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Sunday Times: Review of Holmgren’s “Future Scenarios”
John-Paul Flintoff, Green Central, The Sunday Times
How civilisation will collapse – and when
OK, well that’s rather a grand headline, designed to command your attention. I don’t actually know how our civilisation will collapse, or when, obviously, but have been picking up some clues in the new book by David Holmgren, co-designer of permaculture.
In Future Scenarios, Holmgren leaves little doubt that the twin threats of climate change and peak oil (in fact, peak energy, because other fossil fuels will run out too) will have a revolutionary effect on the way we live.
Gas shortage And the changes are coming sooner than expected – Holmgren points to a comprehensive study showing that the amounts of energy needed to extract and refine energy are increasing so fast that by as soon as 2014 the net energy yield from gas in Canada (to name just one major producer) will fall to almost nothing.
“The implications are so shocking that the naive and simplistic idea that we are running out of oil and gas (rather than just peaking in production) may be closer to the truth than even the most pessimistic assesments of peak-oil proponents a decade ago.”
… If this sounds alarming – well, it is. But Holmgren is a profoundly hopeful man, and his book makes the case that, while change is inevitable, our civilisation may not collapse altogether like the Mayan but only gradually decline, like the Romans. “The conditions for ordinary people may actually improve when the resources devoted to maintaining societal complexity are freed for meeting more basic needs,” he says.
“I don’t want to underplay the possibility of a total and relatively fast global collase of complex societies. I think this is a substantial risk, but the total-collapse scenario tends to lead to fatalistic acceptance, or, alternatively, notions of individual or family survivalist preparations.” It’s so shocking, it can make people reject even thinking about the future, “thus increasing the likelihood of very severe energy descent, if not total collapse”.
In the book Holmgren sets out four overlapping descent paths (covering everything from neo-fascist state and corporate control to knit-your-own-yurt) that could play out over a similar time-frame to the industrial ascent era – roughly 250 years. It’s up to us to determine which descent path prevails by planning ahead.
John-Paul Flintoff writes for The Sunday Times, having previously worked for the Financial Times. Since first writing about climate change and peak oil in 2005 he has devoted much energy to reporting on the environment. He has a young daughter, and hopes the climate, and civilisation, won’t fall apart before she’s grown up.
(16 April 2009)
Excerpt from Holmgren’s book at Organic Consumers.
Flintoff has another good column today: Why we forgot how to grow food
Peggy Noonan: Goodbye Bland Affluence
Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal
Get ready for authenticity chic.
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A small sign of the times: USA Today this week ran an article about a Michigan family that, under financial pressure, decided to give up credit cards, satellite television, high-tech toys and restaurant dining, to live on a 40-acre farm and become more self-sufficient.
… The paper weirdly headlined them “economic survivalists,” which perhaps reflected an assumption that anyone who leaves a conventional, material-driven life for something more physically rigorous but emotionally coherent is by definition making a political statement. But it didn’t look political from the story they told. They didn’t look like people trying to figure out how to survive as much as people trying to figure out how to live. The picture that accompanied the article showed a happy family playing Scrabble with a friend.
Their story hit a nerve. There was a lively comment thread on the paper’s Web site, with more than 300 people writing in. “They look pretty happy to me,” said a commenter. “My husband and I are making some of the same decisions.” Another: “I don’t know if this is so much survivalism as a return to common sense.” Another: “The more stuff you own the harder you have to work to maintain it.”
To some degree the Wojtowicz story sounded like the future, or the future as a lot of people are hoping it will be: pared down, more natural, more stable, less full of enervating overstimulation, of what Walker Percy called the “trivial magic” of modern times.
The article offered data suggesting the Wojtowiczes are part of a recent trend. People are gardening more if you go by the sales of vegetable seeds and transplants, up 30% over last year at the country’s largest seed company.
… More predictions. The cities and suburbs of America are about to get rougher-looking. This will not be all bad. There will be a certain authenticity chic. Storefronts, pristine buildings—all will spend less on upkeep, and gleam less.
So will humans. People will be allowed to grow old again. There will be a certain liberation in this. There will be fewer facelifts and browlifts, less Botox, less dyed hair among both men and women. They will look more like people used to look, before perfection came in.
… A friend, noting what has and will continue to happen with car sales, said America will look like Havana—old cars and faded grandeur. It won’t. It will look like 1970, only without the bell-bottoms and excessive hirsuteness. More families will have to live together. More people will drink more regularly. Secret smoking will make a comeback as part of a return to simple pleasures. People will slow down. Mainstream religion will come back. Walker Percy again: Bland affluence breeds fundamentalism. Bland affluence is over.
(17 April 2009)
Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan. A traditional conservatives – will she become another ally? -BA
Economic recovery? No thank you
Carolyn Baker, Truth to Power
Some economists and a president declare that there’s a glimmer of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel, and that sometime in 2010, we’ll begin to see a return to normal. The stock market bounces up and down, and pundits opine that the worst is behind us. The market has remained in the 7 or 8 thousands for a couple of weeks, so perhaps they’re onto something. Maybe it was all a bad dream, and the worst recession in the history of the United States is waning, and the Second Great Depression that I and so many other astute observers were forecasting will never actually manifest.
What if it’s true; what if this isn’t, as Richard Heinberg says, “a recession that never ends”? Do I enjoy seeing throngs of homeless people gather in tent cities, live out of their cars, or simply roam the streets and back alleys of America in search of whatever crumbs of sustenance they can obtain? Do I take some sick pleasure in skyrocketing unemployment rates or burgeoning bankruptcy filings? What if, once again, empire triumphs over adversity and reclaims the level of prosperity its citizens enjoyed in the nineties? What if the likes of Nouriel Roubini, Gerald Celente, and Peter Schiff are proven to be paranoid nut jobs who really need to be on antidepressants? How much egg will I end up having on my face, and will that actually confirm that Peak Oil and climate change are bogus theories that have nothing to do with economic well being?
… I cringe when I hear the words “back to normal” because of what that means to me. “Normal” means hordes of Walmart shoppers stuffing cars and SUV’s full of plastics from China and driving off to their suburban homes to devour or display them until the current fix wears off and their shallow, meaningless lifestyles demand yet another “mall injection”. Normal means homeowners wearing several tons of house on their backs as they travel by car to jobs they despise to maintain mortgage, taxes, insurance, and upkeep.
(18 April 2009)
Drastic Energy Contraction Ahead
Paul Smith, Culture Change
Editor’s Introduction: The author notes that a more cheerful title might be “On the Way to a Sustainable Future.” I could go for that substitution. Unfortunately, we are not “on the way” until overpopulation is checked somehow. In this article the uncomfortable realities of the effects of immigration on U.S. population growth are quantified. Yet, there are two problems with focusing on them too much.
Before identifying them, consider the fact that up to three quarters of population growth going on in the U.S. is from immigrants and their higher fertility rate. But this should not imply that the U.S. (or the world) will be able to solve its problems by somehow cutting way back on immigration.
Additionally, focusing on immigrants’ population growth is a good way to mislead ourselves: (1) Crash is happening anyway; government policies cannot stop petrocollapse and climate distortion, both of which will cut population size drastically. (2) Focusing on immigration or even overpopulation at this time can distract us from urgent preparations for local self-reliance, which is our only future.
While the motives of the Heritage Foundation may be usually suspect, there can come a time soon when some of us find more and more commonality in the future now taking shape. So while Paul Smith’s article cites the Heritaage Foundation and touches on controversial ground, it is essential that we deal with the issues he presents. He reminds us that energy consumption itself is not on the table, and that switching energy technologies to maintain consumption is a false hope.
– Jan Lundberg, Culture Change editor
The message has gone forth loud and clear in the halls of Congress, in the White House, in the media, and in the reports of reputable scientific commissions. Our nation and the nations of the world must take drastic measures to reduce the atmospheric pollution resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. Otherwise the planet and all of its inhabitants will suffer the dire consequences of harmful climate change.
Our nation is now in the throes of an energy contraction, but the energy contraction following the current contraction will be much more profound in its consequences than anything that we are now experiencing.
(16 April 2009)
New book from Michael Ruppert: A Presidential Energy Policy
Press releas, Rubicon Works
A PRESIDENTIAL ENERGY POLICY: TWENTY-FIVE POINTS
ADDRESSING THE SIAMESE TWINS OF ENERGY AND MONEY
RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2009
… A world-recognized expert who saw today’s crisis coming and started warning in amazingly precise detail in 2000 now gives us the biggest exposé of all time. Refined in chilling detail in “Prezpol”, the “map” Ruppert has been making for thirty years has already saved thousands of families from the current economic meltdown. Mike’s writings, lectures and DVDs have reached people in more than forty countries since 1998.
This book was written to help the American people… and people in all countries. It was written to help an American president realistically and effectively prepare for what is already underway… the collapse of industrial civilization. There are many things that can still be done to prevent a massive die off that is just beginning and which might number in the billions. This book spells them out clearly.
All humans, especially in the U.S., will be affected by the energy policies of the Obama administration. Some of President Obama’s ideas are good and some are hoaxes he might not understand or be able to see yet. Some might be political and economic traps from which he might like (or need) to be liberated. The choices Mr. Obama makes will mean life and death for hundreds of millions of people around the world. For the lucky ones these choices will be about whether they have a home, a job, or food to eat.
A Presidential Energy Policy is a short, simple, easy-to-understand book based on nothing more complicated than high school math, basic science, and common sense. It offers immediate action steps. It will greatly simplify decision making for you, your family, and your community. It will give you real hope. It provides simple standards by which to hold your leaders directly accountable; standards that you won’t need an “expert” to interpret for you.
(17 April 2009)
Press release.
