The Oil Drum: Campfire - Discussions about Energy and Our Future

Tuna, Toilet paper, and Timing

Nate Hagens — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:44:59 -0400

Concern about global resource depletion, at least in certain circles, is generating individual hoarding behavior - I don't know how prevalent this is, the potential advantages it will ultimately confer, or any of the subtleties of the'must have' list. This brief Campfire essay is a (somewhat disjointed) exploration of the short term translation of financial capital into basic goods, from the perspective of long term timing and social trajectories. (I expect it will generate some good discussion, especially following Luis' piece on Sustainability)

When Johnny Carson made a joke about toilet paper supplies disappearing from shelves on the Tonight Show in the late 1970s, it caused instant hoarding of TP which ended up lasting 3 weeks. (Toilet paper ranks #28 on Matt Savinar's list of 100 Items to Disappear First-Business-Plan. In a just-in-time inventory society, where food, water and energy arrive each day 'at the margin' in a complex delivery matrix dependent on liquid fuels, it is only a matter of time (20 days to 20 years?) before shortages of some sort or other occur. There is also reason to suspect that once this happens, there will be considerable positive feedback behavior, both at the moment, and in a lasting shift in peoples expectations about future 24/7 availability of goods buffets.

I was a bit taken aback this week when I went to my hairstylist, (who has until this occasion demonstrated rare skill with sasquatch locks) when she confided her recent exchange of all her bank cash for gold and tools. Surprised, I proceeded to provide her an academic explanation of her behaviour as trading abstract fiat capital into real capital in an environment of energy depletion and expansion of fiat debt, etc. She nodded knowingly and shared that she has believed society was headed for collapse since the 1970s, and only recently have real world facts caught up with her views. She went on to say that the next 20-30 years are going to be much better than the previous 20-30, and wanted to hang on something of lasting value during the transition. She then asked what 'depletion' and 'fiat' meant.

The drive home had me thinking thoughts on various levels. On the surface, I was curious as to how many people unaware of peak oil and fundamentals of debt/credit crisis have been intuitively preparing for some sort of social dislocation. An ivory tower moment for me, of sorts, I suppose. But as I thought about it deeper I wondered, in a world of myriad possibilities, intentions and trajectories, what actual long term advantage would people with gold, or foodstocks, or ammo, really experience - 3%? 50%?. In the grand scheme what kind of edge will Savinar-with-slingshot types have over those who haven't prepared one whit, but who are smart, resourceful and crafty? Or is it just perception of an edge? When we make decisions for tomorrow, is it to improve our odds for some perceived future bottleneck? Or is buying/hoarding stuff like buying State Farm life insurance - it allows us the expectation of a better, smoother, (risk adjusted) future? Or, just like higher returns in the stock market, as a (perceived) indicator of relative fitness vis-a-vis others. (e.g. Bob has 400 lbs more rice and 7 more guns than Bill - we gotta be friends with Bob!) Still, on an even deeper level, even though goods accumulation is in preparation for the 'future', it is still a focus on the very near term future, not the time frame needed for long term symbiosis of our species with the rest of the planetary ecology. So hoarding/peak oil prep. may be just another avenue for individual out-performance in a global commons, via competing for real goods instead of financial.

When we think about the future, whose future are we really thinking about? Our own? Our yet-as-unborn grandchildren? Or yet to be speciated future evolutionary organisms, products of hundreds of thousands of years of vibrant/healthy world ecosystems into the future? The above graph is totally hypothetical, but attempts to illustrate that as the focal point of our cultural/global decisions extends outward in time, it will have differing impacts both on future human welfare (black line) and future non-human welfare - biodiversity, healthy ecosystems, etc. (green line). As our focus moves forward in time, the black line suggests that future human welfare will decline until we begin to focus beyond the next 20 or so years. It is unlikely that many organisms, even possessing language and culture, could think/plan much beyond their own lifespans, but until such a point is reached, focusing on the present, especially when using finite extractable resources, borrows from the future, and quite possibly the immediate future. It seems to me that 'hoarding' as individuals is the opposite strategy as 'hoarding' as a species, which would entail consuming anything beyond renewable flows and the barest trickle of non-renewable resources. (The graph could be drawn many different ways depending on ones assumptions about population, resources and impacts)

Biology tells us that organisms arrived at today's present form and number by 'maximizing 'fitness', or pursuing those behaviours that were most successful in propelling their specific genotypes forward in time. But this is true only looking backwards in time, to all the events/bottlenecks in our ancestry that shaped our physical and mental characteristics before we were born. Once we emerge, bright eyed and naked, we then become adaptation executors, running cultural software cues through fixed hardware. (yes the hardware can 'change', i.e. plasticity, but this trait itself is a fixed property in the wetware). We are descended from the best of the best at surviving, procuring goods, and mating. Most of the planning and decision-making occuring today, even among the depletion cognoscenti, is likely favoring a very short time horizon in the grand scheme. It strikes me that hoarding goods, or scaling renewable infrastructure - wind, solar, nuclear etc. without paying attention to and shifting our demand drivers, is implicitly favoring a certain time period in our future - perhaps 2015-2025. In order to favor 2025 and beyond we need to start making consumption paradigm shifts etc. Still, as events decelerate with energy, the economy and the environment, this will on average increase stress, cognitive load, etc. thus continually shrinking our time horizon of focus.

I have no firm conclusions on these musings, other than by definition those alive and making decisions in 2050 and beyond, will be those (or the descendants of those) who by luck or preparation made it through to that time. I also don't believe that one necessarily needs to be alive or have copies of ones genes extant in that future, to impact it. Finally, I have come to realize that every 'plan' that we individually or as a culture pursue, by definition favors one time frame in the future over another. I'm not sure what this means, other than the further we look in the future, the less certainty there is - so perhaps all trajectories have to just take it one step at a time...

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Campfire questions:

1)Regarding 'hoarding', have you been buying things that you fear someday might be unavailable due to breakdown in supply chain, etc? If so, what is your objective by owning such things? Insurance? To make it through a bottleneck? What % advantage might these things offer you vs average human conspecifics?

2)Regarding the future, how will decisions optimized for the next 5-20 years adversely affect the next 50-100 years? Is it even possible to care more about 100 years from now than 10 years from now, as an individual? as a society?

3)Could we prepare for depletion equally well by giving things up? Instead of amassing 'extra' supply, instead reduce our demand for things at a similar pace? I think this is possible at the margin, but can we really reduce our demand for food, water, energy, and extra 'insurance'?

4)===> anything else related to preparation/paradigm change/timing you think is important..

The Chicken Coop Refuge: Or How I Became a Bug Farmer

Jason Bradford — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:40:12 -0400

I spent about a dozen years as an academic biologist including some period teaching ecology to university students. Often I find this background useful in unexpected ways.

Take my chicken coop as an example. This is an enclosed area where five hens live. They will use their claws and beaks to eat nearly anything that’s edible, and while I feed them mixed seeds and kitchen scraps, various live animals much smaller than themselves tend to be preferred, when available.

After satisfying their foraging needs, hens are shown taking a group "dirt bath" during a winter dry spell in the garden. Behind them is a small "chicken tractor" that I use to confine them in places outside of their coop.

I know this because I sometimes let them out to roam the yard, watching to make sure they don’t destroy a newly planted patch of vegetable seedlings or poop on the steps of the back porch. Their enthusiasm for worms, and little arthropods makes it clear that they would like more of them in their diet and that the coop has a shortage.

This brings me around to basic ecology, where population models and experiments have demonstrated the importance of a “prey refuge” in preventing local extirpation of prey in the presence of predators. Marine reserves are a good example of the application of prey refuges for increasing the populations of both predators and prey, and reducing population volatility.

What I have done is create little faunal refuges in the chicken coop by placing scraps of wood, such as plywood, on the ground. The hens are unable to access anything underneath the wood and after some time a dense population of little critters develops.

Only a few seconds after being turned over, the hens are picking bugs off the board and newly exposed soil. Since it is so dry in CA during the summer, earwigs and pill bugs (known as the wood louse in Britain, and a member of the class Isopoda) are most abundant this time of year, and likely move out to forage at night while the hens sleep.

I haven’t done experiments, or even thought about it deeply, to say how these boards should be spatially arranged, how many to place, how large they should be, etc. to optimize my harvest of eggs. But I do enjoy turning a board over and watching the hens go after the hidden riches. And I also enjoy eating eggs for breakfast most days of the week.

This is a Campfire post and I would like our readers to learn from each other. Does my story remind you of some “discovery” of your own that has practical significance? Have you found yourself engaged in "lateral" thinking and problem solving where you've applied knowledge and experience gained in one capacity to a new situation?

On Independence, Energy Subsidy, and Freedom

Nate Hagens — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:01:19 -0400

How much of our freedom is related to 'cheap energy'? Last I checked, the average American uses over 60 barrel of oil equivalents of the 3 primary fossil fuels (oil, coal and natural gas) per year. Depending on ones assumptions (and occupation), this is in the neighborhood of hundred(s) of years of manual human toil supplanted by cheap ancient sunlight. (At $20 per hour, a human laborer makes over $40,000 per year so even an energy subsidy of 100X p/a equates to $4 million in dollar terms.) Do our social freedoms emanate from the nature of our socio-political system, or the reverse - is our socio-political system a byproduct of the resources we acquired and used after finding this land? What is freedom, anyways? And what will freedom look like in the future? On this the birthday of the United States of America, let's discuss energy and freedom around the Campfire.

I love America. I state this as a plain fact - my friends, family, experiences, connection with nature, and memories are all 90%+ associated with this country. But I also consider myself as a citizen of the planet, circa 2009. Having traveled a great deal, I am all too aware of the advantages our country has vis-a-vis the ROW, that many of us often take for granted. Among many differences I notice when comparing American attitudes/behavior to those of people from other countries when I travel, one predominates: that of entitlement. While scanning a crowd at a train station or airport or restaurant or public event abroad, one can oftentimes notice just by attitude alone who hails from USA. With increasing occasion, perhaps due to my firming awareness of energy as lifes fundamental currency, I credit our enormous liquid fuel subsidy (we have 4.4% of worlds population but used 25% of the worlds oil flows) as a core pillar for our freedoms. Our daily volition, free will and perhaps even confidence likely has direct ties to our natural resources; both our geographic endowment, and what we receive in exchange via increasing amounts of debt. A recent proposal by Congress to release the SPR because $70 oil is causing economic hardship bears witness to just how dependent on energy our 'independence' has become. At $70 a barrel, oil costs much less (retail) than gatorade, milk, lemonade, beer, and bottled water. And we import 70% of what we use. Oh the horror when oil passes Gatorade in cost...

Like everything, I think freedom (to act, think, express, etc.) is related to the 'feelings' it engenders in our brains, which are essentially different neurochemical recipes. We have some idea of what situations generate these 'cocktails'. One seminal experiment on 'control/freedom' was by Lundberg and Frankenhaeuser (1980) "Pituitary-adrenal and sympathetic-adrenal correlates of distress and effort" (Journal of Psychosomatic Research volume 24, pages 125-130). To paraphrase, the researchers had subjects hit colored buttons that matched colored lights that would flash with increasing speed during the experiment and flashing about as fast as the subjects could follow near the end. Similar tests were undertaken where subjects would match these colored buttons to the flashing lights - the only difference being they had control of the dial that would increase the speed of the flashing lights. In this second experiment (controlled individually not by the experimenter), the speed of the flashing lights was as fast or faster than the first experiment.

Before and after blood tests and interviews of the subjects were taken for both experiments. The typical response after the first test was 'that was one of the hardest things I've ever done', and indeed the ratio of cortisol (a stress hormone) to norepinephrine in the blood was high. In the test where subjects had individual control, a typical response was 'that was fun! I enjoyed the challenge!' etc. Blood tests showed the inverse as well - cortisol was much less pronounced. There are similar and follow up tests in the physiological literature**, but the inference is that in IDENTICAL tasks, the difference in our brains response (with pleasurable or stressful sensations) depended on our ability to exert individual control over our circumstances.

Furthermore, from "Biological Basis of the Stress Response"

Recent work shows that differing perceptions of stress result in different patterns of neuroendocrine activation. An easily handled challenge elicits norepinephrine and testosterone rises with success. With increasing anxiety, active coping shifts to a more passive mode. Epinephrine, prolactin, renin, and fatty acids increase. As the distress grows, cortisol augments.

While not 100% explanatory, these and similar findings lend support to the notion that our cheap energy, via subsidizing our basic needs (and even those not so basic), suppresses stress hormones and allows us to feel control/freedom in more situations than we would without such subsidy. To me, this angle is potentially helpful for envisioning post peak institutions and behaviors. As long as people feel they have control of their circumstances and are not overly stressed, I think they (we) could endure a great deal more hardships than if we feel control is out of our hands. Irrespective of declines in resources/capita, assuming basic needs are met, we might be able to 'trick' our wiring into responses that are less stressful as long as we feel ownership in what's happening. (However, we'll likely need to address the habituation/addiction/behavioural ratchet effect angle at the same time....) In my experience, the number of digits in ones bank account allows for the 'perception' of freedom (options), but past a certain point it is just the opposite.

Freedom is related to control. And it could be argued that how much individual 'control' we have overall is a function of resources per capita. It would stand to reason that as resources per capita decline there will be fewer individual freedoms.
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(some) campfire questions:

What is freedom?
Without cheap energy (cheap being anything under $500 a barrel), how much freedom will we have?
How much are we entitled to?
How could less energy per capita equate to more freedom?

Dopamine Returned on Energy Invested (DREI)?

Jason Bradford — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:15:29 -0400

On a steamy Friday night my 10 year old son and I headed over to the rodeo grounds. It is only about a mile from our home and within the city limits, though on the eastern edge where the town merges into the valley landscape of pastures and tree-lined creeks and ditches.

As we approached, it was obvious that a large crowd had gathered. A long line extended from the ticket booth and the stands looked nearly full. Friends had tipped me off about what was going on only 10 minutes earlier, while thousands of others had obviously been looking forward to this event.

It was a truck and tractor pull.

On a hot summer night truck pull fans fill the stadium at the rodeo grounds in Willits, CA. Behind the dust is a weighted sled, called Terminator, that eventually forces the truck to stall. Truck pull images by Ree Slocum.

I place this sport in the same category as NASCAR, demolition derby, drag racing, and motor cross: An internal combustion engine of one sort or another propels a vehicle with a driver. Speed, power, agility, longevity or luck may sort among winners and losers. In this particular version, a weighted sled steadily increases the resistance the further it travels. Vehicles pull until they stop, usually in an engine stall and a cloud of dust.

Because Willits is a relatively small town, anonymity is not possible once you become involved in community affairs. I am on the board of a couple of non-profits related to energy and sustainability, have a radio show on a local station, two kids in the school system, and run a small farm that serves local customers. I brought attention to the subject of peak oil in October of 2005 by showing the film The End of Suburbia every other week for about a year.

I offer this background because people who know me would likely surmise (correctly) that if I were “supreme ruler” nothing like this would ever happen.

I asked a city councilor in attendance (the same person who alerted me to its occurrence) if this event is in conflict with the City’s pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 90% below 2005 levels by 2050, a goal I had a hand in developing? The City of Willits and a who’s who of community organizations also signed a sustainability vision statement I wrote. Was this part of that vision? She just smiled and remarked that energy isn’t expensive enough yet.

I was recognized by a member of the Frontier Day’s Committee, which are the folks who run the rodeo grounds. He sided up to me to verbalize how he saw the equations balancing out with respect to the spectacle. “Using a lot of fuel, aren’t they?” He spoke directly into my ear to compensate for the cylinder blasts. “But you know, this is a big crowd and it really helps us cover the cost of our lease. It’s the first time we’ve done this.” I simply smiled and gave a nod.

The crowd was big. Ten times bigger, in fact, than any I had been able to attract with notions of peak oil, economic collapse, relocalization, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, or a host of other hot topics. What should I make of that?

My son shouted out a running commentary that reflected my own mixed emotions. As the announcer explained in testosterone-laden tones, the turbo diesels spent about a minute “Building their Boost!” before releasing the clutch. During this process, black soot emerged from pairs of thick chrome pipes to neck craning heights, which served to tense the crowd. On several such occasions my son looked up at me to say, “They’re polluting the Earth!” And yet, perhaps ten seconds later as the truck stalled some 300 ft down the dirt track we whooped excitedly with everybody else.

Our brains were being whip lashed by dueling neurotransmitters. The neocortex was giving us one signal, namely “Polluting Earth Bad,” while the limbic system was giving us countervailing signals, specifically “THIS IS SO COOL!” In fact, that is the other phrase my son used often that night. So on a cycle that repeated every several minutes, I would pump my fists and shout “YEAH!”, but as the rush of dopamine waned, nagging concerns regarding the energy expenditure would re-emerge. Sometimes the motions of a really fine vehicle, such as the ones propelled by jet engines, would keep me “amped” even while the track was being prepared between runs by rumbling dozers, rollers, and the periodic water truck. (I am not going to delve into the neurophysiology and evolution of the brain in this post. Please see this one instead.)

I found myself drawn to the particular form of White Lightening. It wasn't of the largest class of trucks, and the length of its pull disappointed somewhat, but the elegance of its lines and the beauty of its exhaust flames can't be denied.

It wasn’t only the fuel injection on a 2000 hp engine going full tilt for 10 seconds that bothered me, but the knowledge that these beasts were coming from all over the state. The names of the vehicles I remember include White Lightning, Semper Fi and Get it Done (which ended up being the big winner, pulling the Terminator sled over 350 ft, dragging it out of bounds and finishing in a perilous side-ways slide). The geographic names included San Luis Obispo, Red Bluff and Bakersfield. And my son and I constituted the majority of the subpopulation that made it to the rodeo grounds via the most energy efficient transportation device every made—the humble bike running at less than one horsepower and burning non-fossil carbohydrate fuels.

I don’t want anybody to get the impression that I judge the people who regularly attend diversions such as the truck pull much differently than my own cohort. The following is a list of low Dopamine Returned on Energy Invested (DREI) activities undertaken by friends and family. These are people who I have personally addressed on the subjects dear to readers of The Oil Drum, and some of them even help me try to “save” civilization, the planet, and other important stuff.

• Fly to Las Vegas to see Cirque du Soleil. This is remarkably common and not limited to any one individual. The most recent “must see show” was The Beatles Love, and I admit it looks awfully tempting!

Although I have not seen the performance, I gather from this image that I would be pleasured by it.

• Spend a week on a Cajun Dance Cruise ship. My wife and I are invited to this one yearly, and it is especially difficult to pass up.

• Ski in the Rockies. Ski in the Sierras, etc.

• Vacations in Europe, Asia, etc.

I haven’t done any carbon footprint analysis to compare the truck pull to the diversions more in line with my own tastes and those of my peers. Obviously they all use gargantuan amounts of energy.

I am a firm believer in the notion that the one-time endowment of Earthly oil should be viewed as a precious gift, and that if any of it needs to be used to it should be allocated towards deploying the technology and infrastructure that would lower our ecological footprint enough not to despoil our home. Anytime I see gallons of fossil fuels being burned I realize that the btus released are enormous, dwarfing the potential power output of human bodies or domesticated animals. Without a renewable energy infrastructure in place before depletion of oil sets in, I fear social convulsions of the worst sort. For example, if we lose our energy slaves will we somehow justify human ones again?

And yet we burn it up so frivolously. This final quote from my son summarizes the situation aptly: "Dad, this is so crazy!"

Nate Hagens and I discussed this topic as part of one of our radio interviews. On that program Nate recommended trying to discover diversions that use little energy, in other words, have a high DREI. I doubt most of the crowd at the truck pull had listened to any of my shows. But even among those of us “in the know,” a challenge we face is dealing with the addictive aspects of energy intensive activities.

On the way back home I met John Jeavons and related my recent experiences. He commented on a time in Mexico, where he was teaching GROW BIOINTENSIVE farming in a workshop. It was in a port city and one day an impressively enormous cruise ship loomed over the docks, its thousands of passengers disgorging into the streets and tourist shops. He thought about the amount the urine and feces produced each day on a ship like that, how much food could be grown with it, and knowing that the mineral wealth of the modern food system and the resulting effluent came from mines and natural gas wells that were low entropy geological riches scooped up using machines running on oil…and yet it was all being dispersed into the ocean.

We like to share stories on Campfire. So I’d like to hear from you about the following:

1. Have you been able to move away from low DREI habits and replace them with high DREI ones?
2. What experiences have you had like mine and John Jeavons’, being simultaneously awed and disgusted by the excesses of our world?
3. Why should I deprive myself of the great hedonistic pleasures of the age of oil if I can still afford them since very few others willingly curtail?
4. Is information sufficient to change behavior, and if not, what does?
5. I recognized very few faces at the truck pull, even though I live in a small town. What does this say about the cultural diversity of society and does that diversity make it more or less challenging to adapt to change?

Story Update: Coverage of the event in The Willits News is now available.

Fibber McGee, Molly, and Your Energy Future

Prof. Goose — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:15:30 -0400

This is a post by Debbie Cook; Debbie is the former Mayor of Huntington Beach and a former congressional candidate. She currently serves as a board member of ASPO-USA and Post Carbon Institute.

Several weeks ago at the Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa, California, Richard Heinberg told a audience member not to hold her vision of the future too tightly. Sound advice that I wrote on a scrap of paper and put in my pocket. This past week his words came back to me as I found myself in a two hour conversation with two peak oil aware friends who wanted to discuss the future. One friend had decided he was going to immigrate with his sister to New Zealand. Having recently returned from New Zealand I could certainly understand the attraction. But I (who am often accused of being a doomer) suggested he consider many scenarios when thinking about the energy transition and reminded him of Mark Twain’s words, there’s so much people know that ain’t so.

We tend to seek information that confirms our beliefs rather than looking for that which contradicts it. It is our tendency to be more sure the less we know, and less sure, the more we know.

During a recent “peak oil” weekend in Northern California I had the luxury of catching up on my podcast listening while driving up from Huntington Beach. In addition to my typical consumption of energy related podcasts, (including an interesting interview by Jason Bradford of Michael Bomford), I sprinkled in some lighter fare.

I love the old time radio programs and keep hundreds on my ipod for long drives or sleepless nights. One of my favorites is Fibber McGee and Molly, a popular 30-minute comedy that entertained America from 1935 to 1956. During the war years, propaganda (I imply no value judgment here) was used by all governments; radio provided a perfect venue for this important component of the war effort. For those of us who did not grow up during that era, the war time radio programs give us a glimpse at the saturation of the messages and also an idea of the efforts that might be enlisted in the future to deal with our energy transition.

From an unlikely source, I found the following episode of Fibber McGee and Molly, entitled Gas Rationing, to cause me to adjust my grasp of my vision of the future. I thought it might make a good Campfire discussion on TOD. There are a number of interesting jumping off points. Here are a few that came to my mind, feel free to suggest your own:

1. Is fuel rationing likely (check out the link to Leon Henderson)
2. How would propaganda play out in a world where media comes in many forms and everyone is a journalist
3. Numerous frames of the issue are presented throughout the program, which are unpersuasive to Fibber until the final one. How might energy transition be framed to get the greatest buy-in.
4. Fibber expresses many of the opinions of the day regarding Government. How similar/dissimilar are ours from those of that era.

I have transcribed the first five minutes of the program below, but I encourage you to listen to the entire program. If nothing else, you are likely to fall in love with Fibber McGee and Molly.

Title: Gas Rationing
Download or listen here: http://www.archive.org/details/FibberMcGeeandMolly1942

Announcer: Mileage rationing has just come to Wistful Vista and in spite of it being a meatless day, get a load of the beef being put up by an average citizen as we meet Fibber McGee and Molly.

FM: I tell ya it ain’t fair Molly. They can’t do this to me. Four gallons a week. Why that’s ridiculous.

Molly: I think so too.

FM: You do?

Molly: Yes, you don’t need four gallons.

FM: Doggone it, I do too. Four gallons is outrageous. Where can I go on four gallons of gas.

Molly: Where do you wanna go, Dearie.

FM: Well gee whiz, what if I did want to go some place…in an emergency or some place.

Molly: You mean like running out of cigars.

FM: Yes….No! Running out of cigars ain’t an emergency.

Molly: You never spoke a truer word McGee.

FM: Huh?

Molly: When I get a whiff of those poison Panatellas of yours, I know why tobacco auctioneers talk that way.

FM:: Whatcha mean?

Molly: Those fellas are hysterical.

FM: Aah, forget my cigars. I’m talking about this mileage rationing. I think it’s a dirty deal. The whole thing is silly. Gonna make everybody stay at home. Why in two years a guy from Indiana won’t know what a guy from Kansas is talking about.

Molly: Where you from?

FM: Illinois

Molly: Then it’s happened already, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.

FM: I’m talking about giving all the car owners a measly little medicine dropper full of gasoline. It’s an infringement on private rights, that’s what it is.

Molly: Look Dearie, the main reason their rationing gasoline is to save tires. Don’t you know if we continue driving like we have been a majority of automobiles will be off the road next year?

FM: Good! There’s too much traffic anyway. Too crowded. Get the cars off the road. That’ll be fine. That’s swell.

Molly: Well I’m glad you feel that way because yours will probably be one of them.

FM: What, me give up my car?! Oh, no you don’t. I paid for my tires and by the left hind leg of Leon Henderson I’ve got a right to… I’m gonna write to my Congressman this very minute.

Molly: Who is our Congressman?

FM: Why it’s ole…I don’t know. Who is he?

Molly: Oh just send it to the Congressman from this District.

FM: OK, that’s exactly what I’ll do. What District is this?

Molly: Maybe you ought to write it to our Senator.

FM: That’s better yet. I’ll tell him I’m not gonna stand for any such…who’s our Senators?

Molly: Look Dearie, our government has asked us to take less gasoline so we’ll drive less and save the country’s rubber. And if you haven’t got enough interest in your government to know who your representatives are, you haven’t got any right to stand around and stomach ache.

FM: Not stomach ache, the word is…

Molly: I know what the word is.

FM: Well, gee whiz, the idea of giving an important citizen like me just an A book…save rubber my clavicle. What happened to that sympathetic rubber that inventor made out of milkweed. Or was it milk he made out of a rubber plant. Any way why don’t…

Doorbell rings…

Improving Power in Rural China

Heading Out — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:15:29 -0400

Heading Out (Dave Summers) is currently visiting China...perhaps these ideas will give us some inspiration for ideas here as well.

Solar heating of a kettle (30 min to boiling)

Powering Rural China

One of the concerns of the Qinghai Administration deals with the large number of herders that remain wandering the hills, as their herds migrate across the landscape. Apart from the concerns over over-grazing that the now-larger herd/flock size is starting to impact grassland stability, they are also concerned with the provision of power and easier physical access to the herder dwellings, and he provision of social services.

Driving out to see the Liujia Gorge hydro-electric scheme and nature park we passed through a street that illustrated one of the first steps in helping that had been achieved. Outside virtually every residence on the sunny side of the street (and about four on the other) there was a solar cooker of the type shown at the top of the page. These are extremely popular even where there is electricity (which is not that expensive) but are even more popular with the herders, since this gives them a source of hot water and power for cooking, without needing access to electricity.

The second step in giving folk power has been the introduction of the solar water heaters. The designs are quite simple, a drum, and thin collector pipes, and they are currently being sold, at a price of around 6,000 – 7,000 yuan (6.7 to the dollar). This is in contrast with electric powered heaters that go in at around 1,000 yuan, but that have a power bill. Despite the differential we saw a fair few installed, though to be honest I think I would be stretching it to say we saw 5% of the homes in the villages we drove through using them.

Solar water heater (cost around $1,000 installed)

But if the herder mentality is to change there are other changes that must also be made, the first being affordable, simple and power independent houses. (Along the lines of the solar house competition on the Mall, though cheaper and less complex, and without the utility and car provisions. ) With stability in population there might be a possibility of using a grid, but the return would not justify the investment.

Most power in the state comes from hydro, they also supply five adjacent provinces, and the size of some it truly impressive. We did a tour around the nature park surrounding the Liujia Gorge hydro-electric plant, rising from 2,000 m at the crest of the dam, up to 3,000 m looking down on the lake as we were driven through the Kanbula nature park (by minibus and golf cart, and then back to minibus and boat).

The Liujia Gorge dam and lake

One additional sign of change, as we drove through the villages was the rapidly changing construction plan, going from mud brick to baked brick, with house after house being rebuilt with the more resistant baked brick. The bricks are it seems, being baked using coal as the power source, but that cost is small relative to the benefit of the new (to them) material.

This is still a land where farming is a major occupation, with couples out every day tending “their patch” and making sure it is properly watered and weeded. This gives a different mentality and cost structure over that which we commonly currently consider when asked for an opinion.

Heating Houses and Tents

Room in a Tu community

The Tu have a significant minority status in China, and in Xining City there is a community, which has at least three culture centers. These show off the way of life of the Tu, and this is a typical room within their gated community. The platform contains a small wood stove, and a conduit that carries hot gases through the bed of the bed, before exhausting it. As a result the ceramic box is quite warm, and the family can thus sit here and eat, and drink, and if they collapse – we’ll they’re on a bed to start with. The amount of wood required to keep the fire going and heat the ceramic is relatively small, and as I mentioned we saw Pollarded trees, and sheep stretching up to eat new leaves and branches. We sat in here for lunch, around the table, and I was initiated into the ceremony of the three cups. (I also can confirm that ear of yak is quite a pleasant delicacy). The design from the bed came from North East China where the Tu originated. They also had a small still going which produced the ethanol for the ceremony.

The construction illustrates how much benefit can come from an intelligence of need.

In contrast, Tibetan tents, which are of a heavy and dark construction so that they can soak up as much heat from the sun as possible, have a central wall, with a small fire built into it. This is usually fed by dried dung, of which there is a pile usually outside. Outside the cities this is quite a common dwelling for the herders (and workers on the pipeline) though the tents were made of different materials and colors (white being the dominant other).

Central heating structure for a Tibetan tent

This post is a combination of two recent posts from Dave's Bit Tooth Energy Blog.

How Will Knowledge of Collapse Impact Collapse?

Nate Hagens — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:00:22 -0400

I just watched an excellent and thought provoking lecture by Noah Raford at London School of Economics (hat tip Jason Bradford): (Note: you can play around with these models on Netlogo online HERE)

Collapse Dynamics

The lecture was about various examples in nature, financial markets and civilizations where previously correlated patterns were eventually sharply disrupted by small critical changes leading to phase transitions. We've had essays on the failure of networked systems, the ecological framing of collapse, and similar topics on TOD before, but while watching the 2 video lectures, I started to wonder: what impact does detailed knowledge of collapse dynamics have on collapse dynamics? This is the topic of tonight's Campfire.

Some summarizing points from the lecture itself (little new to readers here but if pressed for time, I'd rather you watch the video than read this post):

==>The more complicated a system, especially one involving automation, optimization, and human oversight, the more likely it is to fail (tight optimization in a dynamic environment is bad).

==>(From Didier Sornettes "Why Stock Markets Crash"):

"...stock market crashes are caused by a slow build-up of long range correlations leading to global cooperative behaviour of the market eventually ending in a collapse in a short time interval.

1. Individual behavior percolates throughout the system
2. Successful traders set examples for non-successful ones, who then imitate their actions and behaviour
3. Imitative behaviour then intenstifies as markets become more connected.
4. Leading to a crash"

(I think the above is interesting if we substitute 'society' for 'market' and 'citizens' for 'traders'.)

==>Complexity comes at a cost, it's hard to turn back once you've got it, and it's value decreases the more of it you have (Tainter).

==> (Based on Panarchy - Gunderson/Holling)
*Multiple states are common in many systems
*It is impossible to predict where tipping points are until it's too late (interactive complexity)
*Functional diversity builds resistance
*Management must cope with surprise and uncertainty

==>Take Home Message:
* Stay light
* Stay smart
* Experiment
* Learn quickly
* Keep multiple options open

Though all these are topics worthy of discussion themselves, I'd like to throw the following line of questions to tonights Campfire:

By definition, all previous ecosystem and non-human collapses were not 'understood as collapse' by those organisms alive during the collapse. Similarly, during historical human social collapses, (Rome, Easter Island, Anasazi, Maya, etc.), people might have known they were in the middle of some unpleasant trajectory, but they didn't have the knowledge, historical record, technology or communication that modern society possesses in understanding/explaining what was transpiring. As such, when this civilization 'collapses', (which in the opinion of this writer is inevitable - the timing, direction, and severity of which remain the salient unknowns), it will be the first to have at least some portion of its inhabitants anticipate and understand its own collapse in a systems dynamics sense.

How will this odd 'collapse trivia' manifest in steering/pulling/resisting actual collapse, if at all?

Let's presume that ~95% of humans will be unaware of or unable to synthesize the idea of collapse into their existing belief systems. I would put the remaining ~5% in the following groups:

1. Academics tweaking the academic aspects of systems theories out of academic interest (i.e. non-applied)
2. Those following collapse dynamics for unexpected reward (e.g. novelty without intent to change)
3. Individuals and groups accelerating their own localities move towards more durable built/human/social capital. (i.e. resilience and redundancy over efficiency and financial profit)
4. Government/corporate/BAU entities anticipating how to best defend their own power/advantage
5. Other - individuals/groups that history will show as black swans, either purposeful or accidental.

Off the top of my head on this muggy Saturday afternoon, I would guess that groups 1 and 2 (and the aforementioned 95%) are along for the ride. Group 3 (where many TOD readers reside) will mirror the 'multiple strategies' from Noah's lecture -some strategies will work better than others but relocalization, more simplicity, substitution of time and labor for technology, etc. will likely make a portfolio of these groups more resilient to any number of future scenarios, almost exclusively out of self-interest in the medium term (as opposed to long term, e.g. beyond their own lives). Group #4, via ostensibly trying to avert collapse will actually accelerate it because by and large their definition of 'collapse aversion' is embedded in the long-term correlated behavior that is squeezing us further into the chinese finger trap. Group #5 then is the wild card - those whose actions, advertent or otherwise will shift initial conditions enough so that reasonably predictable future events will now have different trajectories and speeds. This group is also probably the tiniest minority (perhaps as tiny as n=1).

TONIGHT'S CAMPFIRE QUESTIONS

1. Will knowledge of upcoming collapse (or at least the possibility of such) change behaviour in anything other than self-interested, intermediate term (5-15 year) preparation?

2. Will spreading knowledge of collapse dynamics (such as Noahs video linked up top) meaningfully change the initial conditions of future real-life iterations? If so, how?

3. Could educating our current leaders about collapse/system dynamics result in their adoption of behaviours outside of the current business as usual system? Or would it require new leaders and/or a different system?

We know so much, yet are careening forward....How to go beyond knowledge and synthesis into integration and implementation?

Campfire and Human Capital - What Do You Want to Learn?

Nate Hagens — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:10:14 -0400

It has been about six months since we started the Campfire series on The Oil Drum. The intent was to host an outlet for those who were reasonably convinced that peak oil and energy descent begin now. The schedule is on Wednesdays to have 'practical' guest posts from 'experts' on various aspects of human capital (skills and knowledge) that might be useful for the community to learn and discuss. The Saturday slot was for some of the larger and more difficult questions we face as a society in an overshoot situation.

The 'guest post' larder since the start of Campfire has been on the bare side (with some stellar exceptions). Tonights post is a blank slate for you to articulate what 'practical' topics you would like covered in future posts. Since peak oil likely means more localization and a move towards self-reliance, essays and expertise on food/water/energy will clearly be of interest. But information on health, psychology, leisure, etc. in a post-peak world will be equally interesting.

This slot is to create social capital via sharing human capital within this community (so in some ways is a microcosm of post-peak culture itself)....

What would you like to learn?

Right Sizing the Economy: Can Herman Daly's Prescription for a Steady State Economy Accomplish this Task?

Nate Hagens — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:06:38 -0400

This is a guest post from RogerK, a hardware engineer from San Jose California who thinks and writes about the finite world paradigms which will be needed to replace the 'no limits' paradigm which exists as the cultural norm of modern industrial society. Tonights post expands on a comment he made in last weeks guest essay from Herman Daly on a Steady State Economy. Roger previously has written a related essay on TOD here, and a follow up here.

Right Sizing the Economy: Can Herman Daly's Prescription for a Steady State Economy Accomplish this Task?

TOD recently published the text of a speech delivered by economist Herman Daly at the United States Society for Ecological Economics bi-annual conference (at American University near Washington DC). About half of this speech was dedicated to making the case for limits to economic growth, a subject on which Daly has written eloquently for years, most notably in his book Steady State Economics[1]. The second half of the speech was dedicated to presenting proposals for economic reforms which would keep in check the destructive tendencies of an economic system which is always trying to maximize short term income.

I am glad to see an economist with Herman Daly's credentials banging the drum for limits to growth. I read Steady State Economics several years ago, and I very much enjoyed Daly's debunking of the "growth men" as he refers to the conventional economists who insist that neither supplies of natural resources or of ecosystem services will put any limits on human economic expansion in the foreseeable future. I particularly like his description of "the myth of the angelized GDP"[2] in which it is claimed that the flow of dollars will increase exponentially forever, purchasing a continually increasing quality of life without requiring any increase in the throughput of materials and energy.

However, I found his proposed fixes to the growth problem to be less than convincing. It is clear that Daly has not stood still in the years since the original publication of Steady State Economics, and the reform proposals presented in his recent speech are more sophisticated and more well thought out than those presented in the earlier book. Nevertheless I am still unconvinced that the proposed reforms would be effective even if the political will to carry them out came into existence.

Daly presents a vision of a regulated, controlled, rationalized version of private finance capitalism. In my view this prescription for a steady state economy is addressed to the symptom of our problem rather than to the underlying fundamental cause. The symptom is that we strongly desire to use resources in a way that will maximize our current exchange income in dollars. The underlying cause is the structural emphasis of our economic system on the atomized accumulation of private financial wealth as the primary route to security and status for individuals and nuclear families.

Daily's vision of a steady state economy leaves in place the primary structures of our current economic system (e.g. capital markets, interest based banking, private savings, etc) and then proposes to control their destructive and depletionary tendencies by a series of rules and regulations. I am extremely skeptical about the potential for success of such a strategy. Yes, a cap and trade system and ecological taxes will work against the destructive tendencies of private finance capitalism, but the political pressure to let us go hammer and tongs after whatever resources will maximize our dollar income in the short term will be enormous and unrelenting. Conservative banking will prevent financial bubbles, but it will not alleviate the desire to squeeze as much short term growth out of the system as current resource flows allow.

I think that much more radical changes than those envisioned by Daily are required in order to create an ecologically sane economic system. I think that we should create an economic system in which we are attempting to minimize our current exchange income in dollars, consistent with the constraint of producing adequate levels of total income including psychic components. The psychic component of our income needs to be largely decoupled from the formal economy as measured by transactions in large scale exchange media like dollars.

The question of how to accomplish such a goal is a complex one. Maybe the often repeated claim that it is not culturally/genetically possible to create such a society is correct. However, I think that some structural features required to make such a society work are clear whether or not one believes that they can be implemented in practice.

First of all community finance is required. Clearly we need to go on investing in infrastructure. But if we wish to avoid a growth orientation, then the purpose of building such infrastructure should be to preserve the long term productivity of society and not to increase the stash of private financial investors. The return on such investment should be the goods and services produced and not excess purchasing power for people who already have excess purchasing power.

Secondly, mutual support has to be clearly and explicitly recognized as the normal path to long term material security. Of course mutual support is already an objective fact. Aside from some bags of flower or rice in your basement, private savings are largely a delusion. Land is sometimes referred as the most substantial and secure of all stores of value. But in point of fact land, in and of itself, is not a store of value. Suppose that you were a feudal land owner with vast estates, warehouses full of grain, fields full of sheep and cattle, dense woodlands, etc. One day you wake up and every human being besides yourself has vanished from the face of the earth. You are rich no longer. Within a comparatively short time your grain stores will be depleted by rodents and rot, and even in the meantime you will have to chop your own wood, haul your own water, grow and harvest your own vegetables, clean and repair your own dwelling etc. So called private stores of value are merely claims against the output of the economic community.

The only real store of value is the built up infrastructure of society, including, crucially, the skill and knowledge of the men and women who are the brains and hands of that society, and in the sustainable resource base which supports that infrastructure. In your prime working years you are supporting the aged and the sick, and when sickness or age reduces your productivity you will be supported in your turn by those who are still in the prime of their productivity (again I am speaking of objective physical fact, not of religious or political ideology). We need to create a society in which people who put their shoulder to the wheel, in however humble a capacity, and help to maintain the productivity of the community can have confidence that they will supported in their hour of need independent of the size of their private financial stash. If such mutual trust cannot be achieved outside of groups of a hundred or so people, then it is hard to see how large scale civilization can attain to long term stability in finite world.

Obviously I am not presenting a practical political program for achieving such objectives, but here are some questions to be considered by anyone hoping that new economic paradigms can ultimately be established.

1. What mechanism(s) should be used for community finance?

One possible answer, of course, is the Politburo and the five year plan. The often made claim that no other possible mechanisms exist strikes me a displaying an incredible poverty of imagination. The Chilean state copper company CODELCO has existed as a highly profitable enterprise for three decades, and I see no reason for comparing its operation to that of a Stalinist tractor factory.

2. What levels of organization of community finance should exist (e.g. village, bioregion, province, nation-state, international, global)?

In giving the example of the Chilean state copper company I did not mean to imply that I think that economic organization should all be concentrated at the level of the nation state. However, if we are not going to return all the way to neolithic technology some amount of specialized large scale manufacturing will be required and the financing decisions concerning such infrastructure should be made by the larger communities that are being served by these forms of manufacturing.

3. What specific mechanisms should be used to make it clear to everyone that a stable, right sized economic community is the real source of our long term security rather than private financial stashes? I have discussed this issue in more detail here.

4. If atomized wealth accumulation by individuals and families is abandoned as the driving force behind economic activity how can efficiency and productivity to be encouraged and rewarded?.

This discussion of this question would lead into a long and complex essay by itself, but I would like to point out one aspect of a possible answer. In a world in which continuous wealth accumulation has been abandoned as a goal one reward of greater efficiency/productivity is greater freedom. In your personal life the less time you spend cleaning, painting, repairing your personal property the more time you have to engage in more fulfilling activities. In our collective economic life the more efficiently we provide ourselves with essential products and services, the more toys we have to manufacture in order to make sure that everyone has a job. Long before I had any particular worries about peak oil this feature of private finance capitalism struck me as colossally stupid.

The task we are faced with is intelligently right sizing the economy. Today this task is virtually impossible because the perception of individual economic actors is: The more my business/ salary/ bank account/ investment portfolio grows, the better off I am. This simple perception is the driving engine behind the growth machine. We need to replace this perception with a new one: If I do my part to create and support a right sized economy (in however humble a role) I know that I will receive the wherewithal for a decent quality of life, and I can have confidence that in an hour of need the right sized economy that I helped to create and support will support me.

This task may appear impossibly difficult, but it is really the only game in town. If we cannot accomplish it then we are stuck with the doomer/cornucopian dichotomy.

[1] Daly, Herman. Steady State Economics. Washington D.C.: Island Press 1991.

[2] A Catechism of Growth Fallacies (Chapter 5 of Steady State Economics) can be found on line at: http://www.dieoff.org/page88.htm

A Message to the Nearly Converted

Jason Bradford — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:25:10 -0400

I was recently asked to give a talk at "The Generation Green Tent" during the Summer Arts and Music Festival at the Benbow Lake State Recreation Area. Here's the text and supporting images for that talk.

Thanks for coming to my presentation. I am going to say some challenging things today. I don't know if you are going to be validated or view me as a heretic. In any case, if you are taking notes I am going to have eight main points to cover. Here it goes!

My wife is a physician and has a Masters in Public Health, and so I am going to start with an analogy inspired by her profession that I believe all of us can follow. A very telling study was done on the health of Native Americans on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. The Mexican population was quite fit, while the U.S. population had high rates of obesity and associated diseases, such as diabetes. I am going to make some judgments about the society that produced this discrepancy, and perhaps we can primarily assign the blame for the illnesses of these people on their sick environment. However, I don’t want to absolve individuals of all responsibility for their predicament because that is a disempowering thing to do.

Overcoming the obesity crisis of humanity requires paying off our ecological debt. This means accepting certain job losses and developing job gains in other areas. See full article for discussion.

What I am going to argue is that you are all capable, powerful individuals and that you are responsible for making great changes.

So, let’s imagine a morbidly obese person died. What was the cause of death?

Did the heart get clogged? Perhaps the lungs filled with fluid? Was it renal or kidney failure or a collapsed circulation system? Did a growing cyst or new cancer lead to a weakness in one of the organs? There are so many possibilities because just about every system was over-taxed.

The patient was in the hospital before expiring, and the doctors weren’t sure what to do. It was like one of those “wack-a-mole games” at an arcade. Addressing one problem, such as heart failure, worsened another, such as kidney failure. The problems kept popping up, and taking care of one simply brought another to the surface…faster and faster and faster until coping with so many became impossible. The medical staff, and ultimately the patient, were simply overwhelmed as everything seemed to go wrong at once.

I’ll ask the question again: “What was the cause of death?”

Common sense tells us that looking at the death of this person from the perspective of failing organs misses the point. The root cause of death was years of unhealthy habits.

Point 1. This is the first point of my talk. I want everybody to view the grim environmental statistics as multiple “organ failures” approaching for human civilization.

I’ll just run through a few of them: Species are being lost at a rate that is about 1000 times higher than normal. Nearly all populations of commercial fish are in severe decline or utter collapse. Forests, wetlands, prime agricultural lands, and other highly productive habitats are routinely paved over or degraded. Key non-renewable mineral and energy resource stocks, especially oil, have been consumed at exponentially increasing rates for decades and are now past or near their extraction peak. Fresh water is frequently polluted and overdrawn from aquifers. And just to finish off this incomplete rundown, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are destabilizing the climate system with frightening consequences.

Graphs from New Scientist.

Most environmentalists will give a talk about one of these systems and then propose some things you or the government or business can do to make it not so bad. I am not going to give that kind of talk. Let’s not waste any more time dealing with the organs, let’s take a look at why they are all failing at once.

Point 2. The second point I want everybody to get is this: The cause of environmental decay is a kind of obesity crisis of humanity. We humans are taking more than we should from the planet, getting fat in the process, and leaving our trash behind.

Why do I put it this way? Well, let’s examine some other statistics. Growth in human population has been sharply rising for several decades. So has industrial output. The number of cars, trucks and planes in the world has increased steadily. Consumption of paper products, and stuff of all kinds, really, has risen exponentially. This is people taking stuff from the planet, building things, and creating lots of waste.

Graphs from New Scientist.

I am going to do an audience survey. I want you all to check your feelings during the following scenario I will describe. It will help if everybody closes their eyes for this exercise. It will only take a minute.

Your radio alarm clock goes off on Monday morning and it is the newscast you regularly hear. The tone of the newscaster is subtly jubilant. She is telling you about the latest survey of consumer confidence. It is high. A new report on the economy indicates that GDP is growing again, that car sales are up, and so is new home construction. Resorts around the world are preparing for a new tourism boom as the economy gets back to robust growth.

Keep your eyes closed. Now, how do you feel about it? I am going to give you three choices. Be honest, eyes are closed. First, raise your hand if your emotions register this broadcast as “good news.” Now raise your hand if your emotions register this broadcast as “bad news.” Anybody left with “mixed feelings” raise your hand.

[Historical note: I gave the same speech on Saturday and Sunday and only one person thought this was good news. The split was about even between bad news and mixed feelings. I suggest this was not a randomly selected audience.]

Thank you for doing that. I believe the common response to that news report would be a sense of “good news.” Now, what if the next news report told you about another calving ice sheet and warned of sea level rise? Perhaps it is an update on the area of plastic waste in the North Pacific Ocean the size of Africa. These would be taken as “bad news,” right?

To make it crystal clear, I am saying that the idea, “Economic growth is good,” is in conflict with “Destroying the environment is bad” because currently, the way things work, growing economies destroy the environment. Just look at the past 20 years in China. They are now wallowing in the putrid wastes of their own “progress.” Conversely, the current economic depression in the U.S. has people driving fewer miles each month for nearly the past two years. Why aren’t we celebrating this drop in gasoline use? Isn’t it great news that we are reining in greenhouse gas emissions and using less foreign oil? Bike sales in 2009 are now greater than car and truck sales combined. Shouldn’t we be celebrating the closing of car factories and the rise in bike sales?

How bizarre then, that the activities that we call “good” are the cause of our collective obesity, leading to organ failures such as calving ice sheets. Keep in mind that societies frequently have bouts of madness. We look back at history and gush, “What were they all thinking?” Can anybody give an example of a crazy mass delusion in history? Our mass delusions are extremely dangerous.

Point 3. This brings me to my third main point: It is well past the time for us to admit that we are a bit off our rockers too. Our society is obviously in a state of collective cognitive dissonance.

Wikipedia defines cognitive dissonance as:

an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The "ideas" or "cognitions" in question may include attitudes and beliefs, and also the awareness of one's behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

Apparently there are two ways to reduce cognitive dissonance: “either by changing attitudes, beliefs and behaviors, OR by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.”

I am here to ask you to do the former, not the latter. Change behaviors, don’t rationalize. I will also make the claim that by changing your behavior you are going to feel a whole lot better. It will be like going on a diet and exercise program, tough at first, but ultimately very rewarding. I will also make the claim that you really don’t have any choice. You will never hear a news report about a newly robust economy--only the false promise of one some vague distance in the future. We are just beginning the Greater Depression and you better get ready. It’s time to shed some pounds.

Some may be wondering why I don’t believe Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geitner and good old American spunk can get the economy back on track. Well, here’s why.

Let’s imagine Mother Nature is a banker. Several generations ago our forefathers walk into “Bank of Nature” and get a loan. Mother Nature approves our loan and offers us plenty of credit. We are now endowed with the riches of ancient forests, prolific fisheries, fertile topsoil, clean water, concentrated mineral ores, vast reserves of fossil fuels, and a splendidly stable climate. These assets, Mother Nature’s credit slip, are the source of our wealth and comfort. Every widget, gizmo, thing-a-majig, do-dad, wach-a-macall-it and Winnebago produced in our factories, sold in our stores, piled in our landfills and spilled in our waters originated as a loan from Bank of Nature.

Why is there a problem? Because loans, as we are now discovering, are not just slips of credit, they also come with debt. While we gleefully liquidated the Natural Capital loan Mother Nature approved for us, we failed to develop a business plan that could pay back the debt. This ecological debt is the underlying problem in our financial system right now. As soon as the economy tries to heat up again, which we call increasing DEMAND, it will be capped on the knees by the henchmen Mother Nature hired. She will not extend us any more credit since we have done a poor job with the first loan. Some of the protest signs you may have seen pictures of around the world are correct: Nature doesn’t do bailouts.

If you are not quite following me here, a few of examples should help. Let’s say demand picks up for fish…woopsie, most fisheries are already collapsed. Want a new tourism boom? Too bad, oil supplies have peaked and the airline industry is being forced to contract, not expand. Looking ahead, how’s the ski resort business going to be with dramatically reduced snow packs and expensive fossil fuels?

The global financial system is not structurally capable of dealing with this situation and is in the process of failing. The current policy response is to inject more money into the system, which doesn’t help because all students of economics know the following: When more money chases fixed or declining goods the result is inflation that brings demand in line with what is materially available.

Don’t get me wrong, economic opportunities remain. What I am saying is that business and government enterprises that run an ecological deficit each year and further deepen our ecological debts will fail. I’ll get to those opportunities later.

Point 4. This brings me to point 4. Problems with the environment or natural resources are problems with the economy because human economic systems are a subset of planetary ecological systems. Environmental issues should be the main topics on page 1 of the business section of your local newspaper—assuming you still have one.

The human economy is a subset of planetary ecology, or Earth System. Ignorance of this simple truth has led to a misdiagnosis of our troubles.

This point brings me back to our original analogy. To our great detriment, the human economy went past its healthy growth phase and is now so enormous it desperately needs liposuction and a frugal diet plan. If we don’t cut back on our portion size, get off the couch and start cleaning up after our slovenly selves, our poor health will lead to our demise as Mother Nature boots us out of her home.

What this means, of course, is that if we want to have a nice home and the economic security and stability that goes with it, we have to repay our debt to Bank of Nature. This sounds scary, and is a huge project, but ultimately we have no choice so let’s not whine and delay. Let’s take it on as a great adventure, a thrilling challenge. Our success or failure is going to hinge on our attitude. We need to take control of the circumstances instead of being passive and expecting someone else to solve the problems we create each day by the way we live.

Let me give you an example. I have a friend named Mary Wood who lives in Eugene OR. I am going to read something she recently wrote about her experience as a soccer mom. This is going to be a long quote because it is much easier for me to copy from her than to write something myself:

Five years ago, I was a newbie soccer mom. I enrolled my little boys in soccer and started hauling them around town to practices and games. Along the soccer field at the appointed time was a regular line-up of huge, gas-guzzling SUVs and mini-vans. After the children spilled out onto the field, the parents would idle on the sidelines sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups, or drinking Pepsi from plastic bottles. They would talk about their family trips to Costa Rica, or Mexico, or Europe, or Disneyland. They would rave about the new soccer equipment they had purchased and share their exploits at the mall. At half time, the parents would dole out dozens of plastic juice bottles to the little soccer players. They would dispense Albertson cookies from plastic boxes and slices of cake from thick plastic domes, slap the goodies on paper plates, and stuff plastic forks into little reaching hands. Within five minutes, the trash cans exploded with paper, plastic and Styrofoam. No one seemed to give any thought to the waste. This was the soccer life. Practices three times a week, two games on the weekend, and heaps upon heaps of trash.

What did Mary and her family do about this? I’ll read on:

There came a point, however, when I could no longer look my children in the eyes with out thinking about climate crisis and the tipping point and my role in it all. Yes, there were benefits to soccer, but really, in light of the world ahead, is soccer the skill that our kids need most? And how do we reconcile the enormous carbon pollution in today’s parenting? How can we love our children and yet contribute to the demise of their world? That’s not love. That’s denial.

We gave up the soccer life.

At about this time, Mayor Kitty Piercy made a carbon challenge to the residents of Eugene in which she asked them to do two new things a month to reduce carbon. We made this a family challenge. At first we did things like ride the bus, or have a no-drive day once a week. The next month we’d come up with two new things, and the next month two more things. Within a year, our front lawn had become a mini-orchard and vegetable garden, there was bulk food stored in our garage, we were riding our bicycles nearly everywhere, we had eliminated almost all food packaging, nearly all of our fruits and vegetables came from local sources, we made our own bread and chicken soup and granola bars every week, we rarely entered a grocery store, we raised chickens and built a coop, we gave up plastic and air travel, we spent our summers berry picking and backpacking, and we spent the long autumn days canning, freezing, and drying the harvest we had gleaned from our own garden and local farms. Our family enterprise became completely devoted to self-sufficiency, home food production, and skills-building in farming, food preservation, wild plant identification, and the like.

These days, our kids dash home from school eager to get started on planting, or raising seedlings, or canning tomatoes, or drying pears. They hop on their bicycles and ride through the neighborhood, giving away extra lettuce, tomatoes and berries from our garden. Their little acts of sharing build community. Neighbors drop in with gifts for our kids – like an old tub to wash carrots in, a blueberry bush, a jar of pie filling, pumpkin seeds, and a recipe for granola bars. My children have become self-appointed ambassadors for this urban homestead lifestyle by talking about it to our neighbors and their friends, and using it as the subject for school writing assignments and projects. Our family dinner conversation is often filled with new insights into raising vegetables or canning foods, or the latest ways to keep slugs out of the spinach. We also have discussions about how fast the world is changing, and how we will prepare for it, embrace it, and learn new ways -- or old ways. Days upon days go by without using the car, and we really don’t even notice it because we are so occupied at home, working side by side to produce our own food -- all of which is part of a family journey towards more self-sufficiency, carbon reduction, and sustainability.

At some point along the way, I noticed that Mayor Kitty Piercy’s carbon challenge had evolved into a new – and infinitely richer – way of life for us. The challenge of two carbon-reducing initiatives a month had grown into a family enterprise, a source of joy and pride, a learning experience, a family identity, and a well-spring of self-esteem and responsibility for our children. Perhaps most important, it had become a shared statement of purpose, a moral fabric for family life – a daily expression of the trust covenant shared with our children. My husband often comes in from the garden and says, “It’s a wonderful life.” And I have to agree. I invite you to embrace this new world ahead -- with courage, passion, and a sense of adventure -- and join in the Great Family Turning.

What Mary’s family is discovering is well-known by social psychologists and goes under the heading Self-Determination Theory. According to the research behind this theory, well-being depends in large part on meeting one's basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Can you see all of that developing through Mary’s story?

Point 5. My fifth point is this: Your zone of control is you and your family. Start the changes there, taking it one step at a time. Over a year this will mean changing your life, but it will happen at a reasonable pace, and it will be a healthy and responsible way to live.

I have a kind of system for thinking about my life and how to get what I need without deepening our ecological debt, while also enhancing my family’s resilience and health.

I plan my home and habits around these categories: Food, Water, Shelter, Transportation, Health, Communication, Personal Skill Set, Social Network, Economics and Finance, and Disaster Preparations. In each of these areas I work to become more competent and self-reliant. For example: making our house energy efficient and powered by renewable energy systems, having a large garden and food storage, paying off debts and limiting unnecessary purchases, using a bike and cargo trailer for nearly all transportation. I will not discuss any “how to” details for these. Anybody can sort out how to do this when motivated. I didn’t know much about any of these things a few years ago. All I needed was time to develop competence. You can do this too. Are you motivated yet?

This has been a five year process so far, and we are not complete. It is an ongoing journey. Personally, I am not able to hold down a full time job, invest in retirement funds, take big vacations, watch T.V., and do all sorts of regular stuff like that anymore. For me, time and money are spent building and being in this new way of life, and I agree with Mary’s husband Joe that it is much better than the old way.

Now some people look at my family and Mary’s family and think, “That is fine for them. They have made a nice lifestyle choice. My choice is to keep on doing tomorrow what I did yesterday.”

Well, that is not going to cut it. While I like my lifestyle choice I want to make another key point.

Point 6. Sustainability is not a lifestyle option of the few, it is a necessary change for everyone if we want a decent future on this planet. This is logically true because anything unsustainable must end, and our demonstrably unsustainable old habits are coming to and end, whether we want them to or not.

Let me give you an example of our old ways coming to an end. General Motors just went bankrupt. Residential developers of suburban sprawl and mega-malls are going bankrupt too. Why? Because our economy is part of the finite planet Earth and we have reached some hard limits. Oil production is in decline and this means GM can’t keep building Hummers that will fill garages in dwellings miles away from work and schools and basic goods and services. Ecological debt yields financial ruin. Ways of life fade away.

If you accept this new direction it will be extremely liberating. No longer will you feel at the mercy of the unfathomable and mysterious global market system. That system is crumbling, and you should get away from it. If you move away in time, you might be able to watch it dissipate with a calm sense of detachment rather than horror.

Oil production history and forecast to 2100 by Tony Eriksen at theoildrum.com.

Mary mentions interactions with neighbors. This is very important. My family is not a modern-day Robinson Crusoe in the midst of civilization. We are part of a small but growing local economy. This new economy is building rather informally at first, meaning it is happening without the use of much money or legal structures. Informal economies are actually the dominant ones on Earth. Think of the statistics you hear about people living on $1 per day. How do they manage? Because most of what they need is available without money!

As our formal economy declines more work will be done in the informal economy, as is true now in so-called developing countries. Graph from Post Peak Living based on World Bank data.

Typical two income households end up paying for all kinds of services that they could do themselves if they had the time. Laundry, housecleaning, home maintenance, vehicle repair, processed and prepared food, gym fees, childcare…it goes on and on. By contrast, the “underemployed” can share skills and time with neighbors, basically trading favors, and no money needs to change hands. Remember: autonomy, competence, relatedness…

A social shift is happening now because of the Greater Depression. Home gardening is undergoing a huge revival. This is fantastic news. It means people are reacting wisely to new circumstances by building skills and improving self-reliance.

Point 7. Here’s point 7. We are social animals and need each other. There is no separate peace. Build community based on your personal strength and example.

A few, or perhaps many, of you might be thinking: “This guy is taking joy in the loss of the American Way of Life and the good jobs that hard working people have held for many years. Is he a heartless jerk?” Well, I don’t think so.

Plenty of job opportunities should exist in order for us to pay back that loan Mother Nature approved. But we can’t keep doing the old jobs and these new jobs. Put another way, we can’t afford both a massive new “green jobs” program and a bailout to the very same industries that have gotten us into this mess. We have to go green all the way.

I think you’ll get my point with some examples. I am going to list “Jobs we need to lose” and “Jobs we need to gain.” I will first say a job, or type of business that should disappear or at least shrink dramatically, then a job or business that should grow rapidly.

While you can make changes in your own life, there is no guarantee that society will follow along. Unsustainable ways will end, but, as professor Jared Diamond documented in his book "Collapse," and Joseph Tainter in "The Collapse of Complex Societies," they could end in the morgue. I’d rather see them end by becoming outmoded. I want to see humans live as constructive parts of the planetary ecology. Making the necessary changes society-wide requires engagement beyond your home and neighborhood.

Point 8. My final point is this. Find ways to widen the circle of change to include governments, businesses and institutions at all levels.

I should mention that in addition to being a fantastic mother who does what it takes to create a future for her children, Mary Wood is a law professor. Here’s something else she tells me.

Governments are incorporated as trustees of the commons and have an obligation to protect assets held in trust, which includes the natural assets like air, water, and soil. Legally speaking, your government shouldn’t spend your tax dollars or give permits to businesses that degrade those assets. To do so is to steal from the future, and therefore a violation of the function of a trustee. But governments have been treating protection of natural assets as discretionary instead of obligatory, which has led to the ecological debt crisis. This can’t go on any longer. Every action of government should be viewed in light of the need to repay our ecological debt. Since government is a trustee of the commons, they legally must protect the commons.

A vital job of citizenship is to hold governments accountable for their trust obligations. And because you have personally reduced your ecological debt you will speak with authenticity when you say, “I don’t need freeways, I need safe bike routes. Why are you spending my tax dollars expanding an energy inefficient transportation system that we can’t even afford to maintain when we have inexpensive alternatives that don’t pollute.”

If you are going to be involved in government my advice is this: Follow the money. Governments are great at making fantastically eco-friendly pronouncements while the budget funds diesel-powered backhoes digging us deeper graves.

Another great option that widens the circle is to start a business. This may sound funny from someone telling you the economy is never going to rebound. While the economy we have now will shrink, we do need something sustainable to grow in its place. Because of financial instability and expensive oil, I see a process of decentralization occurring. Whereas in the past factories in China and Taiwan could be relied upon to deliver, that won’t be the case in the future. Small local shops or regional factories can be amazingly productive at building the new products we will need to take care of basic needs like developing sustainable food, shelter, energy and water systems.

For example, I run a small farm that operates primarily using manual power. The key implements I use are generally not available in stores. When was the last time you saw a low-wheeled cultivator, and do you even know what it is? How about a broadfork, a no-till roller, a scythe, a drill seeder, a grub hoe? I have had to go to great lengths to source and maintain this equipment, which was ubiquitous in America 60 years ago.

I am using a no-till roller to kill an annual cover crop. This is a low-energy method of farm management that minimizes soil disturbance and avoids herbicide use.

Can you go downtown where you live, walk into a store and purchase a solar oven or a cargo trailer for your bike? Can you test-ride an electric bike? Will a local contractor readily install a rainwater harvesting system for your home, or a gray water wetland that irrigates your yard? Do you have a local seed company that tests and packages cultivars for your bioregion? Is anybody making prepared foods like soups and stews using local, seasonal ingredients? I hope you are seeing some potential by now.

Lastly, I want to discuss another opportunity. Underemployment could mean more free time. What are you going do with it? May I suggest supporting the non-governmental institutions where you live? Perhaps join Friends of the Library, work in a soup kitchen, or any number of service clubs that undoubtedly exist. As government programs are cutback and shut down, we will have to learn to take care of ourselves and the less fortunate to a greater extent.

A special class of non-governmental organization is involved in paying back our ecological debt. These are the local environmental centers. I strongly encourage you to join with them on various projects that could make the difference between a healthy versus a dystopian future. The big question I have is this: How are we going to restore and manage local watersheds and ecosystems in this new economy? For example, will a switch to renewable energy mean greater use of wood, and will that decimate the forest or be done with ecological wisdom? Might the jobless hunt for meat and will cause the local extirpation of game or be a healthy, sustained harvest. And I wonder, as people can’t afford trash disposal services will they dump in creeks and at the edge of fields more and more? Who will watch and restore the creeks and clean up the mess others leave behind?

Personally, I have helped found a local group called Willits Economics Localization to discuss the very topics in this speech today. You may have a group in your area like mine, or you can start one. Look for the Transition Town Network on the web. If you are going to begin the process of change that sets you apart from the mainstream it really helps to be socially reinforced by sharing this transition with others. Someday, what you are doing will become the mainstream, but for now we need courageous pioneers.

In this new era, local watchdogs, citizen organizers, restoration ecologists, sustainability educators and pioneers will be extremely vital to the function of a society that must learn how to fit within the limits imposed and the richness given by the Earth around them.

A reader has kindly provided a pdf of this talk.