Thanksgiving food prices will be higher this year due to supply chain issues, limited trucking, limited labor, and higher costs to food producers. Thanksgiving could be seen as a symbol of the American life style, our tendency to over-consume an abundance of cheap goods. We’ve lived this way for decades, but if we are going to address climate change it’s time for us to recognize that the era of plentiful, cheap goods is over. We will pay more for everything.
The only reason that food in America is cheap is because of industrial agriculture, namely animals grown in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). We mass produce animals in highly cramped conditions, stuffing them with all the corn and soybeans they can eat, and often keeping them alive with low doses of antibiotics added to their drinking water. The entire industrial meat producing industry is vertically integrated and controlled by a few large corporations.
Vertical integration means the owners control everything from the feed market, to the farm contract, to the slaughter facility, to the packaging factory, and in some cases even the trucking companies and warehouses. Since they control the entire supply chain, they can make a small profit on each unit as food moves along the supply chain. A small profit on each unit translates into hundreds of billions of dollars when they move hundreds of billions of units along the supply chain. Small farmers can’t compete with this system. Most can’t even find local butcher shops anymore. And the reason for labor shortages is because the employer only offers low wages to desperate people willing to work in dangerous and stressful conditions with few benefits. Many of these jobs are held by immigrants.
As Americans wake up to the reality of climate change, there will be less fossil energy available and this will mean higher costs for manufacturing and transporting products using fossil energy. We are beginning to see the end of industrial agriculture and mass produced food. This year natural gas prices are driving up cost for fertilizer. China is shipping less glyphosate to America. Farm equipment and parts to repair them are in short supply. These are some of the reasons why food costs more or is less available. This is why even schools are having difficulty getting enough food for school lunch programs. These will not be short term issues for America nor will we ever go back to “life as usual”. Believing so is wishful thinking. We can blame the current Administration. We can demand our government do something to fix these problems, but if we were honest we would realize that cheap, mass produced food would no longer be feasible without cheap and plentiful fossil energy.
Locally produced farm meat will cost us more but when raised humanely on pasture it will also be much healthier for us to eat. Buying locally produced food also supports local farm families. And if meat is more expensive people will be forced to eat less of it, another thing that will benefit our health. So rather than complaining that our Thanksgiving meal is going to be more expensive, be thankful we have food when many others don’t, which brings me to the real issue at hand…climate change.
Most people don’t pay attention to weather unless it is severe. We often live in a bubble that encompasses waking in our climate controlled home, getting in our climate controlled car parked in our attached garage, and driving to our climate controlled place of work. We spend only a few minutes outdoors in non-climate controlled environments. And even though the news media broadcast images of weather disasters, the storms tend to fade from our memory fairly quickly (unless we were impacted by them and then the damage lasts for years, sometimes never being repaired). This year there were several such weather events; a deep freeze in Texas, Hurricane Ida, and catastrophic flooding in Europe and China among many others across the world. Unfortunately few Americans pay attention to how weather impacts our economy, and this ignorance (or our ability to forget) could be the reason why we are not acting fast enough to address climate change. Yes, we may be saddened by news that other people are devastated by weather disasters, but we aren’t bothered enough to change the way we live. We have ignored how weather impacts food, water, and energy supplies.
To remind you…in July disastrous flooding events in Europe and China disrupted global supply chains. In September Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans and caused disruption in the agriculture sector. Currently China and Europe are being hit with an energy crisis. All of these events can be linked to climate change, or in the case of energy disruptions, attempts to reduce carbon emissions. After last February’s deep freeze in Texas some people blamed the near grid failure on renewable energy. Now several Republican controlled states have brought a case to the Supreme Court hoping to limit the ability of the US EPA to regulate power plant carbon emissions. Why? Because they want the US to continue using fossil fuels; to pump oil, frack gas, and mine coal. They don’t want to see that climate change is affecting them. This is a grave mistake.
Scientists have long predicted that as climate change worsens we will increasingly experience more severe storms, droughts, and wildfires. They predict shortages of water, degradation of fertile soils, and desertification of rain forests. They predict that glaciers and ice caps will melt causing sea levels to rise. Today we see all these predictions happening, and at increasing rates. Experts also predict that nations will begin to fight over sparse resources.
The destructive hurricanes and floods get a lot of attention, but far worse, is the scale of droughts we see and their impact on water resources. As the earth’s atmosphere warms droughts will spread, deepen, and last much longer. The Middle East and Africa are already being hit hard, and this is largely the reason people are migrating. Climate change migration is becoming a severe problem and one that developed nations are ill prepared to manage. In many countries it is already too late to provide money for them to adapt, people are desperate for a place to live. Droughts will impact nations that have grown dependent on irrigation for crops (including the US). Drinking water resources will disappear in nations who have always depended on melting mountain snows to bring drinking water in summer (including the US western states). Nations without energy resources will be held hostage by countries with energy (as we are currently seeing in Europe and former Soviet Union countries).
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Water, food, and energy are critical for our survival, but so too is fertile soil, ocean fisheries, forests, lakes, and biodiversity. All of these resources are being threatened by climate change, pollution, and exploitation. We are finally seeing predictions become reality…. day-to-day events. If we have any hope of preventing the worsening of climate change we absolutely must cooperate with other nations and with each other. We simply cannot solve our problems alone. Retreating behind national or state boundaries is no different than retreating to your survivalist bunker and hoping that when you emerge the world will be livable.
As nations struggle to feed and shelter their people, as people flee failed, violent states, our leaders will be under increasing pressure to ‘fix’ what is wrong. The only way to fix our problems is to change our lifestyle. We need to buy less stuff, travel fewer miles, consume less resources, live in smaller homes (or share your larger home with more people). We need to live less complicated lifestyles including little or no social media. We can plant a garden, eat more plant based, locally produced food. We can slow cook more meals (including vegetarian and vegan options). We can recycle our clothes and household goods by giving them to stores such as Goodwill. We can enjoy the simple but rewarding experience of sharing a meal with friends and family. Unless Americans are willing to change our lifestyle the world cannot fix its problems, because our consumption is a large part of the problem. We might castigate China for it’s carbon emissions, or Russia for its energy blackmail, but Americans still buy 40% of the goods China produces, and Europe is still dependent on Russia for energy.
I don’t think our supply chain issues are just about truck drivers and warehouse workers. We face an increasingly hostile world. We are going to see more desperate, autocratic leaders taking control, rattling sabers at their neighbors. We are also going to see people taking resources by force rather than payment. I believe we have entered the most dangerous decade in human history. If nations go to war now, the destruction of infrastructure will be impossible to rebuild. We won’t have access to the abundant, cheap fossil energy we used to build them in the first place. We won’t have ample forests, rich mines to plunder, or fertile soil to help us rebuild. Our access to resources will shrink down to the footprint of a region where we live (assuming we still live). There will simply not be enough resources to rebuild our cities, highways, bridges, water treatment facilities, factories, etc. If we go to war what little of humanity survives will live during the longest dark age ever experienced. It will make surviving an ice age pale by comparison.
I’ve often said that if we wait too long to address climate change we will find ourselves between a rock and hard place, none of the options available will be easy. The easy time to address carbon emission was 50 years ago. It isn’t going to ever get any easier, and it will get a whole lot harder.
Teaser photo credit: By Jennie Augusta Brownscombe – Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal http://www.lakenhal.nl/persberichtendetail.php?id=144, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7076653
Comments
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Evgeniy Shcherbakov 3 days ago
While the dramatic consequences are already here and we undoubtedly see more
and more of the examples you’ve listed in the coming decades, not only
the view that there is nothing more we can do and the worst has already
come is binary and doomeristic, it is also false. There are still
different states in the making the world may end up in – even if there
are some models that predict complete extinction if we stay on
the path we’re on, these are still up to the observational tests. No
model I’ve seen states that our impact from now on will be insignificant
in the bigger picture. The Clathrate gun hypothesis is also in need of
the observational test, and whether this tipping point (arguably, the
most critical of them all) has been reached yet still remains to be
seen.
“it seems quite apparent to me that the processes now set in
motion will continue, and dramatically alter the biosphere we’ve
enjoyed for our brief existence.” – they will continue, but scale does
matter as is the qualitative characteristics of said alteration.
In other words, the “black” future still has shades of grey, and it’s just
a physical reality that what humanity does still matters. Who knows,
maybe extreme weather in the nearest decade will be so devastating that
the global capitalist market will collapse in itself, with the strong
drop in emissions. Or an even more dangerous pandemic emerge, wiping out
just as many people to release our overshoot and still preserve a
technological civilization. Let’s not give up and help capitalism to
destroy the planet, shall we
David Veale3 days ago
I wouldn’t suggest that we should do nothing (I still do many of the
things I started doing to reduce my CO2 footprint myself). I’m
absolutely open to the idea that something new may yet offer reprieve.
However, I’ve yet to see anything proposed or implemented at even small
scale which offers such an opportunity
David Veale2 days ago
I set up my own farm circa 2008 largely in anticipation of this collapse and quickly discovered that attempting to compete with the inherent efficiencies of industrial ag is basically an express ticket to the poor-house complete with hard physical labor. I’m still convinced it will collapse, particularly if the 2018 oil production peak holds. There definitely look to be fertilizer and pesticide shortages looming, though I’m inclined to think that these are largely part of an engineered economic demolition (so we can Build Back Better, complete with social credit scoring tied to our new digital currency to keep misbehavers in line) At least here in the corn belt, a major production decline will have more of an effect on meat production than anything else, because that’s where the vast majority of farm commodities end up.
I fertilize primarily with composted manure and bedding, though I also use lime and occasional potash. I’m convinced it does help the soil productivity (especially so during droughts), but at the same time I have to admit that the measured organic-matter content of my soils has not improved considerably.
If I was king of the world I’d have us largely returning to pasture based farming with draft animals for tillage, which is inherently carbon sequestering as well as soil building. But I fear that project probably needed to be implemented about 40 years ago to have the desired outcome. The heat levels I’m experiencing here in SW michigan over the last few years (the night-time lows have risen considerably, leading to higher humidity and heat indexes) are making draft animal use increasingly dangerous. More heat and higher resulting insect pressure makes for less comfortable, less reliable horses in my experience. Horses are subject to similar wet-bulb temperature limits as humans, and we’re bumping up against the dangerous levels where I live in mid summer now. If my memory serves, the big European heat-wave of 2003 generated wet-bulb temps of 79 degrees F and resulted in 50,000 deaths. We’re regularly within a few degrees of that here.
Evgeniy Shcherbakov 2 days ago
Well, truth to be told, I almost gave up on the possibility that the transition to renewables will help us much right now. It’s too late for only that,
without the drastic reduction of consumption and/or human population.
As COP26 has shown, there isn’t political will to shift the course of
the current system which is driving off the cliff. Even Indian Prime
Minister is dead set on increasing its population consumption up to the
US levels, while continuing to burn coal – even as his country will
arguably lose most lives in the coming century from heat waves, by a
long margin.
If anything, I am afraid of the technological
“solutions” the capitalism would be willing to put up, so that the
current generation of the super-riches would die among their gold. My
biggest fear is SRM which will postpone the effects of GHG emissions
until it can not anymore, and the planet will be hit by an abrupt
temperature increase of unimaginable magnitude. This is even worse than
climatic wars. DAC will likely remain a fantasy and will never work at
scale, but it will likely be put forward as the reason to implement SRM
at scale.
So, yeah, I am mostly counting on (a) impreciseness of
the current models, (b) Black Swan events and (c) the internal collapse
of the global market, which will give the local economy the chance to
replace the current system, while we’re still in that narrow window of
opportunity. The rising awareness among at least parts of the population
that we absolutely cannot continue our relationship with nature as it
currently is, is what gives me hope.
mat redsell 2 days ago
Yes I too planned on being self sufficient over 20 years ago and I am but I
took a detour by first building a completely off grid homestead. Double
insulated the walls, even had an underground greenhouse but then
decided to purchase a farm and start over again. We use sunflower oil
instead of Diesel since there is usually some of it left over a
pressing. Draft horses are incredible and I work with them every day. I
did just let the horses go to pasture for the very hot days in august
but still maintained training them every day . Luckily I have developed
local customers and stores to get our vegetable oils and flour sold.
It does bother me that those who purchase from us are usually better
off. Hoping to get a coop garden going next year. Those who work in the
garden share the produce. We also grow all of our own feed for the
horses, and chickens and I spend a lot of time improving my pastures
with cover crops that benefit the horses and the soils. I too realize
that the soils tests take a long time to show any improvement but this
was the first year that my crops showed great improvement probably
because I only crop one in three years and use a lot of cover crops.
JRiverMartin yesterday
I agree with you, Evgeniy, that we should not give up on all prospects of
deliberate social transformation leading to deliberate energy descent
(and materials descent) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Descent
But, as we can see by looking carefully at what happened at the latest
United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, we’re clearly not going to get
any help in this from international agreements. Nor will we get much
help from national governments more generally. Governments are both
corporate captured and ideologically captured (culture captured). So is
the public of most of the nations which really matter in how all of this
unfolds, being the ‘developed nations’ (sometimes called ‘the global
North’ — though they are not all in the North).
The reason I mention these things in the second paragraph, above, is that I feel the
time has come for a world-wide non-violent, non-insurrectionary
revolution — in which the people of Earth — independent of governments
— actively create the healing and regenerative conditions in which
human NEEDS (not wants) can be met without adding more to the Ruin which
has been capitalist industrial civilization.
My assessment is that governments cannot and will not serve our creation of an
eco-culture, and what we need now is an eco-culture — a culture (or
cultures) which respects and even reveres (treats as sacred) this living
Earth. Governments have not, and will not, challenge the corporate
capitalist system of domination and exploitation, and asking them to do
so is a waste of our time and effort. So our only remaining hope, I
feel, is to rapidly create parallel systems outside of government in
which we enact a non-violent, non-insurrectionary planetary revolution.
And that will require a lot of re-imagining of what a revolution is and
can be. It will require a lot of thought and conversations — and a mass
planet scaled international movement of a revolutionary kind.
Arundhati Roy has a famous passage from one of her excellent books of essays which speaks to what we need to do now.
“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it.
To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our
music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our
sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories
that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are
selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their
weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
― Arundhati Roy, War Talk
Our revolutionary task at hand will initially require a mass educational
campaign, in which we expose the lies (e.g., BECCS, ‘green growth’) to
the broad public, in which we the people (not governments) become the
media, the schools, the universities, and use these for their legitimate
and true purpose of true and genuine education rooted in facts and
reality rather than corporate propaganda and the propaganda of the
billionaires.
While all revolutions are social movements, not all
social movements are revolutionary. The main distinction, I would say,
is that a revolution means to overthrow a way of life and to replace it
with another one, and it means to do so rather rapidly, rather than
slowly. We’ve tried slow long enough. It failed. It is time now for
revolution
JRiverMartin yesterday
Mat – Where is your farm located?
pokiwi 5 days ago
But tell them ‘Experts also predict that nations will begin to fight over sparse resources’ – and they run a mile. They’ll claim they don’t like to hear the message (let’s just assume it), they’ll claim not to have the time to read stuff (then quickly put up other stuff, more soothing).
There seem to be few, very few, who keep their eye on the ball and keep telling it like it is. For this piece, many thanks.
JRiverMartin yesterday
That St. Matthew Island story likely didn’t unfold as most of us once believed.
St. Matthew Island reindeer crash revisited
https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/rangifer/article/view/1783
BillLoggins 5 days ago
“The only way to fix our problems is to change our lifestyle. We need to buy less stuff, travel fewer miles, consume less resources, live in smaller homes (or share your larger home with more people). We need to live less complicated lifestyles including little or no social media. We can plant a garden, eat more plant based, locally produced food. We can slow cook more meals (including vegetarian and vegan options). We can recycle our clothes and household goods by giving them to stores such as Goodwill. We can enjoy the simple but rewarding experience of sharing a meal with friends and family. ”
Hear hear!!! Change our lifestyle indeed! Enjoy our new simple but rewarding life over a meal of plant based foods, one big happy nuclear family, sort of like Little House on the Prairie.
From your lips to God’s ears! So, let us do a simple probability calculation for these simple changes in lifestyle, shall we? First we assign the probability of likelihood of occurrence. Buy less stuff? Half of us. Call it 5/10. Travel less? Fewer than buying less stuff. 7/10. Consume less? Sort of like buy less stuff, but lets say this is more general, so call it 3/10. Smaller homes? 4/10. No social media? 2/10. Plant a garden? 1/10. Recycle clothes? 9/10. Defining this exercise as a rewarding experience (and throw in some meals with friends and family)? 2/10. Odds of this all coming together? 0.5*0.7*0.3*0.4*0.2*0.1*0.9*0.2= 0.015% chance. Any statisticians feel free to box my ears for not making a proper calculation. Well, maybe if we just do a couple? Mix and match until we get the likelihood into believable country? I can skip plant based foods and flying and continue consuming if I promise to give old clothes to Goodwill? Probably sounds good to the average American, doing their part! And 90% of us might do it! Declare victory and move on! Just like COP21 and 26…..
mat redsell 5 days ago
Thanks for your brave comments. Yes I planned for this 40 years ago and now have a fully self sufficient farm with my draft horses that work the fields. How smart I thought I was … the only thing now I realize was that I forgot I was going to get old so things are much more difficult but fortunately still manageable.
Jody Tishmack 5 days ago
Odds of this happening? I’d say they are pretty high. Your calculations assume people will have a choice of changing, consuming less. Already higher prices and supply chains shortages are limiting what people can buy. I’m suggesting that people can ‘chose’ to change and perhaps feel better about it. In reality, I really don’t think people have any choice.
For example, the are a large number of families who were impacted by Hurricane Ida that are still living with the damages. Ida crossed 8 states, from Louisiana to New Jersey, and caused an estimated $95 billion in damage. “Nearly 1 in 3 Americans live in a county hit by a weather disaster in the past three months, according to a new Washington Post analysis of federal disaster declarations. On top of that, 64 percent live in places that experienced a multi-day heat wave — phenomena that are not officially deemed disasters but are considered the most dangerous form of extreme weather.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/04/climate-disaster-hurricane-ida/
Do the people living with damaged walls, holes in their roof, mud or mold to clean up, have a choice? The window of choices is closing.
Jody Tishmack 5 days ago
I agree that the problem is deeper than climate change. I’ve often wondered about humanity. Being human, how can we see ourselves clearly? For one, I don’t understand the need to hoard wealth. Why can’t people work to attain a certain level of comfort and security and then simply enjoy it? Why is enough never enough? We can call it Capitalism or greed, but to me it reminds me of kleptomania. An uncontrollable urge to steal. Perhaps humanity suffers from an abundance of mental illnesses. The question is why doesn’t evolutionary pressures weed these weaknesses out? Are they weaknesses? Or is altruism the real weakness? Lots to consider when one dives into human nature and biology.
I also agree that the size of the human population is really earth’s biggest problem. If it were up to me I would make family planning and contraceptives freely available to every woman who wants them, everywhere in the world. Yes, I realize there are some countries where patriarchy prevents us from providing this for their women, but still, I think this is a sound approach.
Jody Tishmack5 days ago
Thank you for your kind words.
Jody Tishmack 5 days ago
I wish you all the best. I would also hope that you can find some young people to whom you can pass on all your knowledge. I know some farms that participate in intern programs but I don’t know much about them. I encourage you to find out more. You have a very valuable skill and the world will need it someday soon.
mat redsell 5 days ago
Yes we are interviewing others who are interested by offering free stay-overs here to exchange skills. The main problem today is to find those who are not badly in debt. It is very hard to sell the idea of a self sufficient farm that produces very little profit despite the fact that here we have all the food, machinery and draft horses one could need for living. We even have plenty of rain and good soils.
BillLoggins 4 days ago
What might your metric for a “disaster” be? Dollars, or deaths? Because if we are going to do dollars, then we need to discuss nominal or real. Deaths, perhaps we convert to % of total national population at the time of the disaster, in order to not miss population growth since some of those older weather events? And then we have newer activity such as coastal buildouts or folks doing really stupid things (building a metropolis on top of active fault zones perhaps?) confused with “disaster” when it was as much humans deciding to put themselves in harms way as much as climate change? More heat in the atmosphere allows more water and energy to be carried in the atmosphere, and utilized by Mother Nature to impact human infrastructure. Humans converting swamps into major cities, and then declaring it a weather disaster when the disaster was the decision to build on what was once a swamp? Is that really the fault of the additional heat in the atmosphere? Or bad decisions by people? Want to bet we won’t blame “tectonic change” when The Big One hits San Francisco?
Jody Tishmack 4 days
Ah, so now you are circling around the real reason why your comment appears unsympathetic. You believe people deserve what they get. Build in the wrong place, you deserve to get flooded. Rebuild after a storm, you deserve to get hit by a hurricane. I agree that the choices we make form the consequences we face in the future. But we should never presume to be complacent. We are human. We are able to feel what others feel. When others suffer, we suffer.
As the world order comes apart, as nations fail, as disasters unfold (anything that destroys our home or makes living impossible) we will share in the experience. This will be the most difficult challenge of all. As others struggle to survive we will feel a need to help even if we have no ability to do so. As other die, we will feel the weight of their deaths on our minds. As others become violent, taking actions we cannot condone, we will suffer the anxiety of a civilization collapsing.
Some days I think it would be easier to remain ignorant.
Susan Anderson 4 days ago
Marketing and 2D media keep comfort and convenience on an accelerating track. It’s the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, out of control. If only we all could see that. In my walk through life I despair of getting almost anyone to look at even the tiniest bit of waste and see how they could cut back.
Thank you for this terrific article.
David Veale 4 days ago
I think your concerns are all quite valid Jody — and share them 100%. But I would caution against emotional investment in solving them, as much as I would like to see them resolved. I spent decades making significant personal changes and hoping to see others follow suit when the exact opposite has occurred.
Probably the most important consideration is the fact that we’ve triggered multiple positive feedback loops. Anthropogenic emissions were never more than a few percent of the flow of carbon through natural systems. Yet, they’ve been all that was needed to throw the system out of balance.
The arctic now belches methane from the seafloor and melting permafrost, acidified oceans start to fail us as sea life disappears (a few years ago in the Gulf of Alaska, and more recently in the north Atlantic (google the Lofoten Islands bird colony collapses — over 99% over a few short years). This year, the state of Alaska started flying frozen fish to communities along the Yukon to keep them from starving, as the salmon there have disappeared.
Of equal importance is the dramatic rise in wildfire rates, with many forest regions around the globe likely approaching carbon-positive status just as has been documented in the Amazon basin. The fires ripping through Siberia this summer greatly exceeded those that were raging across the forests on our continent.
When the natural world tips like this, it quickly eclipses our human emissions. This newly awakened “sleeping giant” renders moot any attempt to reduce our own emissions — even if we were willing or able to take them to zero.
Even if the industrial economy falls flat on its face, or the human population disappears next year, it seems quite apparent to me that the processes now set in motion will continue, and dramatically alter the biosphere we’ve enjoyed for our brief existence. My only real advice is to enjoy it while we can.
Evgeniy Shcherbakov 3 days ago
While the dramatic consequences are already here and we undoubtedly see more and more of the examples you’ve listed in the coming decades, not only the view that there is nothing more we can do and the worst has already come is binary and doomeristic, it is also false. There are still different states in the making the world may end up in – even if there are some models that predict complete extinction if we stay on the path we’re on, these are still up to the observational tests. No model I’ve seen states that our impact from now on will be insignificant in the bigger picture. The Clathrate gun hypothesis is also in need of the observational test, and whether this tipping point (arguably, the most critical of them all) has been reached yet still remains to be seen.
“it seems quite apparent to me that the processes now set in motion will continue, and dramatically alter the biosphere we’ve enjoyed for our brief existence.” – they will continue, but scale does matter as is the qualitative characteristics of said alteration.
In other words, the “black” future still has shades of grey, and it’s just a physical reality that what humanity does still matters. Who knows, maybe extreme weather in the nearest decade will be so devastating that the global capitalist market will collapse in itself, with the strong drop in emissions. Or an even more dangerous pandemic emerge, wiping out just as many people to release our overshoot and still preserve a technological civilization. Let’s not give up and help capitalism to destroy the planet, shall we?
BillLoggins yesterday
I remember that article! Guess what? It didn’t dissuade the peak oilers of the day from endlessly repeating it as part of their wet doomer dreams though. I use the reference as it has been most commonly used since those long gone days of bell shaped curves that aren’t, export land models predicting the end in 2006, shale formations not being able to produce oil or gas and the US having peaked back in the early 70’s, because the light/medium sweet crude from the impossible to produce from shales isn’t REALLY oil. If you don’t stick with church doctrine, folks can get annoyed with well informed heretics. But thanks for reminding me that the St Matthews story (Easter Island was another one) were never as simple as the congregation believed.
When the scarcity starts, it’s there forever.
mat redsellyesterday
We are in south western Ontario… and too much rain! Can’t get my sunflowers and corn harvested.
BillLoggins4 days ago
I am forced to admit that yes…if someone is hitting themselves in the head with a hammer…and complaining about the pain, and the blood in their eyes, and you point out that, you know, they should stop…and then don’t? Yes…they get what they deserve. Although building an entire city on top of an active fault zone, I mean really, that one takes the cake.
I agree with you that some days, it would be easier to remain ignorant. Acceptance seems to be a better response to me. Accept that we will choose to stop hitting ourselves in the head with a hammer (collectively speaking), or we will not. Understand that green washing is just that. Effort on an individuals part matters, regardless of what those around us choose to do, or not do. Don’t build your house on reclaimed swamp land, don’t live on active fault zones or near streams that can become raging rivers with nothing more than a heavy duty rain storm. And pay your insurance bill so that when things do happen, you are covered.
Jody Tishmack 3 days ago
I think and feel much as you do. We really don’t know what the future holds. There may be negative feedback loops as well as positive. Models don’t fully capture how the atmosphere and ocean are responding to heating. And I agree, we don’t know what pressure extreme weather will exert on the economy. We certainly know that drought is forcing civil war and failed nation states.
As earth’s systems change climate patterns are disrupted and new more chaotic responses emerge. Also capitalism (the thing we love to hate) could also cause dramatic shifts in energy use. For example, EV (and solar recharging) could become more widespread over the next five years. We are seeing a significant decline in oil investment and rise in prices that may force a rapid decline in oil consumption. Although I don’t believe it’s wise to ‘plan’ for new technologies that will save us, I don’t discount the efforts of scientists and engineers particularly when funding is applied properly.
Jody Tishmack3 days ago
Do you ever wonder what will happen as industrial agriculture comes to an end? I wrote about this idea before. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-08-01/drawing-down-atmospheric-carbon/
I think this system and the food it manufactures is beginning to fail and may have reached a tipping point. The prices for fertilizer and chemicals are soaring and its becoming difficult to buy and repair large equipment. The supply chains that distribute this food is breaking down. Farmers are not going to be able to plant as much corn this year. Once we stop growing so much corn and soybeans we may see many interesting shifts in farming, perhaps moving towards more rejuvenative agriculture. I believe it won’t take long for farmers to see the benefit of carbon sequestration, as they plow more organic matter into their soil. In Indiana, Federal, State and local programs are developing that explore paying farmers to do so. We could be on the precipice of a massive shift in agriculture and food in the market.
Joe Clarkson 6 days ago
“we will find ourselves between a rock and hard place”
I think present tense would be more accurate.
BillLoggins5 days ago
My view is that people will do what they want to do, and can do, for as long as they can do it. Lying to ourselves all along the way. Might we then get knocked off the good ol’ fashioned St. Matthews Island reindeer way? Sure. As far as all these new and exciting weather disasters being some sort of harbinger of doom, some of this is a moving the goalposts issue (anyone else here live through Hurricane Agnes before any and all bad weather was climate change related?). If 1 in 3 Americans were in a weather disaster hit county across 3 months, then why aren’t we talking about the 1.8 million deaths related to them? So now disaster means, “sounds bad but doesn’t kill folks worth squat”? 8000 people died 121 years ago in Galveston by hurricane, but they are “disasters” for 1 in 3 Americans because some small fraction of them got a hole in their roof, or they have to clean mud out of their basement? Hit Texas with cold weather, and people die, power is out for a week, it makes the papers all around the country. Hit Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, Minnesota and the UP of Michigan with the same “disaster” and its sledding weather. Once upon a time we used powerful words to describe powerful events, to this old fart it sure seems like power word inflation has been running rampant for way too long.
shoal 5 days ago
The crisis of all goes deeper than climate change and cost of living. These are just symptoms of a bigger illness. I would put climate change lower down the list than most environmentalist do. Putting climate change lower on the list does not make it less bad. What this means is there are more pressing issues immediately ahead. Keep in mind the issues are responsible for making climate change a predicament. If you don’t solve these issues then you don’t solve climate change. I would go further and say these issues can’t be solved. This is a trap that we are path dependent in. This means all the talk about the grandiose human agency that the elites are trying to muster is just more of the human waste stream killing the human family, web of life, and forcing the planet’s systems into abrupt change.
The very heart of the problem is human nature. Human nature can’t be reformed in a state of overshoot. This overshoot is with our numbers but also our consumption. Population is easy to understand but remember affluence is a force multiplier of population. Today there are complaints about a small number of affluent people but it is really too many people getting more affluent. The absolute size of the human population is the problem when this population is growing more affluent. Yet, the elites are saying sustainable development will solve this problem. This is like NetZero50 will solve carbon emissions by emitting tremendous amounts of carbon. This absurd elite thinking of cake and eating it is just more of the Cath22 of the overshoot of affluence.
Overshoot is easy to embrace with too many people. The harder and more ingrained issue is overshoot of affluence. Affluence is too much complex knowledge, complicated tech, and relentless efficiency applied in systematic system of networked delocalization. This is the car culture, tech culture, and the elite networks developed to grow and prosper. Here the trap is complete. Here man is the most delusional and beyond reform. It is the elites in general but more importantly the cabal of uber globalist elites who are now pushing urban technocracy of more tech and systems of more transhuman human control. The ultimate blasphemy is the lie of affluence destroying nature by preaching nature saving solutions that are only wealth and power preservation strategies. These elites do not care about you or the planet. This takes us back to the classic arrangement of humans of old where a few elites dominate a mass of serfs as that civilization self-destructs. Today this classic human retirement party is the transformation of human overshoot into a faux NetZero urban world of smart tech. This will be our last great waste stream.
The problem is this arrangement is at a late stage of a crisis of all. It is the illness stage of hubris. The living in the lie of affluence with large populations. The material affluence we have today requires large populations because of economies of scale and specialization this can’t be downsized by efficiency or degrowth. This basic human need for affluence, comforts, and psychological satisfaction is not a problem until the tipping over into overshoot. Human overshoot occurred with the industrial revolution so we are far into the process. Where we are now is the tipping over into where efforts at more affluence of tech, efficiency, and knowledge is now entering the phase where diminishing returns goes non- linear into problem creation. When problem solving becomes problem making then what you have is a snowball of problems. This is when the turbulence of decline begins the process of abandonment, dysfunction, and irrational. Not all human agency is there yet but we are in the neighborhood of a crisis of all.
When you see this for what it is then you have to withdraw locally because it is here proper scale can be achieved to deal with the predicament of human civilization tipping over into self-organizing self-destruction. You can’t transcend this but you can transform your local out of this condition of being trapped in the circular of making the problem worse by employing the same tools and strategies. You adapt the tools and strategies locally where scale is proper with the key ingredient of degrowth doom. You begin the green prepping growth process of degrowth. This may sound incongruous but it really is just finding that niche where overall destructive change allows proper local growth. This is the basics of succession. Use the destructive growth of the greater system to do constructive growth locally. You are still trapped in the condition and consequences of human overshoot but you are better able to adapt and mitigate. Cities are not where you want to be but you will still need cities. Tech is the problem but you will still need tech. The biggest ingredient is reject the narrative of the elites of science, academia, and globalist governance. These are the priest of scientism preaching the mechanization of human affluence through less humanity in transhumanism. Embrace nature instead. It is here where meaning is and this meaning is of consequences and the rationalization of lies. Realgreenadaptation.blog
Apparently there’s a bug in Disqus and the comments for this article aren’t displaying. I’m re-entering them now. I Unfortunatley, the sequence is mixed up. If I have time, I’ll re-order them.
Jody Tishmack 5 days ago
Bill, I’m not even sure where to start…or if it’s even worth the effort since you appear to be content with your views. I might point out that anecdotal accounts of past severe weather are a poor source of comparison when it comes to understanding climate change and its impact on weather disasters. I might also point out that using the number of deaths as a measure of impact is also a poor measurement. Fewer deaths are the result of better early warning systems.
Climate scientists use many ways to graph data hoping they can inform us of what is happening as the earth’s atmosphere, land, and oceans warm, and the warming trends accelerate. I think we should be concerned that 9 out of 10 of the earth’s warmest years on record occurred within the last 11 years. (In order of highest temperature: 2016, 2020, 2019, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2014, 2010, 2013, 2005.) Portland Oregon suffered three heat waves this summer. Temperature records are sometimes broken, but usually by a few tenths of a degree. Portland’s record high temperature (107F in 1942) was not just broken it was shattered reaching 116 degrees F.
Perhaps the reason we are seeing “power word inflation” is because people impacted by severe weather events struggle to describe what they experienced or to put it into context with previous experience. Elder people will say “I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never seen anything like this.” Fire fighters say “I’ve fought fires for 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like this.” It’s hard to find words to describe what has happened when our past experiences fail to prepare us for the unimaginable.
Perhaps you don’t realize how dismissive your comment was, describing the damage caused by Ida as “some small fraction of them got a hole in their roof, or they have to clean mud out of their basement”. This is a vast understatement of the number of homes damaged, the amount of damage, and the weeks and months of suffering of people went through who were forced to live in damaged homes without power, without food, and without help due to flooded roads (some for over a month). Perhaps you might find more empathy if you did some deeper reading, such as stories from local newspapers. It is comments like these that make some people think Americans haven’t a clue. Why should we care as long as our life is comfortable?
Here’s one storm that you may not have even heard about. It won’t make the list of billion $ disasters. It was quickly eclipsed by Hurricane Ida. For the small community devastated by the abnormal rain event, life probably feels it’s been changed forever.https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2021/08/22/flooding-destroys-rural-middle-tennessee-towns-leaving-10-dead-and-dozen-missing/8234159002/. Now multiply this by 10,000 depending on how widely you search and you will begin to understand how widespread and devastating weather disasters are becoming, and why we must do something now to address climate change.