Showing posts with label energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label energy. Show all posts

Tuesday, 28 May 2024

The Porcupine Saga, Part 9, When We Met Jack, Part 3

Allan Harper, evening, Wednesday, April 10, 2030

During supper Angie had warned the Porcupiners that they needed to have another meeting, and she was at the front of the room by the time Allan took a seat next to Erika. Jack sat down on the other side of Allan.

Angie cleared her throat and the conservations died down. "Well, here we all are again for another Tuesday night meeting, and it's only Wednesday. I suspect this will happen a lot for the first while. Several of the crews have reports to give, and there are decisions to be made. And on that note, I must say that I'm not up to facilitating and scribing at the same time. We need to keep track of decisions reached and action items assigned."

Gesturing with her clipboard and pen, Angie said, "Andrea, could you join me up here?"

"Sure thing, Angie," replied Andrea, and got up to join Angie at the front. Sitting down, she put pen to paper with a flourish and said, "OK, I'm ready, go for it."

"One small point before we go to the crew reports," said Angie. "I notice Jack has joined us. Does anybody have a problem with that?"

No one did. "What about him taking part in the discussion?"

Again, no one objected.

"OK," said Angie, "Jack, I have to tell you that if you get out of line, I'm going to jump on you a little harder than I would on the rest of these folks, since you don't have as much riding on what we decide."

"All I want to do is listen," said Jack.

"That'll work," said Angie, "Now, it's hard to say who should come first, so I'm going to just go with the order in which the crews approached me. Erika, that means the housing crew is up first."

Erica got up and made her way to the front. With a nod to Tom she said, "Well, I got picked to present what we've found and what we suggest doing about it. Most of what we have is questions—I hope we can answer them tonight."

"Go ahead," said Angie.

"Well, we think that first we need to decide what level of accommodations we are going to provide for people," said Erika. "At one extreme we could have people sleeping on mattresses in one of the pole barns, with essentially no privacy, shared washrooms and a shared kitchen and dining room. Our most basic needs would be met and it wouldn't tax our resources very much at all, since most everybody came with a mattress or two and some bedding.

"At the other extreme, we could commit to providing separate houses for everyone. I suspect that would take more resources than we have available."

"Sounds to me like when you say 'resources', you're talking about money, energy, materials and manpower," said Angie. "But I'd say the most basic resource we're considering here is privacy. I suspect we already have something of a consensus on that. Is anyone willing to accept the minimum privacy option?"

This question met with a chorus of noes from everybody except Tom.

He put up his hand and Angie nodded for him to go ahead. "When I started planning out this place, I was thinking of something pretty much like Erica's minimum privacy option, with the addition of privacy screens between each family's area on the floor of the second pole barn. I know it doesn't sound very pleasant, but I'm not sure that we can afford to spend a whole lot on accommodations this spring, when we should be concentrating on self sufficiency. Later on, sure, using our own materials, once we are set up to produce them, but not just yet."

"Can you stand to wait until we decide what level of accommodations we do want to go with, Tom?" asked Angie.

"Sure," said Tom, "better to know exactly what I'm disagreeing with, eh?"

"Exactly," said Angie, "so, given our common cultural background, it's not surprising we only have one person in favour of the minimum privacy option, and that for financial reasons. OK, now let's talk about the other extreme. Does anyone think we all really need separate houses?"

Again there was a chorus of noes, with just a few people who stayed silent. One of them, Nora MacGregor, put up her hand.

"I guess we really don't need separate houses, however small," said Nora, "Maybe just little apartments—I do value my privacy. Especially in the washroom. At the moment, upstairs in this house, six bedroom are sharing one bath. Takes a lot of co-ordination, and some of us older folks can't stand around waiting for long when we need to..."

"To go?" said Angie.

Nora nodded.

Erica, who was still standing at the front next to Angie, cleared her throat and spoke up, "Nora, I may have a solution for you. It's actually part of what I was going to present tonight anyway. I think we should switch over to composting toilets. The septic system here just won't cope with this many people for much longer, and we urgently need to recycle the nutrients in our waste back into the soil.

"I don't know if any of you are familiar with the sawdust toilet, often called a 'Jenkins toilet' after the guy that came up with the idea and tried to popularize it. It's just a wooden box with a bucket inside, a toilet seat on top and a container of sawdust or similar organic material nearby. You deposit your waste and then cover it with sawdust. When the bucket is full, it gets dumped on a compost pile. A year later it has composted down to nice rich black earth ready to be used on our gardens. And any disease organisms have had lots of time to die off.

"Subject to everyone's approval, of course, I think we need to pull out all our existing flush toilets and replace them with Jenkins toilets. And anyone who needs quick access can have a toilet in their bedroom. The smell is minimum, but ventilation can be arranged if it turns out to be a problem."

"Well, that's quite a heap of shit you've dumped in the middle of things here, Erica" said Wilf Janes with a chuckle. "But seriously, there's no doubt in my mind that we do need to do this, and it certainly answers some of Nora's concerns. I'm guessing we could even put a little cubicle in the corner of any bedroom that needs one of these."

"I don't know," said Nora. "It's really kind of a shocking idea."

"I've got a copy of Jenkin's book and a couple of others on the subject in our room upstairs if you want to read up," offered Erica. "And there are some websites you could look at too. Just Google 'humanure'."

Allan's own thoughts on the composting toilet issue were mixed. Like many people in modern western society, "feces" were something he felt should be flushed away behind one and never seen again. Not talked about, and certainly not handled. On the other hand, he'd seen the books Erika was talking about and understood the point about replenishing the soil—turning human waste into a valuable resource rather than something inconvenient to be gotten rid of. He had a hunch that, given a chance, Erika might be able to talk him around.

"I think we need to mull this over for a few days," said Angie. "Andrea, make a note that it should be on the agenda of next Tuesday's meeting. Those with serious doubts should approach Erika and get more information. For now, let's get back to the housing question. So, Erika, do you have a recommendation of where we should fall on the privacy spectrum?"

"Yes, actually," said Erica. "And it is kind of a default option, not much different from what we are doing now. We recommend that couples and single adults get private bedrooms with storage for their personal property. School age kids will share a pair of bunkrooms—4 bunks each, to start—one room for boys, one for girls. Currently, we've get 5 couples, 5 single adults, 2 school age boys and 3 school age girls. There are six bedrooms upstairs in this house and they are occupied by the couples and Jane's girls sharing one room. Some of you are sleeping on couches in the living room and here in the addition. It's a less than ideal situation."

"It is less than ideal," said Jane. "But I'm not sure your solution is an improvement, especially this bunkroom thing. You're talking about taking about taking our kids away from us at age four? What kind of a cult are we running here?"

"No kind at all," said Cindy. "I've got kids and I had as much input into this plan as Erika. The decision as to when to make the move would be up to the parents and the children. And 'away' isn't really the right word for it. The parents' rooms would be in the same building, on the same floor, as the bunkroom their kids would be in. Little different from the average family home."

"That sounds better," said Jane. "But I am guessing kids from different families will be sharing these bunkrooms?

"Initially, as it happens, no," said Cindy, "but eventually, yes."

"So, who's going to be in charge of the kids in the bunk rooms?" asked Jane.

"I don't think we've worked that out yet," said Cindy. "I'd like to say their parents. But I can see cases where disagreements between kids could lead to disagreements among parents. Hmmm... I think that leads to something we haven't addressed as yet, and we really should."

"What's that, Cindy?" asked Angie.

"Well, so far we've all been working really hard to get along," said Erika, "And with some success. But eventually we're going to end up with disagreements that people can't settle among themselves. I though Allan and Tom were pretty close to that yesterday. They sorted it out, but we need to have a mechanism for coping when we can't settle out our differences."

"I think you're talking about having some people trained as mediators," said Angie. "Enough so we can always find a reasonably neutral party to mediate a dispute. Yesterday we talked about facilitator training, which I must admit I haven't got around to arranging yet. But mediator training is similar and could probably be done by the same people. Andrea, make a note for me to get that set up ASAP."

Andrea did so and Angie went on, "Jane, you're OK with this?"

"Yeah," said Jane, "but I'll be keeping a close eye on how it works out."

"Good idea," said Angie. "Erika, where were you?"

"Just about to make a sketch of what we can do with this building," said Erika. "We need a few more bedrooms, the two bunkrooms and at least one more washroom. As we see it, we can have all that by putting in some partitions in the large rooms on the main floor of this house, " said Erika. She turned to the white board and made a quick sketch of the main floor of the house. "The living room could be divided into three rooms, the dining room into two, the kitchen into a bedroom and another bath and there is room in this addition for three bedrooms, two bunkrooms and a bath."

She added the partitions she had just suggested to the diagram. "This gives us 14 bedrooms, and we only need ten, so there is even room for the next few people who arrive. And the materials needed for this shouldn't be very expensive. For now we can still cook in the kitchen and since the weather is warming up, we can eat on the front and back porches."

"Maybe we could hold off on dividing up the dining room until we absolutely need to," said Jim. "That way we can eat inside and give the weather a chance to finish warming up. "

"I think you'll find we want a window in each of those bedrooms," said Don. "So that means we can only get one bedroom out of the living room, at the north end. What's left of the living room would do for a dining room in the short run, especially if we knock out the walls separating it from the hall and entrance way. So partition the dining room and addition first, then the living room and finally the kitchen, once we've got another kitchen set up."

"Actually, Don, that's a pretty good idea," said Erika, and adjusted her sketch to reflect Don's suggestion.

"I think there are a few more things we need to discuss," said Angie, "but first, how does everybody feel about just having rooms instead of houses or apartments?"

Allan was cool with it, but he expected to hear some push back. Surprisingly, everyone agreed with the idea.

"OK. So, at this point, the loose ends are replacing the kitchen, dining and meeting areas" said Angie. "Any ideas, Erika?"

"Yes indeed," said Erika. "Let me just add another sketch and then I'll explain what we are thinking about."

She took a moment to roughly outline the two pole barns, and then went on. "The kitchen here is really too small for this group, much less a significantly larger one. We'd recommend cleaning up both pole barns. Put the kitchen at the north end of the nearest barn, with processing and storage areas for the food we'll be producing, and a buffet counter to divide the kitchen from the dining area. Set up tables next to the kitchen for people to eat at. Maybe a stage for entertainment at the other end of the building, with chairs in front of it for the audience. That would work for these meetings, as well. In the other pole barn we can add more bedrooms as more people arrive, plus bathrooms, and also a 'maker space' with the tools and equipment we'll need to build all those things we aren't going to buy."

"That would seem to just about wrap it up," said Angie. "What do we think people?"

"Just a couple of things I'd like to add," said Karen. "First, if we set up a big kitchen in the pole barn and feed everyone from there, am I still going to get stuck doing all the cooking? I pretty much have so far. I mean, I don't mind cooking, and thanks to those who have helped, but as we get more people it's going to become a big deal. More than I can handle.

"Maybe we could take Tom's 'crew' idea and have several 'cooking crews' rotating through the kitchen or sharing the work some other way. Spread the work around and have more of a variety of food than I can provide. And maybe we can try to scare up some actual professional cooks when we are hunting for new people."

"Sounds good to me, Karen," said Angie. "People?"

This time there was unanimous agreement.

"You had a second point, Karen?" asked Angie.

"I do," answered Karen. "I know that some folks, like my husband Tom here, will want access to the kitchen for a snack now and then. Maybe not the whole kitchen, but at least a small area of it, set up with just enough supplies and equipment for those who feel the need to nosh. Or for people who have missed a meal."

A few chuckled at this but no one disagreed. Allan noticed his parents lean together and have a quick whispered discussion.

"When we first moved in here back in February, I claimed the master bedroom upstairs," said Karen. But we've been feeling more and more guilty about hogging the biggest room. If we get a family with a baby or children too small for the bunkrooms, that would be, of all the rooms we currently have, the best place for them. We think that's likely to happen soon, so we are offering to move to one of the new rooms, so the master bedroom can be readied for that use."

"The other thing is storage for personal property. So far, Tom's had us dump everything in heaps in the pole barns, but it's going to have to come out of there if we follow the current plan. The existing bedrooms have closets, and room for a chest of drawers or two. I'd suggest we add closets when we put those partitions in. There's room in the basement here to put in lockers for what won't fit in the bedrooms. When we start building more rooms out in the pole barn they should be big enough to include storage as well as sleeping space. And talking about storage space for personal property gives me the idea that we should really keep that property to a minimum. Something to be decided when we are actually doing the sorting, I guess."

"Well, what do we think of that, folks?" asked Angie."Speak up if you disagree with any of these ideas."

There seemed to be general agreement. "OK," said Angie. "You got that all down, Andrea?"

Andrea, who'd been writing furiously, stopped. "I think so."

"OK. Now Tom, let's get back to your original objections," said Angie. "Would you be satisfied if we agreed to put together a 'Finance Crew' to take a closer at what we can afford?

"I think we should do that in any case," said Tom. "And as long as I get a spot on that crew, I'll be happy. Perhaps we also need to morph today's Housing Crew into a 'Building Crew' to firm up their plans and cost them out. I still think we may have a bunch of new people show up with little warning— after all we are a 'refuge co-operative'—and we might have to do something like that minimum privacy option on a temporary basis. We should be sure to make whatever preparations are necessary to do that. Mattresses and bedding set aside, privacy screens built and so forth."

"Yeah, I think we can take that on," said Erika.

"Andrea, did you get Tom's suggestions down with all the others?" asked Angie.

"Sure did," said Andrea. "Just remember that Terry and I are still working on the new sign tomorrow and Jack has agreed to help us with getting a couple of big cedar posts out of the bush."

"OK, I think that just means you won't initially be on either the finance or building crew," said Angie. "We still have a couple of crew reports to hear, does anyone besides me think it might be time for a 15 minute break?"

Coming soon, Part 10 of the Porcupine Saga.


Links to the rest of this series of posts:
The Porcupine Saga

Maintaining the lists of links that I've been putting at the end of these posts in getting cumbersome, so I have decided to just include a link to the Porcupine section of the Site Map, which features links to all the episodes I've published thus far.

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Sunday, 30 April 2023

The Porcupine Saga, Part 2: When The Lights Went Out, Part 1

Will Harper, Wednesday, July 19, 2028

Another drop of sweat ran off Will Harper's brow and into his right eye. He straightened up and leaned on his hoe while running a finger tip through the eye to get rid of the sweat, reducing the stinging to a tolerable level.

It was as hot as Will could remember it ever being in Inverpen, with not even a hint of a breeze off Lake Huron for relief. He still had ten feet left to weed in the row of beans, and as Co-ordinator for the Community Garden, he felt he had to set a good example, keeping the weeds down in his own plot. So damn hot, though.

He set the hoe down and walked to where his water bottle sat in the shade by the fence. He took a good swig of the not very cold water and splashed the last of it on his face. Somewhat refreshed, he picked up the hoe again, did a quick and dirty weeding of the remainder of the row, and decided that the rest of the plot could wait for a cooler day, hopefully soon to come. He locked the gate behind him, put the hoe away in the barn and set off up the hill for home.

Normally he would have taken the walking path along the river, but he had his heart set on a colder drink than lukewarm water, likely available at a coffee shop downtown. So instead of the path under the bridge, he continued up the park's laneway and turned right onto Queen St. It wasn't far to Inverpen's four block downtown. Something didn't seem right and it took Will a moment to figure it out. The town's main street boasted four traffic lights, all visible from where he stood, and none of them were on. A power outage of some sort was in progress, it seemed. The Community Garden didn't have power, so he had no idea when this had started.

He continued up the street to the second intersection and first traffic light. Traffic wasn't heavy and people seemed to be doing a good job of applying the "treat a dead traffic light like a four way stop" rule, but he paused anyway and then crossed gingerly, not wanting to be the first exception. Huron Beans, a coffee shop that he frequented regularly was only a few doors down on the west side of the street, and he stepped inside.

"Any chance of getting a cold drink?" he asked the young woman behind the counter.

"They're in the cooler behind you," she replied, "better get one while they are still cold—the power's off. And we can only take cash, nothing else is working."

"OK." He picked a bottle of still icy cold Diet Coke from the cooler, and fished in his pocket for some change. "How long's the power been off?"

"Since around three, about half an hour ago," she answered. "And that'll be two fifty nine."

She looked up from the calculator app on her smart phone and opened the cash box that sat nearby on the counter.

Will handed her a looney and a twoney. She put them in the cash box and handed him back his change, then noted the sale on a pad that sat next to the cashbox. "The radio isn't working either," she said, indicating a battery powered radio on the shelf behind her. "Or rather, it is, but there's nothing but static on AM and FM, no local stations transmitting. Nothing from farther away either. Must be a pretty wide spread outage."

"Sounds like what happened in 2003 and 2025," Bill replied, dropping the change in the tip jar. "Which is good, since if that's the case, it shouldn't take long to get things back on, at least around here. Power was only out about 4 hours in 2003 and 3 hours in 2025. Do you know if phones are working?"

"The landline here is working—I talked to the boss about how to set up to take cash and keep paper records," she said. "Haven't tried my cell phone yet."

"I'll try mine, and see if I can find out what's going on." Will pulled his smart phone out of his shirt pocket and called Joe, foreman of the crew at Hydro One that Will had worked on before he retired.

Joe answered quickly with " 'lectrical Maintenace. Joe speakin'."

"Hi Joe. It's Will Harper, what's up with the outage?"

"Hi Will, can't talk long, we're just arranging to turn things back on. Another system stability outage, like in 1965, 2003 and 2025. Way too much air conditioning load, and we're connected directly to Quebec now. They had a hiccup and it took out the whole of the northeast. Gotta go."

"Thanks, Joe. Take it easy," replied Will, but Joe was already gone. To the woman behind the counter he said, "The whole of northeastern North America is out. Should be back on in a few hours, though."

"Good to know. We close at 4, do you think the power will be back on by then?"

"I wouldn't think quite that soon." Will responded, not wanting to make promises his former employer couldn't keep. "Well, I'd better be getting home. See you later."

"Yep, see you too," she replied as Will turned and went out the door.

He headed north along Queen St. and then turned left onto Durham St. The heat was starting to get to him and he felt a little shaky, so he stopped for a rest in the shade on the bench in front of the Post Office. Heat waves had grown much more common these last few years as global warming really started to take hold of things, but usually cold, deep Lake Huron moderated things quite a bit.

But not so much today, thought Will. He fanned himself with his wide brimmed hat and drank his Coke. In a few minutes, he felt better and continued on his way.

"Hey Sue, I'm home," Will called out as he came in the front door. He proceeded through the kitchen and into the living room, where his wife Sue was relaxing on the couch reading a book. "The power is out. Another system stability outage."

"Yeah, I know the power's off. I brought some of bottles of ice up from the freezer and put them on the top shelf in the fridge to keep things cool," she replied. "I would have got the generator set up, but it's just too heavy to get it out of the shed."

"No problem," said Will, "I am heading in that direction now."

But first, he stopped at the fridge. A little mechanical thermometer hung from the bottom shelf and read nicely within its green zone, a few degrees below 40 Fahrenheit. Sue had rearranged things so that the three bottles of ice were on the top shelf and everything else was closer to the bottom. The temperature seemed to be holding well, but the ice would have to be changed regularly if he couldn't get the power on.

"Hey Sue," said Will, "that ice is really working well in the fridge."

"Thanks, Will," replied Sue, "even better if we can keep the door closed."

Will chuckled at that and headed downstairs to the basement, where he opened the disconnect switch for the electric water heater and pulled the plug for the electric clothes dryer. That finished the short list of loads too heavy for the generator. It wouldn't handle the kitchen range either, if the oven and all four elements where on at once. But he preferred to keep open the option of using one or two elements at a time.

Will continued through his workshop and out the back door. He smiled a little, pleased once more that house was built into the side of a hill, the main floor at the level of the front yard and the basement at level of the back yard. A few steps put him in front of the shed where he stored the generator. The wide single step in front of the shed wasn't attached and could be turned 90 degrees and used as a ramp for rolling things in and out. Will turned it around, then opened the shed's double doors and set the near end of the step/ramp up on the door sill.

It being summertime, the lawnmower sat at the front inside the shed, and Will had to roll it down the ramp and set it aside before he could access the generator. Then he lined the generator, which was significantly heavier than the lawnmower, up with top of the ramp, rolled it carefully down onto the grass and over to the concrete pad under the back deck. He checked its gas tank and found it, as expected, full of gasoline. He turned on the fuel valve and the on/off switch, and set the choke lever to "start". In the afternoon heat the generator started on the second pull. He backed off on the choke and it settled down to run smoothly.

Will went back inside and grabbed the heavy, 240 volt, 30 amp extension cord. He plugged the male end into the generator and then the female end into the male receptacle on the wall next to the door. Then he went back inside, closed the generator disconnect switch on the other side of the wall, walked to the far end of the basement and moved the transfer switch next to the main panel to its "generator" position. The lights came on without so much as a flicker and Will smiled in satisfaction. The big freezer sitting against the north wall of the basement, between the laundry area and the shop, hummed quietly.

Will mused that he could have had a permanently installed generator, with automatic start even. But it would have cost a lot more and wouldn't have been nearly as flexible. On occasion he used the generator elsewhere, such as at the Community Garden. With the back seats folded down it would just fit in their little hatchback.

Back upstairs, he found the small freezer working just fine, but the fridge was cool enough it hadn't even come on yet. He adjusted the fridge's temperature controller down a bit and it started. "Everything looks good, Sue," he said to his wife, "Do I need to get the Coleman stove set up to cook supper?"

"No," she replied, "I was just going to cook burgers on the barbeque anyway. How long do you think the power will be off?"

"Joe says another two or three hours. Since it's not going to be a long outage, I think I'll just leave the generator running until the power comes back on. Doesn't use much gas unless we load it up, anyway. The next thing will be how to tell when the power comes back on, since we're running off the generator."

Sue got up and came into the kitchen. "I'll just turn on the radio."

Will turned to watch her switch on the battery operated radio, which was always tuned to the local FM station. There was nothing but static. Oh well, thought Will, they'll probably be back on not too long after the outage ended. But before he could open his mouth to say so, the announcer's voice came from the radio with a crackle and pop.

"Shoreline FM is back online. We finally got our generator hooked up and running. We'll keep you posted on the power outage as soon as we know something more. For now, let's get back to our usual musical programming."

The sound of 80s rock replaced the announcer's voice and Will asked, "Can we trust them to let us know what's going on?"

"Hope so," said Sue. "I'll just finish this chapter and then get started on supper."

"Sounds good to me," said Will, "I'm gonna go check on the neighbours."

Will went out through the front door, and headed south across his lawn and his neighbour's and up to her front door.

He knocked and after a moment she opened the door and said, "Hi Will.The power's out. Any idea how long it's going to take to get it back on."

"I'm guessing before sunset, Joan. You OK in the meantime?"

"Except for the fridge. I hear things start to go off in a couple of hours?"

"Yep. That's what I hear too. I've got the generator going and I could run an extension cord over here if you'd like?"

"If it's not too much trouble, that would be a big help."

"OK, back in a minute."

Will went down to his back yard and into his workshop and grabbed several long extension cords. It took only of a few minutes to hook one up to the outdoor receptacle at the back of his house and run it over to Joan's front door. She was waiting for him and said, "I guess I can leave the door open a crack and just run this directly into the kitchen and plug the fridge into it."

"It's only going to be for a short while, so yeah. I'll leave you to it while I go check on Vicky and the Browns. Come get me if you need help."

Half an hour later, Will had two more cords running from the outdoor receptacle at the front of the house. One to Vicky's place on the north side, and one to the Browns across the street. Traffic was pretty light on Mackenzie Ave., so he didn't worry about having a cord run across the street. The generator still wasn't working hard, even with his house and three others hooked up to it. He spotted Sue on the side deck working at the barbeque and went up the steps to join her. "Any news on the radio?"

"Nothing yet other than an endless parade of golden oldies."

"Anything I can help you with?"

"Could you throw together a salad while I watch these burgers?"

"Sure, no problem."

"I think we'd better eat on the little table out here," said Sue, "it's cooler in the shade of the awning than inside."

"OK, soon as I get that salad together I'll start hauling things out here."

"Things" had included the portable radio, and they were just finishing up supper when the announcer interrupted the music to say. "Word from Hydro One is that maintenance crews will be switching things back on during the next hour or so."

This prediction proved to be true and they had hardly finished cleaning up after supper when the announcer broke in again, "The power is on again. We'll be off the air for a moment while we switch back to grid power."

Standing on his back deck a few minutes later, Will could see clouds rolling in from over the lake, driven by a freshening wind. The temperature had already dropped, a welcome relief from the afternoon's heat. Sticking his head in the door he called out, "Sue, it looks like rain, I'm going to clean up the generator and extension cords before they get wet."

He went down to the basement and switched back to grid power, then put the generator back in the shed away from the threatening rain. He was about to start wrapping up the cords, when all three of his neighbours showed up, cords in hand, coiled up ready to be put away. They had a short chat about the weather and then headed home. Will put the cords away in the basement, then went upstairs to turn on the attic fan and bring some of the cooler air into the house.

Will went to bed that night feeling good about how they had come through the outage, short as it had been. The generator had worked well, and he'd been able to help out the neighbours. It felt like he had things under control. It had cooled down nicely by then, and he looked forward to a good night's sleep—a pleasant change from the sweaty nights of the heat wave they had just come through.

Coming soon, The Porcupine Saga, Part 3, When the Lights Went Out, Part 2,
Will Harper, July 20, 2028


Links to the rest of this series of posts:
The Porcupine Saga

Maintaining the lists of links that I've been putting at the end of these posts in getting cumbersome, so I have decided to just include a link to the Porcupine section of the Site Map, which features links to all the episodes I've published thus far.

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Saturday, 24 July 2021

What I've Been Reading, June 2021

Links

Above the Fold

  • Our Civilization is Dying Because It’s Addicted to Fossil Fuels, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
    "Why We Need to Treat Clean Energy as Our Moonshot, Or Everything Collapses"
    Umair is right that our civilization is dying because it's addicted to fossil fuels. But he's wrong about finding a clean alternative. Even if we could, it would create as many problems as it solved.
  • No, We Can’t Just Leave Assholes Alone Anymore, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
    “Left unchallenged, assholes took over America—along with most of the world. Now this class of assholes dominates our politics. They steer our economies. They run our media. They dole out promotions to other assholes, and punish anyone for trying to do the right thing. They tell us what to do and how to think. Now they’re even trying to tell us how to vote, and how to love.”
  • The Myth — and Liability — of America’s Obsession with Rugged Individualism, by Scott Galloway, Medium—Marker
    “The Ayn Rand image of the solo entrepreneur — Hank Rearden toiling alone in his laboratory to invent a new kind of steel — is a pernicious deception.”
    Many of my fellow Canadians will feel smug that we suffer much less from toxic individualism than the USA, but being better than the USA is a pretty minor achievement.
  • If You Think Socialism’s Unaffordable, You Don’t Understand Capitalism, by UmairHaque, Medium-Eudaimonia
    “How Hidden Hyperinflation Left Americans Broke, and What to do About It”
  • We Can’t Afford for Everyone to Have Their Own Opinion Anymore, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
    “It’s getting us killed.”
  • Why the American Right is Having a Meltdown About Race, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
    “How White Rage Happens, And Why It Still Defines American Life”
  • Lies and honest mistakes, by Richard V Reeves, Aeon—Psyche
    "Our crisis of public knowledge is an ethical crisis. Rewarding ‘truthfulness’ above ‘truth’ is a step towards a solution"
    "Working against this constitution are the forces of what Rauch labels ‘troll epistemology’. Trolls seek not the truth, but the destruction of an enemy, ideological or personal. Trolls not only fail to display the virtues of sincerity and accuracy, they work in precisely the opposite direction, deliberately offering up distorted visions of reality, based on cherry picked information."

Miscellaneous

Coronavirus

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

The New Fascism, the Far-Right 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 (maybe just a few years) 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.

Resource Depletion, formerly (and still including) Peak Oil

The change in title stems from the fact that it's not just oil that is peaking.

Climate Change, or rather, actually, Global Warming

  • This is Why We Should Stop Calling it Climate Change, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
    “The Words 'Climate Change' May End Up Being The Biggest Lie Ever Told”
  • This Is What the Earth’s Climate Will Look Like in 2050, by Julia Slingo, Medium—One Zerp
    “The future under climate change can seem frighteningly vague and variable. A top climatologist explains what to expect in 2050.”
  • Debunking 25 arguments against climate change in 5 sentences or less (each), by Fallacy Man, The Logic of Science
    "Climate change is arguably one of the most misunderstood and controversial topics among the general public. Misinformation abounds, and many people are left debating whether or not we are causing it, and even whether or not it is happening at all. Among scientists, however, there is no serious debate, and there hasn’t been for many years. The evidence for climate change is extremely solid, despite what many blogs and politicians will tell you. Therefore, I want to try to correct some of that misinformation. Yesterday, I posted an extremely lengthy article debunking 25 myths and bad arguments about climate change. Today, I am posting the same information, but in a much more condensed form. I have attempted to address each argument in under 5 sentences. Obviously I had to leave out a lot of information, so if you want the more detailed explanations, please see the original post (each short response is accompanied by a link for the full-length explanation)."

Gardening

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.
  • Soil proprietor: Do GMOs promote dirt conservation? by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
    " Genetically engineered crops are supposed to make it easier for farmers to protect the earth by plowing less. But the record is spotty."

Practical Skills

  • How to Free Up Space in Gmail, by Boone Ashworth and Lorne Goode, Wired
    “Google offers 15 GB of free storage with every account, but many users are hitting the limit. Use these tips to clear some room, and tidy your inbox while you're at it.”
    I've had a gmail account since shortly after gmail cameout, but I only recently switched to using gmail for all my email. Lots to learn.

American Politics

Dancing on Graves

Debunking Resources

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

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 deal of confused thinking.

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

  • The Rent’s Too Damned High, by Cory Doctorow, Medium—Gen
    “A human right, commodified and rendered zero-sum.”
  • Here’s Why You’re Broke, According to Wealthy Americans Who Skim My Articles, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
    “The view from the top is judgmental.”
    “These people are straight up bullies, and what they need more than anything is a hard punch in their pocket books. They need to be reminded that all their 'hard won success' was supported by an infrastructure that no longer exists for the vast majority of Americans.”

Humour

These are great times for political satire.

Books

Fiction

Non-Fiction

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Wednesday, 5 May 2021

What I've Been Reading, March and April 2021

Links

Above the Fold

  • How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways, by Peter Gray Ph.D., Psychology Today
    "The important lessons from hunter-gatherers are about culture, not genes."
  • On Graeber and Wengrow and Institutional Flexibility, by Eric Schliesser, Digressions&Impressions
  • How to change the course of human history (at least, the part that’s already happened), by David Graeber and David Wengrow, Eurozine
    "The story we have been telling ourselves about our origins is wrong, and perpetuates the idea of inevitable social inequality. David Graeber and David Wengrow ask why the myth of ‘agricultural revolution’ remains so persistent, and argue that there is a whole lot more we can learn from our ancestors." "But on one thing we insist. Abandoning the story of a fall from primordial innocence does not mean abandoning dreams of human emancipation – that is, of a society where no one can turn their rights in property into a means of enslaving others, and where no one can be told their lives and needs don’t matter. To the contrary. Human history becomes a far more interesting place, containing many more hopeful moments than we’ve been led to imagine, once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there."
  • A Lot of People Don't Want to Win | James Butler Meets David Graeber, YouTube—Novara Media
    "At The World transformed 2018 James Butler met with David Graeber to talk Momentum,dual power, co-option, the extra-parliamentary left and winning."
  • David Graeber on the Value of Work, by David Graeber, YouTube
    "Does the world really need neuroadvertisers, PR researchers and branding consultants? Renowned academic and coiner of the ‘we are the 99%’ slogan, David Graeber is a passionate advocate for meaningful work. After famously condemning the 21st century phenomenon of ‘bullsh*t jobs’, in this short animation he investigates the philosophical underpinnings of employment, and calls for a reformulation of what work should be."
  • The miracle of the commons, by Michelle Nijhuis, Aeon
    "Far from being profoundly destructive, we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight."

Miscellaneous

  • Monkeys and wolves forge alliance that resembles domestication done by humans, by Tibi Puiu, ZME Science
    "In Ethiopia's grasslands, huge herds of gelada monkeys might be in the process of domesticating wolves."
  • 15 Lies About Firearms Movies and Video Games Told You, by Cracked Writers and Andres Diplotti, Cracked
    "There's something about firearms. Regardless of our ideas about gun control, we can't help but admire a sleek, well-honed, lubricated death machine. Guns have two main purposes: First, being cool (and making you look and feel cool by association), and in a distant second place, causing an awful lot of harm. So they're kind of like mechanical cigarettes (and to some people, just as addictive).
    And yet, considering how many firearms most people have seen, the average person knows remarkably little about them. We're here to help fix that."
  • A Bach cello piece played atop a mountain is as exhilarating as you’d expect, cellist Ruth Boden, Director: Gavin Carver, Aeon video
    "Andante (a musical term meaning ‘at walking pace’) follows the cellist Ruth Boden as she climbs 10,000 feet to a peak in Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains for a deeply personal, yet breathtakingly public solo performance. With her prized cello strapped to her back, Boden reflects on how she wants to do something with music that transcends the commonplace, and on the particular joy of playing from Bach’s cello suite at ‘the top of the world’."
  • The Five Universal Laws of Human Stupidity, by Corinne Purtill, Quartz/Pocket
    "We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril."
  • Why I shut down an argument in my philosophy for children class, by Amy Reed-Sandoval, Aeon—Psyche
  • What fat is for, Director and Animator: Ermina Takenova; Producer: Kellen Quinn; Writer: Nicola Williams,
    "Abundance has made fat an enemy, but it’s been a friend to humans for millennia"
  • The interstellar dream is dying, by Chris Taylor, Mashable
    "Sending "generation ships" to colonize the cosmos makes less sense the more we look at it."
    Of course, many of us have doubts about our civilization making it to the 22nd century at all.
  • Could you wear a dress for 100 days? by Emma Beddington, The Guardian
    "When Emma Beddington took part in a challenge to wear the same dress for 100 days, she wasn’t expecting to feel the positive force of sisterhood alongside a few neat cleaning hacks."

Black Lives Matter

Coronavirus

The New Fascism, the Far-Right 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 (maybe just a few years) 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.

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

  • The 'Capitalism is Broken' Economy, by Anne Helen Petersen, Culture Study
    "feel like we've moved beyond 'burnout' and more to 'the pandemic has illuminated that nearly every aspect of modern society is fundamentally unlivable' "

Climate Change

Energy

Recipes and Cooking

  • 11 Genius Cooking Hacks I Wish I Had Known Earlier in Life, by Karthik Rajan, Medium—Food | Parenting | Family
    Some interesting ideas here, none of which I have tried. There is a fad these days for recipes with few ingredients. For the most part I don't agree that this is likely to give good results. And doing things quickly, from where I sit, is almost always a bad idea.

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 products. 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.
  • Are GMOs worth their weight in gold? To farmers, not exactly, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
    "Biotech seeds cost more and often return less than conventional crops or organic farming. But they do give farmers a kind of safety net."

American Politics

Ontario Politics

Dancing on Graves

Debunking Resources

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

Science

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.

  • Telltale Traits of Terrible People, by Brooke Meredith, Medium
    "Steer clear! (Some of these might surprise you)"
  • 9 Paradoxical Truths That Will Change How You Think About Life, by Moreno Zugaro, Medium—Mind Cafe
  • This One Thing Gives True Insight into Someone’s Character, by Jessie London, Medium
    "This has helped me surround myself with wonderful people."

    • Gender and Sexuality

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

    Education

    Humour

    Books

    Fiction

    Non-Fiction

    I finally finished reading A Peoples History of the United States. And I am over half way through Hierarchy in the Forest, by Christoper Boehm.

    • A Peoples History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
      The version I read (it was lent to me by a friend) was published in 1980, and not surprisingly, only covers up until that point in American History. I see Amazon has a newer version that covers up to the 2000 election and the war on terror. I intended to get a copy and see what Zinn thought of the decades following 1980. In the edition I just read, the very optimistic last chapter was titled "The Coming Revolt of the Guards". It hasn't worked out that way.

    More information about Haward Zinn, from Wikipedia.

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    Wednesday, 7 October 2020

    Collapse, you say? Part 3: Inputs and Outputs continued

    Kincardine's breakwall awash in the waves

    This is the second half of a post that I cut in two because it was just too long (6000+ words). If you haven't read the first half yet, it would be a good idea to do so—what follows will make more sense that way.

    That first half finished with a discussion of the problems with fossil fuels as an energy source for our civilization. It's last paragraph is repeated below. Today, we'll go on from there, looking at other inputs that are problematical for our civilization.

    Energy, renewable sources

    But, you may say, if fossil fuels are no good what about renewable energy sources? There are large amounts of energy available from sources like hydro, biomass, wind, solar and so forth. And they don't involve adding more CO2 to the atmosphere—even biomass is only adding CO2 that was recently taken out of the atmosphere and will be taken out again as more biomass grows. 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.

    The problems with switching over to renewable energy sources can be divided into three areas.

    • the political will to do so
    • the economic means to do so
    • the technical feasibility of doing so

    Political Will

    It is clear that we will have to switch to renewable energy sources if we wish to become sustainable. But it is also clear that, as we'll see in a moment in the section on technical feasibility, renewable energy sources will not be able to support the level of growth and consumption that many of us are accustomed to, and they certainly won't be able to extend that level of prosperity to the poorer parts of the world.

    For the overwhelming majority of people, lifestyle is not negotiable. And our current lifestyle demands continued growth and ever increasing prosperity—consumption, convenience, comfort and entertainment. I haven't noticed anyone rioting for the sort of austerity measures that I believe a switch away from fossil fuels would require. So, any plan that can't provide continued material progress is unlikely to be seriously considered, much less implemented. Yes, of course, I realize that we could change our lifestyle, and indeed circumstances may well force us to do so. My point is that most of us don't want to change the way we live, and will resist any attempt to get us to do so.

    Plans like the "Green New Deal", which promise to create jobs and stimulate economic growth while switching over from fossil fuels to renewables, are intended to be more palatable. But there is good reason to think they are not economically or technically possible. And, if they were seriously undertaken, they might well make things worse, requiring the consumption of even more fossil fuels in the huge construction project that this switch over would require. This would mean further increases in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and would make climate change even worse, bringing about collapse even more quickly. Certainly not what the Green New Deal promises, but what it is likely to deliver.

    The Economic Means

    The surplus energy problem that I spoke of last time, and the resulting continued economic contraction that is going on, make it seem unlikely that we will have the wherewithal for such a major construction project in the years to come—we are looking at spending trillions of dollars building solar panels, windmills, storage facilities and an enhanced grid. Most of which will only make the surplus energy problem worse.

    Technical Feasibility

    For me, this is the real deciding factor. Let's consider the technical problems with renewable energy sources in general and then have a look at the issues with specific types of renewables. This will make it clear why I think a switchover to renewables is simply not doable, without drastic changes to our lifestyle.

    The current fossil fuel infrastructure—coal mines, oil and gas wells, shipping, rail cars, pipelines, refineries, storage, distribution and retail facilities, and the equipment we have set up to use those fuels—is actually quite compact, owing to the concentrated nature of those fuels. They contain a lot of energy in a small, light package, and this has been the key to their success.

    Renewables are more diffuse and require extensive infrastructure to gather and concentrate them to the point where they are useful. Already we are seeing what I call "energy sprawl" spreading across the countryside in the form of wind turbines and solar panels. But the amount of energy we are getting from this sprawl is tiny compared to our total energy use.

    The renewable energy that is being proposed as a solution (wind and solar, mainly) comes largely in the form of electricity. Unfortunately, only about 20% of the energy we use today is used in the form of electricity. The rest is used directly in the form of refined fossil fuels to power transportation and to supply heat for industrial processes, space heating and so forth. The two biggest obstacles are electrifying heavy transportation (trucks and ships), and using renewable power to provide heat for manufacturing things like steel and concrete.

    Switching over to renewables not only requires us to build huge amounts (5 times more than we currently have) of electrical generation, all of it powered by renewable energy sources, but also that we switch our transportation fleets and industrial infrastructure over to use electricity instead of fossil fuels as a power source.

    This a big job that the "powers that be" don't really seem very interested in undertaking, and there are large chunks of it that we don't even know how to do as yet. I'll borrow a term from the nuclear industry here: "paper reactors". Solutions that so far only exist on paper have a tendency to take longer than predicted to implement, and cost a lot more money than expected. Time and money are two things that we don't have in great supply these days.

    The power grid, which in most areas is just barely coping with peak loads, will also have to be beefed up by a factor of five to cope with the switch over to an all electric economy. But using the electricity from renewables presents some significant problems for the grid. Our civilization treats the power grid as an infinite source of energy which is available 24/7. In order to provide this, the grid needs energy sources that are "dispatchable". That is, energy sources can be turned on and off at will and ramped up and down as needed to cope with varying loads. This is usually done using a combination of coal, oil, natural gas and hydroelectricity, all of which are to some extent dispatchable.

    But wind and solar are anything but dispatchable. The wind blows when it will, and there are often long periods without any wind at all over large geographic areas. The sun shines only during the day, except when there is cloud cover, and solar panels are often be covered with snow in the winter. None of these variations corresponds in any way to the normal variations in load that the grid experiences. In fact, to make even small amounts of intermittent renewable energy fit into the grid, highly dispatchable energy sources like combustion turbines (jet engines connected to generators, burning jet fuel) must be left spinning on standby, ready to compensate instantly when renewables falter.

    This hardly makes the grid any "greener" at all. One solution would be to have a way of storing electrical power which could then be used to fill in when renewables let us down. Pumped storage of water is one alternative that is a mature technology. Water is pumped uphill to a reservoir when surplus power is available and then runs down hill through turbines to generate power when extra is needed. The problem is scalability—there are limited locations where reservoirs exists at the top a large change in elevation and near a supply of water. Batteries or compressed air on the scale that is needed here so far only exist on paper, and further development seems likely to run up against some fundamental physical limits.

    Even if all these issues can be solved, we'd end up with a grid that is less resilient and more complex—more susceptible to failure.

    It should also be noted that equipment like wind turbines, solar cells and batteries have a limited life. This poses two problems—when they wear out, they have to be replaced, and the old equipment has to been gotten rid of. Hopefully recycled, but more likely just disposed of.

    A late addtion: Bev, one of my regular readers, pointed out in the comments below something that I had failed to make clear: while the energy from renewables is renewable, the equipment itself is built with largley non-renewable materials, and using up the quantity of materials we are talking about will no doubt lead to new resource depletion problems. It also takes fossil fuels to build, deliver, install, operate, maintain, repair and eventually decommision that equipment. Someday we may be able to power some of those steps with renewables, but initially and for the foreseable future, it's hard to see if there is really any net reduction in the use of fossil fuels when you look at the whole process.

    And finally, even if all the technical problems could be solved, wind and solar do not have very good EROEIs, and would make our surplus energy problem even worse.

    To bring this all home, let's take a look at the specific forms of renewable energy that we might turn to if we want to get off fossil fuels.

    Power from biomass, basically firewood, is a very mature technology, and it has many advantages. While it is produced only during the growing season, it can be harvested and stored for use during winter. It is quite dispatchable and its EROEI is reasonably high, depending on how far it has to be hauled from the forest to where it is going to be used. Unfortunately, it is not highly scalable, since it competes with agriculture for land at a time when we are struggling to grow enough food for the world's growing population.

    Hydroelectric power is another mature technology, with good dispatchability and a high EROEI. It is somewhat seasonal and it is not very scalable since most good locations are already in use. Developing the few remaining feasible locations would mean flooding large areas of land with environmental consequences that we should likely see as unacceptable.

    Wind power is quite scalable, but intermittent and not dispatchable at all. It's EROEI is in the high teens, which is borderline for our needs, and probably lower if you take storage facilities into account.

    Solar power is quite scalable, but intermittent and not dispatchable at all. It's EROEI is quite low, in the mid single digits, less if storage facilities are included in your calculations.

    Nuclear fission power is not really a renewable since it relies on finite supplies of fissionable fuel. If a nuclear powered economy is to keep growing, it will run out of fuel in a surprisingly short time, even if spent fuel from the current generation of reactors can be processed for use in newer reactors. Nuclear has limited dispatchability, being best suited to supply base load. It has pretty good scalability, except that it takes a long time to build new nuclear plants, and we would need a lot of them to replace fossil fuels. We must also overcome many political and safety issues before starting to build more nukes. Lastly, the EROEI of nuclear is around 9, largely due to the complexity and safety features involved, so it only makes the surplus energy problem worse.

    Nuclear fusion power isn't renewable either, though it's fuel is much more common than fissionables. But it is a "paper technology"— usable fusion reactors have been "just thirty years in the future" since the middle of the twentieth century, and will likely always be so. If we did somehow find the money to finish developing this technology, it would be very expensive to build, and its EROEI would likely be very low due to its high degree of complexity.

    All in all, this is not an encouraging picture. You can see why I am so doubtful about switching from fossil fuels to renewables. One the one hand we desperately need to get off fossil fuels to get climate change under control. On the other hand we desperately need fossil fuels (or the elusive "something equivalent") to supply surplus energy to maintain our growing economy and the lifestyles it enables.

    I have no confidence that we will even try to address this seemingly unresolvable conflict, and that is one more reason that I am expecting collapse.

    Further, as the weighted average of the EROEIs of all a civilization's energy sources declines it is not just economic growth that suffers, but also the ability to maintain infrastructure. This includes the ability to build high tech equipment, including things like solar panels and wind turbines. At some point, as our industrial civilization continues to collapse, we will find ourselves restricted to low tech renewables and unable to maintain a large scale power grid. We'll be forced to drastically reduce our consumption of energy, and to adapt our use of energy to the intermittency of the sources, rather than the other way around.

    So far I have only addressed the problems with energy inputs to our civilization, but there are other inputs that also present significant challenges.

     

    The Ecosystem, and ecosystem services
    Figure 2, from my last post

    The circle enclosing industrial civilization in the diagram above is misleading in that it would tend to suggest there is a boundary separating civilization from the environment, when it is really just another part of the environment. I have use a dashed line, hoping to indicated that many things flow freely between our civilization and its environment. There is a whole category of such things—inputs to our civilization—that we are absolutely dependent upon. Often referred to as "ecosystem services", these inputs are things we tend not to be aware of, in much the same way as fish are not aware of water.

    They include breathable air, potable water, a reliable climate and moderate weather, arable soil, grasslands, forests and the animals living on/in them, waters and the fisheries they provide, and so on. These things are available to us free of charge and we would simply could not do without them.

    It is important to understand that the ecosystem can only supply its services at a certain maximum rate—its carrying capacity. If we use those services at a higher rate, the ecosystem suffers and that carrying capacity is reduced. Many of the waste outputs of our civilization can also damage the ecosphere, again reducing its carrying capacity. And we continue to convert nature into farms, roads and cities, yet again reducing its carrying capacity.

    This has created the current situation where we are temporarily in "overshoot", using more than 100% of the planet's carrying capacity. We are able to do this because there is a certain amount of stored capacity within the system. Drawing on that capacity has lulled us into a false sense of security. But rest assured, the situation is temporary and shortly the damage to the ecosphere will become obvious, and its declining ability to support us will have disastrous consequences.

    To put some numbers on this, in the early 1970s when The Limits to Growth was published, we were using about 85% of the planet's carrying capacity. There was, at that point, at least hypothetically, an opportunity to put the brakes on economic growth and start living sustainably. Of course, we did not do so and now we are using around 165% of that carrying capacity. If we bring the poorer part of the world up to a standard of living similar to that of the developed nations, it would take about 500% of that carrying capacity to support the human race. Many suggest we should do exactly that, as a matter of social and economic justice.

    It is hard to disagree with that, in and of itself. But long before this happens, of course, the ecosphere will have collapsed and suffered a drastic decrease in its carrying capacity.

    Three factors are involved in our impact on the ecosphere: population, affluence (consumption) and technology. This can be represented by the equation I=PAT.

    Population and affluence are politically sensitive subjects, so many people have focused on using technology to reduce our footprint. This is known as "decoupling", since the aim is to decouple rising population and consumption from their effects on the ecosphere, to allow growth to continue without having harmful effects. It turns out decoupling has not yet even begun and is very unlikely to ever be achieved. It is largely a myth. Here are a couple of links (1, 2), to articles that go into this in detail.

    In addition to promoting myths about decoupling, those who do not wish growth to stop quibble about exactly what the planet's carrying capacity actually is and just how far into overshoot we currently are. This accomplishes nothing, since whatever that carrying capacity actually is, continued exponential growth will quickly take us past it into overshoot.

    So it would seem we should do something about population and/or affluence. Population is such a hot button issue that one can hardly discuss it in polite company. Understandably so, since reducing population must involve either reducing fertility or increasing the death rate. Indeed people have been accused of being "eco-fascists" because they see the need to reduce our population, and look to the most populous areas as the first place to take action. I think "eco-fascist" is a reasonable term, since the most populous areas are also the poorest places on the planet and our impact on the ecosystem is the product of both population and affluence. In the developed world our consumption is so high that even though we have far fewer people, our impact is much larger than that of the poorer parts of the world.

    Figure 3

    As this chart (Figure 3) shows, the richest 10% of the planet's population does close to 60% of the consumption. The richest 20% does over 75% of it (17.6+59=76.6). So, reducing consumption in the more affluent parts of the world would be a good start to coping with our problems because it would immediately take us out of overshoot and give us some breathing room to address the damage we've been doing to the ecosystem.

    Figure 4

    As this revised consumption chart (Figure 4) shows, if we could reduce our consumption by 50%, it would reduce our ecological impact down to 82.5% of the planet's carrying capacity, while actually increasing the consumption level of the lowest seven deciles of the population, and only reducing the consumption levels of the top three deciles. This would seem to satisfy our yearning for social and environmental justice and significantly delay, if not prevent, collapse. But since the most affluent people, those in the tenth decile, are also in control of the situation, it seems unlikely that we'll make a serious attempt to implement that solution unless we are forced to do so by events beyond our control that bear a strong resemblance to collapse.

    You may say that our population problem exists because our capacity to provide food has increased and our capacity to reproduce has responded, not the other way around. I don't disagree, but I don't think it is very useful to point that out. Deliberately cutting back on food production and letting people starve in order to reduce our impact on the ecosystem is morally repugnant. It is also not particularly effective since the poor would be effected first and they are not the major contributors to our impact on the ecosystem.

    It has also been observed that as countries get richer, their birthrate goes down. Extrapolating current trends (including continued development in the developing nations), the UN calculates that our population will top out around 10 billion late this century and then begin to decline. They would tell you that all we have do is hang on until then and all will be well. But again, I disagree. Long before our population reaches 10 billion, especially if nothing is done to reduce our rate of consumption, the ecosystem will collapse and its carrying capacity will crash down to a level that can support only a tiny fraction of our present population. I think 10 to 20% would be an optimistic prediction.

    Overuse of Fossil Water

    This post is already quite a bit longer than I usually aim for, and I have only covered what I see as the most urgent input and output issues. There are many other areas that I haven't begun to cover, and which I will have to leave for another day. But there is one more input issue that I just can't leave out, and that is the depletion of fossil water.

    Many of the important agricultural areas around the world rely on irrigation, and water for that irrigation is pumped out of fossil aquifers. That is, underground reservoirs that took hundreds of thousands of years to accumulate. The current rate of use is many times greater than the current rate of replenishment, and it is only a matter of time, and not much time, until they run dry.

    The consequences for agriculture will seriously debilitate our civilization's ability feed us.

    Summing it all up

    We have seen again and again, from the start to the finish of this post, and the previous one, that resource depletion of various sorts, and depletion of the sinks into which we dispose of our wastes, seriously threaten our civilization. Any one of these issues is enough, all on its own, to compromise that civilization's ability to provide us with the necessities of life. In other words, to bring about collapse. And many of them interact in ways that just make the situation worse.

    But inputs and outputs are not the whole story. The interior workings of our civilization are replete with issues that threaten its ongoing survival. Next time, we'll have a close look at some of those issues.


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

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