From p 162-169 of A Language Older than Words, by Derrick Jensen
An interview with Bruce Stewart, Maori writer:
If we are to survive, each of us must become kaitiaki, which to me is the most important concept in my own Maori culture. We must become caretakers, guardians, trustees, nurturers. In the old days each whanau, or family, used to look after a specific piece of terrain. One family might look after a river from a certain rock down to the next bend. And they were the kaitiaki of the birds and fish and plants. They knew when it was time to take them to eat, and when it was not. When the birds needed to be protected, the people put a rahui on them, which means the birds were temporarily sacred. And some birds were permanently tapu, which means they were full-time protected. This protection was so strong that people would die if they broke it. It’s that simple. It needed no policing. In their eagerness to unsavage my ancestors Christian missionaries killed the concept of tapu along with many others.
To be kaitiaki is crucial to our existence. So while I am in agony for the whole planet, what I can do is become kaitiaki right here. This can spread, as people see this and say, ‘We can do that back at home.’ Perhaps then everyone can, as was true in our Maori culture, become caretakers of their own homes. Children will say to their parents, or to others, ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t do that here.’
I’m more of a practical man, so rather than write papers about being kaitiaki, I just do it. I don’t trust words. I’m frightened of the intellectualism that can insulate us from action and turn the problems and solutions into puzzles or fantasies. As Maori we already have the words, the concepts. But we can’t rest on what our ancestors gave us. The work has got to be done.
Part of this work must be done by artists, philosophers, educators, and others who can articulate and perpetuate the Maori way of living, people who can help us untangle ourselves from the pakeha, the Europeans. And as a pakeha yourself there are many important things that you, too, can articulate. From your knowledge and from where you live. But I hope to think any piece of art spurs us into action. I want to believe in sustainability. Now. Not in the future. Not some distant day. Now.
...
We also need patches of native bush full of native birds and animals, cathedrals where man is not as important as he makes himself out to be, where he instead recognizes himself as a small part of the big family. If we were to make those spaces of harmony available within walking distance from every house, so everybody was a kaitiaki, we would change the world. That’s the plan I’m working on. If everyone nurtured a seedling and planted it they would be building their new church. And I’m in a rush.
...
Little nurseries like this are springing up everywhere. And they’re done not by the government but by ordinary people. That’s why they work. People come here when we’re planting, to get their little seedlings. And you see the children come back. The children are more aware than their parents, and the younger children know more than the older ones.
...
We are suffering from a great illness, and the way to get better is to serve others. We should all be in service. It makes us well. I serve the birds and trees, the earth, the water.
Anybody can do it. They can do it in their way. It’s action time.
What strikes me about this is that unlike a lot of native traditions (and I'm not knocking the groups that take this stance) where the people look down on the white, new-age, trippy-hippy, flakes who are trying to adopt trappings of a culture they have no deep understanding of, what Stewart is doing is explaining the Maori history and philosophy, and saying, "Go, take it, run with it, make it your own." Which is really the only hope for any given patch of greenery. As long as anyone remains who does not adopt the mentality of kaitiaki, what little natural resources that are left are in mortal danger. Stake out your patch and defend it.
26 March 2008
18 March 2008
Beyond Technofix
And it fits so nicely with yesterday's post. Richard Heinberg's column in the March issue of The Ecologist magazine:
Beyond Technofix
On January 12, The Guardian quoted departing chief scientific adviser Sir David King as saying, "any approach that does not focus on technological solutions to climate change—including nuclear power—is one of ‘utter hopelessness’. "
It is useful to have this view so succinctly stated, because it is nearly the reverse of the position I will be exploring in this column, which is that there is an overwhelming need for non-technological responses to our global environmental crisis. If I could debate the point with Dr. King, I would begin with a discussion of our differing understandings of the nature of the crisis itself. In his view, climate change is caused by technology and therefore must have a technical solution. But to me this is a blindingly superficial framing of the situation. It’s not just climate change that threatens us, but depletion of resources including oil, natural gas, coal, fresh water, fish, topsoil, and minerals (ranging from antimony to zinc, and including, significantly, uranium); as well as destruction of habitat and accelerating biodiversity loss—which is exacerbated by climate change, but is also happening for other anthropogenic reasons. In essence, there are just too ! many of us using too much too fast.
Thus the problem is not merely technological; it is cultural in the deepest sense. Starting a couple of centuries ago, our species embarked on a path of unprecedented growth, founded on a temporary subsidy of cheap hydrocarbon energy. Climate change is a side effect of fossil fuel consumption, and has emerged as the most critical symptom of our growth binge. But unless we address the core of the problem, other symptoms will soon overwhelm us even if we manage technically to resolve the dilemma of carbon emissions.
Addressing the core of the problem means letting go of growth; in fact, it means engaging in a period of controlled societal contraction characterized by a stable or declining population consuming at a per-capita level far lower than is currently taken for granted in the industrialized world.
For anyone who understands the basics of ecology—having to do with relationships between population, resources, and carrying capacity—nothing could be clearer. But for those who insist on seeing only technical problems with technical solutions, the forest remains lost from sight behind a single tree.
To be sure: minimally polluting technologies must be part of our response to climate change and all the other symptoms of global crisis—whether those technologies include wind turbines, better public transit systems, or more efficient electrical storage devices. But just as important are changes in individual attitudes, habits, and expectations; and more essential still is a fundamental reworking of economic institutions and policies, so that endless growth ceases to be seen as good or even possible.
Some (Sir David King among them) would say that climate change is so serious and pressing a crisis that we may have to put off grappling with other environmental problems and use any means at our disposal—including otherwise problematic technologies such as nuclear power—to address it. But there is no way we can substitute alternative sources of energy—including nuclear—for fossil fuels to reduce carbon emissions as much and as quickly as the science says we must, unless we also dramatically reduce overall energy consumption. No matter how you slice it, we’ve got to downsize and relocalize our economies, and so culture change is indispensable to the required response.
King says that wrongheaded environmentalists are keen to take society back to the 18th century or further. Yet there are few indeed who want to ditch the humanitarian and scientific advances of the past decades. This is a straw-man argument. A fairer formulation of many environmentalists’ views is this: unless we use technology within the context of a controlled, planned, sustained period of economic contraction, we will see a chaotic, depletion-led societal collapse that could make the 18th century look like paradise by comparison.
Once one accepts this larger framing of the problem and its solutions, a whole world of possibilities opens up—a world I intend to explore in future columns. Far from being a world of utter hopelessness, it is one that engages human responsibility, creativity, and community. It is one characterized by cultural maturity, rather than the advertising-fueled teenage—even infantile— attitude that assumes that the world exists only to supply an ever-expanding list of human wants. It is the world of post-carbon living toward which tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of citizens worldwide are beginning deliberately to transition.
Beyond Technofix
On January 12, The Guardian quoted departing chief scientific adviser Sir David King as saying, "any approach that does not focus on technological solutions to climate change—including nuclear power—is one of ‘utter hopelessness’. "
It is useful to have this view so succinctly stated, because it is nearly the reverse of the position I will be exploring in this column, which is that there is an overwhelming need for non-technological responses to our global environmental crisis. If I could debate the point with Dr. King, I would begin with a discussion of our differing understandings of the nature of the crisis itself. In his view, climate change is caused by technology and therefore must have a technical solution. But to me this is a blindingly superficial framing of the situation. It’s not just climate change that threatens us, but depletion of resources including oil, natural gas, coal, fresh water, fish, topsoil, and minerals (ranging from antimony to zinc, and including, significantly, uranium); as well as destruction of habitat and accelerating biodiversity loss—which is exacerbated by climate change, but is also happening for other anthropogenic reasons. In essence, there are just too ! many of us using too much too fast.
Thus the problem is not merely technological; it is cultural in the deepest sense. Starting a couple of centuries ago, our species embarked on a path of unprecedented growth, founded on a temporary subsidy of cheap hydrocarbon energy. Climate change is a side effect of fossil fuel consumption, and has emerged as the most critical symptom of our growth binge. But unless we address the core of the problem, other symptoms will soon overwhelm us even if we manage technically to resolve the dilemma of carbon emissions.
Addressing the core of the problem means letting go of growth; in fact, it means engaging in a period of controlled societal contraction characterized by a stable or declining population consuming at a per-capita level far lower than is currently taken for granted in the industrialized world.
For anyone who understands the basics of ecology—having to do with relationships between population, resources, and carrying capacity—nothing could be clearer. But for those who insist on seeing only technical problems with technical solutions, the forest remains lost from sight behind a single tree.
To be sure: minimally polluting technologies must be part of our response to climate change and all the other symptoms of global crisis—whether those technologies include wind turbines, better public transit systems, or more efficient electrical storage devices. But just as important are changes in individual attitudes, habits, and expectations; and more essential still is a fundamental reworking of economic institutions and policies, so that endless growth ceases to be seen as good or even possible.
Some (Sir David King among them) would say that climate change is so serious and pressing a crisis that we may have to put off grappling with other environmental problems and use any means at our disposal—including otherwise problematic technologies such as nuclear power—to address it. But there is no way we can substitute alternative sources of energy—including nuclear—for fossil fuels to reduce carbon emissions as much and as quickly as the science says we must, unless we also dramatically reduce overall energy consumption. No matter how you slice it, we’ve got to downsize and relocalize our economies, and so culture change is indispensable to the required response.
King says that wrongheaded environmentalists are keen to take society back to the 18th century or further. Yet there are few indeed who want to ditch the humanitarian and scientific advances of the past decades. This is a straw-man argument. A fairer formulation of many environmentalists’ views is this: unless we use technology within the context of a controlled, planned, sustained period of economic contraction, we will see a chaotic, depletion-led societal collapse that could make the 18th century look like paradise by comparison.
Once one accepts this larger framing of the problem and its solutions, a whole world of possibilities opens up—a world I intend to explore in future columns. Far from being a world of utter hopelessness, it is one that engages human responsibility, creativity, and community. It is one characterized by cultural maturity, rather than the advertising-fueled teenage—even infantile— attitude that assumes that the world exists only to supply an ever-expanding list of human wants. It is the world of post-carbon living toward which tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of citizens worldwide are beginning deliberately to transition.
11 March 2008
Feeding the hungry
This is likely to be the most inflammatory post I’ve made in a long time. So I’m going to start off with the request that if you’re going to post a comment, respond with something rational and logical, not just an emotional reaction that everyone is entitled to everything everyone can give them, or that I’m such a horrible monster for even considering these things.
That being said...
There have been commercials on TV for as long as I can remember, soliciting people to donate money to feed the starving children in Africa. They show these well-groomed and well-fed white people, standing in the midst of a horde of miserable, toothpick-thin kids clad in shreds and rags, and begging you to send money to feed, clothe, educate, etc.
Fuck that. Kill them off. It’s more merciful than letting them starve to death. It’s also more merciful than feeding them, so that they can grow up and reproduce, and then we’ll have three times as many gaunt faces, their starving sunken eyes pleading for assistance. If we ignore for a moment the fact that we’re talking about members of our own species, what’s more humane? Killing them off outright; letting them starve to death over a prolonged period of time; or catering to their short-term needs, which only really increases the population of starving people?
They’re starving because there are too many people there for the land to support. So rather than trucking in food (which isn’t a solution; it’s a stopgap that only exacerbates the problem), we need to bring the resident population in line with what the land can sustain. I’m willing to bet that these people would grow food if they could, so raising the productivity of the land isn’t really a solution.
There is the argument that fertilizers would rejuvenate the land, and allow these groups to produce more food for themselves. That’s probably true, but it’s going to require a continuous input of additional fertilizer to maintain that kind of output. And in fact, it’s only going to exacerbate the problem, because that additional food production will lead to an increase in the population, which will require more food to support, and the vicious cycle continues.
Regardless, the continual importing of nutrients from elsewhere to grow the food is not sustainable. What happens when the other locations run out of guano? Or is this entirely chemical fertilizer, which brings with it its own slew of problems? It doesn’t matter where the fertilizer comes from, it leads into a batshit downward spiral one way or another.
Even given enough nutrients in the soil, the real reason many of those areas are having problems is that they’re in the bloody desert. Irrigation is such a large problem, even in wealthy nations, that there’s no feasible way to implement it in poor nations. Which is why, for instance, Saudi Arabia is phasing out their wheat crops to conserve water.
Which leaves us with depopulating the land, down to a sustainable level. Population biology tells us that the two ways to decrease the population in an area are to emigrate to elsewhere, or to increase the mortality rate relative to the birth rate. Relocating the population is potentially a solution, but it’s too much of an inconvenience to the people in the areas that would be receiving refugees for them to be welcome. NIMBY. Yes, we should help them, but not if I personally have to be inconvenienced by it. The only other possibility is to kill them off, which people obviously (and understandably) find distasteful.
But since neither of these options can be agreed upon (or even suggested without hellacious backlash), indecision leads to inaction, and we’re left with starving masses who aren’t getting any relief, of any kind. Why am I the asshole for taking the long view and stepping outside petty, insignificant human emotions and looking at it objectively?
The exact same argument is chronically used to justify deer hunting. If we didn't go out and shoot thousands of white-tailed deer every year, they'd overpopulate and starve. The fact that that's only true because we've eliminated the predatory that would normally keep their population in line is beside the point. They're in danger of famine if we don't artificially keep their population down. That's exactly what's happened with human populations – unsustainable agricultural practices have increased local populations while depleting the available food supply, leaving many people with insufficient food. But it's politically incorrect to apply the same logic to humans that we do to other animals, or even to refer to “other” animals, since humans like to think that they aren't.
And before you go off calling me racist, or elitist, or anything else like that, I’m not just picking on poor Africans. The same applies to everybody everywhere – or at least, it will in the near future. The time for worrying about individuals has passed, and the time for worrying about the health of the planet has come. The planet is ill, and civilization the cancer.
That’s not just hyperbole, that’s actually an amazingly accurate allegory. Cancer arises spontaneously out of normally functioning cells. It diverts resources towards itself for its own growth by growing new blood vessels (neovascularization). It metastasizes, leaving its site of origin, migrating and invading anywhere else it can get a toehold, no matter who or what it inconveniences along the way. It lacks contact inhibition, and expands ruthlessly, marginalizing or just brute-force pushing anything that happens to get in its way.
That last point needs a bit more explanation, for the non-bio geeks in the audience. If you grow a culture of normal cells in a dish (and don’t stimulate them artificially), they’ll expand in a flat sheet to the edge of the dish and stop. Cancerous cells don’t do that, they just keep growing all over the place, regardless of what they come in contact with. That’s why brain tumors in particular are so dangerous – there’s only so much room in the skull, and as a tumor grows, it crowds the rest of the brain and impairs its functioning.
So if you’ve made it this far, and you have some legitimate point to make, go for it.
That being said...
There have been commercials on TV for as long as I can remember, soliciting people to donate money to feed the starving children in Africa. They show these well-groomed and well-fed white people, standing in the midst of a horde of miserable, toothpick-thin kids clad in shreds and rags, and begging you to send money to feed, clothe, educate, etc.
Fuck that. Kill them off. It’s more merciful than letting them starve to death. It’s also more merciful than feeding them, so that they can grow up and reproduce, and then we’ll have three times as many gaunt faces, their starving sunken eyes pleading for assistance. If we ignore for a moment the fact that we’re talking about members of our own species, what’s more humane? Killing them off outright; letting them starve to death over a prolonged period of time; or catering to their short-term needs, which only really increases the population of starving people?
They’re starving because there are too many people there for the land to support. So rather than trucking in food (which isn’t a solution; it’s a stopgap that only exacerbates the problem), we need to bring the resident population in line with what the land can sustain. I’m willing to bet that these people would grow food if they could, so raising the productivity of the land isn’t really a solution.
There is the argument that fertilizers would rejuvenate the land, and allow these groups to produce more food for themselves. That’s probably true, but it’s going to require a continuous input of additional fertilizer to maintain that kind of output. And in fact, it’s only going to exacerbate the problem, because that additional food production will lead to an increase in the population, which will require more food to support, and the vicious cycle continues.
Regardless, the continual importing of nutrients from elsewhere to grow the food is not sustainable. What happens when the other locations run out of guano? Or is this entirely chemical fertilizer, which brings with it its own slew of problems? It doesn’t matter where the fertilizer comes from, it leads into a batshit downward spiral one way or another.
Even given enough nutrients in the soil, the real reason many of those areas are having problems is that they’re in the bloody desert. Irrigation is such a large problem, even in wealthy nations, that there’s no feasible way to implement it in poor nations. Which is why, for instance, Saudi Arabia is phasing out their wheat crops to conserve water.
Which leaves us with depopulating the land, down to a sustainable level. Population biology tells us that the two ways to decrease the population in an area are to emigrate to elsewhere, or to increase the mortality rate relative to the birth rate. Relocating the population is potentially a solution, but it’s too much of an inconvenience to the people in the areas that would be receiving refugees for them to be welcome. NIMBY. Yes, we should help them, but not if I personally have to be inconvenienced by it. The only other possibility is to kill them off, which people obviously (and understandably) find distasteful.
But since neither of these options can be agreed upon (or even suggested without hellacious backlash), indecision leads to inaction, and we’re left with starving masses who aren’t getting any relief, of any kind. Why am I the asshole for taking the long view and stepping outside petty, insignificant human emotions and looking at it objectively?
The exact same argument is chronically used to justify deer hunting. If we didn't go out and shoot thousands of white-tailed deer every year, they'd overpopulate and starve. The fact that that's only true because we've eliminated the predatory that would normally keep their population in line is beside the point. They're in danger of famine if we don't artificially keep their population down. That's exactly what's happened with human populations – unsustainable agricultural practices have increased local populations while depleting the available food supply, leaving many people with insufficient food. But it's politically incorrect to apply the same logic to humans that we do to other animals, or even to refer to “other” animals, since humans like to think that they aren't.
And before you go off calling me racist, or elitist, or anything else like that, I’m not just picking on poor Africans. The same applies to everybody everywhere – or at least, it will in the near future. The time for worrying about individuals has passed, and the time for worrying about the health of the planet has come. The planet is ill, and civilization the cancer.
That’s not just hyperbole, that’s actually an amazingly accurate allegory. Cancer arises spontaneously out of normally functioning cells. It diverts resources towards itself for its own growth by growing new blood vessels (neovascularization). It metastasizes, leaving its site of origin, migrating and invading anywhere else it can get a toehold, no matter who or what it inconveniences along the way. It lacks contact inhibition, and expands ruthlessly, marginalizing or just brute-force pushing anything that happens to get in its way.
That last point needs a bit more explanation, for the non-bio geeks in the audience. If you grow a culture of normal cells in a dish (and don’t stimulate them artificially), they’ll expand in a flat sheet to the edge of the dish and stop. Cancerous cells don’t do that, they just keep growing all over the place, regardless of what they come in contact with. That’s why brain tumors in particular are so dangerous – there’s only so much room in the skull, and as a tumor grows, it crowds the rest of the brain and impairs its functioning.
So if you’ve made it this far, and you have some legitimate point to make, go for it.
Oh, yeah, I guess that is today...
Historically (on a previous blog) I’ve done a St. Patty’s Day rant, but this year, I just can't get myself worked up enough to bother with it. With all the other shit that's going down in the world these days, a few more drunk Irish (real or honorary) frat boys (real or honorary) doesn't seem to matter. Very little that people take seriously seems to really matter these days, it’s all silly little petty bullshit. Oil prices are skyrocketing. Food prices are skyrocketing too, because of the increased cost of oil to transport it, because mock-petroleum usage is sucking supply away, and because the demand for (and therefore cost of) fertilizer (which is also petroleum-derived) is going up too. The economy is tanking, and people have less money to spend on the increasingly expensive food. Water is getting scarcer, further exacerbating food shortage problems, and fueling stress and contributing to border disputes.
And people really think things will go back to the way they've been, that everything will work itself out, and nothing will have to change. Or at least, that's the way they act. A lot of individuals don't really believe that the system can continue, but they don’t talk about it; they just keep their heads down and stay in their safe ruts, unable to get the perspective to convince themselves that their world is going to end, and they bloody well need to do something about it, or they're going to get caught in the crash.
The crisis is upon us. We just haven’t realized it yet. I’m not interested in “saving” the planet, as I don’t even really believe that’s possible anymore. Despite the recent swings toward eco-friendly living, electric cars, renewable energy sources, it’s too little too late. Those movements are just now getting started, and will take many years to swing into gear. And that’s just in the “developed” nations. In the rest of the world (call it what you will, “third world”, “undeveloped”, “developing”, “unindustrialized”, whatever), these changes will be much longer in coming, because they’re so far behind the technology curve.
I’m more interested in salvaging the planet. We need to take what we can and start over, as there’s not going to be enough left intact to be able to carry on with anything resembling the past. So let’s start gathering it up now and get out while the getting’s good. Rats off the bloody ship.
“But what about working to patch the ship, rather than abandoning it and letting it go down?” First question, is it even possible to fix it? Not by any recognizable definition of the word “fix”. Civilization as we’ve made it is fundamentally unsustainable. It’s built (literally) on cheap, readily available resources, and cheap transportation of those resources from source to sink. Both of those conditions are becoming less and less true, and there’s not a bloody thing we can do about it. We’re running out of resources quicker than alternatives are being figured out. And thus far none of the alternatives have been able to match fossil fuels in terms of abundance, portability, or ease of use.
To make things worse, most of the other alternatives inherently use fossil fuels as part of their preparation, manufacturing, or execution processes. Solar panels need rare elements to be mined, a process that requires petroleum. Windmills need lots of metals to generate electricity, as well as for structure, meaning more oil used for mining, transportation, and smelting. These may be short-term solutions, but they’re still fundamentally unsustainable, and won’t be replaceable long-term.
If anything that we recognize as civilization is going to survive, it’s going to need a major overhaul. Which leads us to the second question, is the system as it is really worth saving? It’s got some good ideas, some good foundations, but it’s got a huge mountain of useless junk piled on top of it, with occasional gems scattered throughout. It’s not only much simpler, but it will also be necessary to rebuild from the ground up, to start fresh, rather than to try and extricate the valuable bits from the tarry, cohesive matrix of social assumptions they’re embedded in, and leave the counterproductive bits behind.
And there’s where this analogy falls apart. In starting over, we don’t need to subtract anything from the existing system. We pick up ghosts, impressions, ideas, and transport them outside the system, where they become real in their own right. Transmission of a meme does not count against the “parent”. Nothing has been removed from the original, and only the parts that are relevant and worthwhile are adopted and integrated into the new system.
The vertebrate kidney works similarly. As blood flows into the kidney, just about everything in the bloodstream smaller than a protein (which includes individual amino acids, sugar molecules, urea, electrolytes, just about any other random chemicals that might be floating around, and most of the water) is dumped out of the bloodstream and into the kidney. The only things left in the bloodstream at that point are the blood cells, platelets, large protein molecules, and just enough water to keep the sludge flowing. Once everything is out, the kidney picks certain things to reabsorb back into the bloodstream. Like amino acids, sugars, most of the water, and many electrolytes. Urea is left behind in the kidney because it has no receptor to bind it, which would then signal the body to absorb it back into the bloodstream. This is how the body gets rid of nitrogen-containing waste. Any other random junk that doesn’t have a specific receptor, which is the body saying, “That’s useful, hang onto that”, also gets overlooked and does not get reabsorbed. Excess electrolytes are also left behind, above our normal reserve concentration. And then all that stuff eventually gets flushed out of the kidney with the excess water that’s not reabsorbed, down to the bladder, and eventually out of the body as urine.
In building our new culture, we need to get rid of everything, start with nothing, and only take the bits that are actually useful with us. Buckminster Fuller's Law says, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” At this point, we can’t even hope to fight the existing reality, the runaway train has too much momentum and we’re too close to the end of the tracks. All we can do is position ourselves on the outside, such that we’re thrown free when the crash occurs, rather than being torn apart by the components grinding and tearing at each other as they get shredded by their own bulk and misdirected energy.
It’s going to take a new model to have any chance at success. Living green, living sustainably is not just a way to postpone the crash a little longer, and maybe even make it a little softer, but it’s also the only way anyone is going to survive afterwards. I’m developing my plans. Start working on yours. The sooner the better. Before it’s too late. What are you waiting for?
And people really think things will go back to the way they've been, that everything will work itself out, and nothing will have to change. Or at least, that's the way they act. A lot of individuals don't really believe that the system can continue, but they don’t talk about it; they just keep their heads down and stay in their safe ruts, unable to get the perspective to convince themselves that their world is going to end, and they bloody well need to do something about it, or they're going to get caught in the crash.
The crisis is upon us. We just haven’t realized it yet. I’m not interested in “saving” the planet, as I don’t even really believe that’s possible anymore. Despite the recent swings toward eco-friendly living, electric cars, renewable energy sources, it’s too little too late. Those movements are just now getting started, and will take many years to swing into gear. And that’s just in the “developed” nations. In the rest of the world (call it what you will, “third world”, “undeveloped”, “developing”, “unindustrialized”, whatever), these changes will be much longer in coming, because they’re so far behind the technology curve.
I’m more interested in salvaging the planet. We need to take what we can and start over, as there’s not going to be enough left intact to be able to carry on with anything resembling the past. So let’s start gathering it up now and get out while the getting’s good. Rats off the bloody ship.
“But what about working to patch the ship, rather than abandoning it and letting it go down?” First question, is it even possible to fix it? Not by any recognizable definition of the word “fix”. Civilization as we’ve made it is fundamentally unsustainable. It’s built (literally) on cheap, readily available resources, and cheap transportation of those resources from source to sink. Both of those conditions are becoming less and less true, and there’s not a bloody thing we can do about it. We’re running out of resources quicker than alternatives are being figured out. And thus far none of the alternatives have been able to match fossil fuels in terms of abundance, portability, or ease of use.
To make things worse, most of the other alternatives inherently use fossil fuels as part of their preparation, manufacturing, or execution processes. Solar panels need rare elements to be mined, a process that requires petroleum. Windmills need lots of metals to generate electricity, as well as for structure, meaning more oil used for mining, transportation, and smelting. These may be short-term solutions, but they’re still fundamentally unsustainable, and won’t be replaceable long-term.
If anything that we recognize as civilization is going to survive, it’s going to need a major overhaul. Which leads us to the second question, is the system as it is really worth saving? It’s got some good ideas, some good foundations, but it’s got a huge mountain of useless junk piled on top of it, with occasional gems scattered throughout. It’s not only much simpler, but it will also be necessary to rebuild from the ground up, to start fresh, rather than to try and extricate the valuable bits from the tarry, cohesive matrix of social assumptions they’re embedded in, and leave the counterproductive bits behind.
And there’s where this analogy falls apart. In starting over, we don’t need to subtract anything from the existing system. We pick up ghosts, impressions, ideas, and transport them outside the system, where they become real in their own right. Transmission of a meme does not count against the “parent”. Nothing has been removed from the original, and only the parts that are relevant and worthwhile are adopted and integrated into the new system.
The vertebrate kidney works similarly. As blood flows into the kidney, just about everything in the bloodstream smaller than a protein (which includes individual amino acids, sugar molecules, urea, electrolytes, just about any other random chemicals that might be floating around, and most of the water) is dumped out of the bloodstream and into the kidney. The only things left in the bloodstream at that point are the blood cells, platelets, large protein molecules, and just enough water to keep the sludge flowing. Once everything is out, the kidney picks certain things to reabsorb back into the bloodstream. Like amino acids, sugars, most of the water, and many electrolytes. Urea is left behind in the kidney because it has no receptor to bind it, which would then signal the body to absorb it back into the bloodstream. This is how the body gets rid of nitrogen-containing waste. Any other random junk that doesn’t have a specific receptor, which is the body saying, “That’s useful, hang onto that”, also gets overlooked and does not get reabsorbed. Excess electrolytes are also left behind, above our normal reserve concentration. And then all that stuff eventually gets flushed out of the kidney with the excess water that’s not reabsorbed, down to the bladder, and eventually out of the body as urine.
In building our new culture, we need to get rid of everything, start with nothing, and only take the bits that are actually useful with us. Buckminster Fuller's Law says, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” At this point, we can’t even hope to fight the existing reality, the runaway train has too much momentum and we’re too close to the end of the tracks. All we can do is position ourselves on the outside, such that we’re thrown free when the crash occurs, rather than being torn apart by the components grinding and tearing at each other as they get shredded by their own bulk and misdirected energy.
It’s going to take a new model to have any chance at success. Living green, living sustainably is not just a way to postpone the crash a little longer, and maybe even make it a little softer, but it’s also the only way anyone is going to survive afterwards. I’m developing my plans. Start working on yours. The sooner the better. Before it’s too late. What are you waiting for?
10 March 2008
Looming food and water shortages
I’ve talked before about oil, biofuels, overpopulation, and the economy. All of these are already beginning to affect food costs. In fact, food is becoming such a huge problem, and it’s worsening so quickly, that those in the know are now telling us that we shouldn’t bother worrying about climate change or even oil – starvation is going to screw us over first.
With more people to feed, the demand for food is increasing. The supply isn’t increasing, though. In fact, it’s decreasing, because much of the cropland is being shunted over to biofuel production. So growing demand and shrinking supply means skyrocketing prices. Simple, basic economics. And since these price icreases are hitting the fundamental staples (like wheat), just about all food prices are increasing. Pizza, beer, and hot dogs, traditionally cheap food for students and others with minimal income, will no longer be viable core dietary elements. Add to that the increasing cost of oil (for transporting all that food the thousands of miles from production to consumption), and groceries will shortly become luxuries, rather than the entitlements we currently see them as.
So to prevent starvation, people are going to have to start growing their own foods. It’s worked before, in the form of Victory Gardens. Which works well enough when you’ve actually got some land, and the time and motivation to culture it. The problem now is that people are too wrapped up in their own lives to even think outside the box, for things like this to occur to them. They see gardening as a hobby (which they don’t have time for), not as a method of subsistence, and therefore they don’t have the motivation. By the time most people get the motivation it’ll likely be too late, because nobody has the foresight to see things like this coming anymore.
The third element is land, which is even less widely available. The vast majority of the land now under cultivation requires massive amounts of fertilizer, because the soil itself has already been depeleted of its natural store of nutrients. And new fertilizer isn’t being produced in anywhere near the quanitities necessary. Part of the reason for that is a reduction in the supply of natural gas. As with the food end-product, higher demand with less supply leads to increasing prices, and higher fertilizer costs means even higher consumer costs.
The obvious solution is to buy more local and organic foods, to reduce the effect of increasing costs of transportation and fertilizer. In the near future, local and organic foods, rather than being the more expensive exception that you have to actively seek out, will become the cheaper standard option.
But what about the people who don’t have that choice? It’s impossible to grow much of your own food in a city. Individuals might well have a garden in the little backyard of their townhouse, but as a whole, cities are fundamentally unsustainable, and need their food trucked in from elsewhere (despite occasional instances like this, and green roofs). As the cost of food increases, urbanites will be paying more for less. As people get more and more desperate to feed their families, crime will increase, likely leading quickly to riots.
There have also been increasing reports over the last decade of (particularly old) people dying in their houses because of the heat (like in Europe, August of 2003), when they can’t afford to cool themselves, or freezing because they can’t afford heat. That’s another thing that’s likely to spike, as costs of everything rise.
So in the cities, we’ll have malnutrition, starvation, high crime, and weather-related fatalities. And nothing to do with the bodies. With such a large scale cascade of problems, bodies are likely to pile up and breed all kinds of interesting diseases, only increasing the death toll.
The larger cities like New York, and much of California, will be completely fucked. DC isn’t likely to be much better, because there’s at least a two-county radius from the District itself before you get to any arable land. And then, on the Virginia side, at least, it’s largely populated by rednecks who are likely to be even more trigger happy once there’s nobody to stop them picking off anybody who doesn’t speak with their preferred drawl. From what I’ve seen of the Maryland side, it fades into Baltimore, without much untamed greenery around to be taken advantage of (read: run into the ground).
I’m not sure what to make of midwestern cities. They seem to have a steeper city-to-rural transition, meaning more potential farmland closer to the population center, but that implies to me that it’s likely to be destroyed in fairly short order, either by competition over it, or by overuse.
A quote from Richard Heinberg’s :
Peak Everything:
"Many people would leave cities looking for places to live where they could grow some food. Yet they might find all of the available land already owned by banks or the government. Without experience of farming, even those who succeeded in gaining access to acreage would fail to produce much food and would ruin large tracts of land in the process."
So, for the sake of argument, you’ve managed not to starve. Water is still going to be a major issue. Ground water is getting progressively more scarce and/or contaminated, and you obviously can’t trust surface water, given what we flush into it – both from our own contaminated bodies and the cropland runoff. Which will lead to more health problems across the board.
I mentioned Georgia getting uppity about a claim to part of the Tennessee River, but there are also larger issues, like the national movement to drain the Great Lakes, and distribute the water to thirsty southern states.
Similarly, California farmers are now selling their water rations directly to the major cities (rather than growing crops with it, the reason for the apportionment), because it’s more cost-effective that way. This is mentioned more or less in passing at the end of this article, and I’d like to link you to more detail on it, but both the article I originally found and the article this guy links to are gone, with no traces. I smell a conspiracy.
With more people to feed, the demand for food is increasing. The supply isn’t increasing, though. In fact, it’s decreasing, because much of the cropland is being shunted over to biofuel production. So growing demand and shrinking supply means skyrocketing prices. Simple, basic economics. And since these price icreases are hitting the fundamental staples (like wheat), just about all food prices are increasing. Pizza, beer, and hot dogs, traditionally cheap food for students and others with minimal income, will no longer be viable core dietary elements. Add to that the increasing cost of oil (for transporting all that food the thousands of miles from production to consumption), and groceries will shortly become luxuries, rather than the entitlements we currently see them as.
So to prevent starvation, people are going to have to start growing their own foods. It’s worked before, in the form of Victory Gardens. Which works well enough when you’ve actually got some land, and the time and motivation to culture it. The problem now is that people are too wrapped up in their own lives to even think outside the box, for things like this to occur to them. They see gardening as a hobby (which they don’t have time for), not as a method of subsistence, and therefore they don’t have the motivation. By the time most people get the motivation it’ll likely be too late, because nobody has the foresight to see things like this coming anymore.
The third element is land, which is even less widely available. The vast majority of the land now under cultivation requires massive amounts of fertilizer, because the soil itself has already been depeleted of its natural store of nutrients. And new fertilizer isn’t being produced in anywhere near the quanitities necessary. Part of the reason for that is a reduction in the supply of natural gas. As with the food end-product, higher demand with less supply leads to increasing prices, and higher fertilizer costs means even higher consumer costs.
The obvious solution is to buy more local and organic foods, to reduce the effect of increasing costs of transportation and fertilizer. In the near future, local and organic foods, rather than being the more expensive exception that you have to actively seek out, will become the cheaper standard option.
But what about the people who don’t have that choice? It’s impossible to grow much of your own food in a city. Individuals might well have a garden in the little backyard of their townhouse, but as a whole, cities are fundamentally unsustainable, and need their food trucked in from elsewhere (despite occasional instances like this, and green roofs). As the cost of food increases, urbanites will be paying more for less. As people get more and more desperate to feed their families, crime will increase, likely leading quickly to riots.
There have also been increasing reports over the last decade of (particularly old) people dying in their houses because of the heat (like in Europe, August of 2003), when they can’t afford to cool themselves, or freezing because they can’t afford heat. That’s another thing that’s likely to spike, as costs of everything rise.
So in the cities, we’ll have malnutrition, starvation, high crime, and weather-related fatalities. And nothing to do with the bodies. With such a large scale cascade of problems, bodies are likely to pile up and breed all kinds of interesting diseases, only increasing the death toll.
The larger cities like New York, and much of California, will be completely fucked. DC isn’t likely to be much better, because there’s at least a two-county radius from the District itself before you get to any arable land. And then, on the Virginia side, at least, it’s largely populated by rednecks who are likely to be even more trigger happy once there’s nobody to stop them picking off anybody who doesn’t speak with their preferred drawl. From what I’ve seen of the Maryland side, it fades into Baltimore, without much untamed greenery around to be taken advantage of (read: run into the ground).
I’m not sure what to make of midwestern cities. They seem to have a steeper city-to-rural transition, meaning more potential farmland closer to the population center, but that implies to me that it’s likely to be destroyed in fairly short order, either by competition over it, or by overuse.
A quote from Richard Heinberg’s :
Peak Everything:
"Many people would leave cities looking for places to live where they could grow some food. Yet they might find all of the available land already owned by banks or the government. Without experience of farming, even those who succeeded in gaining access to acreage would fail to produce much food and would ruin large tracts of land in the process."
So, for the sake of argument, you’ve managed not to starve. Water is still going to be a major issue. Ground water is getting progressively more scarce and/or contaminated, and you obviously can’t trust surface water, given what we flush into it – both from our own contaminated bodies and the cropland runoff. Which will lead to more health problems across the board.
I mentioned Georgia getting uppity about a claim to part of the Tennessee River, but there are also larger issues, like the national movement to drain the Great Lakes, and distribute the water to thirsty southern states.
Similarly, California farmers are now selling their water rations directly to the major cities (rather than growing crops with it, the reason for the apportionment), because it’s more cost-effective that way. This is mentioned more or less in passing at the end of this article, and I’d like to link you to more detail on it, but both the article I originally found and the article this guy links to are gone, with no traces. I smell a conspiracy.
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