, financial, economic, political, psychological—at whose feet do we lay the blame? Where do we look to better understand the roots of these crises, or to learn how to outrun their dire consequences? While many have identified pursuit of the American Dream as a proximate cause of this global unraveling, the USA was not alone in its reliance upon certain fundamental assumptions about subjugation and exploitation of nature, ineluctably leading to devastating outcomes. All civilized regimes—from the first empires of ancient Mesopotamia to modern nations such as Russia and China—share the responsibility for the current planetary devastation. Industrial progress, economic growth, technological innovation, political expansion and environmental devastation have been the hallmarks of civilization since the beginning of history.

Not surprisingly, there is now growing disaffection in the West (of all places) with the way things are going. Given a global financial meltdown, high unemployment, austerity, endless war, insurrections popping up everywhere, unparalleled greed, irrational terrorism, the American Dream is fading like like the trace of warm breath on a mirror. Mother nature herself seems to be speaking to us loudly, with more frequent and more brutal natural disasters than at any other time in recorded history. Barely two decades into America’s uncontested ascendancy to unipolar imperial power—with the entire planet supposedly globalizing around its neoliberal capitalist dogma—and the whole thing is starting to come apart. If you think this makes the institutional fabric of Western civilization vulnerable, you are right; it does.

Yet do not think for a moment that it is going to come down without a struggle. There are centripetal forces holding this spectacle together as much as there are centrifugal forces pulling it apart. Aside from the greedy and controlling hands of plutocrats, there is too much raw desire out there in the hinterlands, too many people who have been living on the fringes of this “Dream” just waiting for their turn, for a piece of the pie. The entire Soviet Bloc, systematically excluded from all the fun for almost a century, now holds the forbidden fruit firmly within its grasp. These now independent nations are busy chasing the dream as quickly as they can muster the energy and the capital. China has also awakened from its slumber, focused on making up for lost time in securing a position of global prominence. The Indians have decided that they too want to play: Mumbai has made a good beginning in this respect, taking over nearly all customer service functions for major US corporations, siphoning off consumer purchasing power that once went to Americans.

A new generation of Russians is racing to be first at the finish line. The Russian Federation, in concert with its regional administrations, is aggressively stripping forestland, building new roads and expanding old ones, and refurbishing and building-out regional and the international airports. They are doing so with great abandon, as if there is no tomorrow—and perhaps there won't be. Yet no one in Siberia younger than fifty years old seems to want to discuss this possibility. They are having too much fun with their newfound wealth, and are enjoying the spectacle. This is most evident when you look at the younger generation of Siberians and the nouveau riche in Barnaul, Biysk, Belokurikha, and across Altai Krai. They cannot live without their cell phones, their iPods and their credit cards; without their health club memberships, pricey coffee houses and their air conditioners; without their recently financed foreign automobiles and their newly minted driver's licenses. In short, they have tasted the promise of this “society of the spectacle.” They are mesmerized by its allure and hooked on its fascinating appeal. It is not just blue jeans they want. They want it all! Short of an abrupt exhaustion of basic vital resources like fossil fuel, clean water, or fresh air, the only way we could see a quick collapse of this “curriculum of the West” as it moves east, is by prying it from the clutching hands of all those who previously had little, but now choose to have hope for more.

But there is also something ancient and primitive pulling at the emotional core of Siberians, something that once spoke clearly to a more archaic need, and perhaps still speaks to the older generations of Siberians even today. I am referring to the thoroughly mythologized Russian soul: a soul that in the mother tongue is feminine in gender—душа [dushá]—and, as such, is intimately connected with the mystery of Mother Earth. Recall Dostoevsky’s many references to the Russian soul as a reflection of the people’s unfailing and non-negotiable connection to the land from which life springs. There is a well-articulated and indestructible sentiment among our people that does not allow complete separation, physically or emotionally, from the land in which they were born and where they naturally survive and flourish. The Russian people have the greatest appreciation for, love of and attachment to their homeland and families, as well as to the broader ties of kinship these entail. They understand all of this to be intimately connected, as their language makes abundantly clear:

род [rod]: family, kind, sort, genus
родина [ródina]: homeland, motherland
родители [rodíteli]: parents
родить [rodít']: to give birth
роднить [rodnít']: to unite, bring together
родовой [rodovói]: ancestral, tribal
родство [rodstvó]: kinship

Over their historically, Russians have had to endure the hardships and struggles of political turmoil and repeated invasion, and Siberians understand struggle as a given, as part of the cycle of life, death and nature. The normal conditions of existence here, whether in the city or the village, are not what we Americans would consider easy, convenient, or comfortable (although they are improving). Those who live here have preserved some age-old instincts in order to survive, and even to celebrate life in the midst of recurrent hardships and strife. The personal and cultural resolve that personifies this soul has been forged over generations of people facing down aggression, natural and political, then calmly and courageously returning to their roots and rebuilding their lives upon an archaic foundation in which they never lost faith. It is impossible to understand the depth and mystery of this soul separately from its rootedness in the simplicity of the Russian peasantry and the inviolability of the Russian soil. There is an earthly sensuousness that infuses the Russian experience; this culture remains drenched in the primacy of the body and the natural world that nourishes it. This autochthonous connection to the land—the Siberian’s more elemental experience of life in wilder, mysterious nature—may still be capable of influencing the future trajectory of both the new Russia and Western civilization.

Perhaps Russia’s long-suffering messianic mission still stands firm in the Siberian wilderness, albeit less vociferously than before, quietly recalling humanity from the abyss of alienated spirit that haunts the self-absorbed West with its scientific rationalism, its consumerism and its otherworldly transcendence—a self-misunderstanding that seems to be marching all of us mindlessly toward global collapse. Perhaps the more primal Siberian awareness can summon us back to a feral memory trace, helping us recall our essential rootedness in Mother Earth and the earthly sensuousness of our flesh, the flesh of the world. But the delusion of ‘manifest destiny’ that drives Western hegemony and its commodity culture is chipping away relentlessly and callously at that archaic Russian soul, perhaps more rapidly than she is able to redirect and dissipate the self-destructive energy of Western imperialism and its global appetite. Siberians, and those of us living here in Altai Krai, must rethink their commitment to this Western curriculum as it continues to lead us relentlessly, mindlessly, toward a precipice.

ASPO 2011: Post-Collapse Planning

2011-11-05T13:47:00.000-04:00

Hubbert's Third Prophecy

2011-11-05T00:24:00.001-04:00

[A timely guest post from Gary. tl;dn: Hubbert was right. Again.]

In light of recent events such as the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street I thought it would be pertinent to review Hubbert's Third Prophecy about the cultural crisis he expected. He wrote about it in the attached article entitled "Exponential Growth as a Transient Phenomenon in Human History". In case you are not familiar with Hubbert's first two prophecies, he predicted both the US and world oil peak very accurately.

In 1956 Hubbert predicted the US oil peak would be sometime between 1969 and 1971. For this he was ridiculed and laughed off the face of the earth (almost). Turned out the US oil peak was in 1970. This is something the drill-baby-drill, it's all the environmentalists' fault, ditto heads don't know anything about.

Next in 1974 Hubbert predicted the world oil peak to happen about 1998. However he DID say that if OPEC were to restrict the supply, then the peak would be delayed by 10-15 years which would put it at 2008-2013, or exactly right. Here is what Hubbert's prediction (to scale by MBPD) looks like overlayed onto a reasonably close estimate of the actual global oil peak which started in 2005 and has continued as a plateau up to now.

OK, now is anyone willing to make a bet that Hubbert's THIRD prophecy is wrong? Didn't think so. Here it is:

Hubbert said, "The third curve (on the left) is simply the mathematical curve for exponential growth. No physical quantity can follow this curve for more than a brief period of time. However, a sum of money, being of a nonphysical nature and growing according to the rules of compound interest at a fixed interest rate, can follow that curve indefinitely...Our principle constraints are cultural...we have evolved a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that it is incapable of reckoning with problems of non-growth...it behooves us...to begin a serious examination of the...cultural adjustments necessary...before unmanageable crises arise..."

Ok, anyone see any cultural crisis happening? Yeah, what about a worldwide uprising of the 99% against the 1%? What does this have to do with Hubbert's Third Prophecy? EVERYTHING!
Here is a graph of total US debt in all sectors up to end of 2009:

Here is same curve overlayed with same time scale on global oil peak:

Looks kinda like Hubbert's graph above doesn't it? That's because it is. Debt can continue to increase indefinitely, while oil can't. And since our entire money system is based on debt with interest attached there is no way to escape it. All money is debt because we have allowed banks and the fed to create all our money through interest-bearing loans by using the fractional reserve system. The details are unimportant, the main point is that our money supply is created by interest-bearing loans of banks and the fed. Therefore, the economy must always grow in order to pay back the interest. When the economy can't grow anymore...collapse.

Here is what has happened to US debt over the last several years:

2008 US Debt:GDP ratio = 350%

2009 4Q US Debt:GDP ratio = 425%

2011: US Debt:GDP ratio = 475%?

Debt has continued to grow because we don't have a real economy anymore, we have a fictitious funny-money phantom economy of mostly financial speculation. Here is what happened in 2008:

As we all know, we had a stock market crash, a housing crash, an oil price spike and crash, and an employment crash. Because we don't have a real economy any more we have papered over these problems by creating more debt. The taxpayers bailed out the criminal fraudsters on Wall St., taking on more government debt, and the fed bailed out many bankrupt banks internationally ($12 Trillion), indenturing the taxpayers for future debt.

Since debt represents ultimately a claim on real assets, debt cannot continue forever if growth of the real resource based economy has stopped. This is Hubbert's Third Prophecy: When economic growth cannot continue due to the lack of affordable oil, then we will have a cultural crisis. Well here we are folks. The solution of the powers that be? Create more funny money through the fed's "quantitative easing program". The solution of the Keynesian economists? Take on more government debt through interest bearing loans by selling Treasury bonds to the fed, China, and other parties (stimulus). The solution of the right-wing "deficit hawks"? Cut government (social) spending to the bone to "cut the deficit" which they created through monstrous military spending, and tax cuts to themselves. Guess what. None of these are going to work. The solution is structural in the monetary system itself. When all money is debt, there is always interest to pay and growth is required.

Hubbert didn't mention one other notable feature of a debt-money system. It systematically pumps wealth from the bottom 80% of the population in wealth to the top 20%. The bottom 80% pay interest while the top 20% collects it, and of course most of the interest is collected by the top 10%. When all money is debt, that's a lot of money going to the top. The Occupy Wall Street people aren't stupid. They know the game is rigged.

A SOLUTION

A solution is some form of Public Credit Money. That means that money is issued without interest:

1. 100% reserve requirements (abolish bank money)

2. Abolish Federal Reserve notes (end private central banking)

3. Issue Treasury Notes INTEREST-FREE (Greenbacks)

4. Issue state or local currency (warrants, bills of credit, zero interest bonds)

5. Social Credit (CH Douglas)

6. Kucinich NEED Act

Each of these topics could have a separate article, but I will summarize briefly.

1. The small reserve requirement of ~5% means that the banking system can create 1/.05 = 20X the money from deposits on hand. Most people think banks loan out money that people save and deposit, but that isn't how it works. With 100% reserve banks can only loan out money on time that you deposit, and you cannot withdraw it during that period of time, so it is like a CD (certificate of deposit).

2. Abolish the fed or put it under the treasury department.

3. The Treasury department could then issue Treasury notes, not Treasury bonds. Treasury notes are credit money that is spent on public goods, or loaned for projects creating public goods. It is returned to the government through taxes or repayment of low-interest loans. The colonists used colonial scrip, Lincoln issued GREENBACKS, and Kennedy issued Treasury notes. These were all credit money, not debt money.

4. States or local governments could issue warrants, bills of credit, or zero interest bonds. Some people feel the national government is too unaccountable to be trusted with money creation and it should be devolved to lower levels of government.

5. Social Credit (CH Douglas): Part of public credit money could be to resurrect the idea of social credit. Government issues credit directly to the public as a guaranteed minimum income and they spend it on things they need. The fed gave money free to banks. Why not give money free to us? This is similar to the scene in the recent movie "In Time", when they rob the bank and announce to the crowd that the bank is giving zero interest loans, and you don't have to pay it back.

6. Dennis Kucinich has introduced the NEED act which incorporates many of these ideas from the American Monetary Institute.

Debt-based money is incompatible with the post oil-peak world. It's only a matter of time before it collapses in default.

For further reading see:

http://publicbankinginstitute.org/
http://currencycommonsvt.org/
http://www.monetary.org/
Web of Debt, Ellen Brown

ASPO 2011: The Bright Future of Too-Big-To-Not-Fail Finance

2011-11-05T00:00:00.000-04:00

Stadien des Kollaps Revidiert: „An der Brieftasche verwachsen“

2011-11-02T00:20:00.001-04:00

[Auf Englisch]

Meine nette, geordnete Taxonomie des Kollaps, „Die Fünf Stadien des Kollaps“, wurde allein auf meinem Blog mehr als 70,000 mal gelesen seit ich ihn im Februar 2008 veröffentlicht habe. Der Artikel ist immer noch populär: alleine in diesem Jahr gab es über 10,000 Hits auf der Seite. Die Leute müssen ihn immer noch für hilfreich halten.

Und doch verläuft der Kollaps bisher nicht nach Plan. Was mich bewog den Artikel zu schreiben war der finanzielle Zusammenbruch von 2008, der zunächst nach einem Schachmatt für die westliche Finanzwelt aussah. Davon gehe ich immer noch aus. Damals schrieb ich über den „credit event“ von 2008:

Die Regierung könnte als Reaktion einige hilfreiche Predigten über „der Sünde Lohn“ halten und ein paar Suppenküchen und Absteigen an verschiedensten Orten, darunter auch an der Wall Street, eröffnen. Die Nachricht wäre:“ Ihr, die ehemals Schuld- und Spielsüchtigen, habt es wie man so sagt 'verbockt' und dies wird euch eine Lange Zeit leidtun. Wir werden euch nie wieder in die Nähe des großen Geldes lassen. Schafft eure Hintern in die Suppenküche und bringt euren eigenen Napf mit, denn wir waschen nicht ab.“ Das Ergebnis wäre ein stabiler Kollaps im ersten Stadium – die Zweite Große Depression.

Das ist allerdings unwahrscheinlich, denn die US Regierung ist nun mal der Schuld- und Spielsüchtige Nummer eins. Als Individuen können wir noch so tugendhaft sein die Regierung wird dennoch exorbitante Schulden in unserem Namen anhäufen. Jede Ebene der Regierung, von lokaler Verwaltungen und Behörden die den Kreditmarkt zum finanzieren öffentlicher Dienstleistungen und Aufträge benötigen, bis hin zur Bundesregierung, die für ihre endlosen Kriege auf ausländische Investitionen angewiesen ist, ist von privaten Schulden abhängig. Sie wissen dass sie nicht aufhören können Schulden zu machen, also werden sie alles in ihrer Macht tun das Spiel so lange wie möglich am Laufen zu halten.

Ich dachte zwar der Regierungsintervention ins private Finanzwesen die Qualen etwas verlängern würden; doch dass sie sie bis zum Tod der Regierungen selbst verlängern würde hätte ich nicht erwartet.

Der Effekt der Einmischung in den USA und Europa war das Niederreißen jedweden Schutzwalls zwischen privaten und öffentlichen Finanzen, mit dem Ergebnis das wir uns zwei monströsen, furchtbar kranken, siamesischen Zwillingen gegenüber sehen. Der Tod des einen bedeutet den sicheren Tod des anderen. Sie mit einem Hackbeil zu trennen wäre zwecklos: sie würden nur rote Tinte bluten und früher sterben als sie es ohnehin müssen.

Vielleicht wäre ihr frühzeitiger Tod hilfreich. Jetzt, da es mit wirtschaftlichem Wachstum so gut wie aus und vorbei ist, stellt die Großfinanz und hohe Politik nur ein Hindernis dar für ein geordnetes Einschrumpfen der Weltwirtschaft. Was ich mit einem „geordneten Einschrumpfen“ meine, ist ein Prozess bei dem die Wirtschaft in einem gesunden Maße schrumpft, bei etwa der Rate, die man einst als gesunde Wachstumsrate bezeichnet hat. Aber auf eine Weise die es den meisten Menschen erlaubt zu überleben, indem man einige Notwendigkeiten zur Verfügung stellt. So etwa Nahrung, Unterkunft, Sicherheit, der Zugang zu Medizinischer Versorgung, die Möglichkeit Kinder groß zuziehen und so weiter.

Die endlosen, leidenschaftlichen Gebete, für nicht existentes und physikalisch unmögliches Wachstum, sind verräterisch: Ohne Wachstum muss man die befristeten Tricks der Regierungen und Geldinstitute die das Spiel am Leben halten als unbefristet erachten, und unbefristet funktionieren sie nicht. Da gäbe es z.B. den „versteckt den Dreck“ Trick für die Bilanzen der Zentralbanken. Der würde funktionieren wenn der Dreck irgendwann wieder etwas wert wäre, was mit Wirtschaftswachstum denkbar wäre. Ohne ihn bleibt es Dreck.

Ein anderer Trick ist die massive Aufstockung der Rettungsschirme unter Garantieversprechen seitens der Regierungen; Dieser Trick könnte funktionieren, wenn das Wachstum wieder anziehen würde, denn dann würden die Garantien niemals in Anspruch genommen. So wie es steht werden sie aber garantiert in Anspruch genommen. Und da die öffentlichen Gelder hinter den Garantien nicht existieren, dürfte die Behauptung, dass Billionen an Rettungsgeldern zur Verfügung stehen, sicherlich schnell seine Wirkung verlieren.

Ich hätte mir eine geordnete Kaskade kollabierender Institutionen gewünscht, mit genügend Abstand zwischen den Ereignissen, damit sich allgemeine Psyche und Habitus an die neue Realität anpassen können. Doch die fast vier verschwendeten Jahre, in denen die Finanzwelt und Regierung nun schon auf eine Zukunft setzen die nicht existieren kann, und dabei jeden Einsatz verdoppeln den sie verlieren, haben diese Hoffnung zerschlagen. Ich denke der Effekt wird lediglich der sein, dass sich finanzieller und politischer Kollaps in einer einzigen chaotischen Periode verdichten. Der wirtschaftliche Zusammenbruch wird dann nicht lange auf sich warten lassen, denn der globale Handel ist vom globalen Finanzwesen abhängig, und sobald internationale Kredite austrocknen fahren Tanker und Frachter nicht mehr. Kurz danach gehen die Lichter aus.

„Die Fünf Stadien des Kollaps“ war eine nette Theorie. Ach hätten wir doch nur so viel Glück gehabt! Ich schreibe das um Sie zu warnen: erwarten Sie besser nichts derart geordnetes.

Stages of Collapse Revised: “Joined at the Wallet”

2011-10-30T13:42:00.007-04:00

My neat and tidy taxonomy of collapse, “The Five Stages of Collapse,” has been read more than 70,000 times just on my blog alone since I first published it in February of 2008. It continues to be popular: there were over 10,000 hits to the page just this year. People must still be finding it helpful.

And yet collapse has not gone according to plan. What caused me to write the initial article was the financial collapse of 2008, which was shaping up to be a game-ender for Western finance. It still is, I believe. Back then, I wrote of the “credit event” of 2008:

The government response to this could be to offer some helpful homilies about "the wages of sin" and to open a few soup kitchens and flop houses in a variety of locations including Wall Street. The message would be: "You former debt addicts and gamblers, as you say, 'fucked up,' and so this will really hurt for a long time. We will never let you anywhere near big money again. Get yourselves over to the soup kitchen, and bring your own bowl, because we don't do dishes." This would result in a stable Stage 1 collapse - the Second Great Depression.

However, this is unlikely, because in the US the government happens to be debt addict and gambler number one. As individuals, we may have been as virtuous as we wished, but the government will have still run up exorbitant debts on our behalf. Every level of government, from local municipalities and authorities, which need the financial markets to finance their public works and public services, to the federal government, which relies on foreign investment to finance its endless wars, is addicted to public debt. They know they cannot stop borrowing, and so they will do anything they can to keep the game going for as long as possible.

I thought that government interventions in private finance would prolong the agony somewhat; what I didn't think was that they would prolong it even onto the death of the governments themselves! The effect of the interventions since then, in the US and in Europe, has been to knock down every firewall between public and private finance, to the point that now we are faced with two monstrous, and monstrously sick, conjoined twins, and the death any one of them is sure to spell the death of the other. Trying to separate them with a cleaver will be of no use: they will simply hemorrhage red ink and die sooner than they would otherwise.

Perhaps their early demise would be useful. Now that economic growth is pretty much over and done with, big finance and big government stand directly in the path of an orderly shriveling-up of the global economy. What I mean when I say “an orderly shriveling-up” is a process by which the economy shrinks at a healthy rate, corresponding to rates that were once considered to be a healthy growth rate, but in a way that allows most people to survive by providing a few essentials, such as food, shelter, security, access to medical care, ability to raise children and so on.

The endless fervent prayers we hear for nonexistent and physically impossible economic growth are telltale: without growth the temporary tricks used by government and finance to keep the game going have to be seen as permanent tricks, and as permanent tricks they do not work. There is the trick of “hiding the garbage” on the balance sheet of central banks. It would work if the garbage (loans gone bad) were to some day be worth something, which it might have if there were to be growth. Without it, they remain garbage. Another trick is to extend government guarantees to massively raise the amount of available bail-out funds; this trick would work if growth were to resume, in which case the guarantees would never need to be used. As it is, they are guaranteed to be used, and since the public funds behind these guarantees don't exist, the pretense of there being trillions of bail-out funds available is sure to wear thin quickly.

I wished for an orderly cascade of collapsing institutions, with enough of a gap between them for public psychology and behavior to adjust to the new reality. But almost four lost years of both government and finance betting on a future that cannot exist, doubling down every time they lose again, have dashed those hopes. The effect, I think, will be to compress financial and political collapse into a single chaotic episode. Commercial collapse will not be far behind, because global commerce is dependent on global finance, and once international credit locks up the tankers and the container ships won't sail. Shortly thereafter it will be lights out.

The Five Stages of Collapse was a nice theory. If only we had been so lucky! I am writing this to warn you: don't look for anything quite so tidy. Oh, and happy Halloween!

Where's Muammar?

2011-10-18T07:00:00.025-04:00

Auf Deutsch—Vielen Dank, Alexander!

[48-hour update: Muammar is in his home town of Sirte, dead. He died like a warrior, surrounded by his loyal followers, who fought on against insurmountable odds until the very end. He is survived by his enemies, who, if they are lucky, will die the death of cowards—in a hospital bed, fussed over by money-grubbing physicians. And if they are not so lucky—imagination runs wild. Being the scum of the earth is not illegal, but there is most likely a limit to how long people will be willing to go on believing that. I raise my glass of tea to Muammar, a unique and colorful dictator who made other bloodthirsty tyrants look like mice.]

It's been over seven months ago that I commented on the fact that not all is going according to plan in Libya. The Langley, Virginia chapter of Al Qaeda had decided to overthrow Muammar, for all the obvious reasons. The British jumped on board, mostly because they are British. The French jumped on board because Muammar had put up some communications satellites that were undercutting France Telecom's ability to gouge and fleece poor Africans. Everyone else was disgusted.

They've been overthrowing him continually for seven months now. At this point, he appears to be close to 90% overthrown, but the remaining 10% are proving to be slow going. It remains to be seen whether “Operation Suck 'Em Dry” will go according to plan, or whether it will result in pipelines and installations being blown up sporadically for years on end, as it has in every other oil-producing place that's been bombed into submission, invaded and ransacked.

Also, nobody seems to know where Muammar is. Now, some other overthrown dictator might be feeling low around now, but that's not our Muammar! My feeling is that, wherever he is, he is probably having a good time. But seeing as even his most stalwart supporters are ready to concede that his return to power in Libya is, at this point, unlikely, I thought it would be a good time to share with the world my Muammar scrapbook.

And if he is in your area, please be hospitable. He is not a bad sort. Things got out of hand; he didn't mean it; he is sorry. All he ever wanted was to be a non-pro-Western Arab dictator, for a change. Who can blame him for that?

With Mr. 0

Being polite to some sleazebag

With Vova

With... WUGGHGHGH!

Puckering up for Yasser

With his good friend Mandela

Crossroads Lecture on “The Fall of the American Empire”

2011-10-02T14:46:00.010-04:00

Photo credit: David Reid

Update: We managed to completely fill Orcas Center. As one of the organizers said afterwards, "The 99%ers loved it, the 1%ers hated it." I prepared for this eventuality by providing a few shiny new dimes: the 1%ers got a 1% refund on the $10 ticket. I suppose the 1%ers didn't much like my characterizing them as "Bums with money."

Here is the mp3 of the talk.

Sunday, October 9 at 2 p.m. at Orcas Center

From the Crossroads Lecture Series Committee

The Orcas Crossroads Lecture Series presents Dmitry Orlov’s lecture, Fall of the American Empire next Sunday, October 9, 2 pm at Orcas Center, including a reception and book signing with the speaker following the presentation.

Update: Here's a write-up from a local paper.

Living on Stolen Time

2011-10-01T19:50:00.002-04:00

Extracting the Stone of Stupidity

Consider a flame; a jet of methane, for example, injected into an oxygen-rich atmosphere and set alight. Now try to describe the shape and structure of the flame mathematically, in a way that will allow you to accurately predict how its shape and structure respond to changes in various conditions—oxygen concentration, gas pressure and so on. You will quickly discover that the mathematics of the problem can be derived from basic physical principles but is intractable: there are equations that accurately describe the situation, but they are too difficult to solve. Often the easiest solution, one that is practical in the case of a simple gas jet, is to build a physical model or a prototype, test it, and make some observations and measurements that characterize the system. But what if that's not possible? Then the usual recourse is to build a computational model that simplifies the physics in various ways and brute-forces the solution by crunching through lots of numbers.

A flame

Now consider that same flame again from a slightly different perspective: what's actually going on? Yes, the character and behavior of the flame are difficult to characterize and predict with great accuracy, but suppose you already know what a gas flame looks like, and just want to know what it is. Here, the equations are simple. First, methane oxidizes to carbon monoxide, hydrogen and water vapor, giving off energy (heat and light) in the process:

CH₄ + O₂ → CO + H₂ + H₂O

Next, the hydrogen oxidizes, giving off more water vapor and energy:

2 H₂ + O₂ → 2 H₂O

Finally, the carbon monoxide oxidizes as well, producing carbon dioxide and more energy:

2 CO + O₂ → 2 CO₂

This is quite typical of how we go about explaining just about everything we encounter. To understand the flow of traffic, we think about individual vehicles and the interactions between them. To understand epidemics, we think about the course of the disease in individual patients and the spread of infection from patient to patient. To understand how an industrial chemical affects an ecosystem we look at its effect on individual cells in individual organisms. We take a specimen, study its behavior, and extrapolate it to the population as a whole. This approach gives at least the illusion of explanatory depth; more importantly, it often allows us to establish cause and effect relationships and, based on them, make constructive changes that decisively influence the outcome: impose speed limits, quarantines and environmental regulations, respectively.

Let us try to apply this same approach to a truly complex system: the economies of US and Europe, in the state in which we currently find them: raging government deficits, staggering levels of bad debt, continuous government bailouts and infusions of free money by central banks, record levels of poverty and long-term unemployment and underemployment, and a lack of any meaningful economic growth. Specifically, let us try to characterize the effect of the continuous monetary infusions, bailouts, and stimulus spending. The economics profession has failed to do this and so amateurs are forced to step into the breach. The economists' usual excuse is that it's all very complicated; sure it is, so is a gas flame.

All money is debt. It is created when someone takes out a loan, promising to repay it (with or without interest) with proceeds from his or her future labor. If that promise is broken, the money ceases to exist. In the normal course of affairs, the lender then “loses” the money. If the lender loses more money than he happens to have, then the lender is bankrupted and, economically speaking, ceases to exist as well. What happened during the financial collapse of 2008 is that the real estate bubble burst and many loans went bad at the same time. The response was not to liquidate the lenders who lost more than they had, but to prop them up by issuing further loans that were not supported by any specific mechanism or realistic chance of repayment—just the compulsive thought that big financial organizations must not be allowed to fail because that would irreparably damage the system. Propping up bankrupt institutions by issuing fake money (or, more precisely, fake debt) has been assumed to be less damaging to the system than doing nothing.

This assumption would perhaps have been justified if the financial difficulties were, as was once thought, temporary in nature, that the economy would roar back to life and growth would resume. Now, three years later, we find ourselves back where we started, and this assumption no longer seems tenable. It is not clear why growth should resume, as many factors, persistently high energy prices among them, continue to weigh it down. We shouldn't bet on any more economic expansion, at least not in the developed world. As Richard Heinberg argues persuasively in his latest book, The End of Growth, growth has reached its limits, which are both numerous and insurmountable.

There is a plain and simple distinction between the two kinds of money: real money, which was lent into existence with a specific and realistic promise of repayment by a specific party, and fake money, which was dreamt into existence by a central banker without anyone specifically promising to repay it. Suppose a person walks into a grocery with fake money in his wallet, and buys something. This is no different from paying with counterfeit money: the grocer is getting robbed. But there is also a difference: the officially issued fake money is indistinguishable from real money. But just because you can't spot a fake doesn't mean that you aren't getting robbed. And so the fake money mixes with the real money and sloshes about the economy, robbing each person who touches it, until everybody is poor. Since poor people can't pay back big loans, the central banker's conceit that the fake money is debt seems rather unjustified. It is owed by the central banker to the central banker, and it would be foolish of us to expect him to ever work it off.

I am using the word “robbery” here not to indicate moral indignation or feigned umbrage, of the “I am shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” variety. I might even say that sometimes robbery is justified (“expropriation” or “commandeering” are its more polite, civilized variants). I am using it because the trick—paying with a fake—is an obvious one, and the result—the robbed party becomes poorer—is obvious as well. And so whether it is a retiree spending his deficit-financed social security check at the dollar store or a banker spending his bailout-financed bonus on lavish gifts for his trophy girlfriend, or a construction worker drinking his economic stimulus-financed paycheck at the bar, somebody somewhere is getting robbed—and becoming poorer.

Rest assured, I am not advocating letting people starve or forgo beer or anything of the sort. A warm bed and three squares a day is, to me, a human right. I am not interested in policy (nor are policymakers interested in me). But I am interested in making a specific prediction: that government and central bank efforts to stabilize the financial system and restart economic growth will do the exact opposite: they will destroy that which they are trying to save more completely although a little bit later. They are living on stolen time.

The alternative (in case policymakers suddenly decided to pay attention and were capable of taking on board such a radical notion) is a jubilee: full repudiation of all debts public and private and a ban on all repayments, repossessions and collection activities. This would force a full shutdown and cold restart of the financial system. But it will probably have to happen anyway. In the meantime, do your best to avoid getting robbed.

Peak Oil: Laherrère responds to Yergin

2011-09-24T17:12:00.003-04:00

Daniel Yergin

By Matthieu Auzanneau, Le Monde
Translated from French by Natasha

Jean Laherrère, co-founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil is a retired expert from Total. He picks apart the latest analysis from the champion of optimists, the American Daniel Yergin.

Daniel Yergin is back. The author of The Prize, an oft-cited history of oil which glorified the industry, last week has published an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, in advance of the release of his latest work, The Quest.

Daniel Yergin is the vice-president of IHS, a powerful economic intelligence agency considered to be very close to the major American oil companies. The arguments this first-rank analyst develops in the Wall Street Journal is a long-awaited counterattack on the proliferation of alarming forecasts for the future of global oil production.

Daniel Yergin admits that success in satisfying future demand for petroleum constitutes a “challenge”. But he says that he has severe doubts about the credibility of the members of ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, who claim that this battle has already been lost, due to lack of sufficient oil reserves that remain to be exploited.

In his portrayal of the current situation, the vice-president of IHS omits a key fact: conventional oil production (the classical liquid oil which comprises 80% of the current crude oil supply) reached its absolute peak in 2006. The date of 2006 was predicted back in 1998 by Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère, two petroleum geologists who founded ASPO.

And so I have asked Jean Laherrère, former chief of exploration technology at Total, to react to the key statements contained in the optimistic analysis provied by Daniel Yergin.

Daniel Yergin: “Just in the years 2007 to 2009, for every barrel of oil produced in the world, 1.6 barrels of new reserves were added.”

Jean Laherrère: Daniel Yergin cites official, political estimates published in the Oil & Gas Journal and by BP. According to these figures, global reserves were at 1253 billion barrels (Gb) in 2007 and at 1333 Gb in 2009, after the addition of 72 Gb of extra-heavy Orinoco oil discovered in Venezuela... in the late 1930s. What is, let us say, astounding about this, is that Mr. Yergin ignores confidential the figures from his own agency, IHS.

These figures, here they are. Note that they do not incude the extra-heavy oil

	Discoveries (Gb)	Production (Gb)
2007	10.0	26.0
2008	13.0	26.3
2009	12.4	25.8
Total	35.4	78.1

The reality is that for each barrel produced less than 0.5 barrels have been discovered, and not 1.6! Oil continues to be consumed faster than it is discovered. This situation has lasted for a quarter of a century now.

Daniel Yergin: "One example [of revolutionary technology] is the "digital oil field," which uses sensors throughout the field to improve the data and communication between the field and a company's technology centers. If widely adopted, it could help to recover an enormous amount of additional oil worldwide—by one estimate, an extra 125 billion barrels, almost equivalent to the current estimate reserves of Iraq."

Jean Laherrère: It is at present quite fashionable to talk of the “digital oil field” to impress investors. But to this day I have not come across any mature field that has significantly increased its reserves by the use of this technology. To pretend to be able to grow reserves by 125 Gb thanks to this technology amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking, and does not stand up to any serious study.

How does one increase the size of recoverable reserves of oil fields? Well, first of all, there are secondary recovery techniques: the use of water or gas injection to maintain field pressure. This is a practice that is in actual use from the very begginning on all new oil fields.

Tertiary recovery (or EOR, for “enhanced oil recovery”) is used to modify the properties of the liquids: thermal methods (by using steam), chemical, or injection of oil-soluble gases such as CO₂. It's in the United States that EOR is most developed. And yet the number of EOR projects has gone down from about 500 in 1986 to only 200 in 2010. They yielded 600000 barrels per day (bpd) in 1986. From 1992 to 2000, they have remained level at around 750000 bpd. In 2010, they produced no more than 650000 bpd, and this despite high oil prices and the generous easing of environmental regulations of the Bush era.

Technology can do nothing to modify the geology of an oil reservoir! It just allows it to be produced faster, thereby accelerating the decline of mature fields... Here's an example: the very pronounced production declines at the giant Mexican Cantarell field, which made use of massive nitrogen injections.

The rate of recovery of a feld depends above all on the properties of the field and the liquid it contains. This rate can be as high as 80% for sandstone or very porous limestone, and might not exceed 1% for a tight reservoir with isolated pockets.

Daniel Yergin: "A study by the U.S. Geological Survey found that 86 percent of oil reserves in the U.S. were the result not of what was estimated at the time of discovery but of revisions and additions from further development. "

Jean Laherrère: Evidence that the proven reserves of the United States do not increase: over the last decade, according to the US Department of Energy, the amount of upward revisions of U.S. reserves is roughly equal to the amount of downward revisions [pdf, see column 2: "net revisions"].

What allows Mr. Yergin to believe anything different? In the United States, reserves are reported according to the rules imposed by the SEC, the policeman of Wall Street. From 1977 to 2010, these rules required oil companies to report as "proved" only those reserves that were directly accessible by the wells already in production. The SEC prohibited the reporting of reserves called "probable" and found in the vicinity of these wells, even if the probability was very high.

This misleading rule was designed to protect the bankers who, if a producer went bankrupt, could decide to seize only the producing wells. This very narrow definition was anything but reliable, because it led to an underestimation of the actual reserves of American oil fields at the beginning of production, and their subsequent systematic upward re-evaluation.

Take, for example, the Kern River field, located in California. Since 2000, production from this old field has declined steadily. However, the amount of reserves reported for Kern River rose from 318 million barrels in 2000 to 542 million barrels in 2010. This amazing growth is due to the fact that between 2000 and 2010, 560 new wells were put into production (but failed to halt the decline of Kern River)!

Only the addition of both proven and probable reserves allows a field to be evaluated correctly. This method, called EPS, is now used everywhere the world—I actually participated in its development in 1997. Everywhere ... except in the United States. The growth of U.S. reserves which Mr. Yergin celebrates owes nothing to the advancement of technology: its cause is the incorrect method advocated by the SEC until 2010.

Moreover, since 2010, the SEC has lurched from one extreme to another. It now allows estimates of proved reserves not only from producing wells, but according to an evaluation model of the entire field that companies can keep secret! This new method supports all kinds of excesses and abuses, which have been denounced in the New York Times in particular.

This new SEC rule bore fruit in the form of the considerable growth of U.S. reserves of shale gas. Again, this has nothing to do with the implementation of technologies that are supposedly “new”, but which in reality have been there for thirty years, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of rocks. [Editor's note: land speculation fueled by questionable claims for reserves of shale gas is going to feed a large bubble in the U.S., according to an investigation by Ian Urbina New York Times, who is also the author of the article cited above.]

Daniel Yergin lies on reserves, just as Greece has lied about its deficits. Warning: in the world of energy, there are no rules—except to make money, and there are no referees and umpires!

Finally, a little background. In 2005, Daniel Yergin published an editorial in the Washington Post in which he was already mocking the pessimists, and in which he predicted that by 2010 global oil production capacity could increase by 16 million barrels per day (Mb/d) from from 85 to 101 Mb/d. Since then, global production capacity remained on a plateau of about 86 Mb/d... You ought to go back and re-read yourself, Mr. Yergin.

[Daniel Yergin's editorial has elicited other strong reactions among those who support the hypothesis of an imminent decline in the global production of liquid fuels. These include, notably, an on-line article by Professor Kjell Aleklett, president of ASPO International.

In 2008, Glenn Morton, a an American geophysicist and investor, published what he presented as an inventory of the optimistic but incorrect predictions about the state of the oil market provided over the years by Daniel Yergin and IHS.]

Peak Moment TV: Collapse of the Titans

2011-09-22T00:00:00.000-04:00

ASPO Conference

2011-09-11T11:07:00.001-04:00

I'll be speaking at the ASPO in Washington, DC on November 2-5 on why gradual energy descent is a science-fiction scenario that includes friendly oil-exporting space aliens and why the end of the fossil fuel age is likely to be a step-function. I will also talk about investing for post-collapse. I believe that there might still be time to engineer a soft landing at the end of the upcoming economic cliff-diving exercise. This can be done if groups of individuals decide to sell off financial instruments that will have little or no survival value post-collapse (stocks, bonds, gold, etc.) and invest in something that is not useful now but will be: complete construction kits for businesses to deliver products and services that are certain to be in high demand, for lack of better alternatives. To make this scenario possible, it is necessary to design plans, recruit people and stockpile and pre-position materials while finance, industry and transportation systems are still functioning. I hope to see some of you there.

The 2011 ASPO-USA Conference, Peak Oil, Energy & the Economy, will provide eye-opening information and hard-nosed analysis to help you navigate an increasingly uncertain future. Featuring experts from a cross-cutting array of disciplines and perspectives, the Conference will empower you with the tools and connections to make critical decisions for your business, your family, and public policy.

Under the theme of "Truth in Energy," the conference will stress the essential need for reliable, transparent, fact-based information, and a full understanding of growing energy and economic challenges.

The ASPO-USA Peak Oil, Energy & the Economy Conference, November 2-5, 2011 in Washington, DC, is the world's premier event focused on peak oil challenges and solutions. It is produced by the nonprofit Association For The Study Of Peak Oil & Gas - USA (ASPO-USA). The format includes keynotes, plenary sessions, concurrent educational tracks, networking receptions, and exhibits. The conference is supported by more than 35 publications, websites and partnering associations. You can receive a $50 discount off the prevailing fees for Peak Aware Package registration option by inserting the code mediapartner when prompted on the eRegistration page linked from http://www.aspousa.org/conference/2011/Agenda.cfm

How I Survived Hurricane Irene

2011-09-10T12:10:00.028-04:00

Quite a few well-meaning people have written to ask me how I survived the recent hurricane. Some have even suggested that I should give up living aboard and flee to higher ground.

We spent the entire event at the dock, bobbing up and down slightly and leaning over a bit in the wind gusts. By the time she hit Boston Harbor, Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm, with the eye well to the west of us. Still, we got buckets of rain and several hours of gale winds.

The worst of it was the preparation. I had to clear lots of things off the docks and the deck, rig additional dock lines, lace up the sail cover so it wouldn't flog in the wind, take down the awning, secure the dink so that it wouldn't get bashed around, tie down various items on deck so that they wouldn't blow away, fill the water tanks for additional ballast and in case we lost shore water, and so forth. That seemed like a lot of work.

During the hurricane itself we stayed on board, where it was warm and dry. We rocked a bit, and we spent a few hours leaning at about a 15º angle in the stiff breeze. My wife and the cat pretty much slept through the entire event. I would venture out periodically, mill around on the docks with the neighbors, adjust a few dock lines, and go back inside.

A few worst case scenarios were being contemplated, without much conviction, because several people have seen much worse. In one scenario the docks themselves start breaking up and boats start bashing into each other. As it turned out, just one dock cleat pulled out and some boards popped out of the finger piers from the twisting. Another potential problem would be if wind gusts got so stiff that sailboat masts would get tangled up in each others' rigging, possibly leading to a few dismastings. They didn't even get close. The ultimate nightmare scenario involved a storm surge so huge that the entire structure would float off the pilings and crash into the seawall. We were well short of that, in spite of a couple of extra high tides due to the full moon that coincided with the storm surge. We never even lost shore electricity, shore water or internet access, but with a wind generator, 1000 liters of water and plenty of books this wouldn't have affected us too much either.

During the worst of it

It seems like our "house" was designed to take it better than your average house. In a hurricane, there is a high risk of flooding, so it is helpful if your house can float. Also, there is a high risk of very high winds, so the house should be streamlined in shape and able to withstand hurricane force winds, even while floating. The combination of water and wind is known to cause waves, so it is helpful if the house can take the ocean swell and the odd breaking wave without capsizing or swamping. There is a good chance of power cuts and water main and gas line breaks, so the house should have its own internal electricity generation system, and its own supplies of water and propane. Lastly, a hurricane might make a certain area uninhabitable for a period of time, prompting you to want to move, but hurricanes also tend to wash away roads and bridges, so it would be better if your house could make its escape via the waterways. There might also be fuel supply disruptions, so it's better if your house can move without the use of fossil fuels by, say, hoisting a sail or two. In short, if you want to survive a hurricane, you want to be on a sailboat.

Now, granted, you could also be perfectly safe in a house that's built to withstand a hurricane, in an area that's full of such houses. But where is that? Most people I know can't afford the house they are living in now, never mind making it hurricane-proof.

Aside from hurricanes, there are forest fires, tsunamis and earthquakes. Forest fires aren't much of a problem out on the water. Tsunamis are uniquely survivable aboard a boat, given a bit of warning; when you see the water going out, head for deep water. Then, once it's all over, come back to survey the damage. During the recent East Coast earthquake, which damaged the National Cathedral in Washington, everyone in Boston felt it. My wife didn't; she was on the boat at the time.

It was a wet and windy weekend, and I didn't get a lot done. But compared to the scenes of devastation we see among the East Coast communities from Hatteras all the way up the coast and inland through Western Massachusetts to Vermont, for those of us living afloat in the harbor Hurricane Irene was pretty much a non-event.

Reinventing Collapse in the US and Canada

2011-08-21T12:22:00.001-04:00

by Justin Ritchie, The Tyee

It's all too easy to make jokes about our neighbors to the south for their dramatic weight problems, generally poor understanding of geography and that stretch of coastline now famously known as the Jersey Shore.

Yet we're seriously reliant on the economic health our southern neighbours. In British Columbia, 45.9 per cent of our total exports went to the U.S. last year. The Canadian economy exports over 70 per cent of its products to the States, forming the world's largest trading relationship between two nations. The case could be made that no other sovereign economy is tied to the U.S. more than Canada's.

So when someone deeply familiar with the collapse of the Soviet Union writes about how the States is headed in the same direction, we might wish to pay attention. Even greater cause for concern is that he has been doing so since 2005, and his predictions have been proving true at alarming accuracy. That, combined with a crushing national debt hovering over Washington D.C., means there is a prescient need for people to hear from those experienced with "superpower collapse."

Dmitry Orlov writes not for fame or fortune, but to provide a book with which you can smack your friends across the head when they state, "No one could have seen this coming." He moved with his family from the USSR to the U.S. as a kid, but his career allowed many opportunities to travel back home and catch glimpses of growing collapse. Though the USSR had been falling apart slowly, it wasn't until Yeltsin uttered the words "Former Soviet Union" that it seemed to happen all at once. The world's first superpower collapsed because its founding myths of technological progress and "bread for all" had failed to match reality.

Moving past the 'iron triangle'

In the newly revised version of Reinventing Collapse, first published in 2008 before the financial crisis began later that year, Orlov expands on his attempt to convince you that the U.S. is much less prepared for collapse than the Soviet Union ever was. Though headlines declaring the end of America won't appear anytime soon, Orlov forecasts that collapse will happen for each person individually, as they are rudely awakened from the American Dream. And while his propositions can be frightening at times, he understands that forecasts of superpower collapse will either frustrate or alienate most people, or end up largely ignored -- until it's too late.

Many of Orlov's forecasts from the previous edition have proven accurate. Orlov's America is a system barely able to sustain itself, ruined by a population bent on a hardened mythology: an iron triangle of home, car and job that is out of touch with the reality of rapidly depleting cheap energy, which made vehicle ownership and suburban home life a gateway to the goal of being middle class. Orlov predicted that as the steady stream of money from employment dried up, the country's depleted social infrastructure would be exposed and the American standard of living would plummet. His forecasts are lived out by the people who have their home in the underground corridors of Las Vegas and in cars across the nation.

Orlov argues that there is a clear recipe for social unrest in the U.S., with approximately 350 million guns, a consumption rate of two-thirds of the world's anti-depressant drugs and a national homicide rate that could be equaled by a 9-11-sized event every month. The can-do American spirit and career-oriented mindset may have served its residents well in the past, but it will be particularly vulnerable in the transition to a post-growth economy. Contrasted to the Russian work ethic during the latter stage of Soviet decline, Orlov says that someone who worked hard and played hard was considered a fool. American career ethics and economic dynamics have lead to patterns of migration that uproot people from communities, something we're witnessing in Canada now -- though this can be a positive in times of collapse, as it makes us more open to strangers and varied living situations than the tightly knit Russian communities Orlov witnessed. Vancouverites know how difficult affordable housing can be, and openness is an asset as living affordability becomes more precarious.

Orlov contrasts the U.S. and the USSR in areas as diverse as housing policies, health care, food production and core societal myths. His explanation of the difference between Soviet and American expectations for education particularly resonated with me. While Soviet schools had far fewer resources, they produced children that knew much more general information and had better conceptual understanding, rather than a focus on exams. At my university in North Carolina, I experienced that exact dynamic. When a professor made a point to avoid specific outlines of what to study, students squirmed with discomfort. In classes with Russian professors, students complained that exams didn't follow homework problems, testing concepts instead. Orlov concludes this is because schools in the U.S. aren't about learning, they are about institutionalization; merely biding the time while kids enter the institution of the workforce, government, a corporation or prison.

Age of opportunity?

While the updated Reinventing Collapse retains many of its first edition's ideas, it reads smoother and makes the case stronger for the collapse of the U.S. But it's not all doom and gloom. Orlov presents very clear and surprisingly optimistic recommendations, revealing an age of opportunity for those willing to adjust their expectations. Orlov thinks black market economies in scavenged material will become the norm in the near future -- and evidence of that is booming, as witnessed by the rapid growth industry of copper and air conditioner theft in the U.S. Orlov explains that expensive health care will become out of reach for the majority, and alternative medicine will grow in popularity as the complex networks that enable pharmaceuticals wither away. He says that instead of building an electric car no one can afford, products and services can be designed to serve the huge and untapped market segment of the permanently unemployed. There will be a need, he says, for low-cost housing opportunities like dormitories, GPS devices for retrieving and locating stashes of gear, or campgrounds that provide garden plots.

The American economy is deeply tied to oil consumption at incredible levels, made possible by the world's reserve currency. Orlov explains that as oil prices increase, the economy will decline, leading to shortages of serviceable equipment and an inability for citizens to consume -- hurting economic activity further, weakening the U.S. dollar and making more oil even further out of reach. Once shortages appear, much of the spare gasoline is wasted idling at the few gas stations still open and hoarded by those with ambition and foresight. Reinventing Collapse explains how even a relatively minor temporary disruption in gasoline could lead to a dramatic shift to a black market economy for fueling vehicles. Another advantage lies herein for Canada as the value of the loonie has been closely tied to oil prices for over a decade.

So where does that leave Canada? While our debt-to-GDP ratio is among the healthiest of the G20, economic ties to the U.S. means we should pay attention. By understanding where the U.S. is headed, perhaps the argument for greater resilience and sustainability here in Canada can be made anew.

Justin Ritchie counts himself among the first refugees from the U.S. to Canada. He covers sustainability and sociological issues as co-host of the Extraenvironmentalist podcast at http://extraenvironmentalist.com. He is the sustainability coordinator for the UBC Alma Mater Society and is working on energy materials as a Master's of Materials Engineering student at the University of British Columbia.

No shirt, no shoes, no problem

2011-08-19T01:00:00.000-04:00

By Lindsay Curren

Though we’ve had Transition Voice for almost a year now, last month was the first time I talked to Russian-American peak oil and economic analyst Dmitry Orlov, whose popular website, Club Orlov, offers both his own thoughts, and a vigorous community of like-minded readers.
Because Orlov takes a more skeptical, less forgiving look at collapse, I think I might have been tuning him out to a degree, considering myself not doomer enough for his club. Or maybe I had Panglossia when it came to him.

But my prejudices were upended when I took the time to read his book Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects. Erik Curren just reviewed the book for us, but I have my own take, too, in fewer words; it’s awesome.

If you can call reading about peak oil and collapse “awesome.”

Infinitely readable — a page turner even — Orlov’s direct experience with Soviet collapse translates into an excellent historical perspective supported by research and a clear context. Yes, he’s pretty blunt, and doesn’t candy-coat things, but at the same time he’s efficient and even somewhat elegant in his writing. It’s a quick yet informative read and I highly recommend it.

Soon after I spoke with him and, still nervous about my perception of his intensity, I went into the interview not knowing what this guy would be like.

But like most tough guys, he turned out to be a big pussycat. Very nice, very approachable, funny, insightful, easy to talk to. Rather than finding a stodgy analyst of intellectual information — though he is quite sharp — I’d describe his approach as “moving with, rather than against, collapse.” That was one reason for the title for this article, “No shirt, no shoes, no problem.” Orlov’s is a view seasoned by experience, not just theoretical predictions. So there’s an insightful depth there that takes things seriously, while also operating from a deep sense that it’s “just life.”

Oh, and it was my first shirtless interview. Orlov, that is. He was shirtless. It was a very hot day and I interviewed him via Skype. He was on his boat. It was hot here, too. The heat wave of ’11. My shirt stayed on.

Read more...

Le pic pétrolier, c'est de l'histoire

2011-08-17T01:00:00.004-04:00

[Merci, Tancrède! Le texte originel est ici.]

Le baratin mercatique sur la quatrième de couverture de la première édition de mon premier livre, Réinventer l'effondrement, me décrivait comme un théoricien majeur du pic pétrolier. Quand je l'ai vu la première fois, ma mâchoire est tombée — et elle est restée pendante. Vous voyez, si vous parcourez une authentique liste de théoriciens majeurs du pic pétrolier — les Hubbert, Campell, Laherrère, Heinberg, Simmons et quelques autres valant d'être mentionnés, vous ne trouverez pas un seul Orlov parmi eux. En vain chercheriez vous dans les annales et les comptes-rendus de l'Association pour l'étude du pic pétrolier la moindre trace de votre humble auteur. Mais à présent que cette bourde est imprimée et en circulation sur tant de copies, je suppose que je n'ai pas d'autre choix que d'essayer d'être à la hauteur des attentes qu'elle crée.

Mes déqualifications mises à part, le moment semble propice à discourir avec un nouveau bout de théorie du pic pétrolier, car c'est l'année où, pour la première fois, presque tout le monde est prêt à admettre que le pic pétrolier est réel, par essence, bien que certains ne soient pas encore tout à fait prêts à l'appeler par ce nom. Il y a seulement cinq ans tout le monde, depuis les officiels du gouvernement jusqu'aux cadres des compagnies pétrolières, traitait la théorie du pic pétrolier comme l'œuvre d'une frange de lunatiques, mais à présent que la production conventionnelle mondiale de pétrole à atteint son pic (en 2005), et que la production mondiale de tous les liquides à atteint son pic (en 2008), tout le monde est prêt à concéder qu'il y a de sérieuses difficultés à accroître l'approvisionnement mondial en pétrole. Et bien que certaines personnes craignent encore d'utiliser le terme pic pétrolier (et que quelques experts insistent encore sur ce que le pic doit être désigné comme un plateau ondulé, ce qui, au moins, est une gracieuse tournure de phrase), les différences d'opinion proviennent d'un refus d'accepter la terminologie du pic pétrolier plutôt que la substance d'une production mondiale de pétrole atteignant son pic. Ceci est, bien sûr, tout à fait compréhensible : il est embarrassant de sauter soudainement de le pic pétrolier est une ânerie ! à le pic pétrolier, c'est de l'histoire ! d'un seul bond. De telles acrobaties ne sont sans danger que si vous vous trouvez être un politicien ou un économiste.

-> Orbite.info

De val van Amerika: Een vergelijking met de Sovjetunie

2011-08-15T01:00:00.005-04:00

[RC is now available in Dutch.] Wat overkomt de Verenigde Staten bij de aanstaande ineenstorting? Wat zijn de overeenkomsten en verschillen met de val van de Sovjet-Unie? En wat kun je zelf het beste doen als het komt tot een brandstofloos bestaan zonder gezag?

‘Wat betekent een maatschappelijke ineenstorting voor de gemiddelde Amerikaan?’ Die vraag stelt Dmitry Orlov zich in zijn boek De val van Amerika. Niet de vraag wat precies de val van Amerika in gang zal zetten, wanneer deze exact zal plaatsvinden, of diep hij zal zijn.

Orlov gaat er eenvoudig van uit dat er ergens een afgrond gaapt. De ingrediënten voor de ineenstorting zijn hem duidelijk: ernstige en chronische tekorten bij de productie van aardolie, een ernstig en groeiend tekort op de handelsbalans, op hol geslagen militaire uitgaven en een snel aanzwellende buitenlandse schuld. In combinatie met een militaire nederlaag en wijdverspreide angst voor een dreigende catastrofe moet dat leiden tot een val van Amerika. Wanneer en hoe interesseert Orlov minder. “Probeer gewoon dit beeld voor ogen te houden: het is een supermacht, hij is reusachtig, machtig en staat op het punt in elkaar te donderen. Jij noch ik kunnen daar iets aan doen. Het zou zijn alsof je met wriemelende tenen een tsunami probeert tegenhouden.”

Maar je kunt je ogen er niet voor sluiten. Dus: hoe maak ik dit tastbaar, vroeg Orlov zich af. Als geëmigreerde Rus had hij het juiste middel bij de hand: een vergelijking met de val van de Sovjet-Unie.
“Ik probeer de muur in het voorstellingsvermogen te doorbreken door een vergelijkende analyse waarin ik de daadwerkelijke omstandigheden van voor en na de ineenstorting van de Sovjet-Unie vergelijk met de hypothetische omstandigheden van voor en na de ineenstorting van de Verenigde Staten. Ik richt mij daarbij op categorieën die cruciaal zijn voor overleving: voedsel, huisvesting, transport, onderwijs, financiën, veiligheid en nog een paar andere.”

“Het zijn de overeenkomsten op microniveau die ons praktische lessen kunnen leren over hoe kleine groepen met succes het hoofd kunnen bieden aan een economische en sociale ineenstorting. En dat is waar de Russische ervaring van het post-Sovjettijdperk ons heel wat nuttigs te bieden heeft.”

Dmitry Orlov wil ons helpen, wat er verder ook te gebeuren staat, een gelukkig en voldaan leven te kunnen leiden. Hij doet dat door de zaak vanuit allerlei invalshoeken te bekijken, ook door de mogelijkheid van een ‘zachte landing’ te bespreken, en door uitgebreid de manieren de revue te laten passeren waarop je je kunt aanpassen aan het nieuwe normaal en welke carrièremogelijkheden deze toekomst met volkomen nieuwe spelregels in petto heeft.

Het boek wordt nooit zwartgallig. Je schiet bij het lezen geregeld bij in de lach, al is het onderwerp nog zo ernstig.

Downloads

Twaalf beschouwingen over De Val van Amerika:

Presentatie
Dageraad der Tegenvoeters

The Sledge-O-Matic

2011-08-11T01:00:00.002-04:00

Photo: gallaghersmash.com.

[A generally pleasant and helpful book report by Erik Curren. I took the liberty of taking out a paragraph where he sounds too much like a defensive American. There is no room for national inferiority complexes here. Sorry to admit, I haven't read de Toqueville. He talked about democracy in America; what's that? Nor have I heard of Gallagher.]

Dmitry Orlov scares the crap out of me.

The relentlessly doomerish boss of ClubOrlov.com has become famous in peak oil circles for presiding over a kind of comedy club from hell where a rabid fan base celebrates the coming fall of the American Empire under the load of peak debt while devouring posts on such subjects as the future of sailing ships and ways for dead people to send text messages. The site’s sidebar lists topic tags including cannibalism, ruins and Siberia.

Even Orlov’s name is scary, suggesting to the Anglo-Saxon ear a marriage of Orwell and Karlov — evoking George and Boris respectively, each in his own way a master of horror.

But while his online homies clearly relish Orlov’s hard edge, it would be a shame if his intimidating reputation put off a wider audience from reading his brilliant book, recently re-released.

Here, I’d like to propose a different, hopefully more accessible way of seeing Orlov: as a foreign-born observer of American culture in the mold of Alexis de Tocqueville. But with a little bit of Gallagher thrown in — yes, that Gallagher, the prop comic with the goofy hair and suspenders, popular in the 1980s for smashing watermelons on stage.

Hypocrisy in America
I’ll start by admitting I think that Orlov’s Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects is just as perceptive a read on the American mind and the American system as was de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

"As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?” said de Tocqueville. Compare Orlov on the American’s “primitive idolization of money”:

The only thing that makes an American good is the goodly quantity of dollars lining his pockets. This is what makes the ritualistic acts of humiliation heaped on the poor and the unfortunate so politically popular even with the very slightly well-to-do; just utter the fashionable term of abuse — “welfare queen” or “illegal immigrant” — and citizens line up in an orderly gamut, ready to dispense corporal punishment.

It may seem that Orlov is more provocative than de Tocqueville, but historians say that in its time, readers in both the US and the author’s native France thought Democracy in America was pretty edgy too. It’s easy to see why two centuries of scholars and pundits haven’t stopped quoting a guy who says stuff like this: “I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.”

And though Orlov doesn’t mention de Tocqueville, the two should be good friends. Presciently, in 1835 De Tocqueville predicted the superpower rivalry between the US and Russia that would become the backstory to Orlov’s analysis.

The Frenchman also foresaw key threats to American democracy that ultimately led to the debased nation that Orlov finds today: the rise of a plutocracy, the dominance of mass culture over thinking for oneself, a preoccupation with material goods and the isolation and alienation of the individual.

The hammer and the sickle, and the hammer again
Orlov, who was born in Leningrad, emigrated to the US in the seventies and then made repeated trips back home, which enabled him to witness the collapse of the USSR and its aftermath from a perspective both Russian and American. No surprise that he’s built a career out of making unflattering comparisons of the US to his home country.

Orlov has earned a fearsome reputation as a doomer who not only predicts, but even seems to relish, the collapse of American society, while he disdains political activism, celebrates apathy as a healthy coping strategy and warns that there’s nothing anybody can do to fix things. Yet, in his book Orlov projects genuine goodwill, showing evident compassion for the “big, rowdy party that was this country, with its lavish, garish, oversized, dominating ways.”

As the party winds down, Orlov reminds us that “people like to party together but they like to nurse their hangovers alone.” So, he offers no one-size-fits-all plan for surviving the coming turmoil. But in classic American fashion, he urges each of us to come up with our own plan.

“You should figure out what it is you absolutely need to lead a healthy, happy, fulfilling existence. Then, figure out a way to continue getting it once the US economy collapses, taking a lot of society with it. (This is easier said than done; good luck!)”

For example, Orlov himself lives on a sailboat and says that today’s economic downturn is probably a good time for readers to seek their own boat at a fire-sale price. At the same time, living on a boat is not for everybody, and Orlov gives lots of other ideas to prepare for a future economy that’s basically beyond employment and beyond money.

On the way down
Of course, in his place in the cycle of American imperial rise and fall, Orlov differs from de Tocqueville. That could help explain the difference in tone between the two writers. Despite all his criticism of America’s money-grubbing, crowd-worshipping character, the Frenchman often flattered our sensibilities and saw a bright future for our nascent democracy. By contrast, the Russian has little good to say about our character and even less good to say about our prospects.

Measure after measure, Americans are less prepared to deal with a Soviet-style collapse than his people were. In Russia, for example, when the economy collapsed few people lost their homes, because the buildings were owned by the state and more-or-less permanently assigned to their occupants. By contrast, in the US, private landlords and mortgage-holders are unlikely to tolerate deadbeat tenants or defaulting homeowners for very long. In an economic collapse, evictions could dwarf the foreclosure crisis of the last few years.

The collapse party
At the same time, despite a few good qualities (our friendliness to strangers makes us excellent roommates, for example, which could come in handy during a housing crisis), Orlov thinks that Americans are pampered fools who are much less prepared to fend for ourselves than the wily Russians were.

Take food for instance. Many urban Russians had dachas outside of town where they could grow food for their own use and for barter. But in the US, not only do few besides the relatively wealthy own a second home — even fewer of us bother to plant a kitchen garden. When grocery store shelves start to empty out, the dependent American food eater will be like a baby who’s lost his bottle. And a nation raised on cheap eats and easy livin’ could soon face the unimaginable: widespread hunger.

So, what Orlov is really doing is trying to show that the American system is hard and unforgiving but that the American people are ripe and soft, like a big watermelon.

And for me, that’s where Orlov meets that other analyst of the American character, Gallagher. And I don’t mean the racist clown that the un-funny old man has become today, “a hate-filled, right-wing loon,” according to Salon. I mean classic Gallagher, the guy we cared about in the 1980s for only one reason: the Sledge-O-Matic.

This routine with the mallet and an unlucky piece of summer fruit, computer keyboard or other highly smashable item of everyday life clearly spoke to something deep in the American psyche. It wasn’t just the adolescent fun of busting things up. Gallagher also connected to a pervasive if quiet discomfort among the public with our culture of material abundance and wastefulness at the period of its very height.

I don’t think Orlov takes a Sledge-O-Matic to America’s national pride just as a Russian’s revenge. Instead, I believe him when he says he wants to help Americans wake up from their own debilitating national myths in time to save themselves from disaster.

“Sledge-O-Matic removes unwanted fingerprints from walls,” says Gallagher as pitchman. “Sledge-O-Matic also removes unwanted walls from fingerprints.”

Myślenie w liniach prostych

2011-07-31T10:25:00.001-04:00

Thank you, Marcin, for another translation. Here is the original: Thinking in Straight Lines.

Spójrzmy prawdzie w oczy – my jako cywilizowana, wyedukowana, oświecona część ludzkości domagamy się, aby otaczające nas rzeczy były proste. Niech prymitywni tubylcy żyją w malowniczych i praktycznych okrągłych chatkach – my życzymy sobie abstrakcyjnych, stalowych pudełek i betonu platerowanego szkłem, z mnóstwem przyjemnych linii prostych, autentycznie wertykalnych, horyzontalnych, planarnych powierzchni i obfitością kątów prostych cieszących oko. Niech tubylcy wypełniają sobie dni wałęsaniem się w górę i w dół malowniczymi, wijącymi się ścieżkami, wytyczonymi przez pasące się zwierzęta – kiedy budujemy drogę, bierzemy mapę i przykładamy do niej linijkę i wszystko, co stoi na drodze tej linijki, malownicze czy nie, musi być wysadzone dynamitem, wyrównane buldożerem, ponieważ każdy wie, że podróżowanie w linii prostej jest bardziej wydajne.

Większości z nas to odpowiada, zatem uznajemy linie proste za naturalne. W rzeczywistości nasz świat zawiera tylko dwa rodzaje naturalnych zjawisk, które dają początek liniom prostym: obiekty spadają lub wiszą w prostych, pionowych liniach i promień światła podróżuje w linii prostej; poza liniami pionu i liniami widzenia wszystko jest albo zakrzywieniem, albo zygzakiem. Skoro w zdecydowanie większym stopniu nasze środowisko jest sztuczne – i po brzegi wypchane liniami prostymi oraz płaskimi powierzchniami horyzontalnymi i wertykalnymi – sporadycznie bywamy zmuszeni konfrontować się z tym faktem. Oczywiście, bardziej wyrobieni naukowo pośród nas wiedzą, że linie proste są jedynie wygodną fikcją. Zaczynamy od konceptualnych ram przestrzeni, które składają się z osi x, y, z i następnie przechodzimy do zmuszania naszych obserwacji, aby mieściły się w tych ramach, aż do momentu, kiedy niedopasowanie staje się zbyt oczywiste, by je zignorować, jak w przypadku obiektów zrzuconych z orbity, czy światła z odległych galaktyk, które bywa tak dalece zakłócone przez galaktyki pobliskie, że obraz przypomina rozmazaną plamę.

Jednakże fikcja ta jest faktycznie bardzo wygodna. Po pierwsze, wszystkie linie proste są wzajemnie wymienialne i kompatybilne. Kiedy budujemy mamy w zwyczaju kłaść rzeczy 'na' lub 'obok' innych; jeżeli posiadają linie proste, wówczas nie wymaga to wymyślnego dopasowania – możemy po prostu połączyć je bezceremonialnie w jakikolwiek sposób i skutecznie przejść do następnego ćwiczenia w budowaniu pudełek. Kiedy odwiedzamy skład drzewny raczej nie kupujemy drewna, tylko przecięte przezeń linie proste. Drzewa wiedzą znacznie więcej od nas na temat konstruowania maksymalnie wydajnych drewnianych struktur, ale my lubimy linie proste, zatem przecinamy najmocniejszą część drzewa – koncentryczne pierścienie, które składają się na pień – aby wykonać idealnie prosty kij. Moglibyśmy budować piękne, mocne, długowieczne struktury wykorzystując budulec drzewny wyrosły stosownie do potrzeb (tak, jak robią to niektórzy z nas), lecz generalnie tego nie robimy, ponieważ jesteśmy leniwi mentalnie, zawsze w nadmiernym pośpiechu, a z linii prostych uczyniliśmy fetysz.

Nie jest specjalnym zaskoczeniem, że nasze upodobanie do linii prostych przekłada się na sposób, w jaki myślimy o relacjach między obiektami – konstruowane przez nas mentalne modele naszego świata. Przykładowo za kwestię prawości i uczciwego postępowania uznajemy, aby cena była linearnie proporcjonalna do ilości otrzymywanych produktów: jeżeli płacisz dwa razy więcej powinieneś otrzymać dwa razy więcej ziemniaków. Upusty ilościowe są akceptowalne i czasem oczekiwane, ale wycena według krzywej jest ogólnie postrzegana jako podejrzana. Nie ufamy krzywiznom. Funkcje schodkowe są w porządku, ponieważ składają się z segmentów złożonych z linii prostych. Jesteśmy w stanie ścierpieć przedziały podatkowej skali, ale spróbuj opodatkować ludzi w oparciu o formułę nielinearną i z pewnością wybuchnie podatkowa rewolta. Gdyby ziemniaczany rynek był produktem biologicznej ewolucji, a nie wymysłem ludzkim, prawdopodobnie wglądałby tak: cena byłaby pewną nielinearną funkcją, która jest wprost proporcjonalna do wartości netto klienta, a liczba wydanych ziemniaków byłaby pewną nielinearną funkcją, która jest odwrotnie proporcjonalna do jego talii netto. Ulokujcie sakwy z pieniędzmi na jednej szali, swoje zwały tłuszczu na drugiej i część ziemniaków wypadnie. Taki naturalny mechanizm regulacji powstrzymałby otyłych i majętnych żarłoków przed wyprzedzeniem w konsumpcji całej reszty, lecz tak być nie może, bowiem mamy silną kulturową skłonność preferowania prostego, linearnego związku między ilością i ceną.

Linie proste są popularne wśród sklepikarzy i ich klientów, ale nikt nie wielbi pomiarowej krawędzi bardziej od technokraty. Dane z prawdziwego świata ogólnie przypominają kolekcję niepowtarzalnych artefaktów opisanych przez kwalitatywnie odmienne własności oraz wywnioskowane relacje, wszystkie ulegające fluktuacjom w czasie i w taki sposób, który opiera się bezpośredniemu zastosowaniu pomiarowej krawędzi. Dlatego pierwszy krok to określenie ilościowe własności oraz – jeżeli jest to w ogóle możliwe – zignorowanie relacji. Następny krok to wybór tylko dwóch parametrów i przedstawienie tych artefaktów jako punktów na kawałku milimetrowego papieru. Voilà: znaleziony został linearny związek między dwoma skomplikowanymi zjawiskami, które teraz mogą być potraktowane jako prawdziwe i obiektywne – coś, czym można podzielić się ze swoimi kolegami i wykorzystać jako podstawę strategii działania – ponieważ zawiera linię prostą, która mówi, że jedna rzecz jest proporcjonalna do innej, zatem wiemy jakiego oczekiwać rezultatu, kiedy zaburzymy jedną lub drugą.

Linie proste są również popularne wśród inżynierów. Inżynierowie pracują ciężko, aby zaprojektować linearne, niezmienne w czasie systemy, w których wydajność jest wprost proporcjonalna do wkładu w każdym upodobanym przez nas momencie. Z ich perspektywy odchylenia od zachowania linearnego są defektami. Z naszej perspektywy także: możemy je usłyszeć, kiedy wzmacniacz audio ma nielinearne efekty, ponieważ zniekształca dźwięk; możemy je dostrzec, kiedy optyka zniekształca obraz. Możemy odróżnić linię prostą od zakrzywionej bez jakichkolwiek narzędzi. Ale narzędzia matematyczne stosowane przez inżynierów do projektowania tych linearnych, niezmiennych w czasie systemów są szczególnie dobre – jak na matematyczne narzędzia. Matematyka może być nawet przyjemną rozrywką jako rodzaj zaawansowanej gry dla filozofów, ale jej znakomita większość z punktu widzenia inżyniera jest problematyczna. Można opisać praktycznie wszystko stosując zestaw równań różniczkowych, ale przeważająca ilość interesujących zjawisk – przykładowo zachowanie płatu skrzydła w strumieniu powietrznym, czy zachowanie rozgrzanych gazów w komorze spalania – prowadzi do równań, które nie sposób rozwiązać analitycznie; podejść do nich można jedynie stosując metody numeryczne, przy wykorzystaniu komputera. Skonstruowany zostaje matematyczny model i rzuca się weń przypadkowymi liczbami, aby przekonać się, co z tego wyniknie. Jednakże linearne, niezmienne w czasie systemy są opisywane przy zastosowaniu niepowtarzalnie układnej klasy równań różniczkowych, mających analityczne rozwiązania o zamkniętej formie, które dostarczają w bezpośredni sposób odpowiedzi na pytania projektowe, zatem studenci inżynierii ćwiczą je do znudzenia, a w przyszłości projektują i budują wszelkiego rodzaju maszynerię zachowującą się tak linearnie, jak to tylko możliwe, od skromnych pokręteł głośności po złożone płaszczyzny sterowania samolotem. Z kolei ta układna, przewidywalna maszyneria pozwala nam osiągnąć linearne efekty w gospodarce: zbuduj więcej rzeczy – otrzymasz proporcjonalnie więcej pieniędzy; wydaj więcej pieniędzy – otrzymasz proporcjonalnie więcej rzeczy. Jak można podejrzewać, koncepcja ta sprawdza się do pewnego stopnia.

Przypomnijmy raz jeszcze: linie proste są jedynie wygodną fikcją. Nie ma fizycznego analogu matematycznej linii prostej, który biegnie od minus nieskończoności do plus nieskończoności. W najlepszym razie możemy użyć wszystkich kunsztownych zabiegów, aby stworzyć względnie krótkie segmenty linii prostej. Prawda wygląda tak, że inżynierowie nie potrafią stworzyć linearnych systemów; mogą jedynie stworzyć systemy, które demonstrują linearne zachowanie w obrębie swojego linearnego obszaru. Poza tym obszarem przyroda robi to, co potrafi najlepiej: wykonuje szalone zakrzywienia i zygzaki i ogólnie zachowuje się w przypadkowy i nieprzewidywalny sposób. Znanym z naszego codziennego doświadczenia przykładem na to, co się dzieje, kiedy przekroczymy granice linearnego obszaru jest fenomen przeciążenia wzmacniacza audio. Efekt będący jego rezultatem nazywa się przesterowaniem (clipping) i brzmi jak wyjątkowo nieprzyjemny, przeszywający, zgrzytliwy dźwięk. Są tylko dwa rozwiązania: obniżyć głośność (powrócić do parametrów obszaru linearnego) lub zdobyć wzmacniacz o większej mocy.

W sferze ekonomii efekty przekroczenia granic obszaru linearnego mogą być nawet bardziej nieprzyjemne. Budowanie domów pozostające w granicach tego obszaru generuje więcej bogactwa, ale tuż poza obszarem dość szybko zaczynają się dziać rzeczy dziwne: ceny nieruchomości odnotowują katastrofalny spadek, hipoteki tracą wartość i budowanie większej liczby domów staje się wybitnie złym pomysłem. W granicach obszaru linearnego posiadanie większej ilości pieniędzy czyni cię bogatszym, w tym sensie, że jesteś zdolny zakupić więcej rzeczy, ale poza granicami obszaru jesteś zmuszony zdać sobie sprawę, że skoro większość pieniędzy istnieje dzięki pożyczaniu, to de facto stanowi zadłużenie i kiedy pojawia się niewypłacalność, bez względu na to jak dobrze prezentuje się na papierze twoja wartość netto, stajesz w obliczu ubóstwa, które dodatkowo pogarsza fakt, że nie masz praktyki w egzystowaniu bez grosza. W granicach obszaru linearnego inwestowanie większych sum w produkcję energii generuje więcej energii, lecz niedaleko poza nim produkcja energii spada i może niechcący zniszczyć całe sektory przemysłu i ekosystemy.

Skoro linearność jest fikcją użyteczną tylko do pewnego stopnia, to jak wygląda kwestia niezmienności w czasie? Niewątpliwie ona także musi mieć swoje granice. Wciskanie pedału gazu może za każdym razem wywołać przyspieszenie, ale ilość paliwa w baku zmniejsza się monotonicznie, aż nie pozostanie w nim nic. Jeżeli chodzi o bardziej złożone, dynamiczne systemy – przemysły, gospodarki, społeczeństwa – to mogą one do pewnego stopnia reagować na zewnętrzne bodźce w linearny i niezmienny w czasie sposób, ale za tą stabilną fasadą ich zdolności ulegają erozji, ich zasoby zmniejszają się, ich złożoność wzrasta i poza pewnym punktem rozpoczyna się całkowicie odmienny proces: proces upadku. Takie systemy generalnie nie stają się mniej skomplikowane, nie redukują spontanicznie swoich rozmiarów, czy zużycia surowców, reagując przy tym na zewnętrzne bodźce w kontrolowany, linearny sposób.

Tak mocno i tak głęboko wrósł w nas nawyk myślenia w liniach prostych, że często nie potrafimy sobie wyobrazić, iż moglibyśmy kiedykolwiek opuścić obszar linearny, a kiedy już tak się stanie nie potrafimy tego dostrzec, chociaż dowody mamy przed sobą. Specjalistyczne analizy sądowe katastrof lotniczych czasem ujawniają, że w swoim ostatnim odruchu pilot wyrwał konsolę sterowania z podłogi kokpitu – akt, który wymaga nadludzkiej siły – tak mocno ciągnął za drążek, aby podnieść dziób samolotu. Jestem pewien, że istnieje całe mnóstwo pilotów – we wszystkich sferach życia – którzy wybiorą katastrofę, z całej siły ściskając ster, ze wzrokiem wbitym w odległy, nieistotny lub fikcyjny horyzont, zamiast wcisnąć guzik od katapulty. Doświadczenie całego ich życia ograniczało się do obszaru linearnego i dlatego nie potrafią sobie wyobrazić, że mógłby kiedykolwiek się skończyć.

Jeden szczególnie istotny przykład takiego myślenia wiąże się z kwestią Peak Oil zazwyczaj wyrażaną jako założenie, iż globalna produkcja ropy zdążyła już osiągnąć lub osiągnie niebawem swój szczyt wszech czasów, a następnie rozpocznie stopniowy spadek rozłożony na przestrzeni kilku dekad. Wyczerpanie nafty jest modelowane jako linearna funkcja produkcji ropy: kilka procent rocznie, utrzymujących się z sezonu na sezon mniej więcej na stałym poziomie. Jednocześnie zużywanie ropy przez społeczeństwa przemysłowe jest często użytecznie charakteryzowane jako uzależnienie. Przećwiczmy tę metaforę i przekonajmy się dokąd nas zaprowadzi. Załóżmy, że mamy do czynienia z narkomanem, który cierpi na wzbierający heroinowy nałóg i który zmuszony jest naciągać z coraz większym mozołem, aby zaliczyć kolejną działkę. Teraz załóżmy, że globalna produkcja heroiny osiąga swój szczyt, ceny idą w górę, zaopatrzenie słabnie i nasz ćpun musi rozpocząć obcinanie dawki. Po upływie niezbyt długiego czasu mamy już do czynienia z chorym narkomanem, który nie jest w stanie opuścić swojego lokum i naciągać celem pozyskania następnej działki. Zaraz potem mamy upadek rynku heroiny, ponieważ narkomani zostali zmuszeni w mniejszym lub większym zakresie rzucić nałóg. To zaburzenie na rynku, nawet tymczasowe, sprawia, że produkcja narkotyku zmniejsza się jeszcze szybciej, koszty produkcji i ryzyko towarzyszące wzrastają itd. Poza pewnym punktem rynek heroiny nie byłby już charakteryzowany jako linearny, niezmienny w czasie system, w którym im więcej płacisz, tym więcej otrzymujesz w dowolnym momencie, ponieważ tak niewiele pozostałoby do rozdystrybuowania.

Podobnie jest z ropą. Zaraz po huraganie Katrina w niektórych południowych stanach USA miało miejsce zaburzenie dostaw paliwa. Ludzie pisali do mnie, że w rezultacie nastąpił natychmiastowy chaos: społeczeństwo szybko przestało funkcjonować na wszystkich poziomach. Niedobór był tymczasowy i szybko o nim zapomniano, ale gdyby był to niedobór długoterminowy, systemowy, z pewnością zaobserwowalibyśmy wszystkie typowe następstwa: zapasy paliwa wyparowane na skutek tankowania baków po brzegi i spalania podczas jazdy w kółko, z pełnym zbiornikiem i baterią kanistrów w bagażniku; mnóstwo paliwa zmarnowanego podczas jazdy w poszukiwaniu benzyny i podczas postojów w długich kolejkach do dystrybutorów; mnóstwo spuszczania benzyny ze zbiorników i w rezultacie wielu porzuconych na drogach kierowców; wielu ludzi nie zdolnych dotrzeć do pracy; niedługo potem paniczne wykupowanie produktów pierwszej potrzeby, plądrowanie i zamieszki, sparaliżowany handel, federalne służby przywracające porządek na ulicach, godzina policyjna, ograniczenia wszelkich form podróżowania, przymusowe dni wolne, kryzys bilansu płatniczego i w końcu powszechna niezdolność do finansowania dalszej produkcji lub importu ropy. Wszystkie te zaburzenia wywołują dalsze przyspieszenie spadku produkcji nafty, wraz z całą gospodarczą działalnością, aż do momentu, kiedy zapotrzebowanie na ten towar staje się po prostu znikome. W miarę wygasania aktywności globalnego przemysłu naftowego, platformy wiertnicze, rafinerie i rurociągi wychodzą z użycia i nie nadają się do eksploatacji. Zamiast gładkiego, kilkuprocentowego rocznego spadku mielibyśmy sytuację, którą Douglas Adams opisałby jako "spontaniczną awarię egzystencji."

Jestem pewien, że niektórzy ludzie chcieliby, żebym bystro nakreślił swoją pomiarową krawędź, naniósł parę linii prostych i sporządził prognozę: Jakie przewiduję ceny? O jakich wartościach produkcji za dziesięć, dwadzieścia lat możemy mówić? Cóż, w moim odczuciu to kompletna strata czasu. Wolę go spędzić ucząc się jak przycinać drzewa z myślą o budowaniu z okrągłego drewna. Przyszłość z pewnością będzie nielinearna i jestem zupełnie przekonany, że będą w niej drzewa. Wspominam o tym dlatego, że jest tam gdzieś kilkoro pilotów, którzy, mam nadzieję, zachowają przytomność umysłu i wcisną guzik od katapulty, zamiast kurczowo trzymać ster, ze spojrzeniem zatrzymanym na sztucznym horyzoncie.

Dead Souls

2011-07-23T18:27:00.010-04:00

With each passing week more and more of us become ready to concede that economic growth is no longer possible. Economic development, on the old model, which UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon recently characterized as a “global suicide pact,” is becoming constrained by the limits of natural resources of the finite planet, energy, arable land and fresh water foremost among them, and stressed further by extreme weather events that increase in frequency due to the rapidly destabilizing climate.

Since the narrowly averted financial collapse of 2008, aggregate indicators of economic growth have been anemic at best, and would be negative were it not for a dramatic expansion in public debt and aggressive financial manipulation by American and European central banks. These methods are only effective up to a point. Some time ago it became apparent that we had reached the point of diminishing returns on debt expansion: further expansion of public debt decreases rather than increases GDP. Perhaps the next realization to hit us is that public debt is in runaway mode: it will continue to go up whether government spending is cut or increased. From this it follows that the government's days are numbered; but few people are ready to make this leap yet.

Against this background of economic stagnation and decay and widespread financial insolvency one sector is experiencing a boom time: Silicon Valley is booming again, and tech start-up IPOs are doing well. Social networking and mobile computing are hot, and some are expecting them to power the global economy out of the doldrums. Others contend that this industry segment is, and will remain, far too small to pick up the slack for the rest of the resource-strapped global economy. What neither side seems to grasp is this: as the virtualized realm of cyberreality and social networking takes over daily life, the actual physical economy will matter less and less (to those who are still alive and have an internet connection). What these new gadgets offer is, simply put, escapism. In a world of dwindling resources, where each person's share of the physical realm decreases over time, it is no wonder that physical reality fails to satisfy. But thanks to the new, intimate, glowing handheld mobile computing devices, the unsatisfactory real world can be blotted out, and replaced with a cleansed, bouncy, shiny version of society in which little avatars utter terse little messages. In the cyber-realm there are no sweaty bodies, no cacophony of voices to suffer through—just a smooth, polished, expertly branded user experience.

While riding the subway through the Boston rush hour, I have been able to observe just how well these personal electronic mental life support units work in shielding people from the sight of their fellow-passengers, who are becoming a rougher and rougher-looking crew, with more and more people in obvious distress. By focusing all of their attentions on the tiny screen, they are also spared the sight of our well-worn and crumbling urban infrastructure. It is as if the physical world doesn't really exist for them, or at least doesn't matter. But as Horace already understood over 2000 years ago, "Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret" ("You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.") If we ignore the physical realm, the physical economy (the one that actually keeps people fed and sheltered and moves them about the landscape) shrinks and decays. The inevitable result is that more and more of these cyber-campers and their gadgets will drop off the network, shrivel, and die with nary a tweet to signal their demise.

And this is, of course, a shame: a terrible and unnecessary loss to the online community. Yes, resource depletion cannot be turned back, nor can catastrophic climate change. Yes, the global economy will crumble as a result, and people will die. But why should their online personae die with them? That, at least, seems preventable. Not only that, but letting users die is bad for the economy: companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and numerous tech start-ups are judged based on the size of their user base. Some of them may not generate much in the way of revenue, but if they have millions of users then everyone assumes that they must be worth something. But if the physical economy continues to cave in on itself and their users start to drop off like flies in autumn, then that would be bad for a company's valuation and stand in the way of it securing additional rounds of financing. If it finds a way to compensate, then all would be well with their business plan, and their innovative social networking platform might indeed help power the global economy out of the doldrums and into some other nautical metaphor... the coastal shallows, perhaps, where it would be careened and methodically picked clean by the coast-dwelling troglodytes... But if not, then it would be doomed. Doomed! Investors don't like the sound of the word "doomed."

The solution is as obvious as it is counterintuitive, and it comes from a classic of Russian literature: Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls. It details the exploits of one Chichikov, who rambles around the Russian countryside, visiting estates and convincing their owners to sell to him their dead peasants. With the dead peasants' papers in hand Chichikov is then able to use them as collateral for loans and to mortgage them (omitting to mention, of course, that they are dead). Correspondingly, the solution for the social networking tech start-ups, moving forward, is to leverage their dead users. This, after all, seems like a humane and caring thing to do: why let someone's online persona die with them? This is often a shock to the other users, who most likely have never even met the deceased person in real life, and don't particularly care whether he or she physically exists. It was once said that on the Internet nobody knows whether you are dog; so let it be that nobody knows whether you are even alive. In a society that lavishes hundreds of thousands of dollars on end-of-life medical care, why not save a little of that money for the cyber-afterlife? For people whose lives are mostly lived on the Internet, technology that extends their online personae past their physical death would be life-extending technology par excellence, and a fitting tribute.

The technical challenge is considerable, but it is by no means insurmountable. For example, let's say you have a dead user who likes cats. Now, it is well known that uploading pictures of cats is a good way to get “karma points.” In life, our erstwhile cat-lover would have immediately responded with a succinct message such as “UR KITTEH RLY CUTE LOLZ” by thumbing it into some handheld device. After our user's untimely demise, the same function would be performed by a computer program. To paraphrase Descartes, “Txto, ergo sum.” Here is a proof of concept that took me just a minute or two to code up:

With a bit of effort this sample code can be extended to cover the typical set of the eternally resting user's online utterances. (Of course, a more contemporary way to implement it would be as a web service. And, of course, it would have to be a RESTful one.)

Thus, generating tweets, SMS messages and posting comments, perhaps even generating entire blog posts that convincingly mimic those of a living user is an eminently surmountable technical challenge. But a much harder problem would be to keep our dead user in the vanguard of exciting new social movements and fashions that sweep through the net with lightening speed. Just recently “planking” was all the rage.

This is "planking"

But now “planking” is just completely last week and everyone who is cool and hip is into “owling.”

This is "owling"

Without a timely infusion of such new trends our deceased user's persona would grow stale and unpopular. But perhaps that is as it should be: let the living rise in popularity while the dead slowly become de-friended and de-linked, eventually lapsing into oblivion. After all, all we are doing is buying some time. The last person out, please remember to shut down the cloud, because what would be the use of dead people talking to each other on a dead planet?

Share your Recipe for Superpower Collapse Soup

2011-07-21T16:02:00.004-04:00

Update: The forum has had a good run, with 47 topics and 138 posts. We are ready to close it off to new topics, but it will remain there for your to peruse for as long as the TCP/IP packets are flying. Our regularly unscheduled blogging will resume shortly.

New Society Publishers is hosting a forum on which people can ask questions for me to answer. I don't do a particularly good job of responding to questions that sometimes appear in the comments, but here is your chance. If there is something you want to ask me, click over to their site and ask away. Nothing is off-limits... except "Where's my t-shirt?"

A Black Hole of Debt

2011-07-13T22:34:00.000-04:00

The latest installment of consciousness-raising audio from KMO featuring Richard Heinberg, whose soon-to-be-released book, The End of Growth, offers a most necessary flossing between the ears for the growth-addled, and me. Stay conscious!

Collapse Fashionably—Urgent Update

2011-07-04T09:00:00.009-04:00

Update: L's and XL's are all gone! But there are still 75 S's and 45 M's to get rid of... so please do it for the children/large pets/midgets in your life! I'll leave the "donate" button up for another week or so, and after that the the rest of the shirts are going to the donations bin at the Goodwill store.

Update: A few shirts went out with insufficient postage, to the tune of $3. (Apparently, First Class Mail does not automatically mean a First Class Stamp; who knew?) If the Post Office is after you for more money to bail out your shirt, let us know and we'll issue a refund. If you want to complain, please use the comments section below.

Update: The t-shirts have arrived. Boxes of them are piled high in the corner of the marina office (since there is no room for them on the boat). The number of requests I have received to date is less than 10% of the total. However, thanks to several generous donations they have been paid for already, so I am happy to be able to offer the remainder to anyone who'll give me at least $3 $6 (to pay for the bubble mailer and ~~the postage stamp~~ around $3 for 1st class postage, and, of course, the PayPal fee). Think about it: not only will you collapse fashionably, but for less than the cost of laundry! No PayPal account? No problem! Just email me your address and your size, I don't care. The boxes can't stay in the marina office forever, and if we don't send them out promptly their next destination after that will be the Salvation Army and the goodwill store. Please send us a follow-up email to indicate the size: S/M only; the rest are all gone. ~~/L/XL. No XXL, but if you want I can stretch an XL on a sail-bag for you.~~

Please note: Please indicate shirt size (S or M) in a follow-up email.

I am happy to be able to offer you a curious memento of our rapidly passing age: the Reinventing Collapse t-shirt. The shirts are being printed and I will start sending them out in a couple of weeks. If you would like to reserve one, click the "Donate" button above. It will take at least US$20 to defray the costs (a bit more for international shipping, please).

I would like to thank EJ at New Society Publishing and Nina who did the design for bringing this monumental effort to fruition.

Despotyzm obrazu

2011-07-03T11:20:00.004-04:00

[Thank you, Marcin, for the Polish translation of The Despotism of the Image. Original is available here.]

Niewiele ludzi dostrzega, że współczesna kultura nurtu głównego, podporządkowana agresywnej konsumpcji i niepohamowanemu wzrostowi, jest toksyczna na każdym poziomie – fizycznym, emocjonalnym, kulturalnym – i przyspiesza na drodze ku nieuchronnej kolizji z wyczerpaniem zasobów, zaburzeniami klimatycznymi oraz dewastacją środowiska naturalnego. Przynależąc do małej społeczności, która pragnie zmienić tę dominującą kulturę, chcemy w porę wyskoczyć lub ze względu na możliwy brak niezbędnej odwagi liczymy, że szczęśliwie zostaniemy wyrzuceni na bezpieczny grunt.

Rzeczywiste znaczenie tej postawy jest mgliste, a najlepsze, co większość z nas jest w stanie zrobić to skromna demonstracja osobistej cnoty – utylizacja plastikowych opakowań, jazda rowerem zamiast autem, podróżowanie pociągiem zamiast samolotem, niepozorna hodowla własnej żywności, zdrowe odżywianie, inwestowanie w energię odnawialną itd. Są to wizytówki, dzięki którym się rozpoznajemy. W jaki sposób te osobiste cnoty są definiowane pozostaje kwestią indywidualnego gustu: niektórzy uważają, że prowadzenie auta z silnikiem hybrydowym w zupełności wystarczy, natomiast inni eliminują samochody ze swojego życia całkowicie. Przedsięwzięcie niektórych najwyraźniej niezbędnych kroków, takich jak radzenie sobie bez produkowanych z ropy plastików oraz innych materiałów syntetycznych, zdaje się wykraczać poza możliwości nas wszystkich.

Taka postawa zdaje się uchodzić za dogmat wiary: jeżeli zrobimy dostatecznie dużo podobnych rzeczy, bez względu na ich charakter, wówczas problem, bez względu na to jakim akurat jest i jakkolwiek go sobie zdefiniujemy, będzie w stosownym czasie rozwiązany, a cywilizowane życie potoczy się tak, jak dotychczas. Nie dalej jak wczoraj towarzyska pogawędka poobiednia zahaczyła z lekka o temat energii – o to jak Brytyjczykom fartownie udało się znaleźć węgiel, kiedy zaczęło wyczerpywać się drewno, a potem szczęśliwie odkryli ropę i gaz zanim wyczerpał się węgiel. A teraz, kiedy praktycznie zużyli już złoża ropy i gazu naturalnego, “będzie mnóstwo złóż odnawialnych, by zasilić wszystko!” Dla tych z nas, którzy mają niezbędną wiedzę techniczną i rozumieją o jakich fizycznych ilościach energii mówimy, podobne twierdzenie jest niedorzeczne, ale wiedziałem, że wyrażenie sprzeciwu byłoby nieroztropne.

Zaniechałem komentarza, bo zdaję sobie sprawę, że wymogiem kultury jest prezentowanie image’u / wizerunku bezgranicznego optymizmu i niezachwianej wiary w naszą technologiczną potęgę. Okazanie postawy mniej entuzjastycznej automatycznie otrzymuje etykietę defetystycznej, fatalistycznej i pozbawionej wyobraźni. Nadmienię, że słowo to nie oznacza aktywnej pracy intelektu, tylko pasywną, dobrowolną akceptację zestawu powszechnych wyobrażeń lub obrazów. Najważniejszymi obrazami składającymi się na tę sztuczną rzeczywistość, znajdującymi się w sercu tej sfery wymuszonej fikcji, są te, które przynajmniej na swej powierzchni odnoszą się do osobistej godności i fizycznego komfortu.

Od czasu do czasu mam okazję obserwować zderzenie dwóch konkurujących obrazów: osobistej cnoty (jazda na rowerze) oraz osobistej godności i komfortu (jazda samochodem). Jestem całorocznym rowerzystą w mieście położonym na północy, gdzie temperatury okazjonalnie spadają poniżej zera i gdzie często prószy śnieg. To liberalne miasto, co oznacza, że wielu ludzi podziela poczucie osobistej cnoty, które łączy się z oznakami eko-przyjaznego zachowania, jak chociażby idea dojeżdżania do miejsca pracy rowerem – oczywiście sami wzięliby pod uwagę podobne rozwiązanie pod warunkiem, że dystans byłby krótki, a pogoda idealna. Jednakże całkiem spora ich liczba pragnie doświadczyć tej cnoty w sposób pośredni i widząc mnie przyodzianego w odpowiedni strój, z kaskiem na głowie, zagaja w windzie, w drodze do pracy, zwłaszcza, kiedy jest upalnie lub zimno, kiedy pada lub prószy. Często zapytują jak chronię stopy przed odmrożeniem (zakładam bawełniane skarpety) lub jak unikam poślizgu na lodzie (używam opon z kolcami) albo jak pokonuję strome wzniesienia (mocno naciskam na pedały).

Moje odpowiedzi, chociaż udzielam ich ochoczo, spotykają się niezmiennie z cichym rozczarowaniem – zapytanie dlaczego tak się dzieje jest intrygujące. Być może ma to związek z tym, że jazda rowerem nie jest w moim przypadku kwestią osobistej cnoty, ale sposobem na przemieszczanie się z miejsca na miejsce z maksymalną przyjemnością i minimalnym zamieszaniem i rozdrażnieniem. Robię to z pełną osobistą godnością i fizycznym komfortem, ponieważ to w jaki sposób ich doświadczam opiera się na mojej dyspozycji emocjonalnej (która zazwyczaj jest pogodna) i fizycznej wygodzie (która w moim przypadku oznacza zdrową dozę bólu i przynosi skutek w postaci dobrego zdrowia i samopoczucia). Podejrzewam, że godność i komfort moich uzależnionych od samochodów rozmówców z windy nie mają swojego podłoża w osobistym doświadczeniu, ale są powiązane z innymi atawistycznymi impulsami, które znajdują swój pełny wyraz w obrazie automobilu. Są zażenowani, iż został pokonany przez prymitywne, bezsilnikowe, dwukołowe ustrojstwo.

Możliwe jest wzniesienie całej góry racjonalnych, logicznych, policzalnych argumentów przeciwko samochodom, na korzyść rowerów. Najbardziej pocieszna linia analizy wymaga obliczenia ich względnych, efektywnych prędkości. Najpierw obliczamy całkowity koszt posiadania auta zawierający cenę zakupu, koszty spłaty, koszty utrzymania, rejestracji, opłat drogowych, mandatów itd. Następnie włączamy wszystkie koszty zewnętrzne: budowę i naprawy dróg, szkody zdrowotne w skutek zanieczyszczenia wody i powietrza, utratę produktywności z powodu śmierci i kalectwa spowodowanych wypadkami, koszty sądowe i budżet armii pozwalający wyposażyć walczące o paliwo wojsko.

Teraz weźmy przeciętny dochód kierowcy, przepracowane godziny i ustalmy ile godzin pracy potrzeba, by pokryć te wszystkie koszty. Dodajmy do tego czas poświęcony na jazdę. Następnie weźmy liczbę przejechanych kilometrów i podzielmy ją przez całkowitą liczbę godzin poświęconych na jazdę i zarabianie pieniędzy na utrzymanie auta. Zamiast podać wynik zachęcam do samodzielnego odrobienia pracy domowej, ale mogę powiedzieć, że rezultat tego ćwiczenia jest zawsze taki sam: rower jest szybszy od samochodu i w zależności od osobistych założeń jazda samochodem jest wolniejsza od chodzenia.

Następna pocieszna linia analizy dotyczy tematu bezpieczeństwa publicznego. Istnieją ogólne, praktyczne ograniczenia określające jak długo może potrwać nasza codzienna podróż; zazwyczaj nie przekracza godziny w każdą stronę, bez względu na przejechany dystans, czy zastosowany środek transportu. Dlatego właściwa statystyka bezpieczeństwa wciąż dotyczy wypadków śmiertelnych i wymagających hospitalizacji, ale przypadających raczej na jednostkę czasową, nie zaś na jednostkę odległości. I tutaj, jak się okazuje, rowery są bezpieczniejsze od samochodów, nawet na zatłoczonych miejskich obszarach pozbawionych ścieżek i pasów rowerowych. I chociaż zdrowie każdego z nas odczuwa skutki wdychania zanieczyszczanego spalinami powietrza, codzienne ćwiczenie pedałowania w pewnym stopniu je łagodzi, i tym samym bardziej pogłębia przepaść pomiędzy rowerem i autem.

Zatem z punktu widzenia bezpieczeństwa publicznego także wygrywają rowery. Podobne typy analizy mogą być zastosowane wobec pociągów, ryksz, czy motolotni z podobnym rezultatem. Krótko mówiąc pozbawionym sensu jest szukanie racjonalnego wyjaśnienia dlaczego ludzie wolą samochody, bezsensowne jest nawet myślenie o samochodach jako pojazdach wypełniających potrzebę transportową. Ich komfort i wygoda są niczym innym jak kulturowo skonstruowanym mirażem. Najwyższa pora, byśmy zaakceptowali fakt, że ich podstawową funkcją jest zaspokojenie bardzo silnych pierwotnych popędów.
Pod względem anatomicznym automobil wyraźnie przypomina swojego praprzodka – pewnego czworonożnego przeżuwacza z rodziny koni, skrzyżowanego z wózkiem. Po drodze pozyskał pewne drapieżne geny, co nadało mu raczej zawzięte usposobienie i wyrazowi jego „twarzy” często złośliwy aspekt (światła plus kratka ochronna). Ma parę oczu (światła przednie), cztery “kończyny” (koła). Lubi poruszać się w stadach, ale opiera się nadmiernym ograniczeniom zarówno pod względem kierunku, jak i prędkości. Odpowiada na sygnały nożne przesyłane ostrogami (pedał gazu) i ręczne, przekazywane za pośrednictwem cugli (kierownica).

Występuje wielka różnorodność jego ras; większość z nich jest ceniona za umiejętność szybkiego poruszania się, chociaż wykorzystuje ją sporadycznie. Ich główną funkcją jest użyczenie pewnego poczucia szlachetnego dowartościowania swoim posiadaczom, poprzez nadanie kierowcy wyglądu 'dżentelmena na wierzchowcu', a pasażerowi prezencji 'damy w karecie'. Tak jak w przypadku koni ich często przemożna potrzeba uwolnienia wzdęć nawet w najmniejszym stopniu nie degraduje owego poczucia uszlachetnienia.
Drugorzędna funkcja samochodu pozwala właścicielowi mieć władzę nad życiem i śmiercią. Gdyby auto było rozpatrywane wyłącznie z perspektywy bezpieczeństwa publicznego, jego prywatne posiadanie zostałoby zabronione dawno temu. Tym, co faktycznie czyni samochód tak ponętnym, a jego wizerunek w wyobraźni opinii publicznej tak sugestywnym, jest to, że stanowi “naturalnie niebezpieczny instrument”, jak to ujął pewien prawnik. W odróżnieniu od konia, który ma parę oczu oraz mózg i pozostawiony samemu sobie ominie przeszkody, samochód z radością się zderzy; wymaga nieustannej czujności.

Ten trywialny, ale aktywny nadzór, który w celu uniknięcia śmierci lub poważnych obrażeń musi być utrzymany w każdym momencie, jest jednocześnie intensywnie nudny i ekscytujący. Iggy Pop kiedyś uchwycił ducha tej sprzeczności: “W samochodzie śmierci czujemy, że żyjemy!” W społeczeństwie uzależnionym od samochodów, miliony ludzi w każdym momencie są aktywnie zaangażowane w akt unikania natychmiastowej śmierci. W odpowiednim czasie auta i rzeź jaką powodują będą uważane za żywioł naturalny.
Okresowo słyszy się o planach stworzenia “inteligentnych autostrad” i patrząc poza oczywistą sugestię, że obecnie autostrady są w rzeczy samej “głupie”, oczywistym staje się i to, że poruszające się po nich samochody także są “głupie”. Automobil przeprojektowany wyłącznie z myślą o transporcie wyglądałby inaczej.

Trzy koła wystarczą w zupełności, cztery to już nadmiar, czego dowodzą liczne przykłady, od aut wyścigowych napędzanych bateriami słonecznymi począwszy, a na pojeździe Demaxian Buckminstera Fullera skończywszy. Koło prowadzące, przednie i środkowe, służyłoby do kierowania, a poza tym byłoby zaprojektowane, by poruszać się w koleinie eliminując potrzebę kierowania za wyjątkiem manewrowania. Zaczepy z przodu i z tyłu pozwoliłyby autom połączyć się w pociąg, by poprawić wydajność. Kiedy auto nie byłoby podczepione z przodu prosty czujnik podczerwieni regulowałby prędkość, ażeby zachować odpowiednią przerwę na wyhamowanie. Minimalna i maksymalna prędkość byłaby oznaczona kodem kreskowym na chodniku i samochód dostosowywałby się do ograniczeń automatycznie. Przyczepny silnik obniżałby się na przednie koło przy wykorzystaniu podnośnika windowego i ‘wskakiwałby’ na miejsce za pomocą odpowiedniej klamry – ułatwiłoby to jego przegląd i wymianę. Dno samochodu byłoby wodoodporne, koło prowadzące miałoby z boków wiosła pozwalające na przeprawę wodną. W celu optymalnego przechowywania auto obracałoby się wzdłuż osi i stało pionowo, spoczywając na krótkiej stopce.

Jednakże takie ćwiczenia projektowe są daremne: są racjonalnym podejściem do irracjonalnego zestawu wymagań. Głupie samochody oraz ludzie dla których i przez których są projektowane pozostaną z nami przez jakiś czas. Ich obraz jest trwale odciskany w wyobraźni społecznej, ilekroć mali chłopcy przesuwają po podłodze bawialni swoje małe zabawki pomrukując: “Wruuum! Wruuum!”

Przyczyną upadku naszych obecnych systemów komunikacji publicznej jest to, że są zaprojektowane wyłącznie z myślą o transporcie i bezpieczeństwie publicznym i nie są w stanie zaspokoić pierwotnych popędów swoich użytkowników. Stosując się do wizerunku bezpiecznej i niezawodnej służby publicznej nie potrafią zapewnić dreszczyku zwycięstwa i agonii porażki, a nieusatysfakcjonowany pasażer musi godzić się z niecierpliwością, niepewnością i nudą.

„Odpowiednio” zaprojektowany tramwaj byłby całkowicie pozbawiony drzwi lub wyposażony w takie, które zamykają się zdecydowanie, z dużym impetem po nieodwołalnym ostrzeżeniu. Nie zatrzymywałby się na przystankach tylko zwalniał na tyle, by pozwolić pasażerom na wskok i wyskok. Byłby wyposażony w pokłady biegowe i zewnętrzne poręcze; pozwalałyby one pasażerom-gapowiczom demonstrować akrobatyczne umiejętności podczas jazdy na zewnątrz, dzięki której zaoszczędziliby na koszcie zakupu biletu jednorazowego.

Aby wyeliminować ingerencję prawników wymogiem koniecznym byłoby podpisane przez wszystkich pasażerów zrzeczenia od roszczeń, zwalniającego przewoźnika od wszelkiej odpowiedzialności; do zasad ruchu drogowego wprowadzonoby poprawki, aby dać tramwajom prawo absolutnego pierwszeństwa bez względu na okoliczności, a pozostałym uczestnikom ruchu automatycznie przypisać winę za ewentualną kolizję. Przody tramwajowe mogłyby zostać przyozdobione pługami, by umożliwić posłanie na stronę każdego blokującego tory obiektu, redukując tym samym liczbę powypadkowych opóźnień. Nieunikniona rzeź zapewniłaby nieprzerwany potok lekcji bezpieczeństwa publicznego udzielanych przez tabloidy.

Taki system nie tylko byłby tani i skuteczny w obsłudze, ale w odpowiednim czasie wychowałby niebywale zwinną i czujną brać pasażerską, której codzienne popisy odwagi i odporności fizycznej wytworzyłoby prawdziwy duch koleżeństwa, którego próżno szukać pośród dzisiejszych, wyczerpanych i rozpieszczonych użytkowników transportu publicznego. Oczywiście taka forma usługi byłaby niemożliwa, ponieważ pozostawałaby w sprzeczności z wizerunkiem, który komunikacja publiczna winna odzwierciedlać: wizerunkiem publicznej uczynności służącej młodym, starym, biednym i schorowanym; w skrócie – czymś powołanym do istnienia na pożytek kilkorga nieboraków, którzy nie potrafią prowadzić auta.

Wzrasta liczba miejsc, w których transport publiczny staje się zbędny z uwagi na przypadłość znaną jako “rozrost przedmieścia”; sprzyja ono przede wszystkim uzależnianiu od samochodu. Powodem owego rozrostu jest domek na przedmieściach; podobnie jak błędem byłoby postrzeganie auta jako formy transportu – błędem jest postrzeganie domu na przedmieściach wyłącznie jako formy zakwaterowania. I chociaż zapewnia on zestaw nowoczesnych wygód, musi być zgodny z określonym wizerunkiem i podobnie jak w przypadku samochodu przekonamy się, że to wizerunek najlepiej wyjaśnia jego typową lokalizację i formę.

Powszechnym nieporozumieniem jest przekonanie, że główną funkcją domu na przedmieściach jest zapewnienie schronienia, tymczasem w dość oczywisty sposób chodzi tu o zapewnienie miejsca do parkowania. W społeczeństwie zależnym od samochodu dostęp kontrolowany jest przez ograniczanie i nadzór zdolności do parkowania. Parkowanie publiczne jest zawsze ograniczone i często niedostępne, a parkowanie na poły publiczne – w domach towarowych, galeriach, biurowcach i innych prywatnych instytucjach – dozwolone jest wyłącznie tym, którzy chcą wydać pieniądze lub mają do sfinalizowania jakąś transakcję. Chociaż samochód postuluje wolność ruchu, jest to wolność przemieszczania się publicznymi drogami pomiędzy miejscami, w których kierowca nie jest wolny, lecz musi wypełnić konkretną społeczną funkcję: pracowanie, robienie zakupów lub wykonanie innej usankcjonowanej społecznie czynności. Nawet jeżeli pragniesz na chwilę uciec od despotycznych ograniczeń społeczeństwa i spędzić trochę czasu na łonie natury, odkryjesz, że w społeczeństwie zależnym od samochodu nawet w obrębie obszaru dzikiej przyrody obowiązują godziny otwarcia, a parkingi zamykają tuż przed zmrokiem.

Krótko mówiąc jedyną wolnością, jaką oferuje samochód jest wolność jazdy tam i z powrotem pomiędzy miejscami, gdzie nie jest się wolnym, a jedynym wyjątkiem od tej zasady jest własny podjazd. Żaden porządny dom na przedmieściach nie może się bez niego obejść: to twoja prywatna autostrada, która prowadzi do twojego prywatnego domu. Ten obraz dyktuje, by odcinek ten został kosztownie i niepotrzebnie utwardzony, nie jakimiś tam płytami – przypominałby wówczas chodnik – ale asfaltem. Podjazdy na przedmieściach nie są utwardzane na pożytek aut, które radzą sobie na drogach piaszczystych, i z pewnością nie z myślą o pojazdach terenowych, lecz po to, by zaspokoić pewien przyrodzony napęd w kierowcach: przemożne pragnienie posiadania kawałka drogi.

W swojej symbolicznej funkcji dom na przedmieściach służy jako ostateczne miejsce odpoczynku u kresu długiej jazdy do domu. Spokój i cisza uznawane są za jego najbardziej zasadnicze cechy; chociaż ostentacyjną jest troska o bezpieczeństwo, jej źródłem jest irracjonalna potrzeba spokoju absolutnego. Gdyby rezydent przedmieścia miał zamienić samochód i dom na mieszkanie w obrębie miasta, zwiększone ryzyko padnięcia ofiarą brutalnego przestępstwa byłoby więcej niż zrównoważone przez zmniejszone ryzyko poniesienia śmierci w wypadku samochodowym; zatem wybór z punktu widzenia bezpieczeństwa nie jest racjonalny.

Prawdziwa troska nie dotyczy bezpieczeństwa tylko ucieleśnienia abstrakcyjnego obrazu spokoju. Przepisy strefowe i zarządzenia ograniczają hałaśliwe hobby i odchylenia od standardów społeczności, bowiem profanacją jest zakłócenie uświęconej drzemki człowieka przedmieścia. Idealne przedmieście znaczy niezmącony ciąg trawników przyciętych z precyzją manicure, nakrapianych neoklasycznymi rzeźbami; każda nieco odmienna, lecz zasadniczo taka sama. Jest to nieodzowna dekoracja cmentarna: dom jest de facto kryptą rodzinną. Nic dziwnego: ostatnim miejscem docelowym na trasie samochodu-śmierci jest dom-śmierci.

Wszystkie pozostałe funkcje domu-śmierci, poza jedną, są zbędne skoro ludzie mogą jeść, spać i uprawiać seks w swoich autach. W miarę jak samochody rozrastają się gabarytowo, a dojazdy stają się dłuższe, coraz więcej bytowania odbywa się wewnątrz auta, a grobowy kwaterunek używany jest tylko do rozpakowania fast-foodowej przekąski, schłodzenia piwa i zaśnięcia przed ekranem telewizora. Jednakże dom-śmierci ma jedno pomieszczenie, które ma znaczenie zasadnicze, bowiem zapewnia serwis pozostający poza możliwościami samochodu. Jest to łazienka – zawiera prysznic i oczywiście toaletę. I to nie byle jaką toaletę: nocnik lub wiadro wiórów po prostu nie wystarczyłoby. Nie, nie – musi to być najbardziej wymyślne urządzenie, które pozwala użytkownikowi: wypróżnić się bezpośrednio do baseniku wody pitnej (który wedle gustu może zostać zdezynfekowany), a następnie spuścić zawartość kolejną hojną porcją wody pitnej. Jakże osobliwe jest to, że pozostałe mięsożerne zwierzęta instynktownie zakopują swoje odchody, ażeby zapobiec rozprzestrzenianiu chorób – zwierzę homo sapiens uparcie miesza swoje fekalia z tym, co pije! Przeróżne kosztowne zabiegi, żaden z nich nie jest w pełni skuteczny, są niezbędne do utrzymania wody pitnej i ścieków osobno.

Jeżeli przemożna potrzeba wypróżniania się do pitnej wody zdaje się być irracjonalna, to czym jest podstawowy jej cel, czyli wyparcie się faktu, że ciało wydziela nieprzyjemną woń? Toaleta ze spłuczką jest narzędziem służącym do wypierania się tego, że ciało cuchnie wewnątrz; prysznic, z pomocą wymuszonych dziennych ablucji i chemicznych dezodorantów, pełni tę samą rolę wobec powłoki zewnętrznej. Potrzeba wypierania się, że ludzie pachną tak, jak ludzie jest bardzo dziwna, ponieważ ci sami ludzie chętnie tolerują zapachy swoich kotów i psów, które kąpią się z rzadka i pachną dokładnie tak, jak powinny. Prawda wygląda tak, że ludzie wydzielają zapach, nie gorszy niż koty, czy psy, a okazy zdrowsze zazwyczaj pachną dobrze, chociaż dieta oparta na pożywieniu typu "śmieci" czyni woń wyjątkowo nieprzyjemną. Oczywiste rodzi się podejrzenie, że ludzie, którzy prowadzą swoje samochody-śmierci i mieszkają w domach-śmierci, zażywają codziennej kąpieli, ponieważ czują przymus prezentowania pozbawionej odorów fasady ze względu na strach, że może z nich emanować podświadomy fetor śmierci, od którego spowijającej obecności nie potrafią się uwolnić.

Współczesna kultura zdominowana przez nad-konsumpcję i nieposkromiony wzrost, którą tak bardzo chcielibyśmy zmienić, żeby ocalić siebie, naszą planetę lub cząstkę obojga, nie jest i nigdy nie była racjonalną propozycją. Jest to realizacja mrocznych, nieracjonalnych, autodestrukcyjnych popędów, które zostały w nas zaprogramowane na skutek pewnego ewolucyjnego wypadku, a które znalazły swój pełny wyraz dzięki dostępowi do taniej i obfitej energii.

Apele o odwołanie się do racjonalności lub tzw. zdrowego rozsądku są daremne, ponieważ siłą motywującą jest zestaw niezatartych, niezmiennych obrazów, które są odciskane na prostych umysłach w okresie dzieciństwa. Łatwo jest te obrazy ośmieszyć i chociaż drwina może być sugestywna skuteczność jej oddziaływania ogranicza się do tych, którzy posiadają zdolność jej zrozumienia. Voltaire dokonał dość gruntownej analizy kościoła katolickiego, a mimo to księża wciąż są dzisiaj z nami – mogą błogosławić co popadnie i molestować ministrantów, ponieważ przeciętnemu wierzącemu Voltaire nigdy do niczego nie był potrzebny.

O wiele bardziej obiecującym podejściem jest tworzenie nowych obrazów o wielkiej uwodzicielskiej sile, dostatecznie prostych, by zrobić wrażenie na prostym umyśle. Jest to jednak obszar niebezpiecznej polityki i rewolucyjnej zmiany: ścieżka najeżona niezamierzonymi konsekwencjami, której należy unikać. Jedynym co pozostaje jest możliwość podjęcia osobistego wysiłku, by uwolnić się od despotyzmu obrazu / wizerunku.

Jeżeli chodzi o resztę konsumentów kupionych obrazami śmierci, godności i komfortu, możemy być pewni, że tzw. wolny rynek sprosta ich potrzebom. Ci z głębokimi kieszeniami otrzymają prawdziwie luksusową śmierć, w której znajdzie się miejsce na osobiste muzeum transportu oraz bibliotekę pośród zaaranżowanej zieleni francuskiego ogrodu, natomiast tych po stronie przeciwnej będzie stać jedynie na śmierć w brązowym kartonie; czyż nie jest to kwintesencja konsumenckiego wyboru? Miejmy nadzieję, że ich kultura śmierci umrze razem z nimi i że dojdzie do tego na długo zanim staniemy się zagrożonym gatunkiem.

The Road Ahead for Community Action

2011-06-21T10:02:00.003-04:00

I just attended a workshop in Falmouth, Massachusetts organized by Community Action associations of Southern New England titled "The Road Ahead for Community Action: Helping People in Turbulent Times." (Clearly, trying to integrate poor people into a global economy that is collapsing before our eyes is not such a good idea, so I stressed relocalization and community self-sufficiency.) I reused the slides from last year, when I presented at CAP's annual convention in Boston, because they still work; if anything, they work better as time goes on.

Book Review by Frank Kaminski

2011-06-18T23:22:00.000-04:00

Neither an economist nor a formally trained scholar, Dmitry Orlov is perhaps best described in his own words, as "more of an eyewitness" to the phenomenon on which he writes. He's a Russian émigré who saw the Soviet Union fall firsthand and has been drawing on this experience in warning of the coming U.S. collapse. He came to fame five years ago with a smash-hit Internet article that won him a loyal following and a subsequent book deal. The book, Reinventing Collapse, is now in its second edition—and regardless of how well it holds up to scholarly scrutiny, it's admirable in its wit and prodigious street smarts.

The book's central contention is that the U.S. economy is collapsing, and for the same basic reasons as caused the Soviet collapse: dwindling domestic oil production, a worsening foreign trade deficit, out-of-control military spending and mushrooming foreign debt. (With his usual comic panache, Orlov refers to these factors as ingredients in a "superpower collapse soup"; and he promises that "this soup will be served, and it will not be tasty!") He further argues that America is less prepared for collapse than the U.S.S.R. was, largely because of its obsession with the automobile as a symbol of, and prerequisite for, middle-class membership. And he calls for adaptation rather than reform, the latter being as futile as "you or me wiggling our toes at a tsunami."

A Leningrad-born software engineer, Orlov came to the States in the mid '70s when he was 12. During extended visits back home in the late '80s to mid '90s, he watched his home country disintegrate in time-lapse fashion. He later became convinced that America was fated for a similar crash, but remained a closeted doomer for more than a decade. When he finally came out with his message, he found an eager audience among the fledgling peak oil community. Energy Bulletin published his "Closing the 'Collapse Gap': The USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US" in December 2006, and it quickly became one of the site's most popular articles ever.

Orlov knew that many would reject his comparison of America with the U.S.S.R., but he insists that it's valid and telling. Starting with obvious similarities, he cites the two nations' respective advances in space exploration and weaponry, as well as their competition for the title of world's biggest debtor nation. He also notes their rivalry in the "jails race," "hated evil empire race" and "squandering of natural resources race." And he imagines that one day their two collapses may be relegated to a single textbook chapter, and that children "will like learning about the superpowers just like they like learning about dinosaurs: big, scary monsters–but extinct, and therefore not so frightening."

Besides their lower level of car dependence, the Soviets' edge in collapse preparedness lay in the fact that the state provided for people's needs. No matter how bad the economy was, people never had to worry about homelessness or losing access to medical treatment. Americans enjoy no such security.

Reinventing Collapse is intended to give readers a concrete sense of how they can change their lives to better face the reality ahead. Everyone's starting point, argues Orlov, should be eliminating his or her need for money. He's certain that America will choose to inflate away its debt à la the Soviet Union, making the dollar effectively worthless. Those who divest themselves of exposure to dollar depreciation will be poised not just to survive but to flourish in these trying times. For example, someone with the foresight to stockpile basic supplies like razor blades, medications and soap will be well-positioned to barter for other things.

America's future economy, believes Orlov, will depend on access to physical resources and assets, as well as healthy relationships with others who have resources and assets. He illustrates how this worked in practice during the Soviet collapse, largely at the hands of itinerant merchants known as chelnoki. The chelnoki would travel abroad frequently and bring things back in their luggage. Though they had to bribe officials and were often robbed, they were the Soviets' only source of consumer products for a while. Orlov suggests that post-collapse America may evolve its own version of the chelnoki, with customers hauling away their purchases in pilfered shopping carts (already a common sight across the urban landscape, he notes).

And he predicts that nomadic life will have much to recommend it. Nomads will be extremely valuable for their news of the outside world, assorted spare parts, occasional luxury items, elixirs and technical know-how. They'll also have greater survival savvy because of their highly developed situational awareness and their ability to wring the most out of resources.

Orlov advises staying as far as possible from the U.S. justice system, since it "offers a fine luxury model, but its budget model is manifestly unsafe." Already grossly tipped in favor of the rich, it may drop any pretense of serving justice and become simply a tool for social control. Orlov provides some Soviet examples of this, including the Gulag policy of political imprisonment, and describes America's use of secret jails, torture and indefinite detention as steps in the same direction.

Yet Orlov also foresees a melding of the official economy and the criminal one that would compel increasing numbers of people to engage in criminal activity and thus become targets of persecution by the authorities. He describes how during every economic collapse there emerges another, informal economy based around recycling remnants of the waning one—and many of its occupations involve defacing property (i.e., "asset stripping"), administering violence (aka "private security consulting") and trafficking drugs and alcohol.

The author is deeply worried about nuclear waste, the fate of the prison population and the repatriating of overseas military personnel. Nuclear waste poses the gravest threat since it remains radioactive for so incredibly long. Orlov warns that future generations will be unable to deal with it and that its radiation will spread across horrifyingly vast stretches. As for the prison population, he fears that hordes of dangerous criminals will go free in a general amnesty once we lack the resources to keep prisons running. Lastly, with regard to military personnel, Orlov thinks it likely that many of the nation's roughly 1,000 overseas bases will be simply abandoned to their fates once we can no longer maintain them.

The updates in this edition are mostly energy-related. For example, when the first edition came out in 2008, experts still couldn't say the exact year of peak conventional oil production. But they now have enough of a rear view to tell that it happened in 2005, and Orlov notes this in the new book. The past couple of years have also seen an accelerating trend called the land export effect, which is the tendency of oil exporters that are past their peak production rates to cut exports rather than supplies to their domestic populations. Orlov addresses this development as well in the new book, interpreting it as a sign that oil supply shortfalls will be far worse than even the pessimists expect.

One valid criticism that has been leveled against Orlov is that he makes unsupported, unprovable assertions about human behavior. And indeed, his discussions in this book contain some overly facile explanations for why people have mental depression, why revolving doors exist between industry and government and the motives behind news censorship, among other things. Nor does it help that the book lacks notes or references with which to substantiate such statements. If one overlooks these flaws, however, Reinventing Collapse is an eminently practical guide written with welcome comic relief by someone who's been around the block.

[Original available here.]

Twilight of the Antipodes Video

2011-06-18T09:28:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Darren and the rest of the Collapsenet team for putting this together.

Green Life Eco Fest - May 22, 2011 from Dmitry Orlov on Vimeo.

The Sermon to the Sharks

2011-06-14T15:57:00.012-04:00

The publisher was kind enough to provide me with a review copy of John Michael “The Archdruid” Greer's recently published book The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered. It took me a couple of days to get through the book, which I did although much of the material was not new to me, for the sake of his exposition: John Michael is an erudite and patient writer, good at explaining away the various fallacies around money, energy and the pursuit of everything that bedevil our increasingly morbid industrial civilization. I read and I nodded, and it was not until I arrived at the last chapter, “The Road Ahead” that I started shaking my head, because a paraphrase of the title sneaked into my brain, one that I couldn't shake: Preaching to Sharks: Economics as if the Survival of Economists Mattered. What made it hard to shake was that it was accompanied by this stunning image from Herman Melville's Moby Dick. I relate it here verbatim, for your benefit, because Melville makes better reading than either Greer or I. Enjoy!

Warning: This is a text dating from 1851 and it does not adhere to contemporary standards of propriety. In particular, it contains coarse ethnic humor. Persons of delicate sensibility... blah blah blah.

From chapter 64, "Stubb's Supper":

... though one or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a whaleship at sea. If you have never seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety of devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.

... Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that was going on so nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded the smacking of his own epicurean lips.

"Cook, cook!—where's that old Fleece?" he cried at length, widening his legs still further, as if to form a more secure base for his supper; and, at the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if stabbing with his lance; "cook, you cook!— sail this way, cook!"

The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously routed from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came shambling along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was something the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and limping along, assisting his step with his tongs, which, after a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened iron hoops; this old Ebony floundered along, and in obedience to the word of command, came to a dead stop on the opposite side of Stubb's sideboard; when, with both hands folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he bowed his arched back still further over, at the same time sideways inclining his head, so as to bring his best ear into play.

"Cook," said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his mouth, "don't you think this steak is rather overdone? You've been beating this steak too much, cook; it's too tender. Don't I always say that to be good, a whale-steak must be tough? There are those sharks now over the side, don't you see they prefer it tough and rare? What a shindy they are kicking up! Cook, go and talk to 'em; tell 'em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must keep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and deliver my message. Here, take this lantern," snatching one from his sideboard; "now then, go and preach to them!"

Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the deck to the bulwarks; and then, with one hand drooping his light low over the sea, so as to get a good view of his congregation, with the other hand he solemnly flourished his tongs, and leaning far over the side in a mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, while Stubb, softly crawling behind, overheard all that was said.

"Fellow-critters: I'se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam noise dare. You hear? Stop dat dam smackin' ob de lips! Massa Stubb say dat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor! you must stop dat dam racket!"

"Cook," here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a sudden slap on the shoulder,—"Cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn't swear that way when you're preaching. That's no way to convert sinners, Cook!"

"Who dat? Den preach to him yourself," sullenly turning to go.

"No, Cook; go on, go on."

"Well, den, Belubed fellow-critters:"—

"Right!" exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, "coax 'em to it, try that," and Fleece continued.

"Do you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I zay to you, fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness—'top dat dam slappin' ob de tail! How you tink to hear, 'spose you keep up such a dam slapping and bitin' dare?"

"Cook," cried Stubb, collaring him, "I won't have that swearing. Talk to 'em gentlemanly."

Once more the sermon proceeded.

"Your woraciousness, fellow-critters. I don't blame ye so much for; dat is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned. Now, look here, bred'ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a helping yourselbs from dat whale. Don't be tearin' de blubber out your neighbour's mout, I say. Is not one shark dood right as toder to dat whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale; dat whale belong to some one else. I know some o' you has berry brig mout, brigger dan oders; but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies; so dat de brigness of de mout is not to swallar wid, but to bit off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get into de scrouge to help demselves."

"Well done, old Fleece!" cried Stubb, "that's Christianity; go on."

"No use goin' on; de dam willains will keep a scrougin' and slappin' each oder, Massa Stubb; dey don't hear one word; no use a-preaching to such dam g'uttons as you call 'em, till dare bellies is full, and dare bellies is bottomless; and when dey do get 'em full, dey wont hear you den; for den dey sink in de sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and can't hear noting at all, no more, for eber and eber."

"Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the benediction, Fleece, and I'll away to my supper."

Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his shrill voice, and cried—

"Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill your dam bellies 'till dey bust—and den die!"

Elsewhere in the same novel Queequeg, the cannibal harpooner and the narrator's best friend, hops down on the whale-corpse tied alongside their whaling ship and, for exercise, spends a while dispatching the frenzied sharks by stabbing them with a sharp spade around where their brains are presumably located, which, he finds, is the only effective method for shutting them down.

Greer's book comes out at a time when the sharks are indeed ravenous: throughout the world zombie financial institutions, bloated with loans which have gone bad due to a dwindling resource base and a shrinking physical economy, are gorging themselves on free government money, while the governments cannot stop throwing bags of money into their gaping maws for fear of being eaten alive. They seem rather beyond redemption, and Greer acknowledges as much: “When the power of money faces off against the power of violence, money comes out a distant second.” [p. 213]

Books that attempt to look honestly at our contemporary condition often run amok when they attempt to show “the way forward.” What we ought to do is form political coalitions that lock out veto groups, curb the power of corporations, revise the tax code, bring back financial regulations from the 1950s and... so on. This would require reform. However, any reform of a complex system, such as our existing one, involves further investment in social complexity through a wide variety of costly initiatives. And here's the problem: there is no longer either the money or the energy for such initiatives. The default is to just let it collapse, but such an outlook, perfectly reasonable though it is, is generally not regarded as optimistic enough by the people who publish books (New Society Publishers is an exception). Some time ago (during the sustainability movement of the 1970s, which were Greer's formative time) optimistic, reform-minded expositions seemed useful; now they are starting to seem like compulsive anxiety coping behaviors: knock three times on wood, throw a pinch of salt over the left shoulder, mention sustainability and renewables.

One needs better reasons to read Greer than to show concern for the welfare of Western economists, because in all of the preceding chapters he does a through demolition job on their profession—so thorough that it may be more useful to start with fresh kindergartners than to try to reeducate existing economists. The way he does it is engaging enough to make the message palatable even to people who are not particularly concerned with energy or technology or finance, but he can also help dispel the fog for the technically minded people who are in favor of this or that “green” technology which happens to be, more likely than not, a net waste of energy. To explain such notions as “a net waste of energy,” which are counterintuitive for people whose thinking has been conditioned by the availability of cheap and plentiful fossil fuels, Greer delves into thermodynamics and the quality of energy, and explains why using renewable energy sources such as wind and solar to feed the electric grid is a bad idea, no matter how “smart” that grid happens to be, because energy conversion incurs losses that an energy-poor society simply cannot afford. Thanks to his patient and thorough explanations, the reader does not have to be a scientist or an engineer to come to appreciate what an incredible waste of resources it is to squander high-quality (i.e, high-temperature) energy sources such as electricity and natural gas, which are concentrated enough to cut and weld steel, on low-energy tasks such as heating bathwater, or keeping a bed warm—something that can be done with a diffuse, low-energy energy source such as sunlight, or a few furry animals.

Greer's book also serves as a good introduction to the marvels of low-tech, along with an explanation of just how wasteful high technology is, and just how low its productivity is when analyzed in terms of overall resource use rather than in terms of just human labor (a particular blind-spot for the threatened subspecies of economist under discussion in much of the book). Greer knows a lot about technology that is appropriate to a deindustrializing, energy-strapped world: labor-saving devices that do not take exorbitant amounts of energy, fragile international supply chains or dwindling fossil fuel inputs. It turns out that three centuries ago, before industrialization, people were in fact quite clever. The techniques they used were appropriate ones, and limited not so much by lack of better technology as by the scarcity and the intermittent and diffuse nature of the energy sources with which they had to work, and with which we will have to work now that the fossil fuel extravaganza is at its end. Survival certainly does matter; whether economics will still matter is for economists to work out. They should consider themselves helped.

Sailing craft for a post-collapse world

2011-06-08T14:02:00.009-04:00

[This article was first published in the volume Fleeing Vesuvius (ordering instructions are at the bottom), and was more recently republished on the Féasta's web site.]

Land transport will be costly, difficult and dangerous after the industrial system has broken down. Moving goods and people by water will be a better option even for quite short distances but what sort of boats will be needed and what materials will be available to build them?

At present, whether you need to move around yourself, or whether everything you need is delivered straight to your door, you depend for transport on industrial products whether they be cars and lorries, planes, trains, ships, bicycles, or even just a good pair of shoes. Is any means of transport available that you could provide, build or even service yourself that does not require access to industrial materials, products or services?

Even human bipedal locomotion has been industrialised: just to get from the bedroom to the bathroom you might want to put on slippers, and they probably say “Made in China” on them. They were made in a large factory, and were brought to you on an even larger container ship. Few of us know any cobblers who live within walking distance, whereas, were the global industrial economy to unravel, bipedal locomotion would become, pardon the pun, our sole recourse. It is an old experimentalist tradition to try experiments on oneself, and so, as an experiment, I spent a few months going about barefoot. I found it quite possible, reasonably safe, and even perfectly pleasant, in the warmer seasons and climates, following a few weeks of somewhat uncomfortable adaptation. But that’s a minor matter; my other, more ambitious experiments have made me quite optimistic regarding one’s ability to cover huge distances and generally move about the planet, even after jet aircraft, container ships and other leviathans of industrial civilisation go off to join the dinosaurs. Provided, that is, that one makes some timely preparations.

A Thames barge, a traditional 80ft shoal-draft craft designed for estuaries and coastal waters, could carry large amounts of cargo and be sailed by a man and a boy. Photo: Steve Birch.

Although a complete and instantaneous collapse of global industry doesn’t seem particularly likely just at this very moment, its likelihood begins to approach 100 per cent as we move through the 21st Century. The opposing view – that industrial civilisation can survive this century – comes up rather short of facts to support it and rests on an unshakable faith in technological miracles. In an echo of medieval alchemy, the hopes for technological salvation are pinned on some element or other: yesterday it was hydrogen; today it’s thorium. Fusion reactors are currently out of fashion, cold fusion doubly so, but who knows what new grand proposal tomorrow will bring?

In the meantime, we have far more mundane problems to consider. We’ve had ample chance to observe that when key supplies run short, industrial economies crumble. Throughout their relatively short history, industrial economies have tended to do well as they were given more and more of everything they needed (energy, raw materials, fresh water, land, cheap/free labour and so forth). There are no examples of industrial economies surviving chronic shortfalls of key commodities — especially ones that have no readily available substitutes. Quite the opposite: we have the stunning example of the USSR, where the peak in domestic crude oil production precipitated a financial collapse and a political dissolution just a few years later, events which were followed by a severe and prolonged economic decline. It was only by integrating with the global economy, which had plentiful resources at the time, that the Russian economy was able to recover. No such rescues will be available when the shortfalls become global.

We also have the example of the current Great Recession, which occurred as soon as the global economy encountered a physical limit to oil production. These events are like canaries in a coal mine, because over the course of the century the global industrial economy is destined to encounter not just global peak oil, but peak just about everything else it runs on: coal, natural gas, iron ore, strategic metals and minerals – in short, just about everything that industry requires to maintain itself and to grow. Since most footwear is now made of polymers, which are synthesised from oil and natural gas, we are also likely to pass peak shoes. Such facts can now be gleaned from a number of authoritative reports published by international and governmental agencies.

Why, then, don’t these facts inform the discussion on the future of transport? If one were to assemble a panel of professionals and experts on transport technology and ask them to propose transport solutions that could continue to operate for the remainder of this century, one would no doubt hear of various high-tech products – electric cars, light rail, high-speed trains, hydrogen fuel cells, plug-in hybrids and so on. These would enable our contemporary, industrialized society to perpetuate its current lifestyle, and everyone to keep their jobs. That’s all well and good, but as a follow-up question one might wish to inquire as to how their plans will be impacted by a variety of factors, some of which are already present, some certain to happen at some point during this century, with only the exact timing in dispute. The list of such factors might reasonably include:

The inability to supply/afford transport fuels in the amounts needed to run existing transportation networks, construction and industrial equipment. Transport fuels are made almost entirely from oil, and global oil production has probably already entered terminal decline. Since coal and natural gas are set to follow within the next 15 years, they can scarcely provide substitutes. Renewable energy sources such as solar, wind or biomass either do not provide transportation fuels or provide them in comparatively tiny quantities.
A lack of the resources required to build new transportation infrastructure due to a permanent and deepening economic depression. Economies that fail to grow, or grow more slowly than the population, would not produce a surplus sufficient to maintain their existing infrastructure and vehicle fleets, never mind investing in ambitious new schemes.
Shortages of strategic metals and key rare earth elements needed to manufacture high-technology components such as electric vehicle batteries, photovoltaic panels and high-efficiency electric motors. These are mined predominantly in China and are only available in restricted quantities.
Social disruptions and political upheavals caused by population pressures in the face of a shrinking economy. These are unpredictable but would predictably result in disruptions to global supply chains, shortages of parts, and project delays and cancellations.
Disruption of ocean freight once rising ocean levels begin to inundate port facilities. The current authoritative worst-case estimates are for a 1.5 metre sea level rise this century, but it is based on incomplete understanding of global warming effects and dynamics of polar ice cap melt. As knowledge improves, the estimates tend to double every few years, but they have not been keeping up with observed reality. The ultimate sea level rise may be as high as 20 metres.

In response, one would no doubt hear that solving such problems is outside of the area of expertise of transport technology professionals. Transport might be able to overcome some combination of such external problems, given enough time and money. For instance, a way might be found to manufacture high-technology components without using the rare earth elements in short supply. Or, if rising sea levels inundate ocean freight terminals, then, clearly, the terminals would have to be re-built again and again. However, if the resources were not available for such an ambitious and ultimately futile undertaking, then that would be regarded not as a technological but as a financial or even a political problem. Working one’s way up the technological food chain from the transport sector to the energy sector, one finds that energy professionals always blame production shortfalls and high prices on lack of sufficient investment. Why do they always say that the problems they face are not physical but economic? Economists, in turn, are perfectly content to ignore physical realities and treat all problems as problems of economic policy.

And so it would appear that the overall working assumption of every specialist, expert and professional in every discipline is ceteris paribus – all other things being equal. They will work just on those problems on which they are qualified to work, provided that sufficient research and development funds, materials and facilities are made available to them. They would prefer to assume that future demand patterns will be much like the present ones: to-be-developed electric cars and light rail lines would be used to convey commuters to and from their jobs and consumers to and from nearby businesses and shopping centres. It must be inconceivable to them that this equipment would be idled while the former commuters and shoppers, bankrupted by wasteful and ineffective investments in technology, would be forced to spread out across the rural landscape in search of hand-to-mouth sustenance. They would no doubt prefer to think that their profession will continue to exist and have relevance: jobs will lead to pensions, graduate students will grow up to be post-doctoral students and hope to become junior faculty members some day, grant money will continue to flow, conferences will be organised and peer-reviewed journals will be published. In every field of research, from oil field analysis to climatology, no matter how conclusively morbid the results, more research will always be needed. But won’t the sort of disruption we are going to encounter deal the coup de grace to the industrial-scientific establishment? This perfectly reasonable question is answered either with quiet despondency or with entirely unjustified accusations of defeatism or extremism. Such emotional responses are woefully unprofessional; we can and must do better.

One approach to doing better seems to have already exhausted its possibilities. A branch of science known as systems theory was once seen as a way to de-compartmentalise thinking and to formulate interdisciplinary solutions to the problems of large, complex systems. An echo of that approach can still be heard in some of the current thinking on climate science, which attempts to leverage conclusions based on observations and climate models to formulate international public policies to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Experience with both the Kyoto Treaty and the more recent failure to agree a Copenhagen Treaty has laid bare a critical flaw in such thinking: it confuses knowledge with power.

The ability to analyse a complex system does not in any way imply an ability to influence it. Scientists appear, as a group, to be naïve about politics, and are misled into accepting as fact a fiction of control perpetuated by politicians and industry and business leaders, who find it useful to pretend that they possess the power to alter systems over which they merely preside. Be it the fossil fuel industry, or mining and manufacturing, or industrial agriculture, or the weapons industry, or the automotive industry – all of these can be modelled as machines lacking an “off” switch. Yet each one requires energy, raw materials, and financial and social stability and can only continue to operate as long as these needs continue to be met, after which point they undergo systemic breakdowns and cascaded failure. Although an analysis based on systems theory cannot do anything to prevent them, perhaps it can offer valuable insights into how long these systems should be expected to continue functioning, or provide some detail on how their demise will unfold.

If we are willing to concede that the global industrial economy will not last through the 21st century, then, while it is still possible, we can put together technologies and designs appropriate for the post-industrial age, and set in motion forward-looking projects with the goal of creating enough momentum, in the form of strong local traditions, institutions, practices and skills, to carry them through periods of economic disruption and political dissolution. Future generations will have to learn to make do with much less of everything, and with much less research and development in particular. Working in the twilight years of the industrial era, we could offer them a great service by leaving behind a few designs that they will actually be able to build and use.

In particular, post-industrial transport is a subject that until now has been quite neglected. Quite a lot has already been done to elucidate some of the available options for post-industrial construction, agriculture, medicine and other areas. Yet the ability to travel, on foot or otherwise, is the Achilles’ heel of our ability to implement solutions in any other area: innovation and diffusion of new practices, technologies and ideas is bound to come to a near-standstill without the ability to move materials and people. Without long-distance transport, long-distance communication is bound to break down as well, and the current unified view of the planet and of humanity will dissolve. Unlike other components of the industrial life support system, industrial transport systems have no post-industrial back-ups worth mentioning. Post-industrial agriculture has its organic and permaculture alternatives, post-industrial architecture its passive solar, cob, straw bale, rammed earth and round timber alternatives, post-industrial medicine its traditional Chinese medicine and other alternative medical traditions and practices, but when it comes to transport there do not appear to be any presently available post-industrial alternatives beyond horses and our very own scantily shod feet.

Our contemporary transport systems are almost entirely dependent on refined petroleum products for both the maintenance of transport infrastructure and most of the actual movement of passengers and freight. It took decades to phase in large-scale transport technologies such as coal-fired steam engines or marine diesels. Moreover, these transitions could only have taken place in the context of an expanding economy and resource base, and with the older modes of transport still functioning. Thus, it seems outlandish to imagine that a gradual, non-disruptive transition to alternative transport technologies might still be possible. A resilient plan should be able to survive an almost complete shut-down and provide for bootstrapping to an entirely new mode, within a new set of physical limits. Take away petroleum, and none of the contemporary industrial transport systems remain functional. Even electric rail or electric cars, or even bicycles, which do not use petroleum directly, require an intact industrial economy that runs on fossil fuels, and on petroleum-based fuels for the delivery of spare parts and infrastructure maintenance. The current global recession and trends in the global oil market make it possible to sketch out how a Great Stranding will occur: transport fuels may still be plentiful in theory, but in practice they will become unaffordable, and therefore unavailable, to much of the population.

Two factors play a key role. The first is the maximum price that consumers can pay. Beyond this price, demand is destroyed and the recession deepens. Each time this price is reached, a great deal of wealth is destroyed as well, and when subsequently a partial recovery occurs, consumers are poorer, and the maximum price they can pay is lower. Thus the maximum price decreases over time. The second factor is the minimum price that oil producers can charge, as determined by their production costs, which rise over time as easy-to-produce resources become depleted. Beyond putting a floor under prices, this trend cannot continue past a physical limit: as the easy-to-exploit resources are depleted, a point is reached when the resources that are left, though they may yet be plentiful, cannot be produced profitably at any price, because the amount of energy required to do so would exceed the amount of energy they would yield. Thus the minimum price increases over time.

Although an argument can be made that this trend can be offset to some extent by developing alternative energy sources, such as solar, wind, nuclear or biomass, a careful study of this question reveals that the net energy yield of alternative energies is, in all, rather poor, that the overall potential quantity of energy delivered by the alternatives is rather low, and that the massive financial investment that would be necessary to exploit them is increasingly unlikely. Most significantly, while individual countries may find solutions, there are simply no alternative sources of transport fuels in the quantities required globally for current systems to continue functioning, nor are there resources available to replace existing systems with anything else on a similar scale.

Thus we have two trend lines: a falling maximum price that consumers can afford, and a rising minimum price that producers have to charge. When the two lines cross, production shuts down. Since there is finer structure to both the supply and the demand, this is likely to happen in stages. On the demand destruction side, consumers can forgo holiday airline trips; they can stop driving cars and switch to walking or bicycling; they can heat just one room of the house; they can go back to the older tradition of the weekly splash in the tub (whether they need one or not) in place of the daily hot shower. This will allow them to make do with far less energy, and to sustain much higher energy prices. In turn, energy producers can cut their costs by producing less and closing wells or mines that are expensive to operate.

As the oil industry shuts down, maintenance requirements for roadways and bridges, sea ports and other infrastructure will no longer be met, while the price of transport services will come to exceed what businesses and consumers can afford to pay. There are already signs that we are in the early stages of such a slow-motion train-wreck. In 2009 the northernmost State of Maine could no longer afford to continue maintaining many of its paved rural roadways, which were being allowed to revert to dirt. At the opposite end of the transport spectrum, global airline travel had begun to decline, with most airlines reporting losses, and with air traffic still expanding only in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region. Such a gradual winding down of the industrial economy will leave little room for many non-essential activities, such as safety and efficiency upgrades, infrastructure maintenance, fleet replacement, and research and development. We can expect priority to be given to keeping existing equipment in running order by cannibalising and reusing parts as fewer and fewer vehicles remain in use. As this happens, safety and reliability will suffer, with many more cancellations and accidents, and cargoes being lost due to spoilage.

One can reasonably imagine that certain internal combustion vehicles will stay in sporadic use longer than others. For instance, limousines for weddings and hearses for funerals will perhaps remain motorised the longest, moving slowly over unpaved roads, since people would still be willing to pay extra for dignity on special occasions. We can also foresee that certain groups, such as governments, mafias, armed gangs and other social predators will be able to secure a supply of fuel the longest.

It is difficult to imagine that such a winding-down can happen uniformly, smoothly and peaceably. Inevitably, geography will be the determining factor: remote population centres, to which fuel must be brought overland, will have their supply curtailed long before those that are close to pipelines, railway lines, seaports or shipping channels. In communities that find themselves without access to transport fuels, much of the remaining economic activity will centre round gathering the necessary resources to escape, and they will steadily depopulate. Only the old and the sick will be left behind.

To see where this process might eventually lead – if we are lucky – it is helpful to look at pre-industrial settlement and transport patterns. After all, industrial, fossil fuel-powered transport has existed for just a blink of an eye in the long history of global trade and migration. By the time the fossil-fuel age arrived, the vast majority of the planet’s surface was already explored and settled. People moved about on foot, on horseback, by boat and by sailing ship, and these are the transport modes to which humanity will return once the fossil fuel-driven episode is over.

Transport costs can be grouped into two categories. The first is energy cost, encompassing consumables such as fuel, food and fodder, as well as the energy embodied in the equipment used – draft and pack animals, carts, boats, ships and so on. The second is cost of predation, which includes tributes, bribes, taxes, tariffs, duties and tolls, some officially sanctioned, some criminal. Efforts to avoid predation, by choosing pack animals over draft animals, or by taking detours to avoid toll roads, or by fording rivers instead of paying tolls at bridges, or by sailing random courses instead of following sea-lanes, or by sailing smaller vessels so as to pose a smaller, less desirable target, or by travelling in armed convoys to dissuade would-be robbers, and so on, form a grey area between the two. The upper limit on the amount of transport that is feasible is limited by the sum of the two costs. There is also a trade-off between the two: higher energy efficiency allows for more and fatter prey, and, in due course, for more and fatter predators. On the other hand, successful efforts at avoiding predation may increase energy costs but lower predation costs, resulting in greater overall efficiency and a larger volume of cargo that actually reaches its destination. In this case, greater resilience is achieved by “wasting” energy on predation avoidance rather than by striving to be maximally energy-efficient while inadvertently maximising the level of predation.

For some cargoes in the past, the cost of predation as a result of official tolls and unofficial tributes collected along the way could double the goods’ final price. Tolls were collected along inland waterways and at bridges and river crossings on major roadways. In more remote areas, and especially near mountain passes, brigandage was widespread. Often the only distinction between official and unofficial predation was that the former was sanctioned by the local aristocracy.

For bulk commodities, the energy cost of transport imposes hard limits on the maximum distance that is feasible. For instance, if the product is hay, and the mules pulling the cart eat half of it by the time they reach their destination, then either the trip was futile, or the mules would have nothing to eat on the way back. The energy value of the cargo also imposes an upper limit on the level of predation that is sustainable; if the limit was exceeded frequently, the predators would deplete their prey. Since moving bulk goods by barge is more energy efficient, canals could charge higher and more frequent tolls than toll roads. But the ease with which tolls could be collected along canals often led to abuses by rapacious local officials, forcing canal traffic back onto the less energy-efficient roads and depressing the overall level of trade.

Wheeled vehicles were used for local transport of bulk goods (hay, firewood, grain and other bulk commodities) but not for long-distance transport, which relied on caravans of pack animals. Energy considerations made long-distance overland transport impractical for bulk commodities, restricting it to high-priced items, such as specie (gold and silver), works of art and craftsmanship such as porcelain and cloth, and spices and medicinals. For such high-priced goods, transport costs represented a much smaller fraction of their final price, making avoidance of predation far more important than conserving energy. Wheeled vehicles make predation avoidance more difficult, because they have to use roads and bridges, whereas pack animals can use footpaths, steep mountain passes, dry riverbeds, and can ford rivers and streams. Unlike wheeled vehicles, pack animals can be pulled off the road and hidden by making them lie down behind vegetation, to avoid confrontations with both highwaymen and local officials.

Overland transport is orders of magnitude less energy-efficient than water transport. Before the advent of railways and coal-fired steam locomotives, it cost more to move freight a few kilometres overland than it did to ship it across the ocean by sail. The fortunes of coastal cities were determined by the quality of their harbours. In the New World, cities such as New York, Boston, Charleston and San Francisco became transport hubs because of the large numbers of ocean-going vessels their harbours could easily and safely accommodate. Inland transport relied on navigable rivers and canals, making use of wind and tide to move cargo as far as possible up tidal estuaries. Where wind and currents were unfavourable or unavailable, propulsion had to be provided by draft animals (including imprisoned or enslaved humans) either rowing or pulling the vessel from the towpath. For this reason, inland cities were often built in tidal estuaries at the uppermost reach of the tides and along rivers, lakes and canals.

Coal never fully supplanted sail either in coastal freight or on the high seas, and it was not until the widespread adoption of the marine diesel engine in the mid-20th century that the last sail-based merchant vessels were finally decommissioned. With the exception of very profitable routes and cargoes, such as the China tea trade, which was served by large and fast tea clippers, most sailing vessels were rather small, with large numbers of schooners of around 60 feet (18 metres) and crews of about a dozen, and with the vast majority of ocean-going vessels under 100 feet (30 metres) in length. There was a tendency to build larger merchant vessels in the richer trading nations and during politically stable and prosperous times but, even there, less prosperous and uncertain times brought a reversion to norm. There were many reasons for this, from the inability to secure financing for an ambitious shipbuilding endeavour, to lack of profitable cargo with which to fill a large vessel.

A different logic applied to building military vessels, where ability to project force was prioritised above economy, and where large crews could be obtained cheaply from the ranks of young men who were pressed into service by the simple expedient of denying them any other option. Conditions on board could be almost arbitrarily brutal, with discipline imposed through flogging. Disgruntled seamen swelled the ranks of pirates and privateers, who were often unopposed in their confrontations, because the seamen often sympathised with the pirates rather than with their own loathed and despised officers.

Although, within the larger naval empires, the horrid naval traditions often carried over to the merchant fleets, including the megalomania, the brutality, and the purpose-bred viciousness of the officer class, in general merchant vessels could not exceed a size that could be sailed profitably, with full loads of cargo and the smallest possible crew. Significantly, a crew of about a dozen is the optimal size for a self-organising, self-managing, tightly knit group. Anthropological research has shown that groups larger than this size either have to expend an inordinate amount of time on social grooming activities (politics) to preserve group cohesion, or they have to be structured in a rigid hierarchy and disciplined to instil blind obedience, with vastly lower effectiveness in either case. Such limits appear to be biologically determined: humans have evolved to be most effective in self-organized groups of about a dozen. A smaller crew is problematic, because there would not be enough hands to comfortably man all watches, there being typically two four-hour watches per day per crewman, and two crewmen per watch, for a minimum of six crewmen. Add the captain and the first mate, and that brings it up to eight; a cook (since feeding this large a crew is quite a job) and a bosun (who typically does not stand watches) bring it up to ten. Throw in a mechanic and a steward, and you have a full dozen. And so it turns out that the most efficient vessel is one that can be sailed by a crew of about a dozen men.

High costs of predation were by no means unique to overland transport. At sea, both privateering and piracy abounded, the distinction hinging on the presence of official sanction rather than the manner in which the business was transacted. Privateers carried government-issued letters of marque allowing them to take tribute from citizens of a certain country as reparation for past misdeeds, such as damage caused or non-payment of loans. Pirates lacked such official permission, but the distinction was often an informal one. Additional duties were often imposed at the harbours that were the point of departure and the point of arrival. Since ocean-going vessels are restricted by their deep draught in their options of harbours and port facilities, it is easy for authorities to collect duties and fees from them. Moreover, certain governments went beyond this and designated certain ports as “staple ports” – the only ones through which commercially important products, such as Sicilian wheat, could be shipped, to simplify the process of collecting export duties.

Ocean-going ships were built with economy foremost in mind, cargo capacity second, and crew safety and comfort at sea left as an afterthought. Typically about a third of the expense of a journey was represented by the amortisation and maintenance costs of the vessel itself, with the remaining two-thirds going to the crew, as provisions and pay. If the vessel was to be defended against piracy, the additional expense of arming it could as much as triple the costs. Before the development of naval guns, security at sea was largely a matter of having superior numbers in hand-to-hand combat. The advent of naval guns made the contest rather uneven for a time, with large naval ships being able to threaten any smaller vessel with almost total impunity. With the arrival of ubiquitous and powerful small arms, shoulder-fired weapons, and a variety of special-purpose missiles and explosives, the odds have been evened, and mutual assured destruction prevails on the high seas. Navy ships have to remain on constant alert against even a small dinghy that might cause them serious damage as happened in Aden in 2000 with the US Navy destroyer USS Cole. It is quite a challenge for pirates to gain control of a vessel without getting killed or sunk if the prey vessel is armed and keeps a sharp lookout. Most confrontations with would-be pirates can now be prevented by a simple show of arms.

Although every effort was made to cut costs, the design and construction of ships was mired in conservatism everywhere and sailing technology was slow to diffuse westward from China and the Arab world. Even then, it was absorbed only partially. The pinnacle of Western sailing ship evolution is the unwieldy square-rigged vessel, which required the crew to go aloft in all conditions to handle sail – something that is neither necessary nor desirable, and one of the many problems that the Chinese and the Arabs had solved many centuries previously. And yet these manifestly imperfect vessels were the ones that explored and conquered just about every corner of the globe – a process that had largely run its course by the time the first steam-ship was launched in the 1840s. Countless lives were lost due to poor design, shoddy construction and incompetent command, but so great are the advantages of water transport over land transport that the gains were considered worth the risk.

In the light of this, what transport technologies will be relevant to an energy-scarce, climate-disrupted, socially chaotic future? We can foresee that road traffic will be greatly reduced as paved roads revert to dirt and become eroded and, in places, impassable, as bridges collapse from lack of maintenance, and as predation by both local officials and highwaymen increases both the costs and the dangers. Once again, pedestrian traffic and caravans of pack animals will try to evade official and unofficial predation, opting for the less popular, more circuitous footpaths instead of the direct and open road. Canals and other navigable waterways will once again play a much larger role in inland transport, with barges pulled by draught animals along towpaths and with sail-boats carrying freight and passengers along the sea-coasts. As the sea-ports that currently serve container ships, bulk carriers and tankers are submerged under the rising seas, the current hub-and-spoke transport networks will collapse, and smaller coastal communities will once again find ample reason to want to build and provision ocean-going vessels to trade with faraway lands.

Here are some questions we might ask ourselves

“How can we help? What useful technological legacy can we bequeath to future generations?”
“What if, instead of squandering its remaining resources on lavish parting presents for its ageing rentier class, the current profit-and-growth economic paradigm were to be quietly replaced with the idea that society should serve its children and grandchildren, should any be lucky enough to survive”?
“What can we usefully accomplish in the time remaining before inescapable resource constraints force industrial life-support systems to stop functioning? What technological heirlooms and key pieces of learning could we convey, in the form of a living tradition, to give future generations a chance at surviving the dystopian future we are now working so hard to construct for them?”

It is becoming clear that future generations will be faced with a number of new challenges. One is that rapid climate change is very likely to put an end to the last ten thousand years of benign, stable climate. It was this rare episode of climate stability that allowed agriculture to develop and flourish and permitted nomadic tribes to settle down in one place without the risk of starvation. It allowed agrarian societies to produce such large food surpluses that cities and towns could become established, eventually growing to millions of inhabitants, all fed with crops grown elsewhere, at first in the immediate vicinity and now quite far away. As the climate deteriorates, people will be forced to return to a migratory and nomadic existence to minimise the risk of starvation by staying close to the sources of their food and diversifying them across large geographic areas. In other words, they will go to the food rather than having the food brought to them.

Another challenge will be posed by rising sea levels. The latest forecasts indicate that coastal communities will either adapt to life with constant flooding, salt-water inundation and storm erosion, or be abandoned. Ancient ports such as Cádiz, which was built by the Phoenicians and has been in continuous use ever since, will no longer be able to function. Formerly sheltered harbours will become exposed as barrier islands are eroded away by storms. Material from newly eroded shores will form shoals and silt up harbours and navigation channels. Efforts to resist the deterioration such as defending, existing shorelines, building higher jetties and breakwaters, constructing dykes and sea-walls and dredging harbours and inlets, will eventually prove futile as sea levels are likely continue to rise for many centuries. Consequently, those who wish to occupy and use the shoreline will have to find ways to cope with constant flooding.

In the parts of the world where people still walk or use pack and draught animals, they will muddle through somehow but it remains a large open question whether or not they will be able to continue to traverse oceans. Throughout history, the ability to sail the oceans has conferred tremendous advantages. Seafaring pre-dates industry, but it does require access to appropriate boat-building materials and a seafaring tradition.

Future generations will face three major problems in their attempts to preserve their seafaring abilities:

Current, industrial shipbuilding practices, as well as the vessels themselves, will be of no use without both a functioning industrial economy and the widespread availability of transport fuels.
Going back to traditional, wood-based shipbuilding techniques will not be possible because logging and deforestation have depleted the supply of the high-quality timber
Access to the ocean will in most places become complicated as the rising seas silt up inlets, navigation channels and harbours and wash away waterfronts. Deep-draught ocean vessels will find land access obstructed and difficult due to the eroded shoreline.

The vast majority of existing ocean vessels are welded out of steel plate and are propelled by diesel engines that burn bunker fuel, a low-grade petroleum distillate. For their operation, they require industrial facilities such as container ports (for loading and unloading cargo), bunkering ports (for taking on fuel) and dry docks (for maintenance). A vanishingly small percentage of overall gross tonnage is comprised of sailing vessels, which are built and operated mainly for the purposes of preserving maritime and naval history, luxury and ostentation, recreation and sport – pursuits lacking any practical merit. A truly infinitesimal number of more practical boats is custom-built by professionals or amateurs, and an even smaller number of these is actually sailed extensively on the high seas, but these voyages provide the vast majority of interesting contemporary seafaring narratives (“yarns”). Some of these unusual vessels can provide a glimpse of the future. Although the vast majority of even these vessels rely on industrial materials (marine plywoods and epoxies, fasteners, aluminium extrusions for masts and spars, stainless steel wire rope for the standing rigging and petrochemical-based synthetics such as long-strand polyester for the sails and the running rigging) their overall designs are sometimes sufficiently low-tech (which is to say, advanced) to survive the transition to the post-industrial age.

A revival of traditional, wooden shipbuilding is inconceivable in most places, as the required quantities of high-quality timber would be prohibitively expensive and its local supply would be quite limited. Most areas of the world, and especially those near sea-coasts or navigable rivers, have been extensively logged and largely denuded of old-growth trees – those with dense, clear grain that are useful for building hulls. Forest productivity is also being reduced because rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are causing rain to become more acidic. Carbonic acid has a number of negative effects on trees: it dissolves aluminium compounds present in the soil, which plugs up tree roots, starving the trees of nutrients, it dissolves nutrients in the soil, causing them to leach out and drain away, and it harms soil biota that help trees absorb nutrients. Thus even concerted long-term efforts at growing trees suitable for shipbuilding may not yield good results.

Large, deep-draught vessels would not be suitable for the new coastal conditions. Smallish ones, about 60 feet (18 metres) long, with a shoal draught of about 4 feet (120 cm) would be much better. They would have to be sturdily built with flat (rockered but not flared) bottoms to let them settle upright on the bottom at low tide. But it would also have to be a seaworthy, blue water sailing vessel, able to ride out storms up to and including tropical cyclones.

Dmitry Orlov's shoal-draft boat, Hogfish, at anchor in Salem Harbor, Mass.

In 2006, I put my findings together in an article, The New Age of Sail. At that time I had had very little actual ocean sailing experience, and had to rely almost entirely on second-hand information. I have since purchased a sailboat of the sort I described: a versatile and practical shoal-draught ocean-capable boat. My wife and I sold our flat and moved aboard the boat. We have since spent close to two years sailing the entire length of the eastern coast of the United States, from Maine to Florida, including rivers, canals and long stretches of the open Atlantic. We have encountered some very lively conditions whipped up by tropical storms and hurricanes. In the process, I was able to learn enough about boat-building to improve the design, building a new rudder and making numerous other adjustments and improvements. I also fitted it with solar panels and a wind turbine, a composting toilet, and a rainwater collection system.

I am very happy to report that just about everything I wrote in The New Age of Sail I have been able to confirm by direct experiment. I am also quite convinced that, in spite of what some sailing traditionalists and fashion-victims might think, shoal-draft seaworthy boats are very much a reality, and that it is quite possible for a dedicated home-builder to vastly exceed the results of a commercial boat-builder at a small fraction of the cost. Such boats may not please those people whose minds are fixated on the idea of getting to the finish line just a tiny bit faster than the next competitor, or people who have a fetish for varnished wood and polished bronze, or the various other strange fixations and affectations that affect what little has remained of the sailing world, but it is quite hard to see why they would be relevant.

My boat is decidedly not post-industrial. It is constructed of marine plywood (fir veneers laminated with synthetic adhesive), sheathed in epoxy and fibreglass and painted with polyurethane paints. The masts and spars are aluminium extrusions, the rigging is stainless steel, and the sails and lines are of synthetic fibre. It is equipped with advanced electronics, including an autopilot and a GPS chart-plotter. Yet there are many things about the overall design of this boat that are just right. It only draws two feet, it handles very well with the centreboard up (which is only needed when sailing upwind or manoeuvring in close quarters) and so it can be sailed over shallows. It can be run aground or beached without risk of damage and it settles upright at low tide. It rides quietly to anchor even in high winds (a surprisingly important but neglected aspect of yacht design). It is fast for its size, and it is so stiff that it is virtually impossible to capsize. Its almost square hull cross-section provides far more stowage space than round-bilge boats of much deeper draught. Its motion in a seaway is steady and gentle, allowing us to enjoy a nice cup of tea in conditions where the crews of other boats apparently have had to brace themselves to avoid being tossed about the cabin.

But the choice of materials poses a problem. However, as Arthur Conan Doyle put it, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” And so, by eliminating all industrial materials and technologies, as well as the pre-industrial materials that are no longer affordable or available in quantity, I have arrived at what must be, in the end, the only viable set of options for building an unlimited number of ocean-going vessels of the sort that would be required. Given the eventual unavailability of steel plate and welding technology, or high-quality hardwood, or petrochemical-based composites and synthetics, the one remaining choice of hull material is… ferrocement. Many such hulls have been built, with mostly good results, the bad ones generally resulting from improper techniques used by overly ambitious beginners enticed by the very low cost of the materials involved.

If done correctly, the resulting hull is strong, long-lasting, maintenance-free and fireproof. Cement is a pre-industrial material that was already known to the ancient Romans, who used it, among other things, to surface the spillways of aqueducts. It is currently available as an industrial product and in vast quantities, but in the small quantities needed by artisans for plastering hulls it can be produced using non-industrial techniques, by crushing and baking out limestone and clay in home-made kilns. It could conceivably be made using renewable energy: baking out limestone is potentially a good application for concentrating solar technology, while crushing and grinding can be powered by windmills or waterwheels. Limestone is available in unlimited quantities through manual surface mining in many places throughout the planet. The preferred aggregate used for building ferrocement hulls is river sand – sharp, almost completely indestructible granules of eroded hard rock that have not been weathered by surf or wind – a material that is also ubiquitous.

The steel armature that holds the cement plaster together typically consists of small diameter steel pipe, steel rod and steel mesh. These are industrial materials, but they will remain available for a long time past the end of the industrial age, in the relatively small quantities required for building hulls, because they can easily be reclaimed from abandoned industrial structures and facilities. The armature (called “the basket”) is assembled by hand, with simple hand tools, by bending the material into shape and tying it together with short lengths of wire. While the steel armature is a well-understood construction method giving a strong, durable result, it may be possible to replace the mesh and perhaps other parts of the armature with natural fibre. Clearly, thorough testing would be needed before a boat-builder would commit to such a change but this is not an urgent issue because the quantities of scrap metal that the two centuries of industrial development will have left behind will be sufficient for building a very large number of ferrocement hulls far into the future.

Covering the basket with mortar is usually performed by a gang of expert plasterers in a continuous session that may span several days. To become a first-rate ferrocement plasterer, one would start by becoming a master plasterer and then specifically train for the much more demanding task of plastering hulls. To control porosity, the mortar mix used for hulls has to be quite dry compared to the mixes used for other types of construction, making it more difficult to form it into sheets without any voids and without pulling aggregate to the surface. The skin of mortar has to be fair and smooth and as thin as possible (typically between 12 and 20 mm) but thick enough to prevent any part of the basket from showing through (to prevent corrosion). Tight process control is needed for optimum results, which are achieved by controlling temperature and humidity, keeping all contaminants out of the mortar, using precise mixing and plastering techniques, and keeping to a specific hydration schedule. After plastering, the hull has to be kept moist for about three months, during which it slowly gains strength and plasticity.

Unfortunately, the effects of improper technique often become apparent much later, when the hull leaks, abrades or cracks and the armature rusts, resulting in a shorter service life. However, sudden and catastrophic failures seem to be a rarity, and an older hull that would no longer be used for ocean sailing can still be considered safe for use in sheltered waters. Ferrocement hulls are quite easy to repair, and some that have suffered heavy damage by becoming impaled on rocks and coral-heads were subsequently placed back into service after being quite casually repaired with cement mix and a trowel.

There are likely to be opportunities to perfect the properties of the mortar. Microscopic cracking of the mortar, which is structurally benign but increases porosity, can be prevented by the addition of glass fibre chemically treated to withstand the alkaline environment of the mortar. While glass fibre is composed of minerals that are plentiful, it is currently an industrial product. However, as with cement, it is possible to imagine that a way will be found to produce it using concentrating passive solar in combination with wind or water power. The addition of glass fibre to the aggregate also makes the mortar lighter and more impact-resistant: some recent formulations for architectural use have resulted is quite thin sheets that nevertheless can withstand repeated blows with a pick. Another possible direction of research involves making the mortar self-repairing by inoculating the mortar mix with a culture of calcifying bacteria, along with their favourite food (urea). When a crack starts to form, the bacteria become active and fill the crack with new calcium. It remains to be seen whether increasing ocean acidity resulting from carbon dioxide emissions will interfere with this process.

So the prospects for building quite serviceable sail-boat hulls without recourse to industrial materials (with the exception of reused steel) appear to be reasonably good, provided the skills can be established ahead of time and passed on as part of a living tradition. But what about the other essential components of a sailing vessel – the masts, the sails, and the rigging? The current, industrial practice is to use extruded aluminium masts, or masts glued up out of precisely fitted planks using high-technology synthetic adhesives. In the past, sailing vessels had “grown” masts, which consisted of a single tree trunk. The smaller vessels could use such a mast in a free-standing fashion, supported only at the deck and shaped to give it a taper toward the top. On larger vessels the masts were supported on all sides by tensioned lines. By the time the age of sail was nearing its end, however, trees of the right size and quality for “grown” masts had become a rarity and shipwrights were forced to switch to “made” masts which consisted of many smaller tree trunks shaped and held together using dowels and hoops.

Although “made” masts could be given arbitrary thickness and taper, eliminating the need for standing rigging, apparently shipwrights could not imagine such a radical departure from the norm. For such radical post-industrial shipbuilding solutions we have to turn to the ancient Chinese, who explored much of the earth in their large sailing junks, which, incidentally, were equipped with free-standing “made” masts of bamboo. The advantages of free-standing masts are numerous: their design is much simpler, they have less wind resistance up high where wind speeds are highest, they can be taken down more easily, to make the vessel less noticeable when navigating inland and so to avoid predation, or to pass under fixed bridges, overhanging trees and other obstructions. It is difficult to design free-standing masts that are particularly tall, but since shoal-draft vessels of the sort being considered here cannot support masts that are much taller than the length of the vessel without making it unstable, equipping them with free-standing, tapered, “made” masts seems the obvious choice.

With regard to sails and control lines, the modern practice is to use low-stretch synthetic fibre such as long-strand polyester. The high strength and low stretch of these materials allowed designs to progress very far in the direction of very large expanses of fabric unsupported by any internal structure, controlled by a few lines, all under very high tension. The pre-industrial practice was to use much weaker and stretchier natural fibre: cotton or linen for sails, and manilla or hemp for rope, limiting the size of each sail. However, the ancient Chinese have done extremely well with gigantic sails made of even weaker materials such as woven grass mat by using an ingenious rig that distributed the loads over many small lines and panels of sailcloth: the Chinese junk rig. Modern adherents of this rig rave about its numerous merits such as the fact that it can be controlled as a unit, and have crossed oceans with sails so threadbare that they could be punctured with a fist, yet they held together through ocean storms because the individual panels were small and braced by stiff battens. At present, the Chinese junk rig is a splendid solution waiting for the problem that is about to present itself: the end of strong, low-stretch synthetic sailcloth. The junk rig is wonderfully versatile, allowing a vessel to be controlled without leaving the pilothouse, tacked up a narrow channel and even sailed backwards. Blondie Hasler, who has crossed the Atlantic in his junk-rigged boat “Jester” wrote that the ease of handling was such that he could imagine making the entire crossing in bathrobe and slippers, without once venturing out on deck.

But sometimes an auxiliary form of propulsion is needed – if only to be able to steer when drifting in a tidal or river current while becalmed, or to pass under obstructions with the masts lowered, or to shift berth in close quarters. Luckily, we can once again turn to the Chinese for a post-industrial solution that has already stood the test of time. Oars are not particularly useful on anything but very small sailboats because they would have to be quite long to reach down to the water. This would make them unwieldy and their action awkward and inefficient. Oars are inefficient in any case, because they have to be lifted out of the water and retracted for each stroke, wasting time and energy. The Chinese solution for propelling larger sailing vessels is the yuloh: a long, slightly curved sculling oar that extends aft with its blade floating just below the water. To propel the vessel, it is pivoted and moved to and fro by crewmen standing before the mainmast. The resulting motion is vaguely similar to that of a fishtail. With roughly 1kW peak power output per crewman, and with 2 yulohs worked by 4 crewmen each, as much as 8kW (10 horsepower) can be produced for a duration. On flat, still water this is more than sufficient to move even a fairly large vessel. When not in use, the blades of the yulohs are lifted out of the water and lashed to the sides of the hull.

Vessels of the design sketched out in this article would be of immediate practical value to numerous people throughout the world because of the wide variety of purposes to which they can be put. They can be used for transporting passengers and freight over open water and on rivers and canals. They can be used as floating, mobile workshops, schools, clinics, warehouses, offices, and residences on coastal land that is increasingly prone to flooding. This would allow people to hold onto their land for as long as possible and to float closer to shore or further inland when the time comes without becoming dispossessed in the process. The boats can be used for seasonal migrations, to gather scarce resources over a wider expanse and to avoid having to spend summers or winters in hot or cold climates. All that is required for building such boats is a bit of coastal land and materials, some of which are free (river sand), some quite inexpensive (cement, recycled metal), and others that can be grown and worked by hand (bamboo, hemp). The largest input is, of course, labour. Much of it can be semi-skilled physical labour that can be contributed by the local community. Some highly experienced, expert labour is also needed but only at certain key stages of the building process to ensure that the results are long-lasting, safe and reliable.

In a world where rising seas are already putting millions of people at risk of losing their homes, their lives, or both, a programme of building large numbers of inexpensive, practical, utilitarian and versatile sailing craft is a direct way to provide flood-proof, earthquake-proof, fireproof and storm-proof habitation, to build communities, to create local resilience, and to provide hope for a survivable future. It is a way to create connections between different parts of the planet that can survive into the post-industrial age. It enables people and goods to be carried in a way that avoids the predation that will be an inevitable element of a disrupted time. It offers us an opportunity to make sure that we remain a seafaring species even as the fossil-fuel era recedes into history, and gives us a way to salvage something very useful out of the wreckage of our industrial past.

The US and the Five Stages of Collapse

2011-05-31T21:53:00.001-04:00

Interview on WMNF FM, Tampa, Florida

Some excerpts:

First you have financial collapse, which is basically the volume of debt that has to be taken on in order for the economy to continue functioning, cannot continue. We're seeing that right now in Greece, we're probably going to see that in Japan, we're definitely at a point now in the United States where even if you raised the income tax to 100 percent, there's absolutely no way of covering the liabilities of the U.S. federal government. So, we're at that point now but the workout of the financial collapse is not all quite there. We don't quite have a worthless currency but that's in the works.

That, of course, is followed by commercial collapse especially in a country like the United States that imports two thirds of its oil. A lot of that is on credit and if a little bit of that oil goes missing then the economy starts to fall apart because nothing moves unless you burn oil in the United States and, of course, a lot of goods that are sold everywhere are imported again, on credit. And then commercial collapse is generally followed by political collapse because the Congress no longer has the ability to spend money in the fashion to which they have become accustomed. Governments at every level start failing. We're seeing the beginnings of that where fire and police departments around the country are being cut. Right now there's a big fight over the retirement of retired municipal workers. Retirements are, basically, being looted in order to paper over these giant gaping holes in the finance scheme.

Then the last two stages are I think generally avoidable in most places which is social and cultural collapse. Unfortunately to my thinking these two stages have largely run their course in many places in the United States where people really don't know their neighbors and also they don't really do very much for themselves. They expect to be fed at fast food establishments, they don't know how to cook from scratch, and things like that. So, those are the five stages and a lot of people have found this sort of way of thinking useful in terms of understanding what's happening.

What do you see the United States looking like for Americans in the next 5 to 10 to 20 years?

I think the country will be unrecognizable in 10 years, I don't know about 5, but I don't think it will look like a country in 10 years. I think it will be largely dismembered by it's creditors.

Do you think that we're going to be going quickly or slowly into these different stages of collapse?

I think certain stages like the onset of fuel, transportation, fuel shortages will be very sudden. American society tends to be very fragile. People tend to bring shotguns and baseball bats to gas stations and then every thing goes down hill from there. I expect certain parts of the country to go through this cataclysm where suddenly everything that they depend on, which is basically their car, no longer works and everybody's stranded and very angry. It would be a lot of mayhem. We've already seen that, for instance, during Hurricane Katrina and afterward because of all the refinery problems the '..' pipeline that goes up from the Gulf, I think it ends up in New Jersey somewhere, it couldn't be filled so gas stations in places like North Carolina ran dry and I've heard from people in that area that basically civilization ceased to exist. And then, when gasoline supplies were restored civilizaton sort of came back. That should be the pattern in a lot of places in this country.

There's been some limited coverage of peak oil in the press recently, do you think it's enough to raise the level of awareness for people in this country about the things that you predict are going to happen?

Unfortunately a lot of people simply cannot be reached because they refuse to hear what we have to say. It's not that they can't understand it, it's that they refuse to listen. The media, in general, in the United States makes it very easy because there is this fictional reality that they perpetuate and foist on people that contradicts what we're saying. We're saying that 'this will not continue for very much longer, people'. And then the media says that 'everything is fine, everything is normal', and even the President is now in the game where he says completely nonsensical things like drilling in Alaska for oil will actually make a difference. He recently said that. It contradicts what his own government says about the amount of oil left there. Some of these just fictional feel good messages just saturating the media and so the reality based people really don't stand a chance.

The Twilight of the Antipodes and the Cultural Flip

2011-05-22T23:50:00.002-04:00

Presented on May 22 at the Northern California Eco-fest. (For those with browser embed/Google login issues, here's a direct link to it.)

Making the Best Use of your Energy Elves

2011-05-22T23:47:00.004-04:00

Presented on May 21 at the Northern California Eco-fest. (For those with browser embed/Google login issues, here's a direct link to it.)

Northern California Eco-Fest

2011-05-16T20:58:00.002-04:00

I'll be at the Eco-Fest this Saturday and Sunday. (This little promotional graphic is from Mike Rupert's Collapsenet. Not my words; they reminded me of these lyrics: "A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed." Perhaps I resemble this remark; you be the judge.)

I'll be speaking on making the best of your Energy Elves (they are like the old fossil-fueled Energy Slaves except much smaller; I seem to have made my peace with them) on Saturday at 11:15.

I'll also give a talk about the topsy-turveydom, hardcore stupidity and inevitability of collapse for the current economic scheme and about the various ways we can compensate for it on Sunday 11 to noon.

There is also supposed to be a Q&A with Mike Ruppert, a book signing and some amount of general milling around and meeting people. If you are in the area, please drop by.

"What will a post-collapse society look like?"

2011-05-14T21:08:00.000-04:00

Stage 0 Collapse: Talking hipster robot apocalypse. If you haven't had your fill of text-to-film yet, enjoy. Thanks, Marcus for putting this together.

Reinventing Collapse 2.0 is now in print

2011-05-07T09:08:00.003-04:00

My little box of author's copies has finally arrived, and the rest of the print run will be filtering out to book stores, eventually. If you don't want to wait, the book is also available directly from the publisher.

Since with a second edition there is hardly any excuse for getting things wrong, I have spent what seemed like an inordinate amount editing and finding and fixing errors. And yet, when I opened the newly arrived book I immediately stumbled on a slight imperfection: in it, I suggest that Osama Bin Laden CIA code name would turn out to be "Elvis," but now it turns out that it was "Geronimo" (or his stunt double) who, if you believe the news, was recently killed and dumped in the ocean by a death squad composed of some trained seals. My bad: I should have known that the CIA, being a politically correct organization, would never pick a code name that might be offensive to white people! The world can seem infinitely mysterious; it's all a matter of just how gullible you are.

I am sure that the text contains a few other tiny glitches of this sort, but, in all, the fist edition has stood the test of time. The new edition goes beyond it, putting the unfolding collapse into more of a context. Among other things, it provides a new perspective on how Peak Oil is likely to unfold, and it describes viable collapse-era business management and product development strategies. I am happy that the publisher has decided to keep this book alive for a couple more years, as I hope you will be.

Interview on Business Matters

2011-04-20T23:30:00.000-04:00

Rest your eyeballs and prick up your ears: Thomas White of Business Matters gets right past the happy-shiny talk prevalent in the mass media with the help of his two guests: me and Catherine Austin Fitts.

Interview on KOWS FM's What Now with Ken Rose

2011-04-09T14:07:00.001-04:00

A lengthy and wide-ranging interview during which Ken asked good questions and lent a sympathetic ear. Ken is right that what I have to say is difficult, unsettling and disturbing; so, to offset that, here's a crazy picture of our cat Zoë eating Baby's Breath.

Financial Totalitarianism

2011-04-01T13:38:00.002-04:00

A particularly annoying question I am often asked and have come to hate is: “How do I invest my money for it to survive financial, political and commercial collapse?” The short answer is: “Nohow. Money will not survive collapse; not yours, not anyone else's.” But that answer is not acceptable, because accepting it would require a profound loss of faith—faith in money, a profound Götterdämmerung for a civilization based on the worship of money. People want continue to believe all sorts of things: that they can own land (i.e., shares in the Earth), or that they can do good through philanthrophic spending and charity, or that the world with which they have grown up and have lived their lives can collapse all around them, but that if they are informed and prepared, they can survive with all of their middle-class trappings intact. I am told that there is good money to be made in telling them such things.

Those who care to look can easily turn up plenty of evidence that the value of every type of financial asset, not just fiat currency or debt instruments, is unsupported. Its value derives from the goods and services provided by a functioning global industrial economy, which is quickly running out of every type of resource it requires; not just high-EROEI fossil fuels, but also metals, rare earth elements, phosphate, irrigation water and arable land. As industrial activity dwindles, worker productivity will decline precipitously. Many people point to precious metals as the ultimate storehouse of value, but without industrial equipment a man can only put out about 100 Watts of energy—a light bulb's worth—and won't dance any faster no matter how many gold or silver coins you throw at him.

This eventual outcome is the result of long-term physical trends: physical processes that move at predetermined rates and in only one direction. It is not possible to un-burn oil or coal or to un-mine gold or silver. But the short-term political and financial trends point in an altogether different direction: that of the global industrial economy turning boutique. You see, one shoe has already dropped: the level of industrial activity that can be sustained today is already insufficient to provide anywhere near full employment and a reasonable quality of life for vast numbers of people; the solution is to disenfranchise them, to confiscate their savings, to cancel their retirements, to concentrate all of the remaining wealth in as few hands as possible, and to create a boutique economic and financial environment in which the lucky and unscrupulous few can continue to live comfortably, and... wait for the other shoe to drop, I suppose. That will happen once the industrial economy becomes sufficiently disrupted by social and political upheaval that even its boutique version finally crashes.

A feeble (feeble-minded?) counter-reaction to these trends can be discerned: many people want to somehow find an escape from this system while still clinging to their money. This may seem like a contradiction in terms—“fleeing the money system while clinging to the money itself”—but this point seems lost on many people. Most of this counter-reaction is focused on the stampede to precious metals (gold and silver). This train of thought starts out as a smart market play: precious metals have been and continue to be a spectacular investment, and a good way to avoid being robbed blind by the out-of-control printing presses at the US Treasury. But eventually it goes off into ontological self-delusion—that gold and silver are “real” money, as opposed to paper fiat currency, which is “fake” money. Ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't matter whether or not it's shiny; it's all as real or as fake as you are. Some people go straight over the edge and decide to take the law into their own hands and, waving about a dog-eared copy of the US Constitution, set off to coin their own “coin of the realm,” not realizing that the realm isn't theirs. If the realm is financially stable, it will simply change the rules to make such a gambit unprofitable. If the realm is financially distressed and teetering on the verge of collapse, it will panic, shout “Terrorism!” at the slightest provocation, and the result is long-term political imprisonment for the ontologically deluded:

March 21, 2011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A North Carolina man was convicted for creating and distributing a counterfeit currency that was very similar to the real dollar, a U.S. Attorney said.

Bernard von NotHaus, 67, minted Liberty Dollar coins in the value of $7 million dollars. The conviction concludes an investigation that was started in 2005.

“Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism,” Anne Tompkins, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, said in a statement on Friday.

“While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as insidious and represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country,” she said.

This Reuters story has since been taken down, after being ignored by media in the US (but not in Russia). Von NotHaus is looking at 20 years in jail. This is a lot, you might think, for stamping some politically edgy shiny trinkets, but then Stalin gave out similarly long sentences to millions of people for doing absolutely nothing, so let us count our blessings. Let's get one thing straight, though: in the United States, by law, anyone who, “except as authorized by law, makes or utters or passes, or attempts to utter or pass, any coins of gold or silver or other metal, or alloys of metals, intended for use as current money, whether in the resemblance of coins of the United States or of foreign countries, or of original design . . .” faces a fine or imprisonment. It is the same in every other country: the term “coin of the realm” implies that it is the realm that controls creation of all coinage and its circulation. You can wave your US Constitution around, or you can swat flies with it, or you can use it as kindling: the result will be exactly the same.

You cannot create your own global money system, and you cannot change the way the global money system works; either you are part of it, or you are out. Most of us lack the ability to sever all ties with the financial realm, but, as with so many things, having the right attitude is very helpful. To that end, let me drop a Bible-bomb on you. (I do this as someone quite free of any religious sentiment; I just find the Bible to be an interesting and useful work of world literature, filled with highly quotable, pithy remarks.) Here's a particularly nice quote from the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Never has a truer phrase been written. Many of the more recent self-styled or so-called “Christians” have attempted to distort it to mean that it doesn't imply depriving yourself of any worldly goods, and that “poor in spirit” is a special, strictly spiritual sort of poverty. That is, of course, nonsense. You do not have to dig deep for the real meaning: “Poor” just means “poor,” and “in spirit” means “on purpose, not as a result of, say, injustice, misfortune, or being lazy, stupid or a gambler.” Oh, and “blessed” means “not damned.” Accordingly, Christian monks take the vow of non-acquisitiveness, which is a virtue, with the corresponding vices of stinginess (“what is mine is mine”) and greed (“what is yours is mine”). It is rather difficult to embrace such basic tenets while remaining within a culture that has elevated avariciousness and rapaciousness to the status of virtues. But here is a key insight: being poor on purpose is much easier than being poor as a result of suddenly having less than you are accustomed to having. Voluntary poverty is a hell of a lot easier than involuntary poverty.

And so, the answer to the perennially annoying question “How do I invest my money for it to survive financial, political and commercial collapse?” is this: “There is no answer to your question. Try asking a different question, to which there might be an answer.”