collapse

In 2008, before the revolution, the Egyptian Government set a portion of its Army to baking bread for hungry citizens, precisely to forestall revolution.  Now, after revolution, it isn't clear who will provide the bread for its hungry and angry populace: Around a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, with another 20 percent hovering just above it. And while there are no statistics for the period 2012/2013, indications are that malnutrition rates of around 30 percent are also on the increase, he said. Poverty and malnutrition has visible and long-term effects, he added. “…

"We don’t understand how a single star forms, yet we want to understand how 10 billion stars form." -Carlos Frenk The Universe has been around for a long time: nearly 14 billion years, to the best of our knowledge. When it was very young, there were absolutely zero stars in it, while today, there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, each of which contains anywhere from a few billion to many trillions of stars. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI / AURA) - ESA / Hubble Collaboration The galaxy shown above, NGC 2841, is very similar to our own Milky Way. Approximately the…

"Black holes, which have no memory, are said to contain the earliest memories of the universe, and the most recent, too, while at the same time obliterating all memory by obliterating all its embodiments. Such paradoxes characterize these strange galactic monsters, for whom creation is destruction, death life, chaos order." -Robert Coover Our Milky Way, the swath of light and dark that dominates the darkest skies here on Earth, contains a huge variety of stars: large and small, red and blue, from young to old to ancient. Image credit: ESO / Serge Brunier, Frederic Tapissier, The World At…

Note, I'm horrified to realize I inadvertantly left out the link to Rhagavan's piece - SO SORRY about that, and please do click through - it is well worth a full read. Barath Rhagavan has a superb article about the conversion of many climate scientists to support of nuclear power and the reasons this is problematic. These match my own major objections to nuclear as a response. As serious as the environmental impact of failure is, that's not the single biggest issue I see. Even if I thought the siting would avoid any future climate related disasters (I don't), the main issue is the…

If you are interested, check out my peak oil review commentary for this week, which explores what collapse really is - and what we might do about it. The main issue is that it is a heck of a lot more normal than most folks imagine. The piece is a shortened excerpt taken from my forthcoming book _Making Home_. Looking at the history of collapse is really important for us to gauge from history how likely it is - and what we find is that collapse - in the sense of a radical, long term and consequential step down in complexity and comfort - is part of the background of a lot of human lives. I…

I'm obviously always a fan of Greer's work, but I thought this week's post was particularly apt - he addresses the larger question of whether we must keep up industrial civilization until it falls apart (note, I do not say "if it falls apart" - implicit in the keeping up is that it brings us faster to collapse), or whether we can change. George Monbiot, who's carved out a niche for himself as the staff pseudoenvironmentalist of The Guardian, had a blog post of his own on much the same theme. His argument is simply that most people in today's industrial societies are not going to accept…

About a month ago I had the privilege of spending an hour talking (on stage, in front of an audience) to my congressman, Paul Tonko, about energy issues and preparedness. What emerged from this discussion was that *EVEN THOUGH* Tonko is one of the best congresspeople out there on energy and environmental issues, even though he's a tremendously smart guy, even though he actually has had some real education on peak oil issues, the two of us were talking past each other in many ways. It was fascinating - I know that Tonko grasps the basic idea, but the narrative in which efficiency,…

"He'll never catch up!" the Sicilian cried. "Inconceivable!" "You keep using that word!" the Spaniard snapped. "I don't think it means what you think it does." ..."Inconceivable!" the Sicilian cried. The Spaniard whirled on him. "Stop saying that word!" It was inconceivable that anyone could follow us, but when we looked behind, there was the man in black. It was inconceivable that anyone could sail as fast as we could sail, and yet he gained on us. Now this too is inconceivable, but look - look" and the Spaniard pointed down through the night. "See how he rises." The man in black was,…

The theory, of course, is that eventually an inflection point in renewable production *might* be achievable, after which point total gobal energy consumption would decline. The fact, unfortunately, is that we're nowhere near achieving such an inflection point, as Tad Patzek carefully points out: The rate of energy use and carbon dioxide emissions are virtually identical and have grown exponentially over the last 40 years. The impact of large dams and nuclear power plants has been barely visible, and disappeared by 2007. The renewable energy sources, wind turbines, biomass cogeneration, and…

I had been mulling over precisely how to frame this piece for a while, when I read Erik Lindberg's "This Is a Peak Oil Story." which admirably gets at the essential point that I've been wanting to make - that our collective crisis comes to all of us at different times and different ways than we imagined, and that exemptions are only rarely granted. Lindberg writes eloquently of his own experience of trying to undertake change - and failing in large part because of the precise circumstances he is trying to address: I had imagined the rooftop farm thriving far into the future. Here, my…

An anonymous guest poster at ClubOrlov makes the case that America isn't a place you want to live - and that Americans should get out of Dodge: Americans, I have some bad news for you: You have the worst quality of life in the developed world--by a wide margin. If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you'd be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker. I know this…

In yesterday's NY Times Op-ed, Kristof apologized for comparing US income inequity to that of "Banana Republics" - that is, for insulting other nations by comparing them to the US, which has now achieved wholly unprecedented levels of economic injustice. My point was that the wealthiest plutocrats now actually control a greater share of the pie in the United States than in historically unstable countries like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana. But readers protested that this was glib and unfair, and after reviewing the evidence I regretfully confess that they have a point. That's right: I may…

Like my colleague Mike the Mad Biologist, I'm horrified by a story out of Indiana in which parents of disabled children who are no longer receiving state aid due to the state budget crisis, were told that they could drop the kids off at homeless shelters if they were unable to care for them at home: However, that's exactly what Becky Holladay of Battle Ground, Ind., said a bureau worker told her when she called to ask about the waiver she's seeking for her 22-year-old son, Cameron Dunn, who has epilepsy, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. "We are people and they are people…

Actually, it isn't all that slow, because a decade ago, all of this would have been largely unthinkable. The problem is that we don't see the gradual decline and fall - we are only vaguely aware that some things aren't quite what they used to be, and our progressive narrative tells us that they will soon be much better. But the problem is that's not necessarily true - there's little evidence for it. Even the most optimistic economists (and I don't recommend the most optimistic economists ;-)) have to admit our long term economic problems are extremely pressing. Add in resource depletion…

I assume you noticed the quiet demise of the Climate Bill, consented to by most of the people who claimed they gave a damn about the climate. It was a lousy, weak, inadequate bill, but that's still no excuse for giving up the ghost. This makes the 1 bazillionth time in my lifetime I've been ashamed to be associated (if only because the US has no real left, and thus anyone on the left ends up with a default association with the Dems) with the American Democratic Party. I'm used to it by now. On the other hand, maybe the death of our attempt to deal with climate change will force a change in…

Before I take off for the weekend, I thought I'd leave you with another re-run on the very basic process of adapting to rapidly changing conditions. Today I'm starting another Adapting-In-Place Class, beginning with the basics of evaluating whether you have a future where you are, what your other choices are, and then triaging your situation. One of the most basic elements of triaging any system - whether the systems that power your house or the ones that help you keep your head together when the going gets tough, is identifying redundancies. Why redundant systems? Well, for the simple…

We still don't have the faintest idea how much oil is spewing out of the well in the Gulf. Nor do we have the faintest idea what the full environmental consequence of what may well be the biggest single-event human-caused. ecological disaster of all time (the very fact that I have to add the word "single-event" to that statement should tell you something). We know that it is almost certainly more than all the low estimates to date, and we know that the ecological consequences will be huge, lasting and we do not understand them. That is, we know some of the potential effects, we know they…

A reader of mine named Aaron emailed me to ask if I'd respond to Alex Steffen's latest piece at Worldchanging. Aaron writes: I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about Alex Steffen's recent post over at worldchanging.com. I think that it is a well considered and well informed post that addresses many of the things that make me uncomfortable in your writing. I'm really not interested in criticizing your work, or anything of that sort; I believe that the sustainability movement as a whole needs to have a strong and well reasoned message if it is to take root with the public at large…

Note: This is another lightly revised version a piece I wrote some years ago at the oldest incarnation of this blog. It answers a question I get a lot - if people have been saying that the oil is going to run out for years, and if 30 years ago people thought we were going to have an ice age, why should I believe you that peak oil and climate change are real problems. A lot of what I write works from the assumption that we all agree that peak oil and climate change are happening and going to be life-changing events. And yet, some people who read this blog don't necessarily agree on this…

Because of the enormous impact of agriculture on climate change, pick up any book about "green" solutions and you'll find the suggestions that you grow a vegetable garden. Bang into the "we can't go on as we are" end of the environmental movement (mine), and you'll see the general assumption that growing food is part of any process of adaptation to lower resource use. This often then morphs into the assumption that all of us should be able to grow all of our food, or a vast majority of it - that sustainability means the country life for everyone. You might think that because I do produce a…