I got a response back from the person on the mailing list, and we’re taking the discussion off the list. We’re going to be meeting next week, and will presumably continue it then. It may continue here as well, we’ll see.
How about less development and a higher standard of living? Most of those preventable deaths were caused, one way or another, by those in power dumping chemicals and such on these people. These people have not always been miserable; it's civilization that has made them that way.
Umm, not so, here are some facts about human lifespan before modernity and chemicals: Average life expectancy before the health transition of the modern era is thought to have varied between about 20 years and 35 years. reference
I’ll grant you the high infant mortality rate, which has always been high relative to the mortality rate once beyond that point – and that’s still true now. But that’s population control (something sorely lacking in modern “civilized” society), and some cultures (I wish I had a reference for this) don’t even name their children until they’re at least a couple years old, or weaned.
I was thinking more of the suffering and deaths caused by toxic chemicals in the drinking water, or by increased disease rates as a result of denser population centers, antibiotic-resistant strains, and pesticide-resistant vectors.
So let’s reduce infant mortality by reducing population. 9% (avg, first two years, source, which is one of those cited from your linked Wiki page) of 5 million people (10K years ago, near the beginning of the Agricultural Revolution) is 450,000 as opposed to 0.7% (source) of 7 billion people is 49,000,000. That’s over 100 times more dead babies. Reducing population and eliminating modern medicine is a win-win.
Modern medicine, what reduces the infant mortality rate, is also one of the major contributors to overpopulation. There are millions of people with ailments like diabetes and Crohn’s that are only alive because technology supports them. Not only that, but they live to pass on those infirmities to their offspring. A simple removal of medicine would do wonders (though not enough, in and of itself) toward solving the problem of overpopulation.
But to go back to the data on that Wiki page, notice that the Pre-Colombian America and Upper Paleolithic (late Stone Age) life expectancies were actually longer than any other time/technology level prior to the 20th century. Given that civilization is falling apart, that sounds like a good enough reason to return to that lifestyle rather than any other that occurred between then and now.
The problem with the rest of the estimates of lifespan is that they still include infant mortality, which drags the average down a lot. Historically, if you could make it past that rough patch, you could be reasonably assured of having a good long (see graph on p 174, or p 19 of the pdf, from the first infant mortality link above).
WTF? Why the hell wouldn't they? The only problem with Eden was that it got paved over by the people who said, "That's not the way you're supposed to live," and forced those people to live by the "civilized" rules that generate more misery, destruction, mass production, and oppression.
Here's why people don't want to live in Eden--because they can but they don't: Because they don't want to. I don't see masses of people moving to rainforests to live in harmony with nature? Do you? If you believe it, why aren't you doing it?
There is so much bullshit packed into those few short sentences, I don’t even know where to start.
What rainforests? The people who continue to live there are consistently killed off so that the trees can be cut down and the oil can be pumped out of the ground they’ve always lived on. As for myself, I’m kinda trapped at the moment, but I’m moving this summer, and this fall fully intend to start “doing it” – making real progress toward a sustainable existence and disconnecting myself from civilization. I’m already making plans and contacts. This is not a pipe dream, this will happen. It will have to, because civilization is fundamentally unsustainable, and anyone who survives will have to live without it.
Derrick Jensen talks extensively (with references, in both Culture of Make Believe and Language Older than Words) about hostage exchanges between American Indians and white settlers:
In Letters From an American Farmer, Michel Guillaume Jean de Crévecoeur noted: “There must be in the Indians’ social bond something singularly captivating, and far superior to be boasted of among us; for thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those Aborigines having from choice become Europeans.”
Benjamin Franklin was even more to the point: “No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies.” It was commonly noted that at prisoner exchanges, Indians ran joyously to their relatives while white captives had to be bound hand and foot to not run back to their captors.
No hunter-gatherer tribe that has adopted our “civilized” way of life has done so voluntarily, it has always been at gunpoint (or sword, or bayonet, whatever). A quick survey of colonial history will show that slavery, massacres, and other miscellaneous oppression have always been necessary to “civilize” the “savages”.
So why do they resist it so much? Is it just that they’re so entrenched in their way of thinking that they can’t see the virtues of our system (much the same way that we’re buried in material junk up to our eyeballs, so that we can’t see just how unhappy we are)? Well, possibly. But hunter-gatherers work less and are happier (because of more social and leisure time) than “civilized” people, and manage to live perfectly well, as long as they’re not killed off or displaced off their land by the greedy bastards with guns.
Some notes from Richard Heinberg’s Peak Everything:
Hunter-gatherers : 1000 work hours per year
Medieval peasant: 1620 (broken up by frequent rest/food breaks, many holidays)
US, 1850: 3500
US, 1985: 1850
US, now: 2000
Like I said before, we’ve been brainwashed in this culture to believe that #1, our way of living is the best, the only way people should ever live, and therefore #2 that any other way is somehow inferior, that anyone who lives any other way is somehow degenerate, or not as “advanced”. And because of that, we’re eradicating even the possibility of living any other way. Which, because of the unsustainable way we’re living, means that we’re effectively eradicating the possibility of living at all.
The real problem with the "underdeveloped" areas…
Ummm, see above, the historic data for people living without civilization is a lifespan of less than half of what it is today. Eden was human death-trap long before the advent of cash crops, chemicals, and capitalism.
No, again, the people who lived there were doing perfectly well until the capitalists came along and destroyed it. See below about the world population during that time.
No, actually, we've got about 10-12,000 years of sustained human population growth. The previous 200,000 years (if you're counting H. sapiens sapiens, or 4.5 million years, if you count the other human predecessors since they took to the savannas) saw a long-term net growth of effectively zero. They may not have known the theory behind carrying capacity, but they knew the practical implications. If you consume more than the land can produce, you reduce your own future survivability.
The population graph looks sustained to me--I see no flat spots or negative growth from 100,000 bce to 10,000 bce, hence no genetic pressures to limit population growth. reference
First of all, that graph is misleading because it’s on a log-log scale. What the text accompanying it says is that between a million years ago and 10,000 years ago (which is effectively a million-year time span), the population went from 125,000 to 4,000,000, a 32-fold increase. To start with, let’s push that back another 2000 years, to one million people at 12,000 years ago (10K BCE), before the agricultural revolution. That alone reduces the increase to 8-fold.
(Between the end of the last ice age, which opened up much more area to be inhabitable by humans and made the area that had previously been inhabited more fertile, and the gradual adoption of early agricultural practices, I think we can write off that 4-fold increase fairly easily, especially given how quickly the population took off after that. Let me also note that all of these population numbers are estimates with little to no evidence to back them up, since before the 18th century nobody had even made an attempt to count people in the world.)
Now let’s also look at the rest of that million-year span. Homo erectus (the only one around a million years ago) was later replaced by Homo sapiens, and while many of the same rules might apply, it’s not really fair to equate the two. I’ll let that go, though, and just deal with sheer numbers.
The reference that gives a population of 125,000 at a million years ago only has them living in Africa, with a land area of 30,370 sq km (using Wiki land areas), and by 12,000 years ago, we’ve got people occupying Eurasia, North and South America, Australia, and the rest of the Pacific islands, for an additional 105,330 sq km. So when we take the increase in living space into account, what looks like an 8-fold increase drops to less than a doubling. (125K/30,370 = 4.12 people/sq km, vs 1M/135,700 = 7.37/sq km; 7.37/4.12 = 1.79)
Now let me say again that that’s over the course of a million years. If we add in there the better tools and weapons that enabled more food to be collected, it’s no wonder the population increased a bit.
So back to the other points raised. If Eden was a death trap, how could the population have held steady, let alone increased at all?
And the idea of carrying capacity. These early humans were effectively living at their carrying capacity. They knew how many people they could support in their area (with some wiggle room and short-term fluctuations), and if they were at their limit already, they didn’t have kids. Some of that was behavioral – there are plenty of herbal contraceptives and abortifacients all over the world that women have known about all along, but that rarely got written down because it was always the guys doing the writing.
Other physiological factors in the lack of population increase were diet, nutrition, exercise, and breast-feeding. If women are active, they menstruate less often. This is common among female athletes now. A woman who is malnourished, or simply doesn’t have much body fat (anorexics are another textbook example) will also cease menstruation, because she doesn’t have the energy reserves to put into producing a baby.
Nursing also tends to stop menstruation, again as an energy conservation measure. If you’re still providing sustenance for your own body for one child that you’ve already invested a year or two of resources in, it’s counterproductive to start diverting those resources to start fresh on another one, and risk the one you’ve already invested in dying. Even the mammals that pop out a lot of babies quickly won’t mate again until they’ve weaned the previous litter.
While these aren’t “genetic pressures to limit population growth” they are genetically controlled mechanisms by which population growth is limited.
On the other hand, with the advent of civilization, women in particular were more sedentary – meaning both less exercise and more tendency to plump up, both of which contribute to more regular cycles, and therefore more kids being born. Also, with fields to plow and animals to tend, there was a social and practical reason to pop out as many kids as you could, to help with the work. “Work” that didn’t exist for the hunter-gatherers, and so therefore they had no drive to pop out as many kids as they could.
Famine, war, and pestilence all lead to mass death…
Even [if] it was undeniably true, why would you state it that way when it is unpalatable to most people. If you can see the future trends, a more effective strategy is to gently reposition peoples thinking so that they can adjust to it as it develops and becomes apparent. Forecasting doomsday apocalyptic scenarios does not help when most people are only beginning to appreciate the dimensions of the problem. It is more rational to support what awareness there already is, and build on that foundation to prepare people.
What you say is theoretically true, assuming that we have enough lag time before the crunch comes. But we don’t. People with that mindset started trying to make changes thirty years ago, and look what it got them. They failed to change enough minds quickly enough, and it’s screwed us all. I’m not blaming any of them personally, the problem is the inertia of the culture, and the (mis)direction of the media, and the government that controls it.
(Which leads me into another rant about how we don’t actually live in a democracy, that the people don’t really have a say in the laws, that their elected representatives have free reign to do whatever the hell they want, and that that’s exactly the way the Founding Fathers intended it.)
If people had started making any significant progress 30 years ago, we might be able to make a smooth transition to something sustainable now, but we’ve eaten up our buffer. It’s now too late to stop the train. It’s going to crash. The vast majority of people are already dead, they just don’t know it yet. We don’t have time to slowly, gradually, comfortably change peoples’ minds. They need a clue-by-four upside the head, they need to wake up and smell the armageddon or they’re going to become more roadkill.
It's not. It's too late. "The American way of life is not negotiable"…
If it is too late, why waste your time and energy on discussing the inevitable? Why waste of your time on the predetermined? This is a democracy. The American people can and will change.
Oh, I don’t argue that. They will change, but it won’t be by their own choice. The people who are left in 100 years (I’d bet closer to 50), won’t be living the way we’re living now, because anybody who tries to hang onto this lifestyle is going to die. I’m not wasting my time trying to change the world, I’m trying to get to a few more people who don’t have their heads too far up the media’s ass.
I’m not trying to save the world. I’m trying to point out to a few people that might be able to prepare and survive that they need to get started on it. I will say that the only way to save the world at this point is for people to start following this track en masse, immediately. But it won’t happen soon enough or on a large enough scale to prevent the crash. Regardless, that’s my plan and I’m sticking to it, because it’s the only hope anyone has.
As long as some humans survive and subsist, civilizations will re-emerge. Civilizations are spontaneous human phenomena.
Not if there are no resources left. We’ve depleted all of the easily accessible fossil fuels; what’s left is requiring more and more energy input to get any energy out of it. Meaning cheap energy, the basis of what we think of as “civilization” is a thing of the past. In the future, anything that passes as civilization will be based on slave labor – as was everything that passed for “civilization” before the industrial revolution. The Greeks, Romans, Aztecs, they all had large numbers of slaves to do the work for them.
It also assumes the presence of other resources, like metals to work into tools. Most of the easily/cheaply accessible metals have been depleted as well, so they’re going to be left with whatever scraps they can find lying around, which will eventually be depleted as well. As the remnants of civilization disappear, the few people that are left will gradually (over several generations, possibly centuries) revert to a stone-age existence. That part will be a more gentle transition, but we’re in for a hell of a shock when the changeover starts.
Also, about civilization being spontaneous human phenomena, see the end of this post about civilization and cancer.
[I wrote in my e-mail response, but didn’t post here previously:]
I don't mean to be picking on [the person] specifically, you just happened to voice a lot of the standard bullshit lines. :)
No offense taken!
I don't think these are standard lines. The standard line is if we are all a little greener it will all work out. I don't think it will improve until there is population decline. But beginning by building awareness of what it is to try to be greener is a great place to start.
The things you’re saying are slightly more sophisticated elaborations on that “recycle and change your light bulbs and everything will work out” kind of half-assed green mentality. They’re still arguments that have been produced and batted around independently and repeatedly by people still in denial, still coming to terms with just how bad off we really are. :)
People need to think outside the box. We can’t just tweak our current lifestyle to make it sustainable, or even suffice with a general overhaul. We need to start over from scratch. A lower population with our current lifestyle still will not be sustainable, it’ll just last longer before it crashes and burns.
I just don't see any purpose or rational basis for a relentlessly grim apocalyptic viewpoint when it is obvious that food shortages are self-limiting phenomena in terms of population growth. Droughts, famines, Ice age, whatever... civilizations rise and fall. Always will.
Yes, food shortages are self-limiting, because when the food is short, the population will decrease. That’s the way it’s always happened. It’s just never happened on this scale before, with this caliber of widespread consequences. Isn’t that enough for an apocalyptic attitude towards it?
The real problem is that it’s not just the food. It’s the oil, and the economy, and the environment, and the politics, and everything else. If we could deal with one of these problems at a time, we might be able to muddle our way through it, but they’re all hitting right bloody now, and the system is already starting to collapse.
26 April 2008
23 April 2008
Argumentation
These bits of argument were really written to an e-mail list that I'm on, and of course I had to respond, in my (possibly misguided) borderline obsessive need to straighten out people who might actually come around. There are plenty of other people on whom it's not worth wasting my breath (or electrons, or whatever). In any event, they were significant enough, and covered some ground I hadn't hit here yet, so I'm reposting them.
If you spend time in the undeveloped world, you see first hand the infant mortality and preventable deaths and diseases that would be avoided with more development and a higher standard of living.
How about less development and a higher standard of living? Most of those preventable deaths were caused, one way or another, by those in power dumping chemicals and such on these people. These people have not always been miserable; it's civilization that has made them that way.
I think that we all wish that there was a self-sustaining Eden-like existence widely available, but the truth is that most humans don't want that life.
WTF? Why the hell wouldn't they? The only problem with Eden was that it got paved over by the people who said, "That's not the way you're supposed to live," and forced those people to live by the "civilized" rules that generate more misery, destruction, mass production, and oppression.
Unfortunately, in underdeveloped areas, human populations grow until they are limited by resources and the result is death and suffering.
The real problem with the "underdeveloped" areas is that they've had any "development" forced upon them at all. The aboriginals of whatever location you want to point to lived there perfectly well and sustainably until civilization moved in and started developing (read: enslaving and/or killing) them and their area. The native people would never have cut down their low-maintenance trees, plowed up their meadows, and otherwise destroyed the naturally thriving ecological community and planted labor-intensive cash crops unless they were forced to. That same force is what keeps the people impoverished while their leaders are wealthy. And it is the failure of those cash crop monocultures that has plunged them into starvation. A more diversified land/food base will be more resilient, more able to resist minor annual perturbations, with a lessened dearth of sustenance for the people living there.
Cash crops are also a contributor to starvation by other routes, in that the excess food produced during plentiful times allows for increased population. Then when crops fail, and they have no local food, and can't afford to buy any from elsewhere, they starve, and we see their sunken eyes and swollen bellies on TV, pleading for food.
Another reason for crop failure is that continuous monoculture depletes the soil, to the point that it can't grow anything anymore. Of course, the quick fix for that is chemical fertilizer, but that's expensive, and if they had money they'd just buy the food for their own immediate consumption - you can't plan for the future if you can't eat NOW.
...absent any major technology breakthrough...
Ah, yes, the fabled Technofix. If you actually look at the history of technological "advances", they have a horrible track record in terms of waste production/disposal. So we switch from fossil fuel burning cars to electric. That's not solving the problem, that's just displacing it. Is the electricity coming from a coal-fired power plant? Obvious problem there.
How about a nuclear plant? That puts out lots of heat, which consistently destroys the viability of whatever water source it's attached to, and that completely ignores the actual toxic waste, which usually gets shipped off to some storage facility and buried - but it's still there, it's still being produced, even if it's not out in front for everyone to see.
Hydropower? Destroys the watershed, prevents migration of fish, floods areas above and starves areas below.
Solar or wind? Where do you think the materials to build them came from? They had to be mined, which means #1, they're unrenewable, and will eventually run out - and quicker, given the huge increase in demand. #2, The mining processes use up lots of other fuel sources, usually oil, to extract and purify the materials. The same series of arguments can be applied to any proposed technofix. You trace them back, and you see that the problems aren't really getting solved, they're just getting swept under a different rug.
Of course, we have 150,000 years of sustained human population growth...
No, actually, we've got about 10,000 years of sustained human population growth. The previous 200,000 years (if you're counting H. sapiens sapiens, or 4.5 million years, if you count the other human predecessors since they took to the savannas) saw a long-term net growth of effectively zero. They may not have known the theory behind carrying capacity, but they knew the practical implications. If you consume more than the land can produce, you reduce your own future survivability.
It is inevitable that either nature will correct this through pandemics, or humans through wars and policies that increase starvation, or least likely but most reasonable: Negative population growth.
Famine, war, and pestilence all lead to mass death, which is another form of "negative population growth". Usually when people use that term, what they're really talking about is a reduction in birth rates, because they don't want to think about increasing mortality rates. Well, get over it and open your eyes, because people are going to start dying en masse. One way or another, the world population is going to be reduced, and there's not a bloody thing anybody can do about it. We have radically exceeded our carrying capacity for so long, we've reduced our future survivability so far, that we're up shit creek without a paddle, in a wire canoe, petting the dog backwards, herding cats, and many more increasingly obscure and less relevant idioms.
Green is good and in my opinion the most ethical choice, but even if widely adopted I doubt that impact is sufficient to reverse current trends.
It's not. It's too late. "The American way of life is not negotiable" - the first Bush, June 1992, at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and later quoted by Cheney. The people in power are going to fight tooth and nail to hold on to that power, no matter how circumstances change to make their position untenable, and even self-destructive.
Really, the best strategy for the planet is fewer people and the sooner people realize this, the better. We can then move on to the question of how to ethically encourage this goal.
Not just fewer people, but lower energy requirements. Neither of the two can possibly be successful without the other. And regarding ethically depopulating the planet, again, it's too late. Maybe if we had started on that fifty years ago, it could have made a difference in where we are now, but we've hit critical mass. There are so many people consuming so much energy and causing so much damage that the vast majority of people alive now will not live out what they'd like to think of as their "natural lives" - they're going to be unceremoniously done away with as civilization continues in its death throes.
If you spend time in the undeveloped world, you see first hand the infant mortality and preventable deaths and diseases that would be avoided with more development and a higher standard of living.
How about less development and a higher standard of living? Most of those preventable deaths were caused, one way or another, by those in power dumping chemicals and such on these people. These people have not always been miserable; it's civilization that has made them that way.
I think that we all wish that there was a self-sustaining Eden-like existence widely available, but the truth is that most humans don't want that life.
WTF? Why the hell wouldn't they? The only problem with Eden was that it got paved over by the people who said, "That's not the way you're supposed to live," and forced those people to live by the "civilized" rules that generate more misery, destruction, mass production, and oppression.
Unfortunately, in underdeveloped areas, human populations grow until they are limited by resources and the result is death and suffering.
The real problem with the "underdeveloped" areas is that they've had any "development" forced upon them at all. The aboriginals of whatever location you want to point to lived there perfectly well and sustainably until civilization moved in and started developing (read: enslaving and/or killing) them and their area. The native people would never have cut down their low-maintenance trees, plowed up their meadows, and otherwise destroyed the naturally thriving ecological community and planted labor-intensive cash crops unless they were forced to. That same force is what keeps the people impoverished while their leaders are wealthy. And it is the failure of those cash crop monocultures that has plunged them into starvation. A more diversified land/food base will be more resilient, more able to resist minor annual perturbations, with a lessened dearth of sustenance for the people living there.
Cash crops are also a contributor to starvation by other routes, in that the excess food produced during plentiful times allows for increased population. Then when crops fail, and they have no local food, and can't afford to buy any from elsewhere, they starve, and we see their sunken eyes and swollen bellies on TV, pleading for food.
Another reason for crop failure is that continuous monoculture depletes the soil, to the point that it can't grow anything anymore. Of course, the quick fix for that is chemical fertilizer, but that's expensive, and if they had money they'd just buy the food for their own immediate consumption - you can't plan for the future if you can't eat NOW.
...absent any major technology breakthrough...
Ah, yes, the fabled Technofix. If you actually look at the history of technological "advances", they have a horrible track record in terms of waste production/disposal. So we switch from fossil fuel burning cars to electric. That's not solving the problem, that's just displacing it. Is the electricity coming from a coal-fired power plant? Obvious problem there.
How about a nuclear plant? That puts out lots of heat, which consistently destroys the viability of whatever water source it's attached to, and that completely ignores the actual toxic waste, which usually gets shipped off to some storage facility and buried - but it's still there, it's still being produced, even if it's not out in front for everyone to see.
Hydropower? Destroys the watershed, prevents migration of fish, floods areas above and starves areas below.
Solar or wind? Where do you think the materials to build them came from? They had to be mined, which means #1, they're unrenewable, and will eventually run out - and quicker, given the huge increase in demand. #2, The mining processes use up lots of other fuel sources, usually oil, to extract and purify the materials. The same series of arguments can be applied to any proposed technofix. You trace them back, and you see that the problems aren't really getting solved, they're just getting swept under a different rug.
Of course, we have 150,000 years of sustained human population growth...
No, actually, we've got about 10,000 years of sustained human population growth. The previous 200,000 years (if you're counting H. sapiens sapiens, or 4.5 million years, if you count the other human predecessors since they took to the savannas) saw a long-term net growth of effectively zero. They may not have known the theory behind carrying capacity, but they knew the practical implications. If you consume more than the land can produce, you reduce your own future survivability.
It is inevitable that either nature will correct this through pandemics, or humans through wars and policies that increase starvation, or least likely but most reasonable: Negative population growth.
Famine, war, and pestilence all lead to mass death, which is another form of "negative population growth". Usually when people use that term, what they're really talking about is a reduction in birth rates, because they don't want to think about increasing mortality rates. Well, get over it and open your eyes, because people are going to start dying en masse. One way or another, the world population is going to be reduced, and there's not a bloody thing anybody can do about it. We have radically exceeded our carrying capacity for so long, we've reduced our future survivability so far, that we're up shit creek without a paddle, in a wire canoe, petting the dog backwards, herding cats, and many more increasingly obscure and less relevant idioms.
Green is good and in my opinion the most ethical choice, but even if widely adopted I doubt that impact is sufficient to reverse current trends.
It's not. It's too late. "The American way of life is not negotiable" - the first Bush, June 1992, at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and later quoted by Cheney. The people in power are going to fight tooth and nail to hold on to that power, no matter how circumstances change to make their position untenable, and even self-destructive.
Really, the best strategy for the planet is fewer people and the sooner people realize this, the better. We can then move on to the question of how to ethically encourage this goal.
Not just fewer people, but lower energy requirements. Neither of the two can possibly be successful without the other. And regarding ethically depopulating the planet, again, it's too late. Maybe if we had started on that fifty years ago, it could have made a difference in where we are now, but we've hit critical mass. There are so many people consuming so much energy and causing so much damage that the vast majority of people alive now will not live out what they'd like to think of as their "natural lives" - they're going to be unceremoniously done away with as civilization continues in its death throes.
US Food Riot Prognostication
An inside scoop on the functionings (such as they are) of the agricorporations. Some excerpts:
1% of the US population grows all of the food for all Americans.
The bulk of the food we eat comes from grain. ... Half of what a meat animal is raised on is grain so when you eat meat you are really eating grain.
One day grain travels (by rail) from Kansas to Seattle to a flour mill. The next day the flour mill makes the flour and sends it to a bakery. The next day the bakery makes it into bread (and other baked things) and the next day it is at the store where it is purchased that day. Nobody stores anything.
At one time, a whole year's harvest of grain was stored that way. But since taxpayers were paying to store it, certain urban politicians engineered the movement of that money from providing a safety net or backup for their own food supply in order to give the money to various other social welfare things. So now, nothing is stored. We produce what we consume each year and store practically none of it. There is no contingency plan.
In order for riots to break out the whole food supply doesn't have to be wiped out. It just has to be threatened sufficiently. When people realize their vulnerability and the fact that there is no short term solution to a severe enough drought in the Midwest they will have no clue as to what they should do. Other nations can't make up the difference
1% of the US population grows all of the food for all Americans.
The bulk of the food we eat comes from grain. ... Half of what a meat animal is raised on is grain so when you eat meat you are really eating grain.
One day grain travels (by rail) from Kansas to Seattle to a flour mill. The next day the flour mill makes the flour and sends it to a bakery. The next day the bakery makes it into bread (and other baked things) and the next day it is at the store where it is purchased that day. Nobody stores anything.
At one time, a whole year's harvest of grain was stored that way. But since taxpayers were paying to store it, certain urban politicians engineered the movement of that money from providing a safety net or backup for their own food supply in order to give the money to various other social welfare things. So now, nothing is stored. We produce what we consume each year and store practically none of it. There is no contingency plan.
In order for riots to break out the whole food supply doesn't have to be wiped out. It just has to be threatened sufficiently. When people realize their vulnerability and the fact that there is no short term solution to a severe enough drought in the Midwest they will have no clue as to what they should do. Other nations can't make up the difference
19 April 2008
International Trade, or lack thereof
So last night Derrick Jensen talked at Ottawa University (in Kansas, not Canada), which was the first time I’d seen him in person (I hadn’t even heard of him six months ago). During the Q&A, I asked about something he wrote in Culture of Make Believe (scroll down a bit): he quotes a friend as saying that stopping international trade would be necessary for life on Earth to survive, but that “The politicians of the world aren’t about to ban international trade.” Well, they’re now starting to, specifically banning export of oil and food from many countries, and I wanted his comments, thoughts, whatever.
He hadn’t heard about that, saying, “I don’t believe it’s happening on a large scale, ExxonMobil wouldn’t allow it. It would be good for developing countries, but the IMF would kill them. (Salvador Allende didn’t last very long because of that, he didn’t want to be a colony.) Then the US military will move in.” He then qualified it by saying that he wasn’t dismissing me and what I was saying, but that he didn’t know anything about it, and asked me to send him more information. After poking through my previous links here, I realized I don’t have anything on that posted, so here it is.
[I’ll admit, I’d conflated edible oils and petroleum oil, and coal, and so myself overestimated the amount of embargo going on, but it’s still fairly significant, and likely to continue growing as things get uglier.]
I did post a bit previously on food shortages and rising prices, but things have progressed since then. As the supplier countries produce less, they eventually get to the point where they’re not producing enough for their own people, let alone to export. It’s also an attempt to slow domestic inflation, as in Vietnam.
India briefly banned edible oil exports, but then selectively lifted the ban in favor of the rice export ban: “India was one of the first countries to take measures to protect its domestic supplies by halting exports of all but basmati, which sells at a premium.”
Indonesia also bans rice exports, and Kazakhstan bans wheat exports.
"...export curbs imposed by China and Vietnam will spread as importing nations struggle to meet their needs. India and Egypt have curbed sales this year to safeguard local supplies."
And the ripples propagate. Pakistan hasn't banned exports yet, but they're scaling back, and upsetting the Afghans.
Thailand is now under pressure to limit its own rice exports, which is likely to have a huge impact, given that Thailand is the single biggest rice exporter. "The more countries impose export constraints, the stronger the pressures become for Thailand to do the same."
Though ostensibly temporary, China banned coal exports.
What else is coming?
He hadn’t heard about that, saying, “I don’t believe it’s happening on a large scale, ExxonMobil wouldn’t allow it. It would be good for developing countries, but the IMF would kill them. (Salvador Allende didn’t last very long because of that, he didn’t want to be a colony.) Then the US military will move in.” He then qualified it by saying that he wasn’t dismissing me and what I was saying, but that he didn’t know anything about it, and asked me to send him more information. After poking through my previous links here, I realized I don’t have anything on that posted, so here it is.
[I’ll admit, I’d conflated edible oils and petroleum oil, and coal, and so myself overestimated the amount of embargo going on, but it’s still fairly significant, and likely to continue growing as things get uglier.]
I did post a bit previously on food shortages and rising prices, but things have progressed since then. As the supplier countries produce less, they eventually get to the point where they’re not producing enough for their own people, let alone to export. It’s also an attempt to slow domestic inflation, as in Vietnam.
India briefly banned edible oil exports, but then selectively lifted the ban in favor of the rice export ban: “India was one of the first countries to take measures to protect its domestic supplies by halting exports of all but basmati, which sells at a premium.”
Indonesia also bans rice exports, and Kazakhstan bans wheat exports.
"...export curbs imposed by China and Vietnam will spread as importing nations struggle to meet their needs. India and Egypt have curbed sales this year to safeguard local supplies."
And the ripples propagate. Pakistan hasn't banned exports yet, but they're scaling back, and upsetting the Afghans.
Thailand is now under pressure to limit its own rice exports, which is likely to have a huge impact, given that Thailand is the single biggest rice exporter. "The more countries impose export constraints, the stronger the pressures become for Thailand to do the same."
Though ostensibly temporary, China banned coal exports.
What else is coming?
18 April 2008
Party in Jacksonville
I’d intended to attach this to the previous post, but forgot about it at the time, and it’s now grown well beyond the original scope, so it’s getting its own post.
The arguments about the amount of incident sunlight on the planet (grossly overexaggerating what’s actually recoverable) are suspiciously similar to the arguments you occasionally hear against overpopulation to the effect that the entire world population could fit within the city limits of Jacksonville, Florida.
Jacksonville, at 757.7 square miles, is the second largest city in the US by land area, which most people would never guess, so we start off with a misdirection.
At a world population of 6.7 billion people, that gives everyone just over 3 square feet of living space. Not even enough to sit comfortably, let alone lie down.
If we were to expand that out to the entire state of Florida (including the Everglades, which aren’t really viable living area, but for the sake of argument), that still would give people about 244 square feet each – not quite 16 feet square, and still not enough space for anyone to actually voluntarily occupy for any length of time, and probably on the same order as most jail cells.
And I do recognize that these estimates can be increased by vertical stacking – ie, apartments and such, but that still doesn’t solve the root problems (aside from a slight lessening of the claustrophobia).
The real problem with any of these estimates is that they don’t include food production, waste disposal, air recycling, or any of the other ancillary functions that are necessary to support life, let alone business, industry, power, transportation, and all of the other ancillary functions that are necessary to support civilization.
Cramming many people into a small space means that more resources have to be moved farther, which inherently increases the energy needed to transport them (until we develop some kind of clean, cheap, easy teleportation). That’s an inefficient use of resources; it’s much more efficient to have more people more dispersed, closer to their resource base, to decrease costs of transportation, of food in particular, since it’s so fundamental, and can’t just be piped through conduits like water and petroleum.
That means that to reduce the amount of energy (read: oil) required to move food, people need to decentralize, and ideally even grow their own, in small self-contained communities, if not isolated households. The less resources that need to be imported from any significant distance, the richer that community will be.
Which then begs the question of sneakers, coffee, chocolate, soda, hairspray, jewelry, pharmaceuticals, home exercise equipment, massage chairs, air purifiers, sandwich makers, video game systems, computers, waterproof digital camcorders, iPod earphone charms, banana protectors, and all the other silly crap that modern consumeristic society has convinced you that you need to have.
Huston Smith, professor of philosophy and religious studies, said, “You can never get enough of what you do not really want.” We keep blowing money on material crap because we think it’ll make us feel better, but it never does, so we keep buying, continuously chasing the high, and it never occurs to anyone that maybe they’re on the wrong track to begin with. What people are really looking for is a personal connection, a sense of belonging, a community, some true social security (as opposed to the bullshit that the government tries to feed you), to placate the rampant feelings of insecurity.
And now I’ve wandered kinda far afield, to something that really deserves its own post, and which I’ll come back to another time.
The arguments about the amount of incident sunlight on the planet (grossly overexaggerating what’s actually recoverable) are suspiciously similar to the arguments you occasionally hear against overpopulation to the effect that the entire world population could fit within the city limits of Jacksonville, Florida.
Jacksonville, at 757.7 square miles, is the second largest city in the US by land area, which most people would never guess, so we start off with a misdirection.
At a world population of 6.7 billion people, that gives everyone just over 3 square feet of living space. Not even enough to sit comfortably, let alone lie down.
If we were to expand that out to the entire state of Florida (including the Everglades, which aren’t really viable living area, but for the sake of argument), that still would give people about 244 square feet each – not quite 16 feet square, and still not enough space for anyone to actually voluntarily occupy for any length of time, and probably on the same order as most jail cells.
And I do recognize that these estimates can be increased by vertical stacking – ie, apartments and such, but that still doesn’t solve the root problems (aside from a slight lessening of the claustrophobia).
The real problem with any of these estimates is that they don’t include food production, waste disposal, air recycling, or any of the other ancillary functions that are necessary to support life, let alone business, industry, power, transportation, and all of the other ancillary functions that are necessary to support civilization.
Cramming many people into a small space means that more resources have to be moved farther, which inherently increases the energy needed to transport them (until we develop some kind of clean, cheap, easy teleportation). That’s an inefficient use of resources; it’s much more efficient to have more people more dispersed, closer to their resource base, to decrease costs of transportation, of food in particular, since it’s so fundamental, and can’t just be piped through conduits like water and petroleum.
That means that to reduce the amount of energy (read: oil) required to move food, people need to decentralize, and ideally even grow their own, in small self-contained communities, if not isolated households. The less resources that need to be imported from any significant distance, the richer that community will be.
Which then begs the question of sneakers, coffee, chocolate, soda, hairspray, jewelry, pharmaceuticals, home exercise equipment, massage chairs, air purifiers, sandwich makers, video game systems, computers, waterproof digital camcorders, iPod earphone charms, banana protectors, and all the other silly crap that modern consumeristic society has convinced you that you need to have.
Huston Smith, professor of philosophy and religious studies, said, “You can never get enough of what you do not really want.” We keep blowing money on material crap because we think it’ll make us feel better, but it never does, so we keep buying, continuously chasing the high, and it never occurs to anyone that maybe they’re on the wrong track to begin with. What people are really looking for is a personal connection, a sense of belonging, a community, some true social security (as opposed to the bullshit that the government tries to feed you), to placate the rampant feelings of insecurity.
And now I’ve wandered kinda far afield, to something that really deserves its own post, and which I’ll come back to another time.
17 April 2008
Solar fallacy
The argument that enough sunlight falls on the Earth to power everything we need many times over (two examples) is inherently flawed, and obnoxiously disingenuous. Sure, that much light hits the surface (or whatever we’ve built on the surface), but that doesn’t mean it’s not going for any purpose. If we were to coat all buildings with solar panels, that would be good, but I’ve got my doubts as to whether that would be enough to replace all of the industrial, commercial, agricultural, etc. requirements that are currently filled by fossil fuels. (It’s beside the point, and I don’t really care enough to figure it out for myself, but if you’re feeling ambitious, go for it.)
That leaves all of the rest of the surface area that’s not collecting sunlight to generate power. Most of that area is covered by ocean, which grows plankton and other things which kinda need that light input for their own purposes – like soaking up CO2. So no, that’s not available. That leaves the land area, most of which is covered by green vegetation (wild or cultivated), which is similarly off-limits. Then there’s also the roads, which we can’t get any kind of good, permanent, durable cover on, let alone a photovoltaic one, so that’s a complete loss.
I’d like to see someone do an accurate estimate of how much usable solar energy (after conversion losses) hits the parts of the Earth that it can reasonably be harvested from.
That leaves all of the rest of the surface area that’s not collecting sunlight to generate power. Most of that area is covered by ocean, which grows plankton and other things which kinda need that light input for their own purposes – like soaking up CO2. So no, that’s not available. That leaves the land area, most of which is covered by green vegetation (wild or cultivated), which is similarly off-limits. Then there’s also the roads, which we can’t get any kind of good, permanent, durable cover on, let alone a photovoltaic one, so that’s a complete loss.
I’d like to see someone do an accurate estimate of how much usable solar energy (after conversion losses) hits the parts of the Earth that it can reasonably be harvested from.
11 April 2008
Interesting revelations
Maybe that's too strong a word, but these things came to me as I was writing an e-mail a couple days ago, and I figured I'd post them:
Everything is selfishly motivated - there's really no such thing as altruism. Things we do to or for other people create feelings (reflections of sorts) in ourselves too. We act such that those reflected feelings are positive for ourselves, such that we feel good. (This gets a little contorted with sadism, masochism, and all those kinds of things, but the net reflection is still positive, or else people wouldn't engage in those activities. Even self-mutilation is often described as the physical pain reducing or eliminating emotional pain.) We've evolved to be social, "altruistic" animals, meaning the default is to get those positive feelings from positive actions toward other people. It's not much of a stretch to extend that to other animals, the environment, anything that we can perceive as having a "spirit" - hence animism.
...
That sort of pragmatism is the missing link between native traditions with their spirituality and "civilized" exploitation - if you've got plenty of something, you can afford to waste it. If you value individual plants and animals, and don't take any more than is actually necessary, you won't waste any, because that would disrespect the spirit of whatever it is that you're wasting.
Everything is selfishly motivated - there's really no such thing as altruism. Things we do to or for other people create feelings (reflections of sorts) in ourselves too. We act such that those reflected feelings are positive for ourselves, such that we feel good. (This gets a little contorted with sadism, masochism, and all those kinds of things, but the net reflection is still positive, or else people wouldn't engage in those activities. Even self-mutilation is often described as the physical pain reducing or eliminating emotional pain.) We've evolved to be social, "altruistic" animals, meaning the default is to get those positive feelings from positive actions toward other people. It's not much of a stretch to extend that to other animals, the environment, anything that we can perceive as having a "spirit" - hence animism.
...
That sort of pragmatism is the missing link between native traditions with their spirituality and "civilized" exploitation - if you've got plenty of something, you can afford to waste it. If you value individual plants and animals, and don't take any more than is actually necessary, you won't waste any, because that would disrespect the spirit of whatever it is that you're wasting.
10 April 2008
"New" oil field
Two links
With improving technology and increasing cost of foreign oil, the big companies are finally reexamining domestic reserves that were previously deemed too expensive to extract, and therefore ignored. Back in 1951 the Bakken formation was discovered, but fell into that "not worth it" category, because oil was so cheap back then. Now with horizontal drilling capabilities and oil well over $100 a barrel, this field could start producing at a cost of about a 15-20% of that.
This presents several problems, but first, the silver lining: Gas prices might go back down for a while. Might. The oil companies are already gouging us for as much as we'll pay, simply because they can. As evidence, I point to the posted profits from 2007. ExxonMobil alone admitted to a profit of over $40 billion last year. Assuming 300 million people in the US, that's over $130 for every single person. And that's profit, not gross. (That's also what they admitted to, who knows how much more they're not admitting to.) That's what was left over after all of their operating expenses, advertising, distribution, payroll, etc. So what's to say that decreased oil costs (to them) will mean lower prices for the consumer? Sure, it'll drop a bit, but I guarantee they'll post record profits again.
It will also help alleviate the impending recession/depression, though by the time the oil wells come online in any significant quantity, it may well be too late. It'll also likely postpone, for a little while anyway, the country imploding on itself.
So the down side.
There's the obvious environmental impact: The more oil that comes out of the ground, the more oil ends up in the atmosphere and in the oceans.
The longer we put off the crash, the more severe it's likely to be. This oil boom will lull people into thinking that everything will be OK, that these times of shortage were only temporary, and that when they start up again the next time we'll just find something else to keep ourselves going. But these resources are by definition finite. The world situation in general and the domestic economy in particular are progressively getting worse (which is part of what's now making the Bakken oil field profitable), and it can only go so far. The fact that most people are oblivious to it just means that they won't see the end coming.
I'm also curious to see what this means for the Lakota. Though it wasn't widely publicized by the corporate media (I believe USA Today was the only major paper to carry the story), a lot of attention was garnered from independent bloggers and other sources for the Lakota seceding from the US, based on the UN's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The territory they're claiming covers parts of Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, and both Dakotas. Now compare that map to the one on the second link at the top of this entry.
Given the extent of the oil field, I can write off one of my initial responses, that this was concocted as an excuse to charge into Lakota territory and commandeer it for the sake of the all-powerful economy. Not that that won't happen anyway, but I can't still believe that that's the reason for making the story up. What I foresee happening is that the corporations will unofficially start pumping in the new Republic of Lakotah, which will eventually lead to war. It'll be interesting to see, regardless.
With improving technology and increasing cost of foreign oil, the big companies are finally reexamining domestic reserves that were previously deemed too expensive to extract, and therefore ignored. Back in 1951 the Bakken formation was discovered, but fell into that "not worth it" category, because oil was so cheap back then. Now with horizontal drilling capabilities and oil well over $100 a barrel, this field could start producing at a cost of about a 15-20% of that.
This presents several problems, but first, the silver lining: Gas prices might go back down for a while. Might. The oil companies are already gouging us for as much as we'll pay, simply because they can. As evidence, I point to the posted profits from 2007. ExxonMobil alone admitted to a profit of over $40 billion last year. Assuming 300 million people in the US, that's over $130 for every single person. And that's profit, not gross. (That's also what they admitted to, who knows how much more they're not admitting to.) That's what was left over after all of their operating expenses, advertising, distribution, payroll, etc. So what's to say that decreased oil costs (to them) will mean lower prices for the consumer? Sure, it'll drop a bit, but I guarantee they'll post record profits again.
It will also help alleviate the impending recession/depression, though by the time the oil wells come online in any significant quantity, it may well be too late. It'll also likely postpone, for a little while anyway, the country imploding on itself.
So the down side.
There's the obvious environmental impact: The more oil that comes out of the ground, the more oil ends up in the atmosphere and in the oceans.
The longer we put off the crash, the more severe it's likely to be. This oil boom will lull people into thinking that everything will be OK, that these times of shortage were only temporary, and that when they start up again the next time we'll just find something else to keep ourselves going. But these resources are by definition finite. The world situation in general and the domestic economy in particular are progressively getting worse (which is part of what's now making the Bakken oil field profitable), and it can only go so far. The fact that most people are oblivious to it just means that they won't see the end coming.
I'm also curious to see what this means for the Lakota. Though it wasn't widely publicized by the corporate media (I believe USA Today was the only major paper to carry the story), a lot of attention was garnered from independent bloggers and other sources for the Lakota seceding from the US, based on the UN's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The territory they're claiming covers parts of Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, and both Dakotas. Now compare that map to the one on the second link at the top of this entry.
Given the extent of the oil field, I can write off one of my initial responses, that this was concocted as an excuse to charge into Lakota territory and commandeer it for the sake of the all-powerful economy. Not that that won't happen anyway, but I can't still believe that that's the reason for making the story up. What I foresee happening is that the corporations will unofficially start pumping in the new Republic of Lakotah, which will eventually lead to war. It'll be interesting to see, regardless.
08 April 2008
Survivalism...
It's not just for whack-jobs anymore.
Partial excerpt:
Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism
By ALEX WILLIAMS
Published: April 6, 2008
THE traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by cases of canned goods and ammunition.
It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs’s new book, “Wealth, War and Wisdom,” he says people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure.”
“Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food,” Mr. Biggs writes. “It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down.”
Survivalism, it seems, is not just for survivalists anymore.
Faced with a confluence of diverse threats — a tanking economy, a housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in oil prices — people who do not consider themselves extremists are starting to discuss doomsday measures once associated with the social fringes.
They stockpile or grow food in case of a supply breakdown, or buy precious metals in case of economic collapse. Some try to take their houses off the electricity grid, or plan safe houses far away. The point is not to drop out of society, but to be prepared in case the future turns out like something out of “An Inconvenient Truth,” if not “Mad Max.”
“I’m not a gun-nut, camo-wearing skinhead. I don’t even hunt or fish,” said Bill Marcom, 53, a construction executive in Dallas.
Still, motivated by a belief that the credit crunch and a bursting housing bubble might spark widespread economic chaos — “the Greater Depression,” as he put it — Mr. Marcom began to take measures to prepare for the unknown over the last few years: buying old silver coins to use as currency; buying G.P.S. units, a satellite telephone and a hydroponic kit; and building a simple cabin in a remote West Texas desert.
Partial excerpt:
Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism
By ALEX WILLIAMS
Published: April 6, 2008
THE traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by cases of canned goods and ammunition.
It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs’s new book, “Wealth, War and Wisdom,” he says people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure.”
“Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food,” Mr. Biggs writes. “It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down.”
Survivalism, it seems, is not just for survivalists anymore.
Faced with a confluence of diverse threats — a tanking economy, a housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in oil prices — people who do not consider themselves extremists are starting to discuss doomsday measures once associated with the social fringes.
They stockpile or grow food in case of a supply breakdown, or buy precious metals in case of economic collapse. Some try to take their houses off the electricity grid, or plan safe houses far away. The point is not to drop out of society, but to be prepared in case the future turns out like something out of “An Inconvenient Truth,” if not “Mad Max.”
“I’m not a gun-nut, camo-wearing skinhead. I don’t even hunt or fish,” said Bill Marcom, 53, a construction executive in Dallas.
Still, motivated by a belief that the credit crunch and a bursting housing bubble might spark widespread economic chaos — “the Greater Depression,” as he put it — Mr. Marcom began to take measures to prepare for the unknown over the last few years: buying old silver coins to use as currency; buying G.P.S. units, a satellite telephone and a hydroponic kit; and building a simple cabin in a remote West Texas desert.
04 April 2008
This is what's coming here...
Just because we're affluent doesn't mean we're immune to the problems that are now facing the rest of the world. Already urbanites elsewhere in the world are starving, not because there isn't any food, but because they can't afford it.
Food is scarcer, because of weather problems and biofuel initiatives, and it costs more to transport it from where it's grown, to where it's processed, to where it's consumed, all of which means that by the time it hits the shelves, it's a lot more expensive than it used to be. We're already seeing that here, but we're not thinking about where it will lead. More and more people can't afford rent/mortgage, car payment, gas, and food, and so are sloughing off one thing after another. It's only a matter of time, though, before it hits you personally, and things start getting seriously uncomfortable.
Of course, if you were to ditch your car, that would solve a bunch of financial problems.
Americans think that they're safe from the crises and upheavals going on in the rest of the world, because we're so much better off. It won't last. And it'll be worse if we don't start making preparations, based on what we're seeing in the rest of the world. The average person learns from their own mistakes. The wise person learns from others' mistakes. The fool never learns. Which are you going to be?
Food is scarcer, because of weather problems and biofuel initiatives, and it costs more to transport it from where it's grown, to where it's processed, to where it's consumed, all of which means that by the time it hits the shelves, it's a lot more expensive than it used to be. We're already seeing that here, but we're not thinking about where it will lead. More and more people can't afford rent/mortgage, car payment, gas, and food, and so are sloughing off one thing after another. It's only a matter of time, though, before it hits you personally, and things start getting seriously uncomfortable.
Of course, if you were to ditch your car, that would solve a bunch of financial problems.
Americans think that they're safe from the crises and upheavals going on in the rest of the world, because we're so much better off. It won't last. And it'll be worse if we don't start making preparations, based on what we're seeing in the rest of the world. The average person learns from their own mistakes. The wise person learns from others' mistakes. The fool never learns. Which are you going to be?
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