May I add Ben Green's Substack "The Book of the Barracks", https://thebarracks.substack.com/. He started in 2021 to share his 10 year plan to build a post-climate change, self-sufficient, vegan community, and hasn't missed a week yet, as far as I can tell. He bought some army barracks and the land in between in former East Germany, growing all of his food and that for three rescued pigs, adding greenhouses, fruit trees, growing grains, beans, potatoes, tons of vegetables, and sharing how to do it. He's the most impressive post-collaps survivor I know.
I understand. Yet I live with a woman who has been a victim of sexual violence, and I have come to be educated about why so many SA victims fail to report. Because often none of the process you describe gets followed. Even now we have more arrests for vandalism to the reflecting pool than for any of Epstein's fellow criminals.
It is f***ing disgusting that victims are treated so disdainfully. Crimes of violence should carry the sort of penalty that discourages perps from ever doing there. Of course when you see the P/ROTUS (Paedo/Rapist of the US) setting such an example......
Looks like we’re reading all the same authors which is incredible given how much content is out there. I guess the number of writers addressing overshoot is a vanishingly small percentage of what’s out there on the interwebs. It’s quite insane because overshoot isn’t just the biggest story of our time, it’s the only story. Climate extremes, inflation, authoritarianism, etc, all flow downstream from overshoot and the average joe has zero clue and zero ability to connect the dots.
You are right. I'm grateful that so many good writers are on Substack, because, as we can all see, aside from a random story your billionaire-owned corporate Newsproduct™ has less than no interest in telling stories that might be bad for the stock price. To say nothing of that sweet, sweet sugartit of end-of-year bonuses.
Born in 1941 in rural Connecticut, we always had a garden, two rows of which had to be weeded before playtime. I recall my mom buying ground beef 3 lbs./$1. When things were rough we ate dandelions. We walked everywhere and picked berries on the way. Popcorn and Kool Aid for the drive-in. Everyone seemed to have a garden and some raised their own animals. Every fall my uncle would slaughter a black angus we had named "blackie" who had become a pet. Traumatic. When on survival in the military, we ate plants and "ground squirrels" (aka rats) in a stew. Some got lucky by killing a rattler and others a raccoon. I sometimes wonder how people will cope.
Your comment, "The American way of life has been based....... on cheap abundant food." I would expand to "The entire Western way of life, including food, has been based on the extraordinary power of cheap fossil fuels"
Like you, when I was born in the 1950's, the world's population was just 2.4 billion, and if I hadn't followed the serious news from my youth, and followed research in adulthood, then I might barely of noticed humanity passing 3 billion, 4 billion and into the industrialisation of food production, to 5, then 6, then 7 billion, and now over 8 billion hungry people. I didn't feel lonely when there were 'only' 2.4 billion people, and I don't really feel overcrowded with 8.2 billion, so what's the problem?
Two problems:
Humanity now eats around 10 times as much food as we did in the 1950's and 60's; 3.5 times the people, many eating twice as much food per person, and more food wasted in processing and transportation, is the short version. As the area under cultivation has barely changed, all that increase in productivity is due to chemicals and machinery.
We have just damaged the fundamentals of that industrial food system; Russia is almost offline in both fuel and food, Hormuz closure has massively reduced fertiliser and pesticide chemicals from reaching crops, and climate change is damaging harvests, and the fuel for planting, harvesting and transportation has risen in price with severe shortages about to hit hard (U.S. SPR 'tank bottoms due in the next few weeks).
I could go on about overshoot and EROEI and war deaths and pandemics, and El Niño heatwaves, and AMOC turning off making northern Europe uninhabitable for 200 million people...... But the bottom line is that even with all that, the world population decline back down to the 2 billion level that may be sustainable for this planet, will take about as long as it took to rise - perhaps another 75 years. And most of us in the West will barely notice populations falling, even as we didn't notice the world population rising. Perhaps details like falling property prices, and abandoned homes and towns, even cities. Perhaps millions unemployed as markets collapse, until farming sucks them back to the land. Perhaps thousands of small wars and unnoticed small deaths, as the glue of energy that once held nations together dissolves into local conflicts for resources like land and water.
We people alive today have been blessed to have been born into the richest period of human history ever, and a time of once-unimaginable technologies and opportunities and blessings. Just the fact of living a life with no hunger, no wars, and a life expectancy that might yet give me two decades of paid retirement! Our generation has been truly blessed, and I for one am hugely grateful for living it.
As we watch the end of our experiment with our planet, and recognise that we, as a species, were not up to managing the technologies our minds could imagine and create, or indeed the fossil energy sources we released from their entrapment deep in the earth, we can still be grateful for the experience, even as we failed the test.
History tells us that few, if any, lessons will be learned by any human survivors. Certainly the planet doesn't care if humans survive, any more than if Neanderthals or lemmings or bacteria or viruses survive. Just another footnote that will only be written in the fossil record, that no one will ever read.
But hey, it's been a blast! Perhaps that is enough?
Thanks for this. I'm old enough to remember being taught about Borlaug and The Green revolution in high school. And you are absolutely right about our shared good fortune on being born into the richest time in place in human history. Our luck has been absolutely spectacular. This is a conversation I have with my oldest friend, who is similarly mindful of our good fortune. As I get older, I try to be mindful of being grateful, It remains a small miracle that the lights come on when I flip a switch and that clean water comes on from the tap.
For a few reasons, I find myself getting more and more frustrated with the very binary idea that collapse is either an EVENT or a slow degradation.
First - we don’t really know. We can look at historical collapses but our current situation isn’t analogous enough to draw any sound conclusions. Everybody in our echo-sphere likes to discuss tipping points in the climate system, but are far less eager to discuss how tipping points in our financial or geopolitical or social systems will play out. We like to discuss overshoot, but we think that the human version will somehow be slow-ish, despite the natural world’s disagreement. And if we don’t really know how things are going to unfold, if we don’t have a climate bookie making incredibly precise odds, should we plan for the worst, hope for the best? Nah? Are we instead planning for the best, hoping for the best? That’s certainly more convenient. Make no mistake, in the absence of a geoengineering scheme that miraculously has no unintended consequences, catabolic collapse IS the best case scenario.
Second - in practical terms, if our slow degradation happens “faster than expected,” is it really all that different from an Event? Will the planet be ready, given current levels of awareness and buy-in (trending upwards of course as things fall apart) in 20 years? 15? 10? 5? Many people note that we are already collapsing, and various metrics support this. Well if this is true, perhaps we’ve already burned through most of our slow collapse buffer talking about how we’ve got time because collapse isn’t an Event. Do we think the concept of the Seneca Cliff is legit or is it just theoretical mumbo jumbo?
Finally - it kills urgency. It encourages delay. It’s no different than discussing climatic effects in the year 2100. I remember early on in my collapse journey when a calm, rational voice explained that collapse was going to play out slowly, maybe over several decades, with fits and starts, small recoveries, but generally trending downward. I was extremely relieved. I think relief is better than blind panic, but in general it’s not very motivating as far as feelings go.
Do I think it likely that collapse will happen due to an event? No. Do I think it likely that we’re already in the early (or maybe a little later than early…) stages of collapse? Yes. So how long is that gray area gap between the two things? When do supply chains break down? I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure nobody else does, either. Feel free to prep or not in whatever way you see fit, but please remember than we are truly in uncharted waters.
May I add Ben Green's Substack "The Book of the Barracks", https://thebarracks.substack.com/. He started in 2021 to share his 10 year plan to build a post-climate change, self-sufficient, vegan community, and hasn't missed a week yet, as far as I can tell. He bought some army barracks and the land in between in former East Germany, growing all of his food and that for three rescued pigs, adding greenhouses, fruit trees, growing grains, beans, potatoes, tons of vegetables, and sharing how to do it. He's the most impressive post-collaps survivor I know.
Thanks for the heads-up!
Thanks you for sharing this - a fantastic discovery!
So glad you like it; couldn't agree more.
Nice piece! climate change is real and is here. It is impacting crops and hunger around the world. 2 BILLION people are food insecure. Climate change creeps in and impacts food production through dozens of mechanisms. https://markroberts995.substack.com/p/fields-of-ash?r=1mi3pt&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Nice article. I would look at one small item differently.
I don't like the "Always believe the woman/child" approach.
Always listen to the woman/child
Always take them seriously.
Gather every scrap of evidence and follow where it leads, honestly and fearlessly.
Don't abuse the victim, but treat them with respect.
Treat abusers with penalties that remove them from society for a very, very long time.
Always remain open to the possibility that the accused is not the abuser, or that the accusation is a lie.
I really don't like belief. To me the word means you risk accepting something as truth without bothering to assess the evidence.
I understand. Yet I live with a woman who has been a victim of sexual violence, and I have come to be educated about why so many SA victims fail to report. Because often none of the process you describe gets followed. Even now we have more arrests for vandalism to the reflecting pool than for any of Epstein's fellow criminals.
It is f***ing disgusting that victims are treated so disdainfully. Crimes of violence should carry the sort of penalty that discourages perps from ever doing there. Of course when you see the P/ROTUS (Paedo/Rapist of the US) setting such an example......
Looks like we’re reading all the same authors which is incredible given how much content is out there. I guess the number of writers addressing overshoot is a vanishingly small percentage of what’s out there on the interwebs. It’s quite insane because overshoot isn’t just the biggest story of our time, it’s the only story. Climate extremes, inflation, authoritarianism, etc, all flow downstream from overshoot and the average joe has zero clue and zero ability to connect the dots.
You are right. I'm grateful that so many good writers are on Substack, because, as we can all see, aside from a random story your billionaire-owned corporate Newsproduct™ has less than no interest in telling stories that might be bad for the stock price. To say nothing of that sweet, sweet sugartit of end-of-year bonuses.
Born in 1941 in rural Connecticut, we always had a garden, two rows of which had to be weeded before playtime. I recall my mom buying ground beef 3 lbs./$1. When things were rough we ate dandelions. We walked everywhere and picked berries on the way. Popcorn and Kool Aid for the drive-in. Everyone seemed to have a garden and some raised their own animals. Every fall my uncle would slaughter a black angus we had named "blackie" who had become a pet. Traumatic. When on survival in the military, we ate plants and "ground squirrels" (aka rats) in a stew. Some got lucky by killing a rattler and others a raccoon. I sometimes wonder how people will cope.
GRATITUDE.
Your comment, "The American way of life has been based....... on cheap abundant food." I would expand to "The entire Western way of life, including food, has been based on the extraordinary power of cheap fossil fuels"
Like you, when I was born in the 1950's, the world's population was just 2.4 billion, and if I hadn't followed the serious news from my youth, and followed research in adulthood, then I might barely of noticed humanity passing 3 billion, 4 billion and into the industrialisation of food production, to 5, then 6, then 7 billion, and now over 8 billion hungry people. I didn't feel lonely when there were 'only' 2.4 billion people, and I don't really feel overcrowded with 8.2 billion, so what's the problem?
Two problems:
Humanity now eats around 10 times as much food as we did in the 1950's and 60's; 3.5 times the people, many eating twice as much food per person, and more food wasted in processing and transportation, is the short version. As the area under cultivation has barely changed, all that increase in productivity is due to chemicals and machinery.
We have just damaged the fundamentals of that industrial food system; Russia is almost offline in both fuel and food, Hormuz closure has massively reduced fertiliser and pesticide chemicals from reaching crops, and climate change is damaging harvests, and the fuel for planting, harvesting and transportation has risen in price with severe shortages about to hit hard (U.S. SPR 'tank bottoms due in the next few weeks).
I could go on about overshoot and EROEI and war deaths and pandemics, and El Niño heatwaves, and AMOC turning off making northern Europe uninhabitable for 200 million people...... But the bottom line is that even with all that, the world population decline back down to the 2 billion level that may be sustainable for this planet, will take about as long as it took to rise - perhaps another 75 years. And most of us in the West will barely notice populations falling, even as we didn't notice the world population rising. Perhaps details like falling property prices, and abandoned homes and towns, even cities. Perhaps millions unemployed as markets collapse, until farming sucks them back to the land. Perhaps thousands of small wars and unnoticed small deaths, as the glue of energy that once held nations together dissolves into local conflicts for resources like land and water.
We people alive today have been blessed to have been born into the richest period of human history ever, and a time of once-unimaginable technologies and opportunities and blessings. Just the fact of living a life with no hunger, no wars, and a life expectancy that might yet give me two decades of paid retirement! Our generation has been truly blessed, and I for one am hugely grateful for living it.
As we watch the end of our experiment with our planet, and recognise that we, as a species, were not up to managing the technologies our minds could imagine and create, or indeed the fossil energy sources we released from their entrapment deep in the earth, we can still be grateful for the experience, even as we failed the test.
History tells us that few, if any, lessons will be learned by any human survivors. Certainly the planet doesn't care if humans survive, any more than if Neanderthals or lemmings or bacteria or viruses survive. Just another footnote that will only be written in the fossil record, that no one will ever read.
But hey, it's been a blast! Perhaps that is enough?
Thanks for this. I'm old enough to remember being taught about Borlaug and The Green revolution in high school. And you are absolutely right about our shared good fortune on being born into the richest time in place in human history. Our luck has been absolutely spectacular. This is a conversation I have with my oldest friend, who is similarly mindful of our good fortune. As I get older, I try to be mindful of being grateful, It remains a small miracle that the lights come on when I flip a switch and that clean water comes on from the tap.
For us, at least. And so far....
I'm making few assumptions about even our gilded futures.
In my small Midwestern city, ground beef has been going for closer to $8/lb. I don't even bother looking at other cuts of beef.
Yep. My eyes fill at the memory of a well-finished Delmonico.
For a few reasons, I find myself getting more and more frustrated with the very binary idea that collapse is either an EVENT or a slow degradation.
First - we don’t really know. We can look at historical collapses but our current situation isn’t analogous enough to draw any sound conclusions. Everybody in our echo-sphere likes to discuss tipping points in the climate system, but are far less eager to discuss how tipping points in our financial or geopolitical or social systems will play out. We like to discuss overshoot, but we think that the human version will somehow be slow-ish, despite the natural world’s disagreement. And if we don’t really know how things are going to unfold, if we don’t have a climate bookie making incredibly precise odds, should we plan for the worst, hope for the best? Nah? Are we instead planning for the best, hoping for the best? That’s certainly more convenient. Make no mistake, in the absence of a geoengineering scheme that miraculously has no unintended consequences, catabolic collapse IS the best case scenario.
Second - in practical terms, if our slow degradation happens “faster than expected,” is it really all that different from an Event? Will the planet be ready, given current levels of awareness and buy-in (trending upwards of course as things fall apart) in 20 years? 15? 10? 5? Many people note that we are already collapsing, and various metrics support this. Well if this is true, perhaps we’ve already burned through most of our slow collapse buffer talking about how we’ve got time because collapse isn’t an Event. Do we think the concept of the Seneca Cliff is legit or is it just theoretical mumbo jumbo?
Finally - it kills urgency. It encourages delay. It’s no different than discussing climatic effects in the year 2100. I remember early on in my collapse journey when a calm, rational voice explained that collapse was going to play out slowly, maybe over several decades, with fits and starts, small recoveries, but generally trending downward. I was extremely relieved. I think relief is better than blind panic, but in general it’s not very motivating as far as feelings go.
Do I think it likely that collapse will happen due to an event? No. Do I think it likely that we’re already in the early (or maybe a little later than early…) stages of collapse? Yes. So how long is that gray area gap between the two things? When do supply chains break down? I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure nobody else does, either. Feel free to prep or not in whatever way you see fit, but please remember than we are truly in uncharted waters.