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I think we have to distinguish between a crisis and a collapse. By definition, you do recover from a crisis, whereas you don't recover from a collapse.
I think a series of crises which make each-other worse is definitely possible, or actually probably. I think a series of crises which turn into a general collapse is very unlikely.
This article of mine talks about a possible kind of multiple-cause crisis, where the drought and natural gas scarcity combine to create blackouts in Victoria.
Now, this is easily avoidable, we just need electricity generation which doesn't depend on fossil fuels and fresh water. That's wind, solar cells, concentrated solar, and tidal; geothermal doesn't fit in here, unfortunately.
But most likely we won't avoid it, we're SimplyHoping it won't happen again. Instead we'll get blackouts. And those blackouts will have other effects. The planned desalination plant for Wonthaggi will stop without electricity. Industry will die off in the state if blackouts are frequent, leading to economic troubles. That'll mean less revenue for public expenditures, making maintaining existing power infrastructure difficult, making it less reliable, and so on.
But at no point is it unrecoverable.
Another danger is recent moves to keep petrol prices low. This removes the market signal to encourage more efficient use, or alternate means of transportation. That means when the fuel shortage does hit, it'll be more of a shock. Instead of going from $1.50/lt to $10.00/lt over ten years, we'll hover around $2.00/lt for nine years, then in one year it'll zap up to $10/lt.
Again, not unrecoverable. A crisis, yes. A collapse, no.
Good points. I loved your SimplyHoping post, and I agree that the future holds a series of rolling crisis, not a collapse.
At least I hope that is the case.
It is probably of concern when an optimist such as myself feels that a series of rolling crisis is the best future we can hope for.
We are marching forward with our leaders trying to select actions based on appearance, not substance. We need water - fine, we build a desalination plant. This action has the appearance of addressing the problem - the defect in this plan is only obvious if you stop, gather all the facts, and think about it (something few people have the time to do).
Contrary to popular opinion, the job of a democratic leader is to be elected, not to take actions with a view to the long-term good of the people. Getting elected is about appearance, not substance.
So we march forward SimplyHoping....
There are degrees of crises, though. For example, I would call the current subprime mortgage dramas an economic crisis, but they're not on the same scale as the Great Depression.
The real danger is a combination of crises. It's not widely-appreciated that when the Depression hit, most farmers kept their farms - the bank isn't in the business of owning property, it just wants money, and even a small amount from a farmer in trouble is better than foreclosing and selling at a loss. But then the Dustbowl hit. What drove the farmers off their land was the combination of the economic and environmental crises. One was fixable and the other was temporary, so it worked out alright in the end, there was just a lot of suffering first.
What we have to remember is that it's not the new state that hurts, but changing from the old to the new. People are very adaptable given time. In economic crises they deveop alternate currencies (cf Austria in early 1930s and Argentina in 2000s), in environmental crises they develop new methods of growing things, and so on. But they have to have time.
As to our elected representatives, the thing to remember is that they're not actually leaders - they're followers. They follow public opinion. Even the unelected ones have limits, Hitler could not have converted Germany to Islam, nor Stalin made everyone speak French. But in a democracy they follow the public, not the other way around. So if we want change we must change ourselves - and the elected guys will follow along reluctantly.
Between 1930 and 1935, about 750,000 farms were lost through foreclosure and bankruptcy sales. No small number. To say that most farmers kept their farms is an example of happy talk often used by the media. When using such an indeterminate modifier as "most," you essentially imply that "few" farmers lost their farms.
Point in fact, there are two reasons that even more farmers did not lose their farms. First, radical action. The corporate ideologues who shape our school system are loathe to point out that the depression radicalized many. Farmers came together and blocked roads to farms up for auction, declared farm holidays (much like bank holidays) where they refused to participate in auctions, and generally threw monkey wrenches in the machinery of the corporation and its banks. The second reason there were not more foreclosures was due to the Frazie-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act (1934) which suspended farm foreclosures for five years.
As far as your declining to equate the subprime crisis with the Great Depression, you are right, so far. Remember, the full effects of the Great Depression did not settle in the day after the crash on Oct. 29th but developed over a year and a half. I have a feeling that, not withstanding the happy talk, we will see further problems in the banking sector, housing sector, and the level of consumerism. In short, all the ingredients for a spectacular crash.
Will we adjust? Of course. All of life, every second of it, is an adjustment. To say "we will adjust" is as meaningless as saying the sun will rise. The real question is how many will suffer and to what degree. The secondary question is who is responsible and to what degree must they pay. For the wing-nuts, the little guy is to blame for being so dumb as to take on such onerous loans. To the little guy, the bank is to blame for suckering him. What you will see in this corporate world is the privatization of profit and the socialization of loss. Corporations hate welfare when it goes to anyone but themselves.
There was a phenomenon known as a penny sale however:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iacalhou/1930.html
I don't know how many of these took place, but my Dad remembered similar such things while growing up in Minnesota.
LeMars is an hour and a half southwest of here. My mother's parents lost most of their farm in the Great Depression to a local banker. That fellow is long dead and the grandchildren farm the family land ... but everyone still remembers how they came by the property.
Cherenkov, great points once again.
Point in fact, there are two reasons that even more farmers did not lose their farms. First, radical action. The corporate ideologues who shape our school system are loathe to point out that the depression radicalized many.
That what gov’s (I know it is in the US) fear the most. Millions of people in the street and radicalized. All the repeals of laws on demostrating, Marshal law changes, etc.
Listen to a lesson learned by the establishment put into words by G. Gordon Liddy in his reply to Timothy Leary.
"We're not about to let it happen again.
THAT'S when the start of the control of all media to a few companies became an objective of the people who Liddy was talking about.
Notice how we in the states NEVER saw on nightly news nearly ANYTHING on demonstrations on BUSH around the world a few years ago.
Radicalized people in the streets are their greatest fear.
There is a grid don't forget - SA geothermal can feed through to Victoria.
There is also some geothermal exploration going on in the Geelong area.
First up, geothermal requires water. How much, I don't know - figures for water use of the different types of plants are bloody difficult to come by. But it's not nothing.
Second, currently SA's a net electricity importer by a pretty significant amount. Olympic Dam already uses 10% of their baseload power, and is expanding which will require 30%. So unless SA really goes sick on the geothermal, wind, etc, most of their increased capacity will be used by Olympic Dam, and of course their own domestic power requirements, which like everyone's are increasing steadily. They look to continue being net electricity importers for some years yet. Not much help to Victoria if we bollocks it up.
If HFR geothermal is successful in SA there is no reason why it can't expand rapidly (there is a large region of hot rock to mine) and produce significant amounts of power - more than Olympic Dam or Adelaide need.
Water can come from the Artesian basin or from desalination plants on the coast if necessary - but I still haven't seen any numbers on water requirements and the Kalina cycle stuff is supposed to be water efficient.
Admittedly this is all 5-10 years out at a minimum.
Big Gav, IMO investment in desalination plants is just more investment in complexity. It requires a huge capital investment, lots of maintenance (replacement of RO membranes) and a steady feed of electricity.
There is already talk of desalination plants to provide the huge amount of water that will be required if Olympic Dam goes to open pit. It goes something like this: increased nuclear power plants require increased fuel which requires more uranium which requires Olymic Dam to go to open pit which requires more water which requires deslination which requires more electricity which requires more muclear power plants. This is a towering edifice of interdependency which seems, IMHO, to be just begging for something to go wrong somewhere.
PLAN, PLANt, PLANet
Errol in Miami
I agree here - complexity is the enemy. Anything we can't build right now is likely not going to ever be finished at the rate things are going. We have to go hard and go at what we already know we can do. Its mindsets and vested interests that constrain us, not the technology necessary to remediate.
There is no gurantee that ODX will happen. They are still doing feasibility which is a four year project due 2009. I wonder how much diesel it takes to remove 350m rock cap? And what price the copper/gold and uranium need to be to make that investment stack up. The ore won't be reached for about four years after they start the thing which by my estimates means 2014 at the earliest.
Gold and uranium might be still looking good by then, but copper could be in the hole if the Mother of All Recessions/Depressions has kicked in by then.
SA is an energy distributers nightmare. I love Adelaide but firmly believe that they must become an energy producer or self sufficient. I cant see geothermal being a reasonable option. It might work for minning operations but I dont see it supplying the grid. There are also some serious environmental concerns with geo-therm that need to be addressed on a case by case basis.
Why can't geothermal supply the grid? It does in other countries. Ever heard of Iceland?
What are the environmental concerns, and are these greater or lesser than other ways of generating electricity and hot water?
Invalid argument.
Do you think the native Americans at Chaco Canyon were unable to alter their course? Of course they were but did not. Do you think that Rome was unable to alter its course? Of course it could have but it did not.
You make collapse sound as if it is unavoidable. It's always avoidable, if people make the right decisions. Rome did not make the right decisions. Chaco Canyon did not make the right decisions.
And we are not making the right decisions.
This is why I've always said this is not a technological problem, but is instead a psychological/sociological/political problem. In other words, it's about decisions that people make, individually and collectively, not about technology specifically. We have all the technology we need to solve these problems but do we have the individual and collective wisdom? So far the answer appears to be a resounding "NO!"
Rome did not collapse overnight. Neither did Chaco Canyon. Both experienced crisis after crisis. I suggest that your original premise is flawed, and should be revised.
GreyZone you have not fully internalized the fact that humans are NOT smarter than yeast.
When things are not going well, CARVE A BIGGER STONE HEAD.
FLEAM!!!!
That is BEAUTIFUL!!!
Carve a bigger stone head. Wow.
I see a t-shirt fortune in your future.
That completely sums up the entire techno-attitude. If that tech don't work, let's make more of it, with fins, and bells, and whistles, with secret x-ray vision, and sea monkeys.
Anyone here familiar with the Heechee?
Oh yes, excellent little worker drones. Just have to open an airlock now and then to keep the herd thinned out, lol.
GreyZone,
An increasing number of venture capitalists are making right decisions on energy. Look at A123Systems, Nanosolar, and other companies the VCs have funded.
Granted, it would help if governments made far better decisions. But even there I see hopeful signs.
The UK government has decided to do a big build on offshore wind and will probably announce a big nuclear power plant program shortly. The UK government also is looking at its coal reserves in hopes that will cushion the shock.
I suspect some governments have cottoned onto the problem with Peak Oil. But they are using Global Warming as their justification for policies that they want to do for other reasons. Again, I think the UK government thinks that the Russian natural gas can't reliably replace North Sea natural gas for example. Hence the big push in wind, nuclear, and coal.
Making the right decisions can be a problem. Just yesterday, we were discussing the advisability of a big push in nuclear power. It was not clear to me that such a push by UK met with universal approval of the peal oil masses. Here it is being mentioned as an example of good government planning. Only after the fact can one get away to happy talk about making the right decisions. We don't know what kept the Easter Islanders from building boats and leaving before the last tree was gone. Maybe some of them did build boats and leave, but the record is incomplete.
geek7,
Britain's problem is that it is far enough north and overcast that solar power isn't very attractive. Britain's two main non-fossil fuels energy sources strike me as wind and nuclear. Wind by itself isn't enough to shoulder the entire load.
Does Britain have any prospects for geothermal energy?
I don't know about geothermal, but we do have an enormous wave energy potential which is currently in the research stage. Wave energy is about 10 years behind wind energy.
I really hope you are right. The Pelemis developers are suggesting wave farms with 30mw of generating capacity deloyed per km2. In the celtic sea right now the waves are 10 feet plus. As they are in the irish sea. For the Uk I believe wave power is the only long term source that has the potenital to meet all our needs (unless fusion is cracked)
As for Australia I understand the Bight is 'big wave' all year round.Ok further away from the demand than in the case of Europe but I could envisage wave power supplying a significant proportion Of Perth, Adelaide, and Melbournes power.
Greyzone,
I think you're right, but, surely a central question is, what are the right decisions, how do we identify them and agree on how to proceed? How do we adapt and change, and what if the right decisions come up against the vested interests of powerful groups in society who are satisfied with the way things are, and are not particularly enamoured with the idea of change?
Most crisis situations result in conditions that are averse or at least not advantageous to the existing elite in the current social order. Professor G. obliquely referenced this just a few days ago. Even a "successful" transition past peak oil is likely to disrupt the existing social order. That's not a guarantee but is often true as you can see by the change in power from the prior feudal order to a coal fired society and then again with the rise of oil power. Some older elites stayed in power. Some fell by the wayside. And those were all successful transitions.
Collapse, or unsuccessful transitions, generally wipe out almost all of society's elite because the elites are operating under a specific set of premises that no longer apply. Very few of those adapt sufficiently rapidly to avert losing power. Instead new power elites arise, adapting to the new conditions. Witness after Rome, after the Mayans, after Chaco Canyon, etc.
As for what is "right" and what is "wrong", we won't know until we try something and succeed or fail. We can guess. We can model. We can hypothesize. But we won't know until after the fact whether we've succeeded or not. A key decision before you decide on what is "right" or "wrong" though is what is the basis for deciding "right" and "wrong"? If your goal is to continue the existing civilization as-is, maybe that's the problem in the first place?
So tell me again, what's the "right" choice here?
GZ, I think I have to agree.
The problems we have now are global, PO, GW and Economic. Solutions will not be global.
Our attempts at mitigation, start at national levels and continue down by state, corporation, large and small business, county and family. We have forgotten how to cooperate. We have reared our children to be individuals and selfish.
When decisions are made at the national level there will be division and dissent. This division and dissent continues down through the various levels of collectivism until you reach the individual.
We no longer have a need for territorial defence and cooperation, we rely of government security. We are not like schools of fish, penguins, ants or bees or even a herd of eland that work for the common good.
Technology alone can't save us because we are jealous. We will not make sacrifices because most will think they deserve more, are more entitled or just plain better than another ethnic group, country or person.
Hardships forced upon us are not sacrifices. We would, albeit reluctantly abandon luxuries, if we believed everyone was giving them up.
Everyone won't accept sacrifice and give up luxuries though, and it will give rise to the insidious black markets.
As life becomes even harder we will still be looking out for number one until......cooperation out of necessity, becomes an actual survival mechanism once more.
The very sad affair is that we are enslaved by the compulsion to over consume. If we stop investing, using services and buying the myriad of fashionable items ranging from clothing, electronics, travel and personal transport, we doom the economy and our way of life anyway
Do we as humans have the ability to initiate, implement and seriously enforce hard decisions for the common good?
Is cooperation still a possibility?
Are our religious beliefs a help or hindrance?
Greyzone,
As Kunstler is wont to tell us technology and energy are not the same thing. And I would argue that the Roman empire did not callapse at all and is still with us today. It is now more diffuse and it's influence more subtle, but we still have institutions i.e the Roman Catholic Church that can trace their roots to the Caesars. No one in AD 400 set out to continue the empire as it once stood, but the collective memory persisted and influenced the decisions of many individuals as they adpated to a new world order.
The same goes for the British Empire. I's heyday is long gone, but the dominace of the English language ensures that it's influence will persist in the same proportion as it dominated the world.
The American empire too will fall, but that won't diminish the influence of Americanism. The broken, the corruption, the greed, the gun culture and the avarice will be swept away as the energy for which the system was built to channel, eventually depletes.
But the American founding principal of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a sense of duty to God and a pioneering and enterprising spirit are the enduring influences that will persist into history.
Unfortunately though, there is nothing that can save the empire as it stands. The only decisions we absolutely have to get right are the ones that avoid all out nuclear war. Every other mistake on the descent can and will be corrected eventually and attenuated by the enduring influences of empires passed.
This is very contentious, you know. A good argument can be made that the Romans could NOT alter their course. Rome was a complicated balancing act: an extremely rapacious Senatorial class, an Emperor who might be able to restrain them from self-destructive excess perhaps temporarily if that, an army with its own complex dynamics, a number of powerful external enemies ... so yeah, maybe they sometimes had the choice to swim a couple of yards left or a couple of yards right, but they could not swim upstream, and eventually they went over the falls, as they were bound to do.
A common theme on this site is that we 'should have' made certain decisions thirty years ago. But that was never going to happen given our economic and political system of the time. We couldn't have made those decisions, so it is no surprise we did not. Now we will be forced to make those decisions. Is it too late? Who knows.
Path dependence. Human beings are smarter than yeast, but sometimes don't get much more in the way of choice.
You are arguing that there is no choice, that once a path is set upon that the results are a foregone conclusion. Yet as Diamond and Tainter have pointed out, that's not always true. Some societies do make the choices that let them alter their course and then survive. Perhaps they succumb later to another crisis but they survived others before that. Why is it that some societies can make those choices and others cannot?
I agree that there is a form of social inertia that makes such changes hard but I disagree that they are impossible. The Byzantine empire was proof that they are possible.
Yes, there is choice- but there are also points where choices made have unavoidavle consequences.
It is one's choice to jump off a cliff, but once done, the choice cannot be unmade.
This choice was made by our ancestors.
As for the Byzantine Empire, that fire continued burning because there was still fuel
for it to burn and the heat of its flame was enough to keep the combustion going.
(I could talk for a very long time about the byzantine empire, but i would save that for a
separate thread.. but the situation of the greek east was quite different and separate from that
of the latin west.)
Dmitri Orlov's analysis of the collapse of the Soviet Union is instructive:
Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US
http://www.energybulletin.net/23259.html
As he points out, civilizations fail rarely, but economies fail routinely.
See also http://www.cluborlov.com/ClubOrlov/index.html.
Brilliant stuff! The Russians were better prepared because they were USED to things not going well.
I used to do a sport which didn't take a lot of strength, but I learned the benefits of hitting the weights - because when you travel, you've always got to do stuff like pick up a bag in each hand and run the 1/4 mile to make your connecting flight and stuff like that, as well as being in good shape helps you handle the time differences better too. Not necessary for the sport. Very necessary for the intermittant "emergencies" caused by the ordeals of travel a few times a year.
This video spoofs just such such a cascade as you are describing. Very Funny! (But, not if it really happened.)
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/breaking_news_all_online_data
These forms of generation are indeed dependant on fossil fuels for their manufacture, emplacement, maintainence, and is the same as relates to the grid for the same reasons. Time to go back to the drawing board with these additional facts in mind to reassess your crisis scenarios.