I started with my own vegetable garden. So.. at least I know how that goes. Permaculture way. Then stopped buying packaged food. And when I started this, more energy savings were more easy to find. Less use is less pollution
If only we could impress this macro view on our "leaders." It's really quite simple when we accept everything in modern life comes ultimately from fossil fuels. It drives me a little crazy that people like Bill McKibben don't recognize this fact as they cheer on "renewables" which at best can soften the blow as oil becomes unextractable.
I appreciate Bill McKibben's work in stopping the Keystone pipeline, but he hasn't kept up, falling into the trap of thinking opposing Donald Trump is the same as being in Dumbledore's Army. It's not. The Inflation Reduction Act is the most environmentally destructive bill ever written. The sooner we wean ourselves off government "help," the better.
McKibben lives here in Vermont in the small mountain town of Ripton. He seems to be treated as a demigod by our Democrat Legislature, a neoliberal, supermajority monoculture of groupthink. The Vermont Legislature is all-in on renewable energy as are Vermont’s mainstream environmental groups. McKibben is constantly proselytizing for industrial wind turbines on our mountain tops, even though, as he has written, “the acres that their concrete pads cover, and the linear corridor for the roads to service them, cause irreparable harm.” He has also written on his Substack account that “ … Vermont has its share of problems, some of them rooted in an aging population resistant to progress of any kind — there are times when I think it’s de facto motto is ‘Change Anything You Want Once I’m Dead,’ which explains among other things the de facto moratorium on building the wind turbines that could help provide us cleaner power.” Frankly, as a “geezer” and an environmental historian, I’m offended by such ageism and facile waving aside of the environmental degradation of Vermont’s sensitive uplands. McKibben undeniably has a following, particularly among the young. That’s why I call him the Pied Piper of Ripton.
McKibben has done good things, but I part company with him on renewables, other than maybe temporarily smoothing the transition to a low energy world. Fossil fuels are approaching economic non-viability to extract, and without them, you can't build or maintain that infrastructure. You are right, mountain top wind turbines are enormously destructive, as is battery storage necessary to smooth the grid for solar and wind. BTW, I know Vermont a bit, having lived in upstate NY for 30+ years.
I wrote about wind turbines not long ago. They're not green at all when everything is taken into account.
I also wrote about the lithium mining operation at Thacker Pass, NV that Max Wilbert and local tribes fought so hard to stop for years. It has moved forward, and doubtlessly will be environmentally disastrous. The water use alone in an area of the country where drought is a serious issue is stunning.
After three years of educating myself on the climate crisis, and the 6th extinction, I have yet to see any realistic, truthful decision-making at the levels we need it.
McKibben has developed a one-track mind: fight climate change! He seems naive about the sheer complexity of the situation. So, just keep it simple and blame the fossil fuel companies and expand renewables.
All the energy we have benefited from (and died from) since the industrial revolution has been coal and oil. Building and maintaining renewables requires the dense energy of fossil fuels, and renewables are just as destructive in their own right. We are headed for a massive reduction of available energy. It's surprising to me McKibben doesn't see this truth.
However your survey of one is not supported by the evidence which repeatedly ranks a wholefood plant based diet as the good standard. Thankfully youtube keto dieters are admitting to cheating and eating veggies and some who’ve had strokes on keto/carnivore have sensibly gone plant based. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/claims-of-weston-a-price-which-are?utm_source=publication-search
Who, with a straight face, and no sense of the outrageous arrogance would say this to a stranger -- "I am definitely more knowledgable on the scientific literature than you ..."
If you aspired to limit your effect on climate change, loss of biodiversity, dust bowls, ocean dead zones and deforestation you certainly wouldn't aspired to keto; you'd aspire to be a regenerative agriculture vegan.
LOL -- you are absolutely correct, and so, so inspiring.
What you don't get is that it is too late for any of that aspirational stuff, and I really like meat, and have local sources (farmers) that I like, and that provide a good (hand crafted) product.
It may well be too late to prevent future ecological collapse or to save humanity’s existence on this planet. But it’s not too late to do stuff that is helpful and kind for life right now this minute.
You are right again. I didn't mention the use of eggs in the KETO diet, and I am proud to say that yes, my chickens are the happiest birds around. Well fed, plenty water, and lots of space to play. I am particularly kind to them on butchering day -- lots of affection, and a quick axe.
I dunno. These optimistic "slow collapse" concepts just grate on me. Sure, sure things may take time, but things may move very quickly as well and stressing the long term ideas partly ignore reality.
1. US "leadership" is actively pursuing a track toward WWIII
2. Just the mild heating now in force combined with overfishing around the world is constricting the food supply. The food supply is the weakest part of global civilization, and since it all comes from fossil fuels it is very fragile. When people aren't eating well, they get hangry and mean.
We will certainly see if things are going to go quickly.
I just returned from an unexpected and minimally planned trip to Alaska. I live in the PNW but this was my first time. And last. I was not surprised. An incredible wild land scarred by the taming of homo colossus. Without diesel or gasoline that place would be primitive! No pickup trucks, no jets delivering people and supplies, no light aircraft connecting many wilderness dots. No lights. Etc. I believe places such as Alaska should be left to the wild animals. The trees will grow back. The fish will return. The moose will thrive. As it stands the whole gigantic place is being raped and will slowly die.
You are such a gift. You articulate complex ideas in ways that are both beautiful and undeniable.
On the return to manual labor … I think this will take us a long way to returning what it means to be human. It means reconnecting to, what I call, the sacred circle: the intertwined loop of being connected to ourselves, connected to others, and connected to nature.
We probably only need about 5% of all the shit we have in our lives right now. Producing those things with manual labor, in partnership with others, and in harmony with nature, will feel more alive than just about anything we experience in this hellscape of late-stage capitalism.
I have been following you for some time now, and I thank you for adding important bricks to my understanding of this world (putting in declension similar arguments in different posts, but this has value in my opinion, giving different lights and angles to the same problematics).
Compiling a large number of your posts, I think that your vision of our near future is quite accurate in its broad lines, a lot more than what we are being told by our governments or business moguls (and I mean all of them, democracies or dictatorships).
A few more comments:
1) For me, it would add value to your analysis to consider the power factor. From a historical perspective, power has always been and always will be the channel through which the physical realities of this world are shaped and ordered (even with more or less disorder in the process). This low-tech future will be much more localized, I agree, but certainly not random regarding power. Accounting for this factor, our future looks very much like our past, going back in the same order of magnitude but faster to older values. Meaning the demise of liberal democracies, representing a (partial) bracket of about 250 years in human history of a government system that I am truly mourning (being born in it and educated with its ideals at heart).
This implies going back to medieval times' feudal system, in which the structures of power were much more direcly exerted upon common people (serfs) with rigid hierarchies above them (lords and vassals): a much more simplified world ruled by the sword, personal loyalties, inheritance, and rent. This transition from the neoconservative capitalist world—a world started in the 'eighties with the neoliberal, financialized, and globalized economics's triumph—to techno-feudalism, later will have to transition again to plain feudalism when, as you describe it, technology and productivity will pass downward tipping points here and there. Making then the new paradigm evident to everyone. For people who pay attention, there are signs of it everywhere already.
2) In the decades to follow, the dwindling of energy will not be equal for all, and this will give huge advantages—or disadvantages—to countries in the geopolitical strife for power and survival. It is not good enough to only hint at it, for this will be a crucial development in the coming decades.
Small and midsize countries and places with no fossil fuel resources will be impoverished and submitted (including Europe), eventually becoming parts of big predatory powerhouses' zones of influence. This new world is shaping out already. Big nations' policies and actions don't make much sense without this perspective—this new reality. Even in the United States (on track to autocracy, if not this year, later), the Republican Party, in only a decade, has entirely shifted its position to this notion of a secluded nation with enlaged and uncontested dominion over its neighbors. And this is exactly what the other large nations—all of them dictatorships already—wish the United States to embrace. Soon (if we can avoid total nuclear annihilation—still a possibility), these big entities (the USA, Russia, China, and India) will share the world. There will be some zones of friction (obviously Africa, the Arctic, the Middle East, etc.), but their leaders will probably accommodate their rivalries for the sake of unchallenged dominance in their own backyards.
This seems contradictory with the preceding chapter about feudalism (feulalism meaning at the same time a weak central power AND a strong hierarchal and formalized societal system based on loyalties, organized obligations, and benefits). But the world will evolve with a rapidly changing landscape that cannot remain in the same state for long.
Considering these nations' current domestic energy situations, the United States appears to be in the most vulnerable position; today, this country leads the pack in oil and gas production, yet this is only due to the "miracle" of the fracking revolution of the last twenty years. This oil production is still growing only in a particular region (the famed Permian Basin) and cannot last forever. Ten years at most. In the way the United States operated at the time of the Iraq Wars (before the fracking revolution when domestic oil was tapering off), the Middle East will continue to be in the United States' top priorities. The energy IS the economy. In the Middle East and Russia, you find the most abundant and cheapest remaining oil to exploit in a world of dwindling resources. But with a lag in time, neither will last.
3) Another event will completely transform the world's dynamics: global warming. Indeed. We may consider these diverse and evolving factors with their own timeframes and logics, but they are also very much linked to each other. You mention, B, global warming in your essays as an exacerbating, sidekick-factor. Yet I think you don't put enough weight on the radical, ultrafast change of the climate that we have triggered (and on other environmental issues). These last two years, 2023 and 2024, we have witnessed a whooping acceleration of the phenomenon. And if we haven't stepped into climate feedback-loop cycles already (scientists don't agree on this), we are standing at these doors, which, once passed, don't allow return tickets. Global warming happens much faster than you seem to realize and is indeed a strong and fast accelerant of our societies' unraveling. Maybe faster than energy resource depletion. Again, the consequences of this won't be equally distributed; some places will disappear entirely or will lose more or quicker than others (population, wealth, control...), but in the end, everyone will be affected. After the threat of nuclear war, we have opened another avenue for possible human extinction.
So, yes, we have entered a very fluid situation. Let's not assume that the world we were born into and always knew as "normal" will be the same; this is total fantasy. In no scenario, this can be.
The perspective you provide about the link between energy and productivity is enlightening, but also frightening. We have great challenges ahead.
I started with my own vegetable garden. So.. at least I know how that goes. Permaculture way. Then stopped buying packaged food. And when I started this, more energy savings were more easy to find. Less use is less pollution
A video I watched recently captures it in a small microcosm - or Island.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3arhB18xM
If only we could impress this macro view on our "leaders." It's really quite simple when we accept everything in modern life comes ultimately from fossil fuels. It drives me a little crazy that people like Bill McKibben don't recognize this fact as they cheer on "renewables" which at best can soften the blow as oil becomes unextractable.
I appreciate Bill McKibben's work in stopping the Keystone pipeline, but he hasn't kept up, falling into the trap of thinking opposing Donald Trump is the same as being in Dumbledore's Army. It's not. The Inflation Reduction Act is the most environmentally destructive bill ever written. The sooner we wean ourselves off government "help," the better.
I agree and have only found more reasons to fault IRA since writing this article. We're truly not dealing with the climate crisis correctly at all. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/the-inflation-act-climate-change
McKibben lives here in Vermont in the small mountain town of Ripton. He seems to be treated as a demigod by our Democrat Legislature, a neoliberal, supermajority monoculture of groupthink. The Vermont Legislature is all-in on renewable energy as are Vermont’s mainstream environmental groups. McKibben is constantly proselytizing for industrial wind turbines on our mountain tops, even though, as he has written, “the acres that their concrete pads cover, and the linear corridor for the roads to service them, cause irreparable harm.” He has also written on his Substack account that “ … Vermont has its share of problems, some of them rooted in an aging population resistant to progress of any kind — there are times when I think it’s de facto motto is ‘Change Anything You Want Once I’m Dead,’ which explains among other things the de facto moratorium on building the wind turbines that could help provide us cleaner power.” Frankly, as a “geezer” and an environmental historian, I’m offended by such ageism and facile waving aside of the environmental degradation of Vermont’s sensitive uplands. McKibben undeniably has a following, particularly among the young. That’s why I call him the Pied Piper of Ripton.
McKibben has done good things, but I part company with him on renewables, other than maybe temporarily smoothing the transition to a low energy world. Fossil fuels are approaching economic non-viability to extract, and without them, you can't build or maintain that infrastructure. You are right, mountain top wind turbines are enormously destructive, as is battery storage necessary to smooth the grid for solar and wind. BTW, I know Vermont a bit, having lived in upstate NY for 30+ years.
I wrote about wind turbines not long ago. They're not green at all when everything is taken into account.
https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/offshore-wind-change-is-in-the-air
I also wrote about the lithium mining operation at Thacker Pass, NV that Max Wilbert and local tribes fought so hard to stop for years. It has moved forward, and doubtlessly will be environmentally disastrous. The water use alone in an area of the country where drought is a serious issue is stunning.
https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/offshore-wind-change-is-in-the-air
After three years of educating myself on the climate crisis, and the 6th extinction, I have yet to see any realistic, truthful decision-making at the levels we need it.
McKibben has developed a one-track mind: fight climate change! He seems naive about the sheer complexity of the situation. So, just keep it simple and blame the fossil fuel companies and expand renewables.
I used to like Bill McKibben. Now I think that he is not seeing in systems and doesn't understand the complexity of energy.
All the energy we have benefited from (and died from) since the industrial revolution has been coal and oil. Building and maintaining renewables requires the dense energy of fossil fuels, and renewables are just as destructive in their own right. We are headed for a massive reduction of available energy. It's surprising to me McKibben doesn't see this truth.
If you start leading by example, others -the actually non-leaders you describe- they will follow.
Thank you B🙏
Cows milked manually! Who is still consuming methane producing breast milk from another manually impregnated species? Yuk and yuk.
How do you know if a person is vegan?
They tell you!
Actually, I aspire to a KETO (meat, cheese, milk, more meat) diet and I have never been healthier. I recommend it for everyone.
Yes, that little witticism is true.
However your survey of one is not supported by the evidence which repeatedly ranks a wholefood plant based diet as the good standard. Thankfully youtube keto dieters are admitting to cheating and eating veggies and some who’ve had strokes on keto/carnivore have sensibly gone plant based. https://jowaller.substack.com/p/claims-of-weston-a-price-which-are?utm_source=publication-search
Yes Jo, you are definitely a better person than me!! No contest.
I am definitely more knowledgable on the scientific literature than you but that doesn't make me a better or worse as a person than you.
We haven't even gone near animal welfare.
Oh, perhaps not better (that's debatable), but certainly you are better read, and much smarter than me. Clearly, otherwise, I would be vegan too.
LOL
How do I block obnoxious, self-righteous vegans here?
Who, with a straight face, and no sense of the outrageous arrogance would say this to a stranger -- "I am definitely more knowledgable on the scientific literature than you ..."
A vegan.
If you aspired to limit your effect on climate change, loss of biodiversity, dust bowls, ocean dead zones and deforestation you certainly wouldn't aspired to keto; you'd aspire to be a regenerative agriculture vegan.
https://jowaller.substack.com/p/yet-another-unsuccessful-attempt?utm_source=publication-search
LOL -- you are absolutely correct, and so, so inspiring.
What you don't get is that it is too late for any of that aspirational stuff, and I really like meat, and have local sources (farmers) that I like, and that provide a good (hand crafted) product.
But, yeah, you are a much better person.
It may well be too late to prevent future ecological collapse or to save humanity’s existence on this planet. But it’s not too late to do stuff that is helpful and kind for life right now this minute.
See you around.
You are right again. I didn't mention the use of eggs in the KETO diet, and I am proud to say that yes, my chickens are the happiest birds around. Well fed, plenty water, and lots of space to play. I am particularly kind to them on butchering day -- lots of affection, and a quick axe.
Climate Change explained https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-three-pillars-of-bullshit
Yes the future is low energy and vegan; whether by choice or not.
I dunno. These optimistic "slow collapse" concepts just grate on me. Sure, sure things may take time, but things may move very quickly as well and stressing the long term ideas partly ignore reality.
1. US "leadership" is actively pursuing a track toward WWIII
2. Just the mild heating now in force combined with overfishing around the world is constricting the food supply. The food supply is the weakest part of global civilization, and since it all comes from fossil fuels it is very fragile. When people aren't eating well, they get hangry and mean.
We will certainly see if things are going to go quickly.
Shale oil producers can and have switched to extracting NG vs oil. They can switch back as market demands.
Also, refiners have retooled to take NGLs but NGLs are counted in the refining stats.
I just returned from an unexpected and minimally planned trip to Alaska. I live in the PNW but this was my first time. And last. I was not surprised. An incredible wild land scarred by the taming of homo colossus. Without diesel or gasoline that place would be primitive! No pickup trucks, no jets delivering people and supplies, no light aircraft connecting many wilderness dots. No lights. Etc. I believe places such as Alaska should be left to the wild animals. The trees will grow back. The fish will return. The moose will thrive. As it stands the whole gigantic place is being raped and will slowly die.
Nobody survives what is coming:
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
You are such a gift. You articulate complex ideas in ways that are both beautiful and undeniable.
On the return to manual labor … I think this will take us a long way to returning what it means to be human. It means reconnecting to, what I call, the sacred circle: the intertwined loop of being connected to ourselves, connected to others, and connected to nature.
We probably only need about 5% of all the shit we have in our lives right now. Producing those things with manual labor, in partnership with others, and in harmony with nature, will feel more alive than just about anything we experience in this hellscape of late-stage capitalism.
Hi, B.
I have been following you for some time now, and I thank you for adding important bricks to my understanding of this world (putting in declension similar arguments in different posts, but this has value in my opinion, giving different lights and angles to the same problematics).
Compiling a large number of your posts, I think that your vision of our near future is quite accurate in its broad lines, a lot more than what we are being told by our governments or business moguls (and I mean all of them, democracies or dictatorships).
A few more comments:
1) For me, it would add value to your analysis to consider the power factor. From a historical perspective, power has always been and always will be the channel through which the physical realities of this world are shaped and ordered (even with more or less disorder in the process). This low-tech future will be much more localized, I agree, but certainly not random regarding power. Accounting for this factor, our future looks very much like our past, going back in the same order of magnitude but faster to older values. Meaning the demise of liberal democracies, representing a (partial) bracket of about 250 years in human history of a government system that I am truly mourning (being born in it and educated with its ideals at heart).
This implies going back to medieval times' feudal system, in which the structures of power were much more direcly exerted upon common people (serfs) with rigid hierarchies above them (lords and vassals): a much more simplified world ruled by the sword, personal loyalties, inheritance, and rent. This transition from the neoconservative capitalist world—a world started in the 'eighties with the neoliberal, financialized, and globalized economics's triumph—to techno-feudalism, later will have to transition again to plain feudalism when, as you describe it, technology and productivity will pass downward tipping points here and there. Making then the new paradigm evident to everyone. For people who pay attention, there are signs of it everywhere already.
2) In the decades to follow, the dwindling of energy will not be equal for all, and this will give huge advantages—or disadvantages—to countries in the geopolitical strife for power and survival. It is not good enough to only hint at it, for this will be a crucial development in the coming decades.
Small and midsize countries and places with no fossil fuel resources will be impoverished and submitted (including Europe), eventually becoming parts of big predatory powerhouses' zones of influence. This new world is shaping out already. Big nations' policies and actions don't make much sense without this perspective—this new reality. Even in the United States (on track to autocracy, if not this year, later), the Republican Party, in only a decade, has entirely shifted its position to this notion of a secluded nation with enlaged and uncontested dominion over its neighbors. And this is exactly what the other large nations—all of them dictatorships already—wish the United States to embrace. Soon (if we can avoid total nuclear annihilation—still a possibility), these big entities (the USA, Russia, China, and India) will share the world. There will be some zones of friction (obviously Africa, the Arctic, the Middle East, etc.), but their leaders will probably accommodate their rivalries for the sake of unchallenged dominance in their own backyards.
This seems contradictory with the preceding chapter about feudalism (feulalism meaning at the same time a weak central power AND a strong hierarchal and formalized societal system based on loyalties, organized obligations, and benefits). But the world will evolve with a rapidly changing landscape that cannot remain in the same state for long.
Considering these nations' current domestic energy situations, the United States appears to be in the most vulnerable position; today, this country leads the pack in oil and gas production, yet this is only due to the "miracle" of the fracking revolution of the last twenty years. This oil production is still growing only in a particular region (the famed Permian Basin) and cannot last forever. Ten years at most. In the way the United States operated at the time of the Iraq Wars (before the fracking revolution when domestic oil was tapering off), the Middle East will continue to be in the United States' top priorities. The energy IS the economy. In the Middle East and Russia, you find the most abundant and cheapest remaining oil to exploit in a world of dwindling resources. But with a lag in time, neither will last.
3) Another event will completely transform the world's dynamics: global warming. Indeed. We may consider these diverse and evolving factors with their own timeframes and logics, but they are also very much linked to each other. You mention, B, global warming in your essays as an exacerbating, sidekick-factor. Yet I think you don't put enough weight on the radical, ultrafast change of the climate that we have triggered (and on other environmental issues). These last two years, 2023 and 2024, we have witnessed a whooping acceleration of the phenomenon. And if we haven't stepped into climate feedback-loop cycles already (scientists don't agree on this), we are standing at these doors, which, once passed, don't allow return tickets. Global warming happens much faster than you seem to realize and is indeed a strong and fast accelerant of our societies' unraveling. Maybe faster than energy resource depletion. Again, the consequences of this won't be equally distributed; some places will disappear entirely or will lose more or quicker than others (population, wealth, control...), but in the end, everyone will be affected. After the threat of nuclear war, we have opened another avenue for possible human extinction.
So, yes, we have entered a very fluid situation. Let's not assume that the world we were born into and always knew as "normal" will be the same; this is total fantasy. In no scenario, this can be.
Adam Flint, author of "Mona."