What could (and thus will) not be restored is material growth. We will enter an age of ‘negative sum games’, when year after year there will be less and less cars, houses, clothes etc. produced on a global basis.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
The financial system will collapse -- and the global supply chains will VAPOURIZE. You won't be able to buy a toothbrush.
There will be no slow descent. There will be a relatively brief period (which we are experiencing now) where massive amounts of stimulus delay the implosion.... then at some point the central banks push on a string.... and all hell breaks loose.
There will be no food ... so there will be epic violence... lots of murder and rape... and there will be cannibalism.
New Zealand is on the verge... as we can see they are shutting down entire industries... because they are running low on natural gas... too expensive to ship LNG there... and being an island there is no way to pipe it in from Aussie .....
NZ is doomed. We are all doomed. Nobody survives this
And NZ has a big agricultural sector.... they also export a great deal of dairy... dairy farming is electricity intensive....
Dairy steaming mad over energy fiasco
Open Country Dairy CEO Mark de Lautour describes surging energy costs as the light of a big train in a dark tunnel heading for the dairy processing industry, and New Zealand as a nation.
While Open Country Dairy (OCD) is insulated from the rapid rises at present thanks to contracts already in place, he said he and his executive team are fully aware of what is coming once those contracts end.
And, rather than simply being the result of volatile hydro lake levels, he said, there are much bigger issues at play impacting the energy market and costs.
“As coal and fossil fuels became unacceptable, NZ moved away to electricity and gas, or switched from coal to electricity as we have done.
“But the increased demand for gas and increased demand for electricity is what has caused this, not just what’s in the hydro lakes. Demand has increased and NZ has not got alternative sources in place.”
All the rivers in the country that can be dammed are dammed... So there is no margin for error. Drought is a bitch....
Gas provides just under 20% of the electricity production in NZ... apparently there are no more viable sources to be found so they are in depletion....
The writing is on the wall... the economy cannot grow without growing sources of affordable energy.... they are cannibalizing industries to offset the mismatch in supply and demand -- to prevent gas prices from going to the moon.
If they reservoirs for hydro do not refill to sufficient levels in due course.... the economy will go into freefall....
Indeed, global warming JACKED drought is a bitch and there is drought in locals the world over. When you heat things up, any moisture they contain begins to evaporate.
.
*Australia sets record high winter temperature of 41.6 degrees*
.
Data shows average Australian temperatures steadily rising, with climate change fuelling more intense bushfires, floods, drought, heatwaves
.
"The Bureau of Meteorology said it logged the scorching reading from a military training facility at Yampi Sound at 3:37pm local time – apparently smashing the previous record by 0.4 degrees.
The reading was “the hottest August temperature for any location in Australia” and “the new Australia-wide maximum temperature record for any winter month”"
"Official data shows average temperatures for Australia steadily rising, with climate change fuelling more intense bushfires, floods, drought and heatwaves."
“The unprecedented heat in Northwest Australia is mind boggling. Until this week, only three Australian weather stations on four occasions have hit or exceeded 40°C in Winter.
“This week alone, it has happened 16 times, over 10 weather stations. Insane.”
“Another incredible day in this AUSTRALIAN winter with over 40C – 40.7 [105.3F] Mandora and 40.5 Broome smashed their winter hottest day in history plus few more records (see below).
“Next 3 days will be 100% historic with dozens of records smashed in pieces.”
“37.4 99.3F] Sumbawa – HOTTEST AUGUST DAY EVER RECORDED IN INDONESIA. Indonesia is living the most extreme event in its climatic history. Hundreds of records are destroyed all over the country every day.”
I assume given you believe whatever you read on cnnbbc ... without questioning... that you are up to date on your Death Shots... you know... the Safe and Effective shots that are killing and maiming millions.
Nobody survives life, of course. We all die at some point. But there are many kind people in the world and much data to say we can manage and that our better natures become activated in times of crisis. Rebecca Solnit's book A Paradise Built in Hell always comes to mind, but I like Sebastian Junger's book Tribe just as much for the same proposition. Also Humankind by Rutger Bregman. Maybe there WILL be epic violence, and if so, I as an older woman will probably be among those who go down first. But I plan to keep trying to live a generous and helpful life as long as I can.
Instinctively, I think I have made choices that reduce the impact on me as it all goes down.
(1) Choose to own a home with good public transport links to city centre and other education/employment locations (2) Buy an older house and do repairs and renovations myself (less debt, build my own skills, add value over time and reduce debt more rapidly) (3) Become a one car family and use public transport more often because this is easy to to do in the location I have chosen to live (4) Add a secondary micro-apartment to my house and provide accommodation to someone needing affordable accommodation while working and studying at the same time and needing to spend minimum time on commuting (4) choose an e-bike with a cargo rating and attachments that make it way more useful "vehicle" than just a regular bicycle would be as a second vehicle but at a very affordable cost (5) establish a small herb and vege garden which only saves me 5 percent per week off my food bill but actually increases the nutrition quality of the food I eat (loads more vitamins and anti-oxidants etc) so the health benefits are way more than the money saving benefits (6) set up a tiny micro-business whereby I can use the internet to add 10 percent to my weekly disposable income and provide a value-for money service to other people in my community.
It is possible for people in high energy using countires in the west to start NOW to make changes that will make them less impacted by the coming economic/energy crunch. But I think you have got to have a multi-pronged strategy which anticipates people will have less disposable income for non-essentials, essentials are going to be the items most impacted by inflation, and "conspicuous consumption" is pretty soon going to begin to be not a good look so better to get away from it ASAP.
If *everyone* in rich nations would do what you're doing, a "slow crash" may be possible.
Look around you. How many to you see following your example?
I don't mean to detract from your efforts, but in light of their inadequacy to affect the greater picture, I suggest you double-down on all your points:
1) Choose to own outright (or with family money) more modest accomodations on some good growing soil of at least a half-acre per person. Can't swing that? Join with others of like mind to "group buy" such a situation.
2) Or buy bare land, and build from the ground-up, using the very soil you stand upon. It's inherently fire-proof, and most of the materials are literally as cheap as dirt. Don't have good building dirt? While the rest of the world is still growth-crazy, you can get tonnes of clay from nearby building sites for the cost of the dump truck run. Get re-used doors and windows. Prepare to heat with wood, and make sure you have a good supply.
3) Become a sub-one-car family, with the help of others who also don't need an expensive resource sitting around unused most of the time. Split costs and pay by the kilometre. Use an "analog" bike for as much as you can.
4) Share your dwelling with others less fortunate. Using a co-op structure, offer them equity over time, instead of rent.
4.2) You've got batteries in your thighs. Eschew e-bikes that use proprietary circuit boards and batteries that will fail and abandon you as industry declines, leaving you with an over-built pedal bike that is too heavy and slow to be useful without electricity.
5) Grow everything you can. Veggies and herbs are easy. You put them at the end of your main crop rows. Focus on staples: quality fat and protein and carbohydrate. Involve multi-purpose animals and send them out to gather current sunlight that you gather in their manure to keep your soil fertile.
6) Your soil is also your income. Trade with neighbours. Learn to value-add your food production with preservation. (Everybody like cheese, but amazingly few actually know how to make it!)
It's not possible to to avoid the impact of the coming crunch. But it's better to prepare for the worst, rather than prepare for something that is just a "little bit different" than what you have now. Your job may be the first thing in your plans to "go wrong."
Most of these things you list will not exist as collapse deepens. Public transport, jobs, debt nor profit, your car (it will be an inert mass), a renter, commuters, a food bill. What you are listing are things that can confer benefits whilst everything is still functioning, which is not nothing in the present. Once it isn't, they'll be meaningless.
I love your writing, B, because you give plenty of facts and historical precedents, and let us consider how that might unfold in whatever part of the world we're inhabiting. The part of Appalachia I live in has become dependent on college loans, artillery production, and private equity real estate, which will become worthless, but before that, we had farms and timber, and transport by river and rail. The steepest lands have been timbered and then left to regrow out of the reach of the developers' bulldozers. Plants and simple hand tools can make food, housing, medicine and art, if we work together and protect our soil and water.
Great article. I do have to wonder if Fast Eddy's sudden and brutal collapse scenario is more likely, though. Neither scenario is appealing. Most don't have a clue either way.
Fast Eddy has been saying things like that for a couple decades.
Could he be right? Of course he could!
But it's best to plan for the Maximum Power Point. Plot effort vertically against severity of crash horizontally.
Fast Eddy may be the first to agree that preparing for worst case may require infinite resources! And it's obvious that planning for status quo requires no effort beyond what you're already expending.
But that effort of merely living in an increasingly complex and unstable world might buy you a lot of resilience if you push your way up the curve somewhat!
I suppose there are myriad factors in choosing your spot, health, age, finances, and meaningful personal relationships. For me, it's about quality of life. Having had many pets in my life, I've often had to make that decision about the quality of their lives, always heartbreaking. That's how I look at my own. It's a very individual decision about how hard to fight. I support anyone's handling of this situation as long as it doesn't involve harming someone else. Growing food will be the most basic of survival skills. Being successful as a survivalist will make people targets. Personally, I don't care for that road. I'll make my stand now, but I certainly support yours.
We are indeed in our epilogue as a civilization and when it goes down so will most of the 8 billion created and sustained by oil go away. Those who recognize our predicament today fall somewhere in Kubler-Ross's stages of grief. There are of course many in the denial stage, but one can't say then that they recognize where we're at, except subconsciously - they are railing against what their subsconscious already recognizes. Most of those who do understand where we're at are in the bargaining stages of grief. Proposing solutions where there are none. Enjoy and be grateful for every day you get is our job now.
"The future is already here. It's just not widely distributed yet."
You are, of course, right in your broad analysis, but I think the devils are in the details..... For example, not all Western countries are equally vulnerable. Those that have built their infrastructure and economy on domestic fossil fuels, or easy access to them, are by now entirely dependant in the continued and uninterrupted supply, not least because the energy intensity of fossils is so useful and seductive. America is, of course, the prime example, but England and others too.
Compare this to, say, France, historically with few fossil reserves and expensive fossil imports, along with a strong post-WW2 urge to be independent and self sufficient in the essentials, like food and energy (and food is energy too!). Decades of investment in farming, for example, including many subsidies and protections for small farms and farmers, has produced one of the best food production systems in the world, with 30% of net production being exported. Also France extends across climate zones, so produces grains and vegetables in the north and citrus in the south, along with easy imports from Holland, Spain and Italy.
Similarly, today 70% of France's electricity is from nuclear and 15% from hydro (mostly tidal power), plus increasing investments in wind in the northwest and solar in the south. With cheap electricity, it has therefore electrified its infrastructure, from the high speed TGV 220mph train network and electric freight, to domestic heating, increasingly using heap pumps for new developments. If you add the next layer, electric cars and eventually electric trucks, and electrification of the extensive canal and barge freight transport system, then all together you can envisage the possibility of a genuine transition that still has the fundamentals of a modern society.
It is hard to see such a transition in America, both for your technical reasons, well identified, but also against a backdrop of an already fractured society and politics, as well as all those guns! America's infrastructure is already in decline, has not been updated with investment for a post-fossils age, and will never be due to the frozen Right v's Left politics. The end of net energy will likely fracture America for ever, perhaps even to a war within itself.
So the broader future may be inevitable, but the worst consequences may take much longer to play out. Which is, of course, why I have retired to France!
This is amazing analysis. However, it’s « fewer and fewer cars ». The difference between mass nouns and count nouns will remain. Basic grammar will remain. We will have the rudiments of civilization. May the 1% perish. If there are teachers, journalists, saints, and poets, we can survive.
There is a point many commentators miss, which is the difference between distributed energy and local energy. The current debate is about oil and fracking rigs being replaced by massive wind turbines and 'solar farms' with tens of square kilometers/miles of land covered, all feeding into the grid system. But that agenda is entirely driven by energy companies that monopolise distributed energy, and have to keep you plugged into their system to make profits.
The alternative is local energy; your own roof covered in solar PV and hot water panels with a small wind turbine, battery pack (like Powerwall) and inverter, for example. And for a business or workshop, the biggest daytime users of electricity, a solar roof and south facing walls, battery packs, perhaps with a night time cheap rate electricity feed to ensure the batteries are topped up. And a solar hot water system with insulated storage tank and night-time cheap electricity top-up for process hot water.
In fact a local municipality could probably generate substantial local power by mandating that all industrial and office buildings and shopping centres must cover their roofs with solar, and offer cheap loans and tax breaks to do so. And then, suddenly, the economics of electric delivery vans and trucks become obvious, and electric cars for workers commuting to work.
Obviously the grid energy companies would fight that tooth and nail. But if you want a feasible solution to the imminent problems......
What could (and thus will) not be restored is material growth. We will enter an age of ‘negative sum games’, when year after year there will be less and less cars, houses, clothes etc. produced on a global basis.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
The financial system will collapse -- and the global supply chains will VAPOURIZE. You won't be able to buy a toothbrush.
There will be no slow descent. There will be a relatively brief period (which we are experiencing now) where massive amounts of stimulus delay the implosion.... then at some point the central banks push on a string.... and all hell breaks loose.
There will be no food ... so there will be epic violence... lots of murder and rape... and there will be cannibalism.
Of course there are 4000 spent fuel ponds that will be left unmanaged...and spew cancer causing poisons for centuries... more details here https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
New Zealand is on the verge... as we can see they are shutting down entire industries... because they are running low on natural gas... too expensive to ship LNG there... and being an island there is no way to pipe it in from Aussie .....
NZ is doomed. We are all doomed. Nobody survives this
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/nz-is-running-out-of-gas-literally
I know NZ relies heavily on fossil fuels but does hydro power not give a bit of a buffer?
Hyrdo power will not grow crops.
And NZ has a big agricultural sector.... they also export a great deal of dairy... dairy farming is electricity intensive....
Dairy steaming mad over energy fiasco
Open Country Dairy CEO Mark de Lautour describes surging energy costs as the light of a big train in a dark tunnel heading for the dairy processing industry, and New Zealand as a nation.
While Open Country Dairy (OCD) is insulated from the rapid rises at present thanks to contracts already in place, he said he and his executive team are fully aware of what is coming once those contracts end.
And, rather than simply being the result of volatile hydro lake levels, he said, there are much bigger issues at play impacting the energy market and costs.
“As coal and fossil fuels became unacceptable, NZ moved away to electricity and gas, or switched from coal to electricity as we have done.
“But the increased demand for gas and increased demand for electricity is what has caused this, not just what’s in the hydro lakes. Demand has increased and NZ has not got alternative sources in place.”
https://www.farmersweekly.co.nz/special-report/power-in-crisis/dairy-steaming-mad-over-energy-fiasco/
All the rivers in the country that can be dammed are dammed... So there is no margin for error. Drought is a bitch....
Gas provides just under 20% of the electricity production in NZ... apparently there are no more viable sources to be found so they are in depletion....
The writing is on the wall... the economy cannot grow without growing sources of affordable energy.... they are cannibalizing industries to offset the mismatch in supply and demand -- to prevent gas prices from going to the moon.
If they reservoirs for hydro do not refill to sufficient levels in due course.... the economy will go into freefall....
Indeed, global warming JACKED drought is a bitch and there is drought in locals the world over. When you heat things up, any moisture they contain begins to evaporate.
.
*Australia sets record high winter temperature of 41.6 degrees*
.
Data shows average Australian temperatures steadily rising, with climate change fuelling more intense bushfires, floods, drought, heatwaves
.
"The Bureau of Meteorology said it logged the scorching reading from a military training facility at Yampi Sound at 3:37pm local time – apparently smashing the previous record by 0.4 degrees.
The reading was “the hottest August temperature for any location in Australia” and “the new Australia-wide maximum temperature record for any winter month”"
"Official data shows average temperatures for Australia steadily rising, with climate change fuelling more intense bushfires, floods, drought and heatwaves."
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/australasia/article/3276008/australia-sets-record-high-winter-temperature-416-degrees
~~~~~
“The unprecedented heat in Northwest Australia is mind boggling. Until this week, only three Australian weather stations on four occasions have hit or exceeded 40°C in Winter.
“This week alone, it has happened 16 times, over 10 weather stations. Insane.”
https://x.com/Alison_Osborne_/status/1828686077961625892
~~~~~~
“Another incredible day in this AUSTRALIAN winter with over 40C – 40.7 [105.3F] Mandora and 40.5 Broome smashed their winter hottest day in history plus few more records (see below).
“Next 3 days will be 100% historic with dozens of records smashed in pieces.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1828757978046148716
~~~~~~~~~~
“EXTRAORDINARY HEAT WAVE IN INDONESIA:
“37.4 99.3F] Sumbawa – HOTTEST AUGUST DAY EVER RECORDED IN INDONESIA. Indonesia is living the most extreme event in its climatic history. Hundreds of records are destroyed all over the country every day.”
https://x.com/extremetemps/status/1828783209636892798
~~~~~~~~~
Stay Frosty Eddy
I assume given you believe whatever you read on cnnbbc ... without questioning... that you are up to date on your Death Shots... you know... the Safe and Effective shots that are killing and maiming millions.
Nobody survives life, of course. We all die at some point. But there are many kind people in the world and much data to say we can manage and that our better natures become activated in times of crisis. Rebecca Solnit's book A Paradise Built in Hell always comes to mind, but I like Sebastian Junger's book Tribe just as much for the same proposition. Also Humankind by Rutger Bregman. Maybe there WILL be epic violence, and if so, I as an older woman will probably be among those who go down first. But I plan to keep trying to live a generous and helpful life as long as I can.
Instinctively, I think I have made choices that reduce the impact on me as it all goes down.
(1) Choose to own a home with good public transport links to city centre and other education/employment locations (2) Buy an older house and do repairs and renovations myself (less debt, build my own skills, add value over time and reduce debt more rapidly) (3) Become a one car family and use public transport more often because this is easy to to do in the location I have chosen to live (4) Add a secondary micro-apartment to my house and provide accommodation to someone needing affordable accommodation while working and studying at the same time and needing to spend minimum time on commuting (4) choose an e-bike with a cargo rating and attachments that make it way more useful "vehicle" than just a regular bicycle would be as a second vehicle but at a very affordable cost (5) establish a small herb and vege garden which only saves me 5 percent per week off my food bill but actually increases the nutrition quality of the food I eat (loads more vitamins and anti-oxidants etc) so the health benefits are way more than the money saving benefits (6) set up a tiny micro-business whereby I can use the internet to add 10 percent to my weekly disposable income and provide a value-for money service to other people in my community.
It is possible for people in high energy using countires in the west to start NOW to make changes that will make them less impacted by the coming economic/energy crunch. But I think you have got to have a multi-pronged strategy which anticipates people will have less disposable income for non-essentials, essentials are going to be the items most impacted by inflation, and "conspicuous consumption" is pretty soon going to begin to be not a good look so better to get away from it ASAP.
If *everyone* in rich nations would do what you're doing, a "slow crash" may be possible.
Look around you. How many to you see following your example?
I don't mean to detract from your efforts, but in light of their inadequacy to affect the greater picture, I suggest you double-down on all your points:
1) Choose to own outright (or with family money) more modest accomodations on some good growing soil of at least a half-acre per person. Can't swing that? Join with others of like mind to "group buy" such a situation.
2) Or buy bare land, and build from the ground-up, using the very soil you stand upon. It's inherently fire-proof, and most of the materials are literally as cheap as dirt. Don't have good building dirt? While the rest of the world is still growth-crazy, you can get tonnes of clay from nearby building sites for the cost of the dump truck run. Get re-used doors and windows. Prepare to heat with wood, and make sure you have a good supply.
3) Become a sub-one-car family, with the help of others who also don't need an expensive resource sitting around unused most of the time. Split costs and pay by the kilometre. Use an "analog" bike for as much as you can.
4) Share your dwelling with others less fortunate. Using a co-op structure, offer them equity over time, instead of rent.
4.2) You've got batteries in your thighs. Eschew e-bikes that use proprietary circuit boards and batteries that will fail and abandon you as industry declines, leaving you with an over-built pedal bike that is too heavy and slow to be useful without electricity.
5) Grow everything you can. Veggies and herbs are easy. You put them at the end of your main crop rows. Focus on staples: quality fat and protein and carbohydrate. Involve multi-purpose animals and send them out to gather current sunlight that you gather in their manure to keep your soil fertile.
6) Your soil is also your income. Trade with neighbours. Learn to value-add your food production with preservation. (Everybody like cheese, but amazingly few actually know how to make it!)
It's not possible to to avoid the impact of the coming crunch. But it's better to prepare for the worst, rather than prepare for something that is just a "little bit different" than what you have now. Your job may be the first thing in your plans to "go wrong."
Most of these things you list will not exist as collapse deepens. Public transport, jobs, debt nor profit, your car (it will be an inert mass), a renter, commuters, a food bill. What you are listing are things that can confer benefits whilst everything is still functioning, which is not nothing in the present. Once it isn't, they'll be meaningless.
You are a very decent and thoughtful person, Duncan. Best of luck to you.
I love your writing, B, because you give plenty of facts and historical precedents, and let us consider how that might unfold in whatever part of the world we're inhabiting. The part of Appalachia I live in has become dependent on college loans, artillery production, and private equity real estate, which will become worthless, but before that, we had farms and timber, and transport by river and rail. The steepest lands have been timbered and then left to regrow out of the reach of the developers' bulldozers. Plants and simple hand tools can make food, housing, medicine and art, if we work together and protect our soil and water.
Great article. I do have to wonder if Fast Eddy's sudden and brutal collapse scenario is more likely, though. Neither scenario is appealing. Most don't have a clue either way.
Fast Eddy has been saying things like that for a couple decades.
Could he be right? Of course he could!
But it's best to plan for the Maximum Power Point. Plot effort vertically against severity of crash horizontally.
Fast Eddy may be the first to agree that preparing for worst case may require infinite resources! And it's obvious that planning for status quo requires no effort beyond what you're already expending.
But that effort of merely living in an increasingly complex and unstable world might buy you a lot of resilience if you push your way up the curve somewhat!
So there's a collapse sweet spot? Wow, what great news! : )
There are certainly "collapse sour spots", so you might as well get as far up the curve as you can, with the resources you've got!
One thing seems certain: status quo is a collapse sour spot. Do what you can to get away from that. GROW FOOD!
I suppose there are myriad factors in choosing your spot, health, age, finances, and meaningful personal relationships. For me, it's about quality of life. Having had many pets in my life, I've often had to make that decision about the quality of their lives, always heartbreaking. That's how I look at my own. It's a very individual decision about how hard to fight. I support anyone's handling of this situation as long as it doesn't involve harming someone else. Growing food will be the most basic of survival skills. Being successful as a survivalist will make people targets. Personally, I don't care for that road. I'll make my stand now, but I certainly support yours.
Let’s check in 50 years
We are indeed in our epilogue as a civilization and when it goes down so will most of the 8 billion created and sustained by oil go away. Those who recognize our predicament today fall somewhere in Kubler-Ross's stages of grief. There are of course many in the denial stage, but one can't say then that they recognize where we're at, except subconsciously - they are railing against what their subsconscious already recognizes. Most of those who do understand where we're at are in the bargaining stages of grief. Proposing solutions where there are none. Enjoy and be grateful for every day you get is our job now.
"The future is already here. It's just not widely distributed yet."
You are, of course, right in your broad analysis, but I think the devils are in the details..... For example, not all Western countries are equally vulnerable. Those that have built their infrastructure and economy on domestic fossil fuels, or easy access to them, are by now entirely dependant in the continued and uninterrupted supply, not least because the energy intensity of fossils is so useful and seductive. America is, of course, the prime example, but England and others too.
Compare this to, say, France, historically with few fossil reserves and expensive fossil imports, along with a strong post-WW2 urge to be independent and self sufficient in the essentials, like food and energy (and food is energy too!). Decades of investment in farming, for example, including many subsidies and protections for small farms and farmers, has produced one of the best food production systems in the world, with 30% of net production being exported. Also France extends across climate zones, so produces grains and vegetables in the north and citrus in the south, along with easy imports from Holland, Spain and Italy.
Similarly, today 70% of France's electricity is from nuclear and 15% from hydro (mostly tidal power), plus increasing investments in wind in the northwest and solar in the south. With cheap electricity, it has therefore electrified its infrastructure, from the high speed TGV 220mph train network and electric freight, to domestic heating, increasingly using heap pumps for new developments. If you add the next layer, electric cars and eventually electric trucks, and electrification of the extensive canal and barge freight transport system, then all together you can envisage the possibility of a genuine transition that still has the fundamentals of a modern society.
It is hard to see such a transition in America, both for your technical reasons, well identified, but also against a backdrop of an already fractured society and politics, as well as all those guns! America's infrastructure is already in decline, has not been updated with investment for a post-fossils age, and will never be due to the frozen Right v's Left politics. The end of net energy will likely fracture America for ever, perhaps even to a war within itself.
So the broader future may be inevitable, but the worst consequences may take much longer to play out. Which is, of course, why I have retired to France!
This is amazing analysis. However, it’s « fewer and fewer cars ». The difference between mass nouns and count nouns will remain. Basic grammar will remain. We will have the rudiments of civilization. May the 1% perish. If there are teachers, journalists, saints, and poets, we can survive.
Very good overview, thanks!
There is a point many commentators miss, which is the difference between distributed energy and local energy. The current debate is about oil and fracking rigs being replaced by massive wind turbines and 'solar farms' with tens of square kilometers/miles of land covered, all feeding into the grid system. But that agenda is entirely driven by energy companies that monopolise distributed energy, and have to keep you plugged into their system to make profits.
The alternative is local energy; your own roof covered in solar PV and hot water panels with a small wind turbine, battery pack (like Powerwall) and inverter, for example. And for a business or workshop, the biggest daytime users of electricity, a solar roof and south facing walls, battery packs, perhaps with a night time cheap rate electricity feed to ensure the batteries are topped up. And a solar hot water system with insulated storage tank and night-time cheap electricity top-up for process hot water.
In fact a local municipality could probably generate substantial local power by mandating that all industrial and office buildings and shopping centres must cover their roofs with solar, and offer cheap loans and tax breaks to do so. And then, suddenly, the economics of electric delivery vans and trucks become obvious, and electric cars for workers commuting to work.
Obviously the grid energy companies would fight that tooth and nail. But if you want a feasible solution to the imminent problems......