Sorry that the posts have been a little thin this week, but I read a book that has occupied almost the full attention of my thoughts and caused a great deal of reflection, sorrow, and a small amount of panic.
The Long Emergency
The subtitle of the book — Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophies of the 21st Century — is not sensationalized. “Surviving” is not lip service. It means “not starving,” “not freezing,” “not dying of heat exposure,” and “not dying of disease.” “The end of oil” translates as “we may have already passed the global peak for oil production, we only have about two decades' worth left, and no other energy source we have today will come anywhere close to meeting our needs.”
It's a very bleak, very scary picture he paints. After six chapters of explaining our total obliviousness to what lies ahead, the geopolitical frictions, the strong likelihood of very little, very expensive energy even with alternative sources, and nature's own pressures of disease and climate change, the final chapter explains what life will be like in the “The Long Emergency
- Globalization is not sustainable without oil. Economies will be “intensely local.” Wal-Mart and the like will go out of business.
- Education will be vastly different. Vocational courses of study, apprenticeship, and labor will replace the last years of high school, because many courses of study will be obsolete when their market is eliminated. (Including mine to a large extent.)
- Life will gravitate and thrive (or not) in small cities and towns, and may be largely autonomous. Agriculture will be local and laborious.
- Suburbia is not sustainable without oil. This part of the “American Dream” was subsidized, developed, and financed by cheap oil, and it's impossible to maintain this lifestyle. The forty-mile commute will be impossible. Residential subdivisions will suffer a cruel loss of value and may simply be abandoned, decaying and rotting soon afterward.
- Rather than everyone getting something for nothing, “nobody will get anything for nothing.”
This book grabs you by the collar from page one, and smacks you, claws you in the eyes, and beats you to a pulp for 324 pages without even breaking a sweat. You won't be the same after you read it. (At least, I hope you won't.) It's very much like taking the red pill.
It was a very convicting book. I look around at every creature comfort I have now, and a lot of my habits, with a bit of disgust, since I was largely indifferent to how fortuitous it was to be alive when cheap personal transportation, plastics, abundant energy, pre-packaged food, air conditioning, and everyday low prices reigned. Now these things are on the way out, and I'll be alive to watch them leave. My daughter may only be a teenager when they leave. It's not comforting.
I'm not sure how this book will affect what I do. Right now I feel like I've had the wind knocked out of me. I'll probably add a new category to the blog for conservation/preparation issues; it would be reckless not to.
If you've read the book what did you think? How would you fit in?
I haven't read the book, but off-the-cuff, two reactions
1) Yes, there will be changes; as oil grows scarce, our way of life will get affected.
But
2) I don't think the doomsday scenario is likely. There will be alternative energy sources that get tapped, different ways to travel and manufacture that will come up even in the interim. As gas goes from $2 to $10 and beyond, the economics of coal, natural gas, nuclear and other sources become much more attractive – plus, there's an automatic self correction in demand.
If the "profligate ugly American customer" syndrome changes, that would be a change for the better.
such doomsaying has been around for a looooong time (probably as long as humans have been grouping together in social groups). Why, our most recent historical example (and the basis for most conclusions like those found in the book you mentioned) = Malthus ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malthus ).
Naturally, given the passage of time without a major recent catastrophe (which seems to negate Malthussian thinking), several have dismissed Malthus as overly pessimistic. I think the massive problems due to an exponential increase in population (amidst modest "gains" in crop yields and oil production/etc. over the recent years) is just setting us up for a massive fall (the bigger they are. . . after all).
Anybody who studies biology knows about an S-curve, population dynamics, and the likely factors that reduce exponential growth into sometimes extreme decreases (limited resources, increased competition, disease, problems eliminating wastes, etc.). It is simply life, and humans are not exempt from nature's cold, relentless corrections when "fixing" species that populate their environment beyond their means to support such heady numbers.
The following link has some info about population dynamics (with graphs) that you might find interesting. You probably know all of this stuff from earlier exposure (or from the book), but. . . meh. . . http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk…
All these things (and what you mention, along with other worries) = precisely the reason that I don't want to have children. I'm young, and I know that my lifetime will probably see the emergence of real, deadly, unstoppable pandemics (and. . . all this worry about bird flu/SARS/etc. . . why isn't anybody that freaked out about things like the super-strains of tuberculosis/pneumonia/etc. that are fully resistant to our strongest antibiotics). And, naturally, you always have diseases like HIV/Aids out there to compromise immune systems (as if the superbugs needed any help). At least that's avoidable (for now. . . ).
Repeatedly, humans have turned a blind, happily ignorant eye to the perils just around the corner. But, catastophes are just around the corner. Europe lost (at least) 1/3rd of its population to plague. . . . the Irish lost about 1/4 of their people to death, 1/4 of their people to emigration following the potato famine (the population of the country went from 10mil to 5mil). . . and, where we used to have hundreds of strains of rice which provided the majority of the world's population with their daily carb's. . . now, we've limited the rice group (as with all other agricultural produce) to a few strains that yield high/large amounts faster than those other varieties. . . I think it's actually 10 strains that acccount for 75% of the world's rice production. We've learned so little from earlier famines and examples of what happens when you lower the diversity of your foodstuffs.
Time and time again, some disesase or catastrophic event underscores man's stupidity. . . and yet, we learn next to NOTHING from the past, and set ourselves up for even greater failures in the future. Hence the cliche that "history repeates itself".
As Bobby Dylan says (totally unrelated to this, of course):
"Praise be to Nero's Neptune / the Titanic sails at dawn. . . ."
oh. . . and the S-Curve on that page isn't quite the picture that I had hoped. Normally, the exponential growth carries well beyond the carrying capacity (at least for a short while), then. . . almost with an exponential rate of decline, the population line steeply dips under the carrying capacity. . . and, after some time, will gradually inch back up to the carrying capacity and typically stays just at that level.
I have no idea what the carrying capacity for humans is. . . but, I bet 1 billion is easily pushing it. . . and we're way beyond that now. In a few decades, I shudder to think about life in this crazy world. One thing that I forgot to mention in the previous (in light of your thoughts of preparation):
(lots of good info)-
http://www.backwoodshome.com/
also. . . I have no affiliation with this religious group, but if you have a cannery near you (or can find one from somewhere else), it might provide you with an easy, affordable way to stockpile some basic supplies like water/cereals/etc. –
http://www.justpeace.org/nuggets13.htm#MORMON%20C…
The only thing that I'm worried about is the real doomsday stuff. . . the thought of those of us who were prepared enough to stockpile defending our homes and families (with deadly force) from roving bands of starving thugs. Imagine all of the innercity street gangs (or just the hungry masses) roaming around, invading homes and killing people for water, or fuel, or food.
It's corny to compare, but it always leaves me thinking about Madmax. Also, the looting and general disorder that I saw in Iraq (following the invasion) woke me up to the possibilities of what would happen when the system starts to collapse under it's own inability to do anything (think Katrina, as well).
Icebergs? Insane! Full speed ahead!!! We're unsinkable, after all. . . (just like Rome, the Ottoman Empire, the Dutch, the British, and all of the other great empires were, right?).
I read it a while ago and saw it as a general wake up call to be more aware and prepared. We don't know what the future holds, hopely we will have alternatives out there in time.
Until then, whether oil is being depleted or not, catastrophes do occur and it is a good idea to have a survival attitude on the backburner just in case of anything, IMHO.
I understand where you are coming from, I was anxious, depressed and gung-ho all at the same time. Little steps in preparation are better than nothing.
It sounds really interesting. I'm not sure I'm ready for 300+ pages of it though. I read a lot of sustainability stuff and frankly I'm already the tree-hugging type that tries to consume less to have more in the future. But I'll look into it. Maybe it'll give me some more ammo in conversation. Thanks!
I recommend everyone focus on the math – infinite consumption minus finite resources equals ultimate consequences. The belief that we can infinitely prevent our demise through technology is arrogant AND ignores the inexorable calculus of bad math.