Showing posts with label economic contraction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economic contraction. Show all posts

Tuesday, 29 September 2020

Collapse, you say? Part 2: Inputs and Outputs

Waves breaking along the Lake Huron shore—and this on a relatively quiet day.

The title of this series of posts comes from the typical reaction you get when suggesting that our civiiization might be collapsing, "Collapse you say, surely not!" In my last post I said that I am convinced it is already happening or at least will happen at some point soon. Then I went on to explain what I mean by collapse—the process by which a civilization declines in its ability to provide the necessities of life to its members, the end result being that people are forced to fend for themselves or perish.

It seems to me that this is in fact happening today—that for all but a tiny minority at the "top", things are getting continually worse. The how and why of this process is the subject of this post and the ones that follow it.

The means of production and distribution that provide us with the necessities of life in modern industrial civilization require certain inputs and produce certain outputs. Today I want to the look at the problems posed in acquiring those inputs and disposing of those outputs.

I would guess that it's clear that by inputs I mean the energy and materials required to make the things we need. But what I mean by outputs may be less clear. I am not referring to the goods that are produced from the inputs, but the waste products produced in the process and the garbage that is left over when we are done using those goods.

But why should these inputs and outputs constitute problems?

Conventional thinking has our civilization in a box, separate from our planet and its ecosphere. The inputs (energy and materials) our civilization uses come from sources that are seen as essentially infinite and the outputs (waste heat and waste materials) are discharged into sinks that are also seen as being essentially infinite in size. Given all that, no reason is seen for progress—economic growth in this context—not continuing for the foreseeable future. This way of looking at things typifies some of the blind spots of modern thinking on economics and business.

Figure 1

Figure 1 illustrates what I am talking about. As long as there were relatively few people on our planet, and they weren't consuming excessively, it's easy to see how we might have looked at things this way. But now that we are well on our way to filling up the planet—or more likely well beyond that point—this is no longer valid. And sure, many people are aware that this is a very unrealistic picture, but the people who are running things, even those who verbally acknowledge the realities, continue to act as if there are no limits built into the system. In a future post we'll look at why this is so, but for now it suffices to say that it truly is the case.

Figure 2

Figure 2 is a different diagram, which provides a more realistic depiction of things as they exist today.

First of all, our civilization exists on a finite planet, entirely within that planet's ecosphere, with no real separation from it (note the dashed border). Our inputs are taken from that finite source and our wastes are discharged back into that same finite space, used as a sink for waste heat and all our material wastes. This has some truly nasty consequences.

Inputs and outputs come in two forms: energy and materials. Energy flows from more concentrated to less concentrated forms, and regardless of where it comes from, is eventually radiated away from the planet as waste heat. Because of this, at any one level, we only get to use energy once. Materials stay around and can be reused, but generally change from more organized forms to less organized, (and less useful) forms as time passes.

For the planet itself, on the relatively short timescales we are considering, the only significant inputs and outputs are in the form of energy—sunlight in and waste heat out. This means that the planet isn't a closed system and incoming energy can be used to arrange matter into more complex forms, converting the energy used to a less concentrated form in the process. That's the good news—the rest of the news is bad.

Outputs

Let's look at outputs first, since that will make it easier to understand some of the problems with inputs. As I said, the outputs I am talking about are the wastes from processes within our society, and the garbage left over when we are done with the products of those processes. We simply throw these things away, but the trouble is that there is no such place as "away". The sinks into which we dispose of wastes are part of the very same environment where we get our inputs from, so this is much like shitting in our own nest. And in a great many cases it is not necessary at all. Many of these end products could, with relatively little effort, be fed back into the processes, and not treated as "wastes" at all.

That we haven't "circularized" our use of materials is a really bad sign. Why we continue to do this is inherent to the internal workings of our civilization and I'll go into the details of that in a future post. For now it is sufficient to understand that as long as that civilization exists in its present form, it's outputs will continue to be a problem.

There are a great many different types of pollution, but for our purposes today I'll concentrate on two particular type of waste—carbon dioxide and methane.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is produced in the burning of fossil fuels and biomass, and in the processes we use to make things like steel and concrete, essential building materials of our civilization. CO2 is a major contributor to the greenhouse effect and consequently climate change, and is also the cause of ocean acidification.

Methane (natural gas, CH4) has been touted as a replacement for coal and oil since it gives off less (but not zero) CO2 when burned. But it is an even more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Between the wellhead and where it is used a great deal of methane leaks into the atmosphere—probably enough to overshadow any reduction in CO2 released by burning natural gas instead of other fossil fuels. Methane is also produced during the decay of organic matter and by the digestive systems of many animals. Warming due to climate change is releasing methane currently trapped in permafrost and in methane clathrate hydrates at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, further intensifying the warming process.

Ocean acidification the lesser known evil twin of climate change, occurs when CO2 is dissolved in water. An estimated 30–40% of the carbon dioxide from human activity released into the atmosphere dissolves into oceans, rivers and lakes. Some of it reacts with the water to form carbonic acid. Some of the resulting carbonic acid molecules dissociate into a bicarbonate ion and a hydrogen ion, thus increasing ocean acidity (H+ ion concentration).

Increasing acidity is thought to have a range of potentially harmful consequences for marine organisms such as depressing metabolic rates and immune responses in some organisms and causing coral bleaching. A net decrease in the amount of carbonate ions available may make it more difficult for marine calcifying organisms, such as coral and some plankton, to form biogenic calcium carbonate, and such structures become vulnerable to dissolution. Ongoing acidification of the oceans may threaten food chains linked with the oceans.

(Thanks to Wikipedia for the last two paragraphs.)

These are food chains that we sit at the top of, with many people, especially in poorer nations, relying heavily on seafood for protein.

Climate change has been in the news a lot lately, with a wide range of people expressing concern about its negative effects on our future. If, despite this, you are still a doubter or denier, you're in the wrong place on the internet, and need not bother leaving any comments. In my experience, if you scratch a climate change denier, you will find beneath the surface a rich person who is worried about losing their privilege.

So, climate change is real and it is driven by increases in greenhouse gases (CO2 and CH4 among others) in the atmosphere which cause the planet to retain more of the sun's heat. It has also been called "global warming", since it causes the overall average temperature of the planet to going up. The high latitudes in particular are already experiencing temperature increases. Eventually this is going to cause enough melting of glaciers to make for a significant increase in sea level.

In the meantime, climate change is also causing more frequent and heavier storms, which combined with even small increases in sea level, are causing a lot of damage along the oceans' shores. Such storms are also causing more frequent and serious flooding of many rivers.

Climate change is also intensifying droughts in many other areas, and in some of those areas this is leading to wild fires.

How does all this tie into collapse?

Storm surges, high winds, river flooding and wild fires are doing a great deal of damage to human settlements, at a time when our economy is struggling and the added cost of rebuilding can scarcely be afforded. Especially since we tend to rebuild in the same areas, leaving rebuilt settlements just as exposed as they were before.

The effects of climate change on agriculture are even more serious. In the ten or so millennia since we started practicing agriculture the climate on this planet has been particularly friendly to that endeavour. Farmers have been able to count on reliable temperatures and rainfall. This is now starting to change and as the rate of that change picks up over the coming decades, it is going to be very challenging to adapt to. This at a time when we are struggling to keep up to the demands of a growing and ever more affluent population for food and when there is little left in the way of wilderness to expand our farms into.

Even if climate change was the only problem we faced, it is serious enough to place the continued survival of our species into question. We are facing, to quote Jem Bendell, "inevitable collapse, probable catastrophe and possible extinction."

The threat of climate change is serious enough that most people who worry about such things at all are concentrating on it alone. Unfortunately, they are largely ignoring looming problems with the inputs required by our civilization.

Inputs

The problem with inputs is "resource depletion". We live on a finite planet and we can really access only a small part of it—the lower part of the atmosphere, the oceans and a few thousand feet at the top of the crust. Within that volume, there are finite supplies of the resources that we rely on.

Several problems result from the way we access and use those resources.

We generally access the lowest hanging fruit first. This means that the most convenient, easily accessible and highest quality resources get used up first. That makes sense as far as it goes, but it means as time goes by we are forced to use less easily accessible and lower quality resources. This takes more energy and more complex equipment, and is more costly.

Many of the resources we rely on are non-renewable—there is a finite amount of them on this planet, and "they" aren't making any more. Further, we use them in very wasteful ways. It is important to be aware here that, even at best, there is always some irreducible waste in our use of any resource, but currently we tend to make things, use them once and throw them "away". This means that depletion of many resources is happening thousands of times more quickly than it really needs to, and as I said in the section on outputs, that waste is accumulating in the environment.

Some of the resources we use are renewable, but the processes by which they are renewed work at a limited rate. We are using many of these so called renewable resources at greater than their replacement rate, and so they too are becoming depleted.

Conventional economists will tell you that when a resource starts to get rare, its price goes up, encouraging the development of substitutes. This is true to some limited extent, but many of the most critical resources simply have no viable substitutes. Not unless we are willing to make significant and unwelcome changes to the way we live.

At this point, we should look at some specific resources and the unique problems each of them presents.

Energy, Fossil fuels

Despite what conventional economists would tell you, energy (not money) is actually the keystone resource for our economy. Nothing happens inside our civilization without energy as an input and degraded energy (waste heat) as an output. Money functions as a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value, all of which is very useful, but energy is what makes the economy function and grow. About 80% of that energy currently comes from fossil fuels (primarily coal, oil and natural gas). The remaining 20% comes from sources that we can only access using equipment that is both made using fossil fuels and powered by them.

So, our civilization is utterly dependent on having a cheap and abundant supply of fossil fuels. "Peak Oil" enthusiasts have been saying for decades now that we'll soon run out of oil and things will come to a grinding halt. In fact, though, there are still large quantities of hydrocarbons to be found in the earth's crust, so you might ask, "What's the problem?"

Well, there are two problems with continuing to burn fossil fuels.

One is the consequences for the climate of burning hydrocarbons and releasing ever larger amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is a very serious problem, for which we are having trouble finding and implementing any sort of solution.

The other problem, I'll be calling it "the surplus energy problem", is in many ways more complex and more serious.

Because we use various forms of technology to access energy, many people think that technology makes energy, and with improved technology we can always make more energy. Or, in this case, access the difficult to access hydrocarbons that currently remain in the ground. But in fact, the opposite is true—technology uses energy and won't work without it.

The energy that remains after we've powered the processes used to acquire that energy is referred to as "surplus energy." For instance, the technology used to drill oil wells and pump crude oil out of the ground uses energy. Back in the day, it used to take the energy equivalent of about one barrel of oil to get 100 barrels of oil out of the ground, leaving a surplus energy equivalent to 99 barrels of oil. This is usually expressed as "Energy Returned on Energy Invested" (EROEI), in this case 100/1, giving an EROEI of 100. Another way of looking at this is to talk about the Energy Cost of Energy (ECoE). In this case that would be 1/100, or 1%. Note that both these numbers are just bare numbers without units, and most significantly without a dollar sign in front of them. The "money cost" of energy is another thing entirely and since it is influenced by speculation on future supply and by fluctuations in demand (as we have seen in 2020 during the pandemic) it is not a reliable indicator of the actual cost of energy in energy terms, or the future availability of energy.

Conventional oil discoveries have not been keeping up with depletion for some time and our use of conventional oil actually peaked in the last few years. So we have been forced to switch to lower quality and more difficult to access sources. Conventional oil today has an EROEI ranging from 10 to 30. Tight oil and gas (from fracking), heavy oil and the "dilbit" (diluted bitumen) made from tar sands all have EROEIs less than 5, or ECoEs of 20% or greater.

"So what?" you might say. As long as the net amount of energy available is sufficient to power our civilization, what's the problem? Well, it's not just the amount of energy available from any particular source that really counts, but the EROEI. Or more precisely the weighted average of the EROEIs of all the various energy sources an economy uses. That number needs to be around 15 or more to keep that economy growing.

When the average EROEI goes below 15, growth slows and eventually stops and it becomes difficult to raise enough capital to even maintain existing infrastructure. Why our civilization needs to grow is a topic for another day, but it certainly does. This is what most people are missing about energy. Yes, a country can use debt to finance access to low EROEI energy resources in order to keep the economy going. But only for a while, until its economy contracts to the point where things begin to fall apart. This is certainly the case in the US. Fracking has made sufficient energy available, at what seems like a reasonable dollar price, but the real economy is mysteriously contracting, and debt is continually growing. Both economists and politicians, while putting on a brave face, are hard pressed to do anything about it, because they don't understand the surplus energy problem.

As we saw in the section on "Outputs", there are pressing reasons not to continue burning fossil fuels. But even if that were not the case, it would not be possible to continue running a growth based industrial civilization on the low EROEI fossil energy sources now available to us. For this reason alone, collapse seems like a sure thing to me, and I would say it has been underway since oil production in the continental U.S. peaked in the early 1970s.

But, you may say, what about renewable energy sources? Like non-conventional fossil fuels there are large amounts of energy available from sources like hydro, biomass, wind, solar and so forth. A great many people today believe that renewables can replace fossil fuels and solve both our surplus energy and climate change problems. In fact it has become very unpopular to challenge that idea, but I am afraid I must do just that.

This post ened up at over 6000 words long, enough to try the patience of even my most loyal readers. So I have split it in two at this point, leaving the second half for my next post, which will pick up from here and cover renewable energy sources, ecosystem services and fossil water.


Links to the rest of this series of posts, Collapse, you say?

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Thursday, 20 August 2020

What I've Been Reading, July 2020

Links

Above the Fold

Miscellaneous

At the Doomstead Diner

Over the last while I've gotten together on Skype with RE at the Doomstead Diner and made a few videos. Here are links to what we've done so far. There is more to come.

Defund the Police

Coronavirus

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

The New Fascism, and Antifa

I hear a lot of well educated people saying that the people some of us are calling fascists don't meet all the criteria for being "real" fascists. Others have even accused us of calling anyone we disagree with a fascist. I predict that a few decades from now those same people will be saying they wish they hadn't been quite so fussy with their definitions, and had acted sooner to oppose these "new fascists", even if they weren't identical to the fascists of the twentieth century.

Economic Contraction and Growing Inequality

  • The Ides of Autumn--Seeds, Stagflation and Crash Risk , by Tim Morgan, Surplus Energy Economics
    "For anyone involved in economic interpretation, these are hectic times. They’re frustrating times, too, for those of us who understand that the economy is an energy system, but have to watch from the sidelines as huge mistakes are made on the false premise that economics is ‘the study of money’, and that energy is ‘just another input’."

Recipes and Cooking

  • Bouillon Brodo Caldo Dashi, Medium-Anthology of Cooking
    "The broths of several cultures, their preparation and use"
    I find broths freeze quite well. I also tend to cook them quite a bit longer than this piece suggests, like overnight. Very few tings benefit by being turned in a race.

Genetic Engineering

Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

  • Panic-free GMOs, A Grist Special Series by Nathanael Johnson
    "It’s easy to get information about genetically modified food. There are the dubious anti-GM horror stories that recirculate through social networks. On the other side, there’s the dismissive sighing, eye-rolling, and hand patting of pro-GM partisans. But if you just want a level-headed assessment of the evidence in plain English, that’s in pretty short supply. Fortunately, you’ve found the trove."
    A series of articles that does a pretty good job of presenting the facts about GMOs. I plan to include one article from this series here each month.
  • Genetically modified literature (in which I read books so you don’t have to), by Nathanael Johnson, Grist

Practical Skills

American Politics

  • What Could Happen If Donald Trump Rejects Electoral Defeat?, by Jabin Botsford, The New Yorker
    "A new book conjures three scenarios in which President Trump could lose the election but not step down."
  • Are you a conservative? It’s a trick question., by Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post
    This article makes some good points, but I'd say that conservatism is a force for evil, and still a powerful one.
  • Biden’s Big-Tent Strategy Seems to Be Working, by John Cassidy, The New Yorker
    "None of this means that Biden is a lock for the Oval Office. Between now and November 3rd, something could conceivably shift the momentum against him, such as a Vice-Presidential pick that backfires, a major slipup in the debates, or a surprising economic upturn. Right now, though, the challenger’s strategy of keeping the focus on the incumbent and pitching a broad tent that accommodates anyone who wants to see the back of Trump is working well."

Canadian Politics

Debunking Resources

These are of such importance that I've decide to leave them here on an ongoing basis.

Science Based Medicine

"Science is properly reductionist for a reason. In order to understand the world, and to have reliable empirical knowledge, you have to build your theories from the bottom up, but also confirm them from the top down. This means that we correlate ultimate effects with basic knowledge about mechanisms. Scientific knowledge does not have to flow in any particular direction. At times we discover something fundamental about the world, and then look for implications and applications. At other times we observe effects in the world, and then reverse engineer their cause. In either case real scientific phenomena become increasingly embedded in this network of knowledge. When a claim remains persistently isolated at one level, and neither leads to further applications or to more basic discoveries about the nature of reality, that is suspect." Steven Novella

There is No God, and Thou Shall Have No Other Gods

I don't think I've made any secret of the fact that I am an atheist, but I may not have made it clear that I think any sort of worship is a bad thing and that believing in things is to be avoided whenever possible. Indeed, I do not believe in belief itself. That's what the "Thou shall have no other gods" is about—it's not enough to quit believing in whatever God or Gods you were raised to believe in, but also we must avoid other gods, including material wealth, power and fame.

Further, many people today (including most atheists) follow the religion of "progress", which is based on the belief that mankind is destined to follow a road that leads from the caves ever upward to the stars, and that however bad things seem today, they are bound to be better tomorrow due to technological advancement and economic growth. This is very convenient for those who benefit most from economic growth, but it is hardly based on any sort of science and leads to a great many confused and incorrect ideas.

Poverty, Homeless People, Minimum Wage, UBI, Health Care, Affordable Housing

Artificial Intelligence

  • If You Think GPT-3 Makes Coders Obsolete, You Probably Do Not Write Code, by Chris I., Medium--Data Science
    "In rebuttal of data scientists and developers going obsolete"

    • Books

    Fiction

    Non-Fiction

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    Friday, 27 March 2020

    Responding to Collapse, Part 17—Shortages of Money, Part 2

    A high water level, wind, big waves and temperatures below freezing
    combine to create ice sculptures along Lake Huron.

    I am writing this in late March of 2020 and it seems that hardly anyone else is writing anything that doesn't focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. A few posts back I said that shortages of electrical power, diesel fuel and money will be at the heart of the troubles that lie ahead for small remote communities as collapse progresses. I am interested in that sort of community because that is where I am recommending that you take refuge in order to ride out collapse, and where I have already taken refuge myself. I've covered electrical power and diesel fuel, and in my last post I covered the sort of money shortages that occur when you have money on deposit at the bank, or credit prearranged with them, but can't access it due to problems with the banking system.

    Today, tempting as it is to talk at length about the pandemic, I'll be talking about the money shortages that occur when you have trouble earning enough money to live on because of problems with the economy. The end game is the demise of BAU (Business as Usual) and finding a sustainable replacement for it on a local scale. But between now and then there is a transitional state that is going to be pretty challenging for many of us.

    To my way of thinking, the pandemic is going to result in a relatively small but very much regrettable loss of human life. To put that in context, I've been saying that the demise of industrial civilization that I expect to take place over the next few decades will result in the death of 80 to 90% of the human population. That's pretty horrific, I know, but it's the reality that we face and denying it will only make things worse.

    For the majority those who survive the pandemic, its effect on the economy is going to be quite serious. As usual, I'm not expecting it to lead to a hard fast collapse over the next few months. Rather this will be one of those bumpy steps down that I have spoken about before, from which I expect we will recover to some extent. It will highlight the extreme fragility of our capitalistic economy, and serve to further weaken BAU. A lot of us will be learning more about what we can and can't get along without. Who knows, we may even see BAU weakened enough that local economies will have a chance to get started in some areas.

    In any case, much of what I have to say today applies to hard times of any sort. And to get back to today's topic, as I said last time, the song says, "money makes the world go round", but I don't agree. Drawing from the writings of Dr. Tim Morgan on "surplus energy economics", I would say that it is energy that makes the world, or at least the economy, go round.

    Energy and the economy

    So, I've said that energy is what makes the economy function. How does that work? An economy is really a system for making and distributing the things that people need. And to be clear, those "things" do include data and information. The processes by which things are made require energy in the form of heat, mechanical energy and electricity. Without energy, nothing works. Economist Steve Keen is one of just a handful of economists worldwide who understand the essential role of energy in the economy. As he puts it: “Capital without energy is a sculpture and labour without energy is a corpse.”

    In preindustrial economies heat came from firewood and mechanical energy came from muscles (human or animal) powered by food, and of course electrical technology hadn't yet been invented. (Yes, I'm leaving out power from falling water and moving air, but they played a relatively small part until more recent times. And I am aware that all these forms of energy ultimately come from sunlight.)

    In an industrial economy most production is done by machines, and those machines are usually powered by some sort of energy other than human or animal muscle power. This became true only in the last few hundred years after engines driven by heat from burning fossil fuels were developed. Yes,. they could be powered by burning firewood, but it is interesting to note that they were invented in Britain only after that island was already pretty short of wood.

    Because we use technology to access energy, people tend to think that technology produces energy. But just the opposite is true—technology uses energy. Even the technology we use to access energy uses some energy in the process. The energy that is left over is known as surplus energy, and that what really drives the economy. The term "Energy Returned on Energy Invested" quantifies this. Back in the day, for instance, it took about one barrel's worth of energy to get 100 barrels of oil out of an oil well, leaving 99 barrels of surplus energy for use in the economy. The EROEI was 100, calculated as 100 divided by 1. That was a very good EROEI, and resulted in a rapidly growing economy in the middle of the twentieth century.

    In pre-industrial days, the process of converting sunlight into food (done by plants, and less directly by animals eating plants) and then food into muscle power, had an EROEI of around 5. And that is why pre-industrial economies grew very slowly and attained a limited degree of complexity compared to our modern industrial economies. To keep functioning, a modern industrial economy needs the average EROEI of its energy sources to be above 15 or so. When the average EROEI falls below that level, growth stops and eventually it becomes difficult to maintain the complexity of the system.

    In the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century successful economies in what we now call the developed world were powered by fossil fuels with high EROEIs and they grew quickly. But since we picked the lowest hanging fossil fuel “fruit” first—the ones easiest to access and use—the EROEI of the remaining fossil energy sources has declined considerably and the rate of economic growth has declined with it. There are many alternatives to fossil fuels, but the ones most people are counting on (nuclear, solar, wind) all have low EROEIs, among other problems.

    Because our present banking system is fueled by growth and almost all economic operations are mediated through the banks, even small reductions in growth have very negative effects on the economy. The reduced EROEI of our energy supplies has been causing economic contraction for quite some time now. Governments don't understand this and are puzzled that none of the remedies suggested by conventional economists seem to work. So they have adjusted the way they calculate inflation, CPI, employment and GDP statistics to make it seem that the economy is still growing, inflation is under control and there are jobs for everyone, when none of that is really true.

    The situation is worsened by widening economic inequality. To use a pie analogy, where the pie represents all the wealth generated by the economy, the upper classes have always insisted on an ever growing slice of the pie. As long as the economy was growing, the amount of pie left for the rest of us could grow as well, though not so quickly as the share allotted to the wealthy. But once the economy started to contract, our share had to shrink faster that the economy itself was contracting if the upper class' share was to keep growing. And indeed this is what has happened.

    Any society that works like this will experience growing inequality and all but the upper class will suffer greatly during economic contractions. The U.S. is certainly an example of this. Since the 1990s there has been little real growth—debt and investment bubbles have been used as a substitute for surplus energy to keep things "growing". Interest rates have been lowered so that the increased debt can be supported. Those with wealth have been hard pressed to find investments that give good returns. Many have turned to speculation in real estate and this has resulted in real estate bubbles in many cities.

    The contracting economy has also meant businesses have had to streamline their operations to maintain their profitability. This has resulted not so much in outright unemployment, but rather in under-employment—part time, precarious jobs that won't support even a lone individual, much less a family. That, combined with the overheated real estate market, is making it very hard for working class people to find affordable accommodations. This is leading to homelessness for more and more people, with many who still have jobs being forced to live in their vehicles. And the prices of food, fuel and other necessities have also been going up, which only makes things that much worse.

    In societies where progressive taxation is used to take some of the money accumulated by the rich and fund a social safety net, inequality is decreased and conditions are much better for those at the bottom. The negatives effects of homelessness both on society and on the homeless themselves can be significantly reduced by providing socially supported accommodations.

    Let's be clear—I am not saying that it is possible to reverse the decay of BAU, but the trip down can be rendered much less unpleasant and more resources can be retained at the community and personal level for the adaptations that will be needed when BAU does eventually fail.

    Coping in a contracting economy—deliberate descent

    If anything, the contracting economy has been harder on small, rural communities than urban areas. Farming still continues but because less labour is involved these days, the farming community is smaller, and the business of providing services to farmers has declined as well. For the last several decades there has been a steady flow of young rural people to the cities in search of work, reducing the local population and causing the economy to shrink that much further.

    If, as I've been suggesting, you've moved to a small, remote town, found a job in the local economy and rented a place to live, you may well find that the local economy is drying up around you, and your job is much less secure, if it still exists at all. There will be a temptation to move back to the city. Why, then, am I recommending small, remote communities?

    Well, things aren't, and increasingly won't be, all that much better in the cities. And I believe that as collapse deepens and infrastructure and supply chains start falling apart more quickly, the cities will become a very much worse place to live while rural areas will have a chance to support themselves outside of BAU. And remote areas will be faced with less of a deluge of refugees from the cities than those rural areas immediately adjacent to the cities.

    The trick is finding a way to support yourself during the transitional period. Setting up economic arrangements outside of BAU will be very hard to do until BAU has been drastically weakened—today it just provides too much competition. You want to avoid homelessness if at all possible, since it has some very debilitating effects—poor health and lowered life expectancy, along with the sapping of personal strength and the loss of any sort of a community of people with the resources to help you.

    The key to avoiding destitution and homelessness is something called “deliberate descent', on which I wrote a series of posts a few years ago. John Michael Greer coined the phrase "collapse now and avoid the rush", and that is basically what I am talking about here—anticipating that the future holds a decline in your economic status, and taking voluntary steps to adapt to that before you are forced to.

    Whether your resources consist of a job, a pension or personal investments, you will use part of your income for living expenses (keeping those as low as possible), some for paying down debts, and some for accumulating a reserve of cash and non-perishable emergency preparations. Always with the awareness that income based on BAU will eventually disappear, and may do so at any time and at a moment's notice. And finally, having taken care of yourself, it would be wise to invest in people who are less fortunate—more on that in a moment.

    Unfortunately we are all being deluged with marketing efforts that attempt to convince us that we need a great many things. Most of those "needs" have only existed for a few years or decades at most and people got on just fine without them before that. So it is important to sort out your wants from your needs and concentrate on your needs when resources are limited. When it comes to material things, water, food, adequate clothing and a safe, warm, dry place to sleep are pretty much the short list. Of course, you may need some tools and equipment to acquire those things, but most of them can be made, borrowed or bought second hand.

    It will still be necessary to maintain personal morale, and some small luxuries and entertainments may help. But non-material things, chiefly human relationships, are far effective at maintaining our morale, and in monetary terms, much less expensive. No single individual can hope to be completely self sufficient, but a community can come pretty close. And a close knit community can provide the sort of companionship and support that material toys simply can't. Independence and privacy are likely to be among the main casualties of the changes in life style that I am talking about, and that will be hard for many of us, especially old boomers like myself.

    Rent, or taxes and upkeep on housing you own, will probably be the hardest part of BAU to get clear of and most of us will be paying them for quite some time yet. I think sharing housing with a group of people and pooling incomes to cover the cost is probably the way to go for many people. If you can find a way to set up an extended social unit that can maintain its integrity within BAU and generate enough income to pay taxes/rent and purchase what it can't produce (by gardening, hunting and so forth.), then the world should beat a path to your door. I notice younger people are being forced to try this, and are experiencing some degree of success, with which I am very impressed.

    Eventually rural municipalities will have to admit to the realities of collapse and reduce both property taxes and services to match the realities of the situation. Land reform will also be needed, to take advantage of potentially productive land that has essentially been abandoned by owners who can't make a living farming it. This will be easier to do once housing developers are no longer interested, having realized that no one can afford the housing they would build on such property.

    There is a role to play for an enlightened local government in organizing the response an area needs to mount when BAU withers to the point it can no longer provide the necessities, and in handling refugees from the city, but I haven't much faith in the kind of people who run for office in most municipalities. They tend not to be at all collapse aware and will most likely be caught unprepared and unwilling to change. More likely this will have to be done by small groups of people who are aware of what is going on and have planned ahead and made some preparations. I think the key is to realize that BAU's demise will be gradual, recognize the signs and start taking action at that point to get ahead of the curve of collapse.

    I can think of a few different situations people may find themselves in during the coming years, and approaches suitable for those situations.

    Retirees from the local area who (like me) have fairly decent pensions and already own a house will be in a good position until the pension fund runs into financial trouble, and our pension are discounted and finally disappear altogether. Indeed that is probably the way that BAU will first fail us. Fortunately, we know what's coming, we already know the area and have had lots of opportunity to established a network.

    Retirees from the big cities, who have sold their city homes for several times the price of a house in a small town, can set themselves up in such a town with a fair chunk of cash left over to live on, especially if they are content to chose a fairly modest place for their new home. Investing that cash so that it doesn't disappear will be the big challenge for those folks, especially with the chaos we can expect to see in the financial sector.

    Those who are still working to earn their living fall into several categories.

    Some intrepid souls with a job in the city will elect to move to a small remote town and commute. This is expensive and involves a lot of personal wear and tear. Others are self employed in a way that is not location dependent, or have a job in the city but can do the work from home most of the time. All these situations make it possible to move without having to find a new job. This allows you to get to know your new community without making any irreversible commitments. Especially if you keep your place in the city and rent in your new town. Your city home can be rented out, or sublet if you are renting.

    Skilled people—professionals, trades people, artisans and so forth— who can find paying jobs in the local economy are another significant group. Many areas have one or more large local industries that employ a significant number of people, and will continue to do so until the failing economy forces them to shut down. There's nothing wrong with working at a place like that as long as you realize it won't last forever and plan accordingly. In most areas there are also opportunities in health care, education, agriculture, trades and various sorts of services.

    I wouldn't advise anyone to try setting up a new business in a contracting economy, even if your idea seems fool proof (to you), but some jobs are available and if you have the right skills, there will be people who have need of you. You just have to find an area where the opportunities match your abilities. And of course if you succeed in "deliberately descending", it will be easier to find a job with pay that matches your needs.

    Then there are those who are less fortunate, who are working at a job that doesn't pay the bills, or have lost their job or their pensions or whose investments have evaporated in a market crash. Sadly there will be a great many more such folks as economic contraction becomes more intense. Many will find themselves homeless or at least tottering on the edge of it. And people in any of the categories above should keep in mind that they themselves may well become less fortunate at any moment.

    Sadly, many folks have a picture of homeless people as human detritus and pretty much beyond help, as if poverty was some sort of moral failing. But, if this was ever true, it is becoming less so all the time as ordinary working class people find it more and more difficult to earn enough to provide the necessities of life, even if they can find a job. I think there are a great many people currently in dire straits who could do, or easily enough learn to do, the sort of work that will need to be done in a community trying to support itself when BAU can no longer do so. Many would be willing or perhaps even eager. What is needed is the organization to offer these people a job, and training as required, with the aim of relocalizing* and, rehumanizing* the local economy in order to cope with broken supply chains and energy infrastructure.

    Initially these will be local people who left for the city and are now returning along with a few city folks who have read the writing on the wall and want to get out before things get worse. Eventually, it will get worse and then there will be refugees.

    In any case these people will need a place to live and they won't have the resources to buy or even rent. Those with local connections will live with parents or friends. Others will come in a vehicle and live in it, at least at the start, and they will need parking and access to services—water, washrooms, showers and electrical power as long as it is available. For those with no local connection and no vehicle, camping may be an option in the summer (certainly not in the winter, where I live), but families with a spare room should be encouraged to welcome them and collect room and board once they are working. Any empty housing should not be allowed to sit idle as long as there are people without a place to stay. The local community may eventually have get together to build some very modest, low cost rental accommodation, even though resources will be very short.

    Whatever the details, investing some time and money in creating jobs and making a place to live for such folks will eventually pay off very well, as BAU fades away and the new local economy rises to take its place. Experience has shown that in emergencies people do come together to do what is needed.

    That just about wraps up this series on responding to collapse. It would be good to have a closer look at the sort of community that I think you'll get when you do what I've been recommending here, but I'm beginning to think fiction might be a better vehicle for getting that across.

    I've been blogging here for just over eight years now and I still have ideas for a few more posts, but at some point in the near future I may try to write some fictional stories about the kind of situations I've been talking about in this series of posts. Sometimes stories can be very effective at getting across ideas. Providing, of course, that I am up to the writing challenge. We'll see.

    *Relocalization and rehumanization are words you won't find in the dictionary, at least not in the sense I mean them here. Relocalization refers to bring back to a community the part of its economy that was centralized during the industrialization of our society and producing locally what is needed locally. Rehumanization means that many of the tasks that have been automated over the last couple of centuries will once more be done by human muscles, hands and minds.

    The word conservation is often used together with those two terms, and in this context means using less in order to get by with what can be produced locally. Thanks to John Michael Greer for expressing these ideas so clearly in his blog, The Archdruid Report.


    Links to the rest of this series of posts, Preparing for (Responding to) Collapse:

    https://theeasiestpersontofool.blogspot.com/2020/03/responding-to-collapse-part-17-of-money.html
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    Tuesday, 11 February 2020

    What I've Been Reading, January 2020

    Links

    Miscellaneous

    In this section you will find some articles that I am simple at a loss as how to classify, and a few others that might well have gone in another section, but I think are important enough that they deserve a place at the top of the list. I'll leave it up to you to discern which is which.

    • I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left, by Ross LaJeunesse, Medium—Business
      "The company’s motto used to be “Don’t be evil.” Things have changed."
    • A Simple Explanation of White Privilege That Anyone Can Understand, by Mark Greene, Medium—Equality
    • Here’s A Riddle That Might Expose Your Blind Spot, by Rebec Ansar, Medium—An Amygdala
      "Don’t scroll to the end! That’s where the answer is."
    • George Monbiot on the unholy trinity of ideologies trashing our planet, by Brendan Montague , Open Democracy
      "The invisible ideology referred to is neoliberalism. But when I caught up with Monbiot at his home in Oxford this month he had already extended the scope of his speech to include capitalism and consumerism. This is the holy trinity: capitalism is the father, consumerism the son and neoliberalism the holy ghost."
    • Yuval Noah Harari and Fei-Fei Li on Artificial Intelligence: Four Questions that Impact All of Us, by Briana Brownell, Medium—Towards Data Science
      I won't deny that we need to be aware of the "new problems" that AI presents us with if we are to deal successfully with them. But I find it disturbing that while focusing on those problems, the discussion seems to be losing sight of the fact that the "old problems" are far from solved. The systems and supply lines we rely on for the necessities of life (air, water, food, shelter, fuel) are by no means secure. Not even here in the developed nations, and certain not in the developing nations. And that is why my focus is mainly on the old problems.
      Much of what Harari has to say is full of a naive eagerness about what AI can do today, and might someday be able to do, with seemingly very little awareness of the limitations of the current generation of AI advances. Those advances have brought us some success in a few very narrow fields, but there is no clear path to a wider, more general, application of AI. But I agree that we need to be concerned about how even those limited successes are being (or may soon be) used by capitalists and the governments who serve them.

    Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

    • The Nobel Prize for Climate Catastrophe, by Jason Hickel, Pocket—Foreign Policy
      "Growth versus life. The conflict between economics and science has never been clearer."
      "We can improve people’s lives right now, without any additional growth at all, simply by distributing existing income more fairly."
      "If we think about the growth conundrum from this angle, then it comes down to a much more obvious choice: between living in a more equitable society, on the one hand, and risking climate catastrophe on the other. I imagine that most people would have little difficulty choosing between the two."
      Convincing the upper class, the oligarchs who are running things, will prove quite difficult.
    • Capitalism is the Planet’s Cancer: Operate Before it’s too Late, by George Monbiot, You Tube

    The New Fascism, and Antifa

    I hear a lot of well educated people saying that the people some of us are calling fascists don't meet all the criteria for being "real" fascists. Others have even accused us of calling anyone we disagree with a fascist. I predict that a few decades from now those same people will be saying they wish they hadn't been quite so fussy with their definitions, and had acted sooner to oppose these "new fascists", even if they weren't identical to the fascists of the twentieth century.

    • Would you stand up to an oppressive regime or would you conform? Here’s the science , by The Conversdation,
      I have always had a lot of trouble going along with authority, but I finally learned that to resist effectively, it is best to keep your head down and maintain the appearance of going with the flow, while participating in "underground" activities. Those who resist openly are soon dealt with and find themselves in a position where they cannot resist.
    • How Capitalism Torched the Planet by Imploding Into Fascism, by Umair Haque, Medium— Eudaimonia and Co
      "Catastrophic Climate Change is not a Problem for Fascists—It is a Solution"
      A good essay, but as usual Mr. Haque misses the effects of economic contraction due to declining surplus energy. But even so, there is no excuse for those in the lower classes who have supported neo-fascists leaders.

    Eco-Modernism, Decoupling and the Religion of Progress

    ,

    Australia is Burning

    ,

    Pandemic

    Collapse

    Peak Oil

    Climate Change

    Economic Contraction and Growing Inequality

    Energy

    Agriculture

    Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are being spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

    • ‘Regenerative Agriculture’: World-Saving Idea or Food Marketing Ploy? by Nathanael Johnson, Medium—Environment
      "Let’s just hope that power is put towards pragmatically improving agriculture, rather than abandoning science for religious adherence to an idea."
      We definitely need a replacement for conventional agriculture that is (unlike "Certified Organic") more than a marketing ploy, and is based on something more than the "naturalistic fallacy".

    Food

    Genetic Engineering

    Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

    • Panic-free GMOs, A Grist Special Series
      "It’s easy to get information about genetically modified food. There are the dubious anti-GM horror stories that recirculate through social networks. On the other side, there’s the dismissive sighing, eye-rolling, and hand patting of pro-GM partisans. But if you just want a level-headed assessment of the evidence in plain English, that’s in pretty short supply. Fortunately, you’ve found the trove."
      A series of articles that does a pretty good job of presenting the facts about GMOs.
    • The GM safety dance: What’s rule and what’s real, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist

    Practical Skills

    • All about willow, by Hanna van Aelst, on her own website
      This page presents information about growing, harvesting, sorting, soaking and steaming willow to prepare it for weaving. On You Tube Hanna has a number of videos about various aspects of weaving baskets.

    American Politics

    Politics

    • On est là /Here we are! by Bernard Dreano, Open Democracy
      "Macron faces widespread protests against his proposed reforms, but the roots of discontent run deeper and are beginning to join up."

    Secession

    Debunking Resources

    These are of such importance that I've decide to leave them here on an ongoing basis.

    Pseudoscience, Quacks and Charlatans

    Science

    • Is Betelgeuse About To Explode? by Ethan Siegal, Medium—Starts with a Bang
      "It’s a supergiant star in the final stage of its life, and it just dimmed by an enormous amount. What’s going on?"

    Science Based Medicine

    Lacking an Owner's Manual

    The human body/mind/spirit doesn't come with an owner's manual, and we continually struggle to figure out how best to operate them.

    Gender and Sexuality

    There is No God, and Thou Shall Have No Other Gods

    I don't think I've made any secret of the fact that I am an atheist, but I may not have made it clear that I think any sort of worship is a bad thing and that believing in things is to be avoided whenever possible. Indeed, I do not believe in belief itself. That's what the "Thou shall have no other gods" is about—it's not enough to quit believing in whatever God or Gods you were raised to believe in, but also we must avoid other gods, including material wealth, power and fame.

    Further, many people today (including most atheists) follow the religion of "progress", which is based on the belief that mankind is destined to follow a road that leads from the caves ever upward to the stars, and that however bad things seem today, they are bound to be better tomorrow due to, technological advancement and economic growth. This is very convenient for those who benefit most from economic growth, but it is hardly based on any sort of science and leads to a great many confused and incorrect ideas.

    • Trump is Impeached, and We’re Leaving the Church, by Crissi Langwell, Medium—Religion
      Or maybe stop clinging to Jesus and realize that believing means claiming to know things that you don't actually know and leads to just the sort of thing that you're complaining about.
    • Everything you know about the Gospel of Paul is likely wrong , by David Bentley Hart, Aeon
      The point I like to make about religion (both in St. Paul's time and now) is that the people who are doing it are making it up as they go along. The only reality religion reflects is about the character of those who are inventing it, and frequently that reflection isn't very pretty.

    Intelligence and Consciousness

    Refugees and Migration

    Poverty, Homeless People, Minimum Wage, UBI, Health Care, Affordable Housing

    Artificial Intelligence

    Humour

    These are great times for political satire.

    Books

    Fiction

    Non-Fiction

    • Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, by Giacomo D'Alisa (Editor), Federico Demaria (Editor), Giorgos Kallis (Editor)
      "This overview of degrowth offers a comprehensive coverage of the main topics and major challenges of degrowth in a succinct, simple and accessible manner. In addition, it offers a set of keywords useful for intervening in current political debates and for bringing about concrete degrowth-inspired proposals at different levels—local, national and global."
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