Culture & Behavior

Not preparing, living my life

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By the time we were finished [with the interview], I felt that I’d lent myself to a subject about something I really know very little about – that is, preparing for a hypothetical crisis that may come someday. What I actually am starting (and I’m still just starting) to know something about is living in such a way that I’m somewhat insulated (not perfectly) from a whole host of scenarios.

The tempo of change

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As industrial society moves deeper into a time of crisis, the likelihood of drastic change rises. Still, even the most dramatic changes take on a different shape from the perspective of those present at the time. How will these differences affect our plans for a post-peak future?

The Long Descent (excerpts from new book)

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The Stories We Tell Ourselves: “One of the things that makes our culture’s reliance on the utopian myths of progress and apocalypse so problematic as we approach the end of the age of cheap energy is that both narratives claim to explain the entire universe.”
Tools for the Transition: “One of the most hopeful features of this side of our predicament is that the revitalization of old technologies can be done successfully by individuals working on their own. It’s precisely those technologies that can be built, maintained, and used by individuals that formed the mainstay of the economy in the days before cheap, abundant energy…” (paean to the slide rule)

Oil demand destruction & brittle systems

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People think we can insulate ourselves from supply disruptions, from our dependence on potentially unreliable foreign sources of oil, by improving our efficiency and eliminating “unnecessary” oil consumption. In my opinion, this is backward. I will argue that, because the demand that is destroyed first in a free market is the demand that is easiest to eliminate, the resulting consumptive system is more inelastic, more brittle, and more susceptible to systemic shock from supply disruption.

On American sustainability – summary

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Message to mainstream America: our American way of life—300+ million people enjoying historically unprecedented living standards—has been enabled by our increasingly dysfunctional ecological and economic behavior over the past 200 years. Our existing way of life is therefore unsustainable; in fact, America is facing imminent societal collapse.