Dismantle Civilisation

By Joshua Holland, at Alternet. Although many people are going to find this ‘sudden crash’ difficult, as we are almost all tied into globalised civilisation, a complete stop of all economic activity is what is needed if we are to reduce carbon emissions. We don’t need trade for the sake of trade, and the only way to take climate change seriously is to crash this whole flawed system, and start living our lives differently. Why should peasants 1000s of miles away toil, to grow food to be sold to people who should be growing most, if not all, of their food themsleves?

The worldwide economic meltdown has sent the wheels spinning off the project of building a single, business-friendly global economy.

Worldwide, industrial production has ground to a halt. Goods are stacking up, but nobody’s buying; the Washington Post reports that “the world is suddenly awash in almost everything: flat-panel televisions, bulldozers, Barbie dolls, strip malls, Burberry stores.” A Hong Kong-based shipping broker told The Telegraph that his firm had “seen trade activity fall off a cliff. Asia-Europe is an unmit­igated disaster.” The Economist noted that one can now ship a container from China to Europe for free — you only need to pick up the fuel and handling costs — but half-empty freighters are the norm along the world’s busiest shipping routes. Global airfreight dropped by almost a quarter in December alone; Giovanni Bisignani, who heads a shipping industry trade group, called the “free fall” in global cargo “unprecedented and shocking.”

And while Americans have every reason to be terrified about their own econopocalypse, the New York Times noted that everything is relative:

In the fourth quarter of last year, the American economy shrank at a 3.8 percent annual rate, the worst such performance in a quarter-century. They are envious in Japan, where this week the comparable figure came in at negative 12.7 percent — three times as bad.

Industrial production in the United States is falling at the fastest rate in three decades. But the 10 percent year-over-year plunge reported this week for January looks good in comparison to the declines in countries like Germany, off almost 13 percent in its most recently reported month, and South Korea, down about 21 percent.

Chinese manufacturing declined in each of the last five months; according to the Financial Times, “More than 20 [million] rural migrant workers in China have lost their jobs and returned to their home villages or towns as a result of the global economic crisis.” The UN estimates that the downturn could claim 50 million jobs worldwide, prompting Dennis Blair, the U.S. National Intelligence Director, to warn Congress that, “instability caused by the global economic crisis had become the biggest security threat facing the United States, outpacing terrorism.”

Riots, strikes and other forms of civil unrest have become widespread the world over; governments have fallen. In Europe, parties of the far right and left have seen their fortunes rise.

The model of economic globalization that’s dominated during the past 40 years is, if not dead, at least in critical condition. Few progressives will mourn its demise — it was both a proximate cause of the economic meltdown in which we find ourselves today, and one of its victims. But if we are reaching the end of an era, questions arise about not only what will replace it, but also how we’ll finance the government spending that most economists agree will be required to stave off a long, painful depression.

Always a Flawed Model

For almost 40 years, smooth-talking snake-oil salesmen in well-tailored suits have pitched the wonders of a globalized economy. Politicians and pundits alike insisted that the wealthy states at the core of that worldwide economy could shift labor-intensive production to the poorer countries at the edges, in search of a cheaper pair of hands and less nettlesome regulations, and that ordinary working people would benefit. Whatever pain Americans might feel as a result of the project was merely temporary “displacement,” they argued, and anyway those cheap toys at Wal-Mart more than offset any problems that might come along with the decimation of America’s middle class. After all, a little lead never hurt anyone.

The same hucksters sold a similar bill of goods to the developing world. Look outward, they said, build export economies and turn those peasants into factory line workers. Sign treaties forcing governments to let multinationals move goods and capital freely, keep their regulators out of the way of Big Business’s profits and prosperity will surely follow. Most governments adhered to this pro-corporate orthodoxy, slashing taxes on foreign companies and scrapping various controls on foreign investment. Largely unregulated “free trade” zones proliferated along the world’s significant shipping routes.

The result was an explosion in international trade and a distinct increase in economic inequality in both poorer and richer countries.

Among the wealthy countries, nowhere was this truer than in the United States, with its fealty to a mythic “free market” and its elites’ scorn for a robust safety net. After union-busting, global trade deals have done the most damage to workers’ bargaining power. Whereas companies used to negotiate with their employees in relatively good faith, those negotiations are now overshadowed by the threat — ubiquitous in labor disputes today — to simply move the whole plant to Mexico or China.

The result was an illusion of prosperity. Corporate profits rose (in 2004, corporate profits took the largest share of national income since they started tracking the data in 1929 and wages took the smallest), and high earners did very well too. When the oil shock hit in 1973, those in the top one percent of the income ladder took in just over 9 percent of the nation’s income; by 2006, they grabbed almost 23 percent. In the intervening years, their average incomes more than tripled (Excel file).

The rest of us didn’t do as well. In 1973, the bottom 90 percent of the economic pile — most of us — shared two-thirds of the nation’s income; by 2006, we got half. If you take off the top ten percent of the income ladder, the rest of the country in 2006 earned, on average, 2 percent less than they did 30 plus years earlier, despite the fact that the economy as a whole had grown by 160 percent over that time.

But we continued to buy; it’s become almost a cliché to say that American consumerism is the engine of the global economy.

How did we do it with incomes stagnating? First, women entered the workforce in huge numbers, transforming the “typical” single-breadwinner family into a two-earner household. (Between 1955 and 2002, the percentage of working-age women who had jobs outside the home almost doubled.)

After that, we started financing our lifestyles through debt — mounds of it. Consumer debt blossomed; trade deficits (which are ultimately financed by debt) exploded and the government started running big budget deficits year in an year out. In the period after World War Two, while wages were rising along with the overall economy, Americans socked away over 10 percent of the nation’s income in savings. But in the 1980s, that began to decline — the savings rate fell from 11 percent in the 1960s and ‘70s, to 7 percent in the 1980s, and by 2005, it stood at just one percent (household savings that year were actually in negative territory).

After the collapse of the dot-com bubble and the recession that followed it, the economic “expansion” of the Bush era was the first on record in which median incomes never got back to where they were before the crash. Fortunately for Wal-Mart shoppers, a massive housing bubble was rising. Americans started financing their consumption by taking chunks of equity out of their homes. The result: in 2005, long before the housing bubble crashed, the average amount of equity Americans had in their homes was already the lowest it had ever been.

We hear a lot of chatter about a “credit crunch” being at the root of our economic woes — that banks aren’t lending to otherwise qualified individuals and businesses. The truth, however, is that before the housing (and stock) markets crashed, the average American household already had 20 percent more in debt than it earned in a year.

Already deeply in the hole, when the markets crashed, consumers stopped spending, and that’s fueled millions of layoffs, led to a mountain of foreclosures, and left state budgets decimated. The connection between decades of false prosperity, the piles of household debt that resulted, and the degree to which that left American families vulnerable to the bubble’s crash is not difficult to see.

Global Illusion of Prosperity

During the “era of globalization,” massive increases in trade created a similar illusion of prosperity, masking a long-term decline in real economic growth worldwide.

Much of Asia has become a huge production platform for the West. It’s been said, half-jokingly, that the modern global economy works something like this: the U.S. produces pieces of green paper, which it trades to China for the goods lining the shelves of Wal-Mart and Target, the Chinese trade those pieces of paper to the oil-producing states for energy, and the oil producers exchange them with Europe for Mercedes and foie gras.

Economist Robert Brenner described a “long downturn” in the world’s wealthiest countries, noting that their economies grew by a steady rate of 5 percent or more each year from the end of World War II through the 1960s, but in the 1970s their growth fell to 3.6 percent, and it has averaged around 3 percent since 1980.

But as the social scientist Walden Bello pointed out, even those anemic numbers are misleading. “China’s 8-10% annual growth rate has probably been the principal stimulus of growth in the world economy in the last decade,” he wrote. Without China’s (and to a lesser degree India’s) consistent growth rates, global economic expansion has been all but nonexistent.

China became an export engine by keeping wages down through repressive union-busting and by drawing on an almost endless supply of poor rural peasants to work its production lines.

While global trade flows have exploded, much of that trade has been between multinationals based in the advanced economies and their own offshore units. They ship production overseas, but the goods produced end up back in domestic markets; it’s a means of avoiding “first-world” wages, public interest regulations and environmental restrictions.

China and the U.S. have developed a precariously symbiotic relationship. As Walden Bello wrote, “With its reserve army of cheap labor unmatched by any country in the world, China became the ‘workshop of the world,’ drawing in $50 billion in foreign investment annually by the first half of this decade.” To survive, firms all over the world, “had no choice but to transfer their labor-intensive operations to China to take advantage of what came to be known as the ‘China price,’ provoking in the process a tremendous crisis in the advanced capitalist countries’ labor forces.”

It was always an unsustainable model; the United States’ annual trade deficit with China — financed by debt — was $6 billion as recently as the mid-1980s; by last year it had exploded to $266 billion.

Defenders of the global trade regime have long argued that China’s currency will rise in value against the dollar, the trade deficit will shrink, and there will be significant “decoupling” between the two economic powerhouses as a new generation of middle-class consumers in the East Asian countries begin demanding a greater share of all those manufactured goods.

On the surface, it appeared that at least the last part of that was indeed happening. As Bello noted, “To satisfy China’s thirst for capital and technology-intensive goods, Japanese exports shot up by a record 44%, or $60 billion. Indeed, China became the main destination for Asia’s exports, accounting for 31% while Japan’s share dropped from 20% to 10%. China is now the overwhelming driver of export growth in Taiwan and the Philippines, and the majority buyer of products from Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Australia.”

But Bello went on to describe that this “decoupling” was also an illusion:

Research by economists C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh, underlined that China was indeed importing intermediate goods and parts from Japan, Korea, and ASEAN, but only to put them together mainly for export as finished goods to the United States and Europe, not for its domestic market. Thus, “if demand for Chinese exports from the United States and the EU slow down, as will be likely with a U.S. recession,” they asserted, “this will not only affect Chinese manufacturing production, but also Chinese demand for imports from these Asian developing countries.”

The collapse of Asia’s key market has banished all talk of decoupling. The image of decoupled locomotives — one coming to a halt, the other chugging along on a separate track — no longer applies, if it ever had. Rather, U.S.-East Asia economic relations today resemble a chain-gang linking not only China and the United States but a host of other satellite economies. They are all linked to debt-financed middle-class spending in the United States, which has collapsed.

We often hear that U.S. consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of the economic activity in the country. Do the math: with 20 percent of the world’s economic activity, U.S. consumers — most weighed down with stagnant wages and maxed-out credit — make up about 14 percent of the planet’s economic demand. Add the other affluent countries (which were also heavily invested in our real estate market and related securities), and it’s easy to see why the economic meltdown has grown to global proportions. The dominoes are tumbling.

What’s Next?

International trade existed long before the era of economic globalization, and will continue after its demise. The so-called “free trade” agreements championed by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, liberals and conservatives alike, for the past few decades was always less about trade than constraining the policy options of governments through treaty.

The one likely bright spot in all this is that the cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all economic orthodoxy lies in ruins. What will replace it is a question for the long-term.

The more immediate question is two-fold. First, in a global economic crisis such as the one we’re experiencing today, where is the engine of rapid growth that might pull the world’s economy out of the doldrums? Recessions of recent years — in the early 1980s, the early 1990s and the early 2000s — weren’t global in nature; rapidly developing economies in Asia and Eastern Europe, and later the rise of the U.S. housing market, pulled the world out of the doldrums. It’s difficult to see where that kind of growth might be found today.

And then there is the question of how long foreign investors will continue to run our tab. As Americans’ demand for just about everything has tanked, economists from across the political spectrum have called on the government to take up the slack. So we got a big stimulus package — probably the first in a series — which will be tacked onto a budget that was already deeply in the red. The hole is cavernous, and we have little choice to dig deeper. In 2008, the official deficit was around $500 billion; the most optimistic projections are deficits averaging around $1.35 trillion in both 2009 and 2010.

In 2006, economist Barry Bosworth testified before Congress that “net foreign lending” had been almost $800 billion in the red — a negative 7.2 percent of national income. “This degree of reliance on foreign financing is unprecedented,” he explained, “but has been achieved with relatively few strains because foreigners perceive the United States as offering safe and attractive investment opportunities.”

Right now, foreign investors are still snapping up American debt — the dollar is seen as a safe haven in turbulent seas. But how long, and to what extent they will continue to do so are crucial questions.

China, with the world’s largest foreign currency holdings — about 70 percent of which is in U.S. treasury bills — is still buying, at least for the moment. Luo Ping, director-general of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, recently asked, “Except for US Treasuries, what can you hold? Gold? You don’t hold Japanese government bonds or UK bonds. US Treasuries are the safe haven,” he explained. “For everyone, including China, it is the only option.”

But the Chinese are concerned about the stability of their investments. If the U.S. government needs to raise the interest rates on its securities to attract enough foreign investment to cover our shortfall, the value of those T-bills China and other central governments are holding will drop.

Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that the world economy is anything but decoupled, all but begging the Chinese to continue to buy our debt. According to Agence France Presse, “Clinton and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi largely agreed to disagree on human rights,” while “she focused on the need for China to help finance the massive 787-billion-dollar US economic stimulus plan by continuing to buy US Treasuries.”

In a moment of clarity — one that shone a light on the rot of the global economic system that has prevailed for the past 40 years, Clinton explained to the Chinese media, “We have to incur more debt … the US needs the investment in Treasury bonds to shore up its economy to continue to buy Chinese products.”

Forget chinese products. Forget bailouts, forget governments, forget any ideas that things can carry on as they have. Reconnecting to the earth and to community is the only viable solution, and by removing yourself from the economic system you may well be helping to bring it down.

We need a healthy ecosystem, more than we need a healthy economy – not that the pyramid-selling, enrich the few at the expense of the many system, could in any way be called a healthy economy. It is not and never has been. It is simply an extension of the piracy, invasion, war and slavery that civilisation is founded upon. Our consumerism and subservience has fed this monster, and now our only chance at freedom or survival comes from withdrawing and putting our energies into local communities and trade. This ‘collapse’ is a chance for the people of the world to free themselves from the shackles of civilisation, industrialisation, globalisation. A chance perhaps for life, and an end to the soul-destroying living death that is ‘civilisation’ for most people and the devastation it has wrought on mother nature.

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If you ever needed proof of how far the majority of the environmental movement is from figuring out the core truths of the ecological and social catastrophe facing this planet, it can be found in this article written by former US Vice-President Al Gore and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Indeed, the very title of this article gives away its central flaw: “Green growth is essential to any stimulus”. The concept of ‘Green Growth’ is so far removed from what this planet needs right now, and ranks as one of the greatest oxymorons ever created, that anyone familiar with this and other rewilding sites would find it laughable. Yet this concept is gaining currency within the environmental movement, with many promoting a ‘Green New Deal’ which they promise will sort out the economy, environment, social and any other problems you care to mention. We, however, challenge this growing acceptance that growth and capitalism have a future on this planet – to survive, we must tear down and dismantle the old ways, not just apply an extra-thick coating of greenwash onto them. Let’s analyse this article and show it for what it really is.

Economic stimulus is the order of the day. This is as it must be, as governments around the world struggle to jump-start the global economy. But even as leaders address the immediate need to stimulate the economy, so too must they act jointly to ensure that the new de facto economic model being developed is sustainable for the planet and our future on it.

It immediately begins with a dichotomy – they say the new economic model must be sustainable, yet they also encourage the ‘immediate’ stimulation of the old unsustainable economy. No questions are asked as to what governments are attempting to stimulate or jump-start, just the suggestion that whatever it is it better be more sustainable. What if the very thing they’re jump-starting is the definition of unsustainable? Shouldn’t it be left to die in that case?

What we need is both stimulus and long-term investments that accomplish two objectives simultaneously with one global economic policy response – a policy that addresses our urgent and immediate economic and social needs and that launches a new green global economy. In short, we need to make “growing green” our mantra

So as long as the old way – growth – is made to be ‘green’, apparently we can solve all our economic, social and environmental woes. No questioning of that old concept, just the tacking on of an environmentally friendly adjective. “Growing green” may be their mantra, but the first word is by far the most important and unquestionable, joined only in a forced marriage with ‘green’ in order to let growth continue that little bit longer.

In Washington last November, G20 leaders expressed their determination “to enhance co-operation and work together to restore global growth and achieve needed reforms in the world’s financial systems”. This needs to happen urgently.

Within a paragraph the principal focus on growth is clearly illustrated. As I have explained in the article ‘The Fallacy of Growth’, and is repeatedly plugged at this and other similar sites, the concept of growth is NOT compatible with anything remotely ‘green’. As the economy/civilisation grows, it must consume more resources and ultimately more energy. The power of Compound Interest ensures that this increases exponentially over time, putting an ever increasing pressure on the planet at an ever increasing rate. Making efficiency cuts and conserving energy does produce a lesser burden, but as long as we maintain a system of growth this saving will be overtaken and lost within a matter of years at this point in history. They can promote efficiency and conservation as much as they like, but as long as they maintain growth it will all be in vain – the only way to conclusively reduce our impact on the earth’s ecosystem is to remove growth. The old economic system of civilisation needs to be dismantled and replaced with stable, local and sustainable economies pioneered by the people they are meant to benefit.

This stimulus, along with new initiatives by other countries, must help catapult the world economy into the 21st century, not perpetuate the dying industries and bad habits of yesteryear. Indeed, continuing to pour trillions of dollars into carbon-based infrastructure and fossil-fuel subsidies would be like investing in subprime real estate all over again.

We agree, the dying industries and bad habits of yesteryear should not be perpetuated! It’s a shame that despite this logical statement, they undermine it by their support for the vast majority of those bad habits.

Therefore, governments in industrialised countries must reach beyond their borders and invest immediately in those cost-effective programmes that boost the productivity of the poorest. Last year, food riots and unrest swept more than 30 countries. Ominously, this was even before September’s financial implosion, which sparked the global recession that has driven a further 100m people deeper into poverty. We must act now to prevent further suffering and potential widespread political instability.

Note how they propose helping the poor by boosting their productivity, rather than questioning and dismantling the system that ensures their continued poverty and enslaves them to scour the earth’s remaining wealth to end up in the pockets of the few. These people won’t benefit from growth, their extra productivity will be funnelled up the pyramid scheme of our economy. To prevent further suffering their economic cage needs to be broken, not remade. Instead, a minute increase in living standards in the cage is proposed to stave off political instability – which one might translate as uprisings against this enslavement. Ban Ki-moon and Al Gore are not as concerned by the welfare of the poor – although I’m sure they do feel concern – as they would be by a revolution against the system.

It means investing in agriculture in developing countries by getting seeds, tools, sustainable agricultural practices and credit to smallholder farmers so they can produce more food and get it to local and regional markets.

A token of sustainability and a nod to smallholders is somewhat undermined by their support for the economic order which has seen agriculture ever further industrialised, made unsustainable to dangerous levels and destroyed the small farmer in favour of the large agribusinesses.

Third, we need a robust climate deal in Copenhagen in December. Not next year. This year. The climate negotiations must be dramatically accelerated and given attention at the highest levels, starting today. A successful deal in Copenhagen offers the most potent global stimulus package possible. With a new climate framework in hand, business and governments will finally have the carbon price signal businesses have been clamouring for, one that can unleash a wave of innovation and investment in clean energy. Copenhagen will provide the green light for green growth. This is the basis for a truly sustainable economic recovery that will benefit us and our children’s children for decades to come.

A truly sustainable economic recovery via the medium of growth is ultimately impossible. Copenhagen has become a poster-boy for green capitalism and its neat solutions like carbon trading (a growth market!), and will hardly be a robust climate deal. More a deal between members of the elite to create new exploitative markets but with the words ‘climate’ and ‘carbon’ tacked on and some conservation measures to let the party continue that little bit longer. Copenhagen will be a farce, the little advances that may be made with deforestation cuts for example will be overshadowed by the unquestioned commitment to growth. Copenhagen will be a landmark moment not for the climate or saving the earth, but for human stupidity. And Al Gore and Ban Ki-moon will be there to lead the cheerleading squad.

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An excerpt from a free online book called A Matter of Scale, also by Keith Farnish.

One: Reward Us For Being Good Consumers
The rewards of life are manifold: love, a feeling of belonging, happiness and pleasure, a sense of wellbeing having done good things – all of these are rewards in themselves and, ultimately, as I showed in Part Two, such rewards are the reason we do things, for better or worse. After the biological need to reproduce, our main aim, as a human being, is to gain rewards such as those mentioned above. It seems obvious, then, why people try to earn money or take part in lotteries, or even carry out robberies – so that they can use this money to buy things that give them a sense of well being.

Which, of course – as I also showed in Part Two – is a complete fallacy.

The “happiness” that comes from holding a new piece of technical wizardry in your hands is something created by the system that needs you to feel happy in buying that piece of technical wizardry; because if you didn’t feel happy then you wouldn’t want to buy it. The sad fact is that there are few real rewards to be had from following the consumer dream, apart from the initial flush of excitement that raises our endorphin levels – the same hormones that make childbirth more bearable – and thus leave you with a chemically-induced sense of happiness or wellbeing. This then leads you to associate buying things (or taking part in other artificial “experiences” for that matter) with good times, so you do it again, and again, and again. If all this sounds like a circular argument, then you have spotted the exact point I am making – you, the consumer, are stuck in a positive feedback loop which is growing increasingly urgent: “Buy now, while stocks last!” “Hurry, closing down sale!” “Limited edition!” “Special offer!” And all the while the economy keeps growing, and the amount of carbon dioxide being thrown into the atmosphere keeps going up.

Victor Lebow, a leading retail analyst, encapsulated the desires of the consumer economy – the economy that most of you reading this book are a part of – in a startlingly candid manner, and one that is so much more relevant today than it was back in 1955:

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, or prestige, is now to be found in our consumption patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives is today expressed in consumption terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats…these commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require not only “forced draft” consumption, but “expensive” consumption as well. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing pace.[iii]

Your reward for being a good consumer is the ability to consume more, and feed the economy so it can keep growing. That’s it. And yet, we keep doing it because we continue to believe it makes us happier, more content and better people.

Two: Make Us Feel Good For Doing Trivial Things

Last year I reduced the amount of energy I consume in my home by around a quarter: that made me feel good because I knew that by doing this I had reduced the amount of carbon dioxide I put into the atmosphere. I had to do the “feeling good” for myself because no one else was going to do it. No, what I would have had to have done in order to be told I was a good person was lots of recycling: certainly my local council like to tell residents that they are good people because they are recycling more than they were last year, but when I called them up to ask whether they would tell people to stop buying goods, so that the council would have to collect less rubbish overall, I was met with cold silence. The reason was simple: if you buy less stuff then you will stop the economy growing; whereas, you can recycle with abandon while still buying more and more things. In fact, the more you buy, the more you will be able to recycle – result!

“Doing Your Bit”, is the clarion call for a new light green generation. We can all do our bit and make a positive difference for the environment – apparently. Turn your thermostat down (for heating) or up (for air conditioning) a degree; change a conventional light bulb for a compact fluorescent one; buy organic vegetables rather than non-organic…deep breath, I want you to read this list produced by the car manufacturer Lexus[iv]:

· When remodeling, consider sustainable materials like bamboo flooring.

· Instead of sending someone cut flowers, give them a plant.

· When redecorating, use latex paint instead of one that’s oil-based.

· Keep your tires properly inflated. You’ll get better gas mileage.

· Next time you have a dinner party, use cloth napkins.

· Don’t toss out your old cell phone; donate it to a charity.

· Keep a canvas bag in your car so you’ll have it handy when you go grocery shopping.

…and so on. None of these things are bad, as such, but they are trivial: nowhere in the list do Lexus suggest that you should get rid of your car, or even drive less, which is not surprising because the idea of the list is to make the Lexus owner feel good about their purchase. The Internet abounds with lists like this; some produced by businesses, some by local authorities and governments, some by well meaning environmental organisations that are naively regurgitating the same ideas as the businesses and the politicians. The whole point of praising people for carrying out trivial activities, however worthy they may be, is so that those people carry on living in almost exactly the same manner as they did before: you have to expend only a little effort in order to feel better, while the businesses and politicians that depend on a vibrant economy for their existence can continue to carry on operating in almost exactly the same manner as they did before.

Three: Give Us Selected Freedom

What is meant by freedom? The most obvious answer would seem to be, “the right to live your life in whatever way you choose, whilst not interfering with the right of anyone else to live in the way that they choose.” This is fraught with problems, not least because – taken to extremes – you would have to account for the impact of all of your actions, however trivial, on everyone else. The biggest problem with this definition, though, is that not all rights are equal: should I choose to live a life without electricity in order to help prevent climate change, then I would be denying the employees of the electricity company their rights to a job. Again, taken to extremes; should I choose not to take crack cocaine then I would be denying the crack dealer their right to earn a living. The crack dealer is currently suffering as a result of my non-existent drug habit.

In fact, freedom is one of those things that has to be taken in perspective. Going all the way back to Chapter Seven, we see the idea of the Greatest Good coming into play – the idea that we should strive towards something that benefits the greatest number of people in the most effective way – alongside a number of rights that no human should do without: clean air, fresh water, shelter, food and a basic level of mental and physical stimulation. No one can reasonably deny anyone those rights. The sum of the Greatest Good along with these basic human rights actually leads to a mutual respect and care for the natural environment. The millions of people breathing in the rancid, choking air of Mexico City, Beijing, and countless other towns and cities around the world have had their rights curtailed; as have those people who drink polluted, toxic water; as have those people who had their native food sources taken away from them by mining companies; as have those people whose homes were destroyed to clear space for agriculture and commercial expansion. This is not freedom.

What we are actually given are those “freedoms” selected in order to ensure minimum disruption to the continued business of making money: voting is a perfect example. I am often struck by the sheer brilliance of the phrase, “If voting changed anything, it would be illegal.” This is often attributed to the social reformer and anarchist, Emma Goldman, who may not have said these exact words, but most certainly railed against the pretence that voting was something worth doing; and in doing so made herself extremely unpopular amongst those who were fighting at the time for the right of women to vote. As I write, the Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe, is still refusing to reveal the outcome of the presidential election after two weeks of waiting. The opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai won the election, which is why the result is being withheld, and there is nothing the voting public can do about it within the laws that Robert Mugabe put in place – they have cast their votes, they have expressed their democratic right, and a dictator remains. Think about your options in the country in which you live – how much change can you really make by casting a vote, while all the time the millions of people around you cast theirs?

Forget the politicians – they’re an irrelevance. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice.[v]

The next Presidential election in the USA will be won by either a Democrat or a Republican, and nothing will change beyond a little tinkering around the edges and the type of rhetoric being spouted by the new President. It is sobering to note that before George W. Bush came to power, Al Gore – joint Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the poster boy for the new light-green generation – had already terminally weakened the Kyoto Protocol that Bush subsequently refused to sign. As Vice-President, Al Gore realised that not including poor countries in the Protocol would be a vote loser, and thus ensured – through his influence on the negotiating table – that rich countries would be able to, by trading their emissions with poor countries, buy their way out of any potential punishment when the emissions were added up.[vi] Funny, the difference a bit of power makes to people.

So, go and protest, make some noise, wave some banners, sign a petition: just make sure you stay within the law. I mean it – protest of some form or another is permitted in most nations, but the severity and the type of protest allowed depends on the legislation that is in place; both standing legislation and the widely used “state of emergency” which, in fact is simply an extension of the existing laws. As the Zimbabweans ponder their electoral fate, the Mugabe regime has imposed “emergency” laws to prevent any form of gathering that may threaten the government. What the Mugabe regime knows only too well is that in Zimbabwe, as with many other African, South American and Asian states, protest often takes an entirely different form to the type of protest the people of the industrial West have become accustomed too. The Mugabe regime know that real protest is capable of overthrowing governments; whereas in the USA, for instance, it almost goes without saying that protest will lead to nothing more than a warm feeling in the hearts of those taking part:

One will find hundreds, sometimes thousands, assembled in an orderly fashion, listening to selected speakers calling for an end to this or that aspect of lethal state activity, carrying signs “demanding” the same thing…and – typically – the whole thing is quietly disbanded with exhortations to the assembled to “keep working” on the matter and to please sign a petition.

Throughout the whole charade it will be noticed that the state is represented by a uniformed police presence keeping a discreet distance and not interfering with the activities. And why should they? The organizers will have gone through “proper channels” to obtain permits. Surrounding the larger mass of demonstrators can be seen others…their function is to ensure the demonstrators remain “responsible,” not deviating from the state-sanctioned plan of protest.[vii]

Laughable, isn’t it, that such a well controlled event – and this is the way every official rally I have ever been on works – should be considered a “protest” by the organisers? The laws in each country are tailored to suit the appetite of the population for change: a country full of people that want to fight for change needs to be kept tightly controlled; a country full of catatonic, drip-fed consumers can march all they like, be given a well-controlled soapbox on TV – and the voltage on the tasers can be turned right down.

That is, unless someone decides to break the law.

Four: Pretend We Have A Choice

When you accept the label of “consumer”, you accept that you have become a financial object, willing to be manipulated by whatever marketing tricks abound. Consumer choice would be far better entitled “Conchoice”, a term describing the true level of choice that individuals are provided with, should they find themselves within the consumer culture. Benjamin R. Barber puts it like this: “The apparent widening of individual consumer choices actually shrinks the field of social choices…For example, the American’s freedom to choose among scores of automobile brands was secured by sacrificing the liberty to choose between private and public transportation. This politics of commodity…offers the feel of freedom while diminishing the range of options and the power to affect the larger world.”[viii] The individual is being conned: there is no choice.

Step outside the business districts of most cities in the Western world, and your ability to move around is dramatically curtailed. I tried to advise an ecologist friend of mine how to travel the 1300 miles to Boston from a town in Iowa without using car or aircraft – it was just about possible using a combination of suburban and cross country buses, along with three different trains running on three different rail networks and a couple of taxi journeys along the way. Her journey would have taken around 31 hours, not including the waits between the various legs of her journey. Her “choice”, in reality, was one fold: a car to the airport, and a plane to Boston – about seven hours in all.

America is a very large country, but even in small countries the way people travel is limited by whatever economic policies the government of the time decide best serve the thinking of the time. The 1960s nearly dealt the railway system in Britain a fatal blow: had the recommendations of Dr Richard Beeching – a transport adviser working for the British government – been fully carried through, the UK would have been left with just 3,000 miles of trunk route rather than the 12,000 miles that exists today.

As it was, a third of the stations and a third of the track was shut down in the space of two years. It turns out, that Doctor Beeching was only doing what he was told; as Charles Loft writes: “[Transport Minister] Ernest Marples was a self-made man who owned a road-construction company. He was required to sell his stake in the business on becoming Minister of Transport in October 1959, but was slow to do so…it was easy to attribute ulterior motives to the Minister’s apparent enthusiasm for closures, particularly as he also presided over a shift in investment from rail to road…With both road freight and the motor-car industry now essential sectors of the British economy, with restrictions on motoring a political impossibility and congestion a growing problem, the case for more and better roads seemed clear.”[ix] There is little doubt that the British government, under severe pressure from the car industry, had tried – and partially succeeded – to kill off the railways, and entirely remove one genuine choice.

Look at the way you are currently living: you can “choose” between plasma, LCD, cathode ray tube or Internet TV, but not having a television is inconceivable to most people in the consumer culture; you can “choose” between shopping at Walmart, Aldi, Tesco, Carrefour or any other supermarket, but not using a supermarket is impossible for hundreds of millions of people who need to buy food and have no way of growing it themselves. Some “choices” are even more blatantly false:

An off-camera interviewer asks a woman, “What would you rather have: a car or a cleaner environment?”

The woman pauses, seemingly thoughtfully, before at last saying, “I can’t imagine me without my car. Of course I’d rather have a clean environment, but I think that that compromise is very hard to make where we are.”

The ad ends with a voiceover saying what BP is doing to make the world a better place.

How would the ad run if we changed the question to, “What would you rather have, a planet that is not being made filthy and in fact destroyed by automobiles and other effects of civilization, or your car?”[x]

How much of your life was simply picked off the shelves of the Conchoice Mall, and how much of it came out of a conscious decision to live in that particular way? Have a think about that question for a while.

Five: Sell Us A Dream

On 1 April 2007, the Brazilian city of São Paolo officially became billboard free. The tide of advertising that had swamped every physical dimension of the city had become intolerable, even to the local authorities; such was the scale of the problem. The law that demanded the removal of all billboards was – incredibly – passed by a huge majority, with the only “no” voter being an advertising executive on the council. People are happy, except the advertisers, who made their position clear after the law was proposed:

Border, the Brazilian Association of Advertisers, was up in arms over the move. In a statement released on 2 October, the date on which law PL 379/06 was formally approved by the city council, Border called the new laws “unreal, ineffective and fascist”. It pointed to the tens of thousands of small businesses that would have to bear the burden of altering their shop fronts under regulations “unknown in their virulence in any other city in the world”.[xi]

We’re all smart enough to see through the rhetoric of these comments: “unreal, ineffective and fascist” are perfect descriptors for the synthetic, disconnected, material world that advertising has forced upon humanity – a world that is swamped with branding, corporate “messages”, sponsorship, flyers, free sheets, popups and numerous other forms of corporate propaganda. São Paolo may have lost its billboards, but the advertisers can still feed their messages to the public through newspapers, magazines, television, radio; even schools, into which corporations don’t so much sneak advertising, as blatantly trumpet the goodness of their products and services. Almost every school in the UK collects Tesco and Sainsburys supermarket tokens, through which they can acquire computers and books. Every token handed over by every child is a graphic advertisement for competing brands that want their cut of the family shopping budget, and the future loyalty of the children who carry these little pieces of paper into the classroom. North America has it far worse: “It is never enough to tag the schools with a few logos. Having gained a foothold, the brand managers are now doing what they have done in music, sports and journalism outside the schools: trying to overwhelm their host. They are fighting for their brands to become not the add-on but the subject of education.”[xii] As you have seen, the individual is not offered real choice in this culture of consumption – simply “Conchoice”. The real choice has already been lost in favour of corporations that have sold entire populations down the commercial river: the individual’s ultimate dream is no longer a response to “what can I achieve in my life?” but “what can I buy?”

This goes back further than you can imagine. Long before mass advertising and competition between corporations, commerce was the prime motivator in the foreign policies of the imperial powers of Europe and, later on, the USA. The events in Haiti over the last 500 years reflect this perfectly. Like countless tribal peoples prior to European settlement, the Taíno[xiii] people lived a connected life with the land, the sea and the sky that drove much of their mythology. Then Christopher Columbus landed at Hispaniola in 1492 – the island that would become Haiti and the Dominican Republic – and irreversibly changed things:

It took no time at all for the [people] who first greeted Christopher Columbus to be all but erased from the face of the earth…less than 30 years after Columbus’ three ocean-crossing ships dropped anchor off the island of Hispaniola, the Taíno would be destroyed by Spanish weaponry, forced labor and European diseases.[xiv]

Those that survived lived at the behest of the invaders, and somehow managed to hold on to a semblance of their ancestry. The commercial advantage such a fertile environment provided to invaders in terms of crops, slave labour (both local and imported) and trading routes made Haiti the subject of continued negotiation and conflict ever since; but it was the specific words that were used with reference to Haiti that reveals so much. In 1833, in relation to the Haitian people but, no doubt, a view that could be applied across the entire British Empire, a British parliamentarian observed: “To make them labour, and give them a taste for luxuries and comforts, they must be gradually taught to desire those objects which could be attained by human labour. There was a regular progress from the possession of necessaries to the desire of luxuries; and what once were luxuries, gradually came…to be necessaries. This was the sort of progress the negroes had to go through, and this was the sort of education to which they ought to be subject in their period of probation.”[xv] In a striking parallel to this, Arthur Millspaugh, an advisor to the occupying USA government wrote in 1929: “The peasants, living lives which to us seem indolent and shiftless, are envariably (sic.) carefree and contented; but, if they are to be citizens of an independent self-governing nation, they must acquire…a new set of wants.”[xvi] In other words: the commercial Americanization of a culture.

Quite what the people of Haiti did to deserve such a long period of turmoil, especially considering their “carefree and contented” existence in the past, is difficult to understand at first glance. The more you look at the history of commerce though – the ravenous British East India Company; the endemic slavery to feed the coffee, cotton and sugar industries; the limitless ambition of Coca-Cola and McDonalds – the more you realise that this is just par for the course. The reason you are surrounded by logos, adverts and brands, and the reason entire cultures are being cut up into bite-sized pieces and swallowed is because commerce needs to constantly sell a dream of a new reality in order to survive.

Six: Exploit Our Trust

If I were to tell you to hit someone, just because I wanted them hurt, you would almost certainly refuse, and probably report me to the authorities for suggesting such a thing – and quite right, too. If I were to don a white coat, welcome you into a laboratory and explain that you were to take part in an experiment, and that the person on the other side of the screen who you were about to apply extremely painful electric shocks too was a willing volunteer, you would probably say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Or would you?

The groundbreaking experimental work of Stanley Milgram[xvii] simply reinforced what he already knew – that individuals, when exposed to an authority figure in a pressure situation will obey the authority figure far more readily, and to a greater extent, than would have been possible in other circumstances. The reason Milgram already knew the power of authority – although he was, himself, surprised at the level of obedience in his experiments – was historical. In 1961, when the experiments were first conducted, World War II was fresh in the minds of every adult living in the parts of the world where the conflict had taken place. The hierarchy of authority within the Axis Forces had been carefully designed to ensure maximum obedience: from Hitler, the master orator and “saviour” of the German people; through to the SS guards and local enforcers operating on behalf of the Third Reich; the weight of power upon ordinary citizens and soldiers was irresistible. But, even given such a level of authority, it is still shocking to read of the ease in which people were coerced to carry out appalling acts:

Judicial interrogations of some 125 of the [reserve police battalion] men indicated that, while no one had to participate…the great majority stayed in ranks and later killed whoever was brought to them out of loyalty to those ranks, and to maintain their standing in their units. Thus the men chose to become murderers rather than look bad in the eyes of the other men.

Over time, as the battalion participated in more and more mass murders, it became far more relaxed and efficient in its deadly operations. These ordinary men got used to killing thousands of people at close range as part of their day’s work. By the time their part of the “Final Solution” was completed in Poland, the battalion had shot at least 38,000 Jews to death.[xviii]

You might think that you would behave differently to these ordinary people caught up in the rigors of war, and that you would refuse to obey the requests of those in authority. In fact, only about 20 percent of those ordered to kill Jewish prisoners, without fear of repercussions if they refused, did refuse[xix]. The chances are that if you were put in this same situation, you would not refuse and would, yourself, become a murderer. It is a chilling thought that the simple act of being in a controlled situation where there is a hierarchy of authority pushing down on you can turn people into something that would otherwise be unthinkable to them – but that is the power of authority. In effect, it is our good nature, our trust of other people that allows us to be manipulated in such a dramatic way; and not even the threat of certain death can change that.

The daily grind of work exposes billions of people to some form of authority, but only in a minority of cases do people ever think to question the tasks they are given. To be sure, many of the people carrying out their work are in a very difficult situation: however mundane and soul-destroying, the completion of these tasks is simply the only way they can foresee earning the money necessary to buy food to keep themselves alive. The sweatshops of South East Asia and Central America starkly bear testament to that reality. There are people, though, who carry out work that is utterly destructive; yet because of the deep disconnection between what that person is doing and the impact of that work on the environment, and humanity in general, they continue to do it – and authority serves to deepen that disconnection.

The person operating the feller-buncher in Chapter Six knows, quite clearly that he is removing trees, destroying habitat and leaving behind bare earth which will be washed away in the next rainstorm. He also knows – despite the efforts of those who have tried to suppress this information – that the removal of trees contributes to the greenhouse effect, which is heating up the planet and threatening to bring on a catastrophic cycle of events at all scales of life. He know all these things and yet he continues[xx]. The CEO of the forestry company, say Georgia-Pacific, Kimberly-Clark or Asian Pulp And Paper, knows the impact of his company’s activities; as do the directors, upon whom the pressure to meet financial targets is imposed by their CEO; as do the managers, upon whom the pressure to improve output is imposed by their directors; as do the operators of the feller-bunchers, who have been clearly told that they are doing an important job, and they have to process a set tonnage of timber every day otherwise the contract will be lost. The hierarchy imposes authority, and the destruction continues.

As you will see later, the threat of financial loss is most definitely a factor in the continuation of highly destructive activities; but, as Stanley Milgram demonstrated all those years ago, we don’t really need those threats: we just do what we are told.

Seven: Lie To Us

It seems so obvious, especially after reading to this point, that in order to thrive as a species humanity is dependent on a fully functioning, healthy and diverse global ecology. When you turn on the television news, listen to the radio or read a newspaper, the state of the global ecology is shown clearly as improving or reducing in quality overall, with x number of species having been created or become extinct, and certain trophic levels becoming more or less dominant. Or rather, this is what we should be seeing and hearing: instead, we learn about the state of the global economy, whether the markets are rising or falling; how many jobs have been gained or lost; which companies are taking over others, and which sectors of the economy are thriving or failing. The economy is king; the ecology is a footnote.

It is impossible to create something out of nothing. National economies or, in microcosm, the finances of individual companies cannot grow unless they take something from somewhere else: this can either be in the form of market-share from other nations or companies, or by creating product from a resource like oil, metal ore, limestone (for cement) or the ecological complexity of a natural habitat, such as an ancient forest[xxi]. The global economy cannot take market share from another planet; it can only grow by using additional resources taken from this planet.

Taken like that, it is obvious that economic growth is ultimately unsustainable – especially given the narrow, capital based definition used to define the term “economy” in the industrial world – yet, we continue to be fobbed off by the message that we must have economic growth in order to progress or develop as humans. Of course, if we judge development or progress in terms of the number of televisions, computers and cars we have, the size of home we have or the amount of energy we use; then economic growth most certainly does lead to a more “developed” human race. If we judge development or progress on rather more esoteric (and, quite frankly, more important) measures such as clean water and air, physical and mental health, freedom of expression, and having a future that our descendants will be able to thrive in; then economic growth is failing on almost all of these counts. Humans in every place touched by the rank hand of industrialisation are told that development based upon economic growth, is good. When you think about it, though, the only true form of development is that which moves us into balance with our natural environment – in effect a reversal of what we are now doing. You do not have to be financially prosperous in order for your water to be clean – you just need a basic level of hygiene, sensible water management techniques and, most of all, a lack of toxic muck being poured into the water supply by industrial processes.

Economic growth as a necessity is the biggest lie that humanity has ever been sold; yet we are lapping it up because the lie is repeated day after day by every information source we are unfortunate enough to be subjected to.

* * *

In a rather wonderful chapter of his book “Heat”, George Monbiot describes how the vested interests of climate change – the corporations, agencies and individuals whose existence depends on producing greenhouse gases – have colluded for decades to ensure the public, you and me, are kept confused and ill-informed. The methods now used for denying that humans are changing the climate are the same methods used by the tobacco industry throughout the late decades of the twentieth century[xxii]: corporate funded articles and press-releases that specialise in misinformation and pseudo-science; faux public interest groups known as “Astroturfs”; a host of media representatives funded by industry; and an unhealthy dose of greenwash[xxiii], specifically designed to make companies look environmentally sustainable, when they are nothing of the sort. This is a pet hate of mine, so much so that, at the start of 2008, I set up an anti-greenwashing website called The Unsuitablog. In one article, regarding the mining company BHP Billiton, I wrote:

Like all destructive companies, BHP Billiton are engaging in some striking greenwash: in fact they have just agreed a new Climate Change Policy, which is not surprising considering their operations emit nearly 52 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere every year (that’s about the same as Denmark – yes, the entire country!) It’s a pity they have entirely failed to commit to any reductions in greenhouse gases at all. Exactly what kind of Climate Change Policy is this?[xxiv]

Corporations, in particular, take advantage of the innate trust we have in authority figures, often hiring scientists (in the spirit of Stanley Milgram’s electric shock experiments) to speak to the media, apparently on their own behalf while, in fact, ensuring that the information put across is precisely the information the corporations want the public to hear. The damage that has been caused by the continuous stream of lies and denial is impossible to quantify: certainly it has put back public awareness of the climate situation by a decade, at least. When you consider that most environmental damage has been caused in countries whose governments support the biggest lie of all – the “need” for economic growth – it is clear that the greenwashing corporations are in very good company indeed.

Eight: Scare Us

We live in times of fear: fear of the impact of terrorism on our ability to live in safety; fear of the results of economic collapse on our future financial security; fear of what strangers and paedophiles might do to our children. Some of us are even afraid of climate change. Industrial Civilization instils us with a succession of fears not only because we may be genuinely afraid of a particular thing happening but also because we live in a state of comparative ignorance. Few people have a good understanding of the nature of risk so, for instance, a person might tell you that she drives her child to school in order to protect them from “stranger danger”, and in doing so exposes the child to the far greater risk of being the potential victim of a vehicle crash. This is simple ignorance: the type of fear I want to tell you about preys on our poor understanding of risk, and is propagated on purpose in order to keep us in check.

Anyone who grew up in the United States in the 1950s will be familiar with the fear of Communism, and the many lists that Senator McCarthy threatened to release in order to expose those people who were threatening the stability of the USA with their left-leaning political ideals. What most people in the United States don’t realise, is that “McCarthyism”, as the specific attitude came to be known as, had as much to do with Communism as the type of politics being espoused in the Soviet Union had to do with genuine Communism. A certain suspension of belief is required when you consider that last sentence – especially if you grew up in either the USA or the USSR during the Cold War – because it completely denies two articles of faith that were in place at the time. Firstly, Senator McCarthy, along with the entire state hierarchy (with a couple of exceptions), helped to spin a web of fear in order to encourage patriotism amongst the American people, and ensure everyone was kept “on side”. The author Bill Bryson, who grew up in 1950s America writes:

Thanks to our overweening preoccupation with Communism at home and abroad America became the first nation in modern history to build a war economy in peacetime. Defence spending in the Fifties ranged between $40 billion and $53 billion a year – or more than the total government spending on everything at the dawn of the decade.[xxv]

History repeats itself, as always; so it was that 50 years later George Bush Jr., along with his cadre of high-ranking political colleagues (all of whom had financial interests in either the arms industry, the oil industry or both) used the threat of global terrorism on the USA to ease through military spending bills totalling more than $3 trillion dollars since September 2001. The 2008 Pentagon budget alone is expected to be a shade under $600 billion – nearly a thousand times the amount of money spent on diplomatic relations.[xxvi] It was the threat of terrorism that ensured Americans meekly accepted the Patriot Act, and its even more intrusive successor, Patriot Act II. It was the threat of terrorism that ensured that the torture of hundreds of innocent people in Guantanamo Bay, and thousands more in Iraq and Afghanistan was tolerated by the majority of people in Western Industrial Civilization. It was the threat of terrorism that ensured that, since 2001, every conference of the richest industrial nations had “national security” at, or near, the top of its agenda – pushing climate change prevention conveniently down the list. Since September 11, 2001, not a single American has died on US soil as a result of a terrorist attack; yet, in that same period at least 300,000 people in the USA have died as a result of motor vehicle incidents[xxvii]. How many times do you hear your political leaders urging you to be afraid of cars?

The second denial of an article of faith I make is that the USSR under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, was never a Communist country. Communism implies “commune” and “community” – it does not imply centralised control of all assets with an elite minority benefiting greatly from the labours of the poor majority. But, just like in the USA and every other industrialised nation since the start of the Agricultural Revolution, the Soviet Union practiced a deliberately bastardised form of Communism designed to funnel economic wealth to a rich and powerful minority. As with the USA, the people of the Soviet Union were kept in a state of fear by their government. This excerpt from a 1941 Marxist document illustrates what had already happened to the Communist Dream:

The Soviet Union can be best understood as a great trade union fallen into the hands of corrupt and degenerate leaders. Our struggle against Stalinism is a struggle within the labor movement. The Soviet Union is a Workers’ State…degenerated because of Stalinist rule.[xxviii]

Essentially, two governments were creating a state of fear within their respective borders in order to control the people, and that state of fear was an almost total fabrication of the truth. The Cold War was simply two imperialist, hierarchical states trying to gain global power by force. If only the majority of people in those states had known that at the time.

* * *

Fear doesn’t only have to be an extension of a real, if muted, threat though. Cast your mind back to the Tree Huggers of northern India, and the native West Papuans, who were prepared to challenge government and business in order to protect their ways of life. It is now standard practice amongst certain vested interests to refer to such people as “eco terrorists” or the “green mafia”: anything that creates a sense of fear is a vital weapon in ensuring the public at large see environmental action as a negative thing. For many business-friendly politicians, the doyen of “green mafia” writing is Michael Crichton, whose dramatic, but ultimately fictional book about eco terrorism, “State Of Fear” launched a thousand spin-offs and a great many newly converted climate sceptics. In fact, the eco terrorism argument goes far deeper than the books of fiction writers – however much they manage to scare people. Senator James Inhofe, former chairman of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is a self-confessed climate change sceptic who used the fear agenda in the most direct way possible – by comparing environmentalists to Nazis:

“It kind of reminds . . . I could use the Third Reich, the big lie,” Inhofe said.

“You say something over and over and over and over again, and people will believe it, and that’s their strategy.”[xxix]

Which, of course, is exactly how governments all around the world advance the message that economic growth is necessary; along with the message that people of different colours, religions or political beliefs are a constant threat to the security of the people those governments rule over. In Brazil, such ideas flow freely from the keyboards of many journalists and politicians. A plan by WWF – one of the most conservative of the big environmental NGOs[xxx] – to set up a large wildlife reserve in the Amazon rainforest was met with typical contempt:

“This is a new form of colonialism, an open conspiracy in which economic and financial interests act through nongovernmental organizations,” said Lorenzo Carrasco, editor and co-author of “The Green Mafia,” a widely circulated anti-environmentalist polemic. “It is evident these interests want to block the development of Brazil and the Amazon region by creating and controlling these reserves, which are full of minerals and other valuable natural resources.”[xxxi]

When you don’t have the fear of Communism or terrorism to fall back on, then it’s time to roll out those old staples, “preventing development” and “blocking economic growth”. There is most certainly a pattern emerging here. Sadly, though, I have to now leave behind the mere threat of loss and move on to the reality – the execution, as it were – and I don’t even have to change countries to find the first example.

Nine: Abuse Us

Just another day in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest: the dank, humid air hangs like lianas, the moisture dripping from leaf to branch and down onto the shady litter-strewn soil; insects feed on plant matter, and themselves are preyed upon by birds – the tumult they create being heard for miles across the deep, dense jungle; chainsaws buzz and scream as they carve up massive trunks, leaving behind acid, infertile soil that may never again be fertilised by the tree canopy; Dorothy Stang, an American nun, defending the same area of forest she had defended for 20 years, is shot six times – murdered in cold blood by a hit man hired by a cattle rancher, determined to ensure that this swath of forest can be cleared and grazed for a healthy profit.

The men directly responsible for Dorothy Stang’s murder in 2005 were eventually prosecuted and sentenced, but it took another two years for the cattle rancher, who “owned” (or rather, took from the native inhabitants) the land, to be prosecuted. In fact, despite nearly eight hundred people being killed in the heavily forested Para region of Brazil in land disputes, only four people have ever been convicted: “Intimidation by loggers and land-grabbers, corrupt local authorities and a lack of law enforcement resources mean that many of these cases go uninvestigated and unsolved. Meanwhile, the decimation of the Amazon continues at alarmingly high rates.”[xxxii] What you will never see is the conviction of anyone higher up the ladder than the rancher – the chain of responsibility ends where it connects to those who have a significant part to play in the global economy: these people will never be held to account. The simple fact is, corporate leaders invest in wholesale human misery and, where required, they will initiate and then ignore the slaughter that is invariably the outcome of their activities – euphemistically known as “turning a blind eye”. This slaughter is not necessarily the pernicious, gradual type either – the roasting of the planet, or the toxification of the land and the oceans – some forms of corporate slaughter are very much in the open and visible to all. These most visible forms of corporate slaughter have almost always been state sanctioned.

The British colonial slave trade, and the use of slaves as a form of cheap (free) labour, which persisted throughout the 18th and 19th century in order to provide a ready supply of exotic foods for the public, and vast financial rewards for the companies involved, was readily sanctioned and overseen by the British government. The brutality of the West Indian plantations, which were the source of the British companies riches (and not just companies, the Church of England were the landowners of one of the most notorious plantations, at Codrington in Barbados[xxxiii]), led to a death toll that we would now call genocide:

When slavery ended in the United States, less than half a million slaves had grown to a population of four million. When it ended in the British West Indies, total slave imports of well over two million left a surviving slave population of only about 670,000…The Caribbean was a slaughterhouse.[xxxiv]

If you are under any illusions that such corporate and state-sanctioned atrocities are no more, think again. The mining companies’ destruction of the native West Papuans’ forest – their means of survival – was, as discussed in Chapter Eleven, ably assisted by the Suharto government of Indonesia. The continued, senseless slaughter of thousands of Sudanese in the oil-rich Darfur region is regarded by both the Sudanese government (who are gaining tremendous wealth from oil sales) and the Chinese government (who have an insatiable thirst for oil) as an unavoidable consequence of economic activity[xxxv]. Arms companies throughout the USA have benefited tremendously from the purchase of billions of dollars worth of weapons by the US military for the second Gulf War in Iraq – which, incidentally, tops up the GDP of the country in which the weapons are manufactured. The war has been responsible for at least 80,000 civilian deaths[xxxvi] since 2003.

Such abuse of people and power may seem, on the surface, to be unrelated to the environmental disconnection humanity has had foisted upon it; but this would be ignoring the subtext. The driver for this abuse is primarily to gain wealth for a privileged few. The unwritten reason for using abusive tactics, as with using fear, is to ease people into a state of denial. Denial of a situation, however terrifying, is the standard human response to prolonged abuse of all types; whether parent-child abuse, employer-employee abuse or state-civilian abuse. Riane Eisler, president of the Center for Partnership Studies in the USA, writes:

In a top-down, authoritarian family that relies on fear and force, children often learn to be in denial about their parents’ behaviour since they depend on them for survival. This makes it easy to later be in denial about “strong” leaders who abuse power, and to identify with them. People’s willingness to countenance the erosion of democratic safeguards…and their support for the preemptive Iraq War, even though it was justified by false information, are also largely due to early habits of obedience to authority figures coupled with denial that “strong” leaders can be wrong.[xxxvii]

The various tools and methods used in order to disconnect us from the real world and accept the way that the world is being run on our behalf – the way that the planet is being trashed for economic gain – accumulate over time, from birth to death, to create an almost insurmountable personal barrier. We willingly disconnect because, eventually, we see it as the only option.

That said, there is one final method that I need to tell you about: one that almost everyone on Earth is a party to, and one that feels so natural to accept that it couldn’t possibly be to our disadvantage – or so you would think.

Ten: Give Us Hope

Not all hope is bad. There is the simple type; the benign wish or blessing, that shows you care: “I hope you have a good day”, “Hope to see you again soon”, “I hope you pass your exam.” In isolation, and as merely a gesture, then this kind of hope can make someone feel wanted and rather special. This kind of hope is nice – it is harmless.[xxxviii]

There is a second kind of hope that is not harmless; it is the kind of hope that implies more than benign wishes. This kind of hope is, essentially, prayer – religious or otherwise. Religious prayer, we all know about and, as we saw in Chapter Ten, a large proportion of the world’s population use prayer of one sort or another. Even when not religious, “secular prayer” bears all of the hallmarks of its religious namesake, and carries the same dangers that are faced when someone’s future is entrusted to it.

Like it or not there appears to be no empirical evidence showing that prayer works. The Religious Tolerance web site[xxxix] has carefully broken down the methods and results in, and reaction to, all of the recent major studies carried out on the effectiveness of prayer; and the conclusion you have to reach is that prayer alone simply does not have any recordable effect. The reactions that that this kind of statement invokes are often furious, but also more specifically along the lines that God must not be tested. As one theologist put it : “You’re going to do your best to limit the prayer some people get so that you can measure the benefits for those who receive a lot of prayer? Do you think that’s how God intended prayer to be used?”[xl]

So that appears to be that. Except that when you look deeper into the research, you find something very interesting. A widely cited and carefully controlled study[xli] into the relative effects of prayer on post-operative coronary recovery found no significant difference in recovery rates between those who received prayer unknowingly and those who did not receive prayer at all. But here’s the interesting bit: the group of patients who knowingly received prayer had a 15 to 20 percent worse recovery rate than the other two groups. Some commentators suggested this was because of the increased pressure of knowing you were expected to respond to prayer, but I believe the cause to be down to something different.

Hope.

You see, when you hope for something to happen – not the benign good wishes, but the deep, heartfelt hope that aches for an outcome of your choosing – then something happens to you: your motivation to work for the desired outcome actually decreases. Like the detached worker who can’t accept their responsibility for the destructive outcome of the process they are part of, by entrusting an outcome to the ethereal entity that is “hope” then you are passing on responsibility to something that is out of your control. This is what you are doing when you pray: you pass on the responsibility for the outcome of your prayers, meditations and deepest wishes to an external force.

A positive state of mind is often a vital attribute in recovering from illness, whether mental or physical, and also other conditions such as addiction. Quite how this works is uncertain, but more studies than not show that maintaining positivity is beneficial. Knowing that someone cares about you enough to pray for you is one thing, though; thinking that the job of getting you better has passed from you to something you have no control over is another thing entirely.

* * *

Every day, in all sorts of ways, we hand over the responsibility of our actions to other parties. We entrust religious leaders to act as proxy supreme beings, to give us blessings and pray for the delivery of our souls and, as is becoming more common, the protection of the natural environment. We entrust politicians to justly run districts, states, countries, the whole planet, on our behalf, and deliver whatever is in their jurisdiction from whatever evils we have asked them to deal with. We ask the heads of corporations to use profits wisely, to provide fair wages, allow union representation and listen to their staff and respond appropriately – we ask them not to destroy the planet. We ask environmental organisations to look after the planet on our behalf, to lobby fiercely and petition prudently, to give us a world worth living in.

We are guilty of a mass dereliction of responsibility.

When we vote we hope the politicians will do the right thing after they have been elected. When we buy a product from a company, we hope that company are acting in the best interests of everyone and every thing they impact. When we sign a petition, go on a protest march or write a letter, we hope that it will change things for the better. But it is never that simple.

Voters vote for different things: your hope that a politician will increase pollution controls will be running counter to the hope of another voter that pollution controls will be weakened. Your entrustment of a company that they will act ethically runs contrary to the basic needs of a shareholder in that same company, that demands an increase in profits, which requires poorer labour standards, increased use of natural resources, corner cutting and cost slashing across the board. Your petition or protest march may give you hope that something will change when in fact you have simply channelled your anger and concern into a symbolic action that threatens not a single media executive, company director or head of state. You innocently believed that right would out simply because you placed your demands on the wings of dear hope.

When we stop hoping for external assistance, when we stop hoping that the awful situation we’re in will somehow resolve itself, when we stop hoping the situation will somehow not get worse, then we are finally free – truly free – to honestly start working to thoroughly resolve it. When hope dies, action begins.[xlii]

* * *

The Highland Clearances were just part of the Agricultural Revolution – the starting point for the disconnection which the newly dominant Western culture turned into an art form. From this point onwards a gash was cleaved between people and the real world that has been growing wider and wider ever since. This was, and is, entirely intentional. It is now time to identify the culprits and try to explain why they are doing what they do.

Who Is Responsible?

It is far easier to blame others for something than to blame ourselves. There is something alluring in pinning the woes of our situation on forces that are “out there” – stupendous, unreachable forces that chart our every move and guide our hands to do their bidding. Somewhere, in the minds of the disenchanted, there is a room in which the most powerful people in the world sit and decide the fate of entire continents, political systems, religions and the Earth itself. What wouldn’t you give to walk into that room and take out every one of those people; walk back out brushing your hands together proclaiming, “Everything is going to be all right.” Oh, what wouldn’t you give for that chance?

And, yes, there are rooms in which far-reaching decisions are made by extremely wealthy and powerful people: The G8, The Bilderberg Group, The World Economic Forum, NATO, The United Nations Security Council, The World Trade Organization…but they aren’t in charge. They are just fulfilling an obligation to something far more powerful: the belief that this is the way it has to be. You won’t get anywhere near the people on the top tables of these groups, anyway, because they are being protected by those who believe that they must be protected; who would probably give their lives to keep the system in good health. But they aren’t in charge either. They are just fulfilling an obligation to the belief that this is the way it has to be. And even if you do get near, and manage to dispatch the protectors and the protected, it won’t change things, because the people in the shops, the people in their cars, the people in their offices, the people at home watching the news on the television and the people protesting on the streets are simply fulfilling an obligation to the belief that this is the way it has to be.

Hopeless, isn’t it?

But, of course, you’re not going to hope, are you? Hope is one of the ways in which we are disconnected from the real world, just like everyone caught up in this accursed culture – “The Culture of Maximum Harm”, as Daniel Quinn accurately describes it[xliii]. The ten Tools of Disconnection I have spent pages of exhaustive analysis showing you, are real. They are, more or less, the essence of Industrial Civilization: they are what make it what it is. We all accept this because we cannot think of anything else – because we are so disconnected from the real world and attached to this way of being that any other way of life seems impossible.

But stop! Can you imagine what would happen if you walked up to a group of people outside of this culture and said, “This is how you are going to live from now on: instead of looking after the land, water and air on which you utterly depend – without which you will die – you are going to wreck it. Instead of taking only what you need to survive, you are going to take far more – stockpile it and call it wealth. Instead of enjoying the lives you have, the interaction you have with the world and the rich, intense stimulation that it provides you with, you are going to withdraw from it, provide yourselves with artificial stimulation and pay others – with the wealth you have accumulated – to entertain you. Instead of being happy with what you have, you are going to live in a state of constant anxiety and restlessness, craving more and more things that you are told are necessary. Instead of thinking for yourselves, you are going to be told how to think, and you will learn to see this as the only way to think.”

Can you imagine what the response would be?

We are in the terminal stages of the greatest addiction humanity has ever seen. We live in a constant disconnected haze; drip-fed a cocktail of proto-choice, dreams, lies, fear, abuse and hope. We are users of this culture, and it makes us feel good – until we need another dose. We are also players in this culture. Whatever your social status; whatever your “class”; whatever your level of wealth or influence, you are likely to be taking part in the process of disconnection just because of the job you do or position you hold.

I’m going to repeat the Tools of Disconnection, adding just a few example roles to each: if you are in one of these roles, or anything remotely similar, then you are probably a party to that method, whether you like it or not.

• · One: Reward Us For Being Good Consumers – store managers, marketing executives, investment bankers;
• · Two: Make Us Feel Good For Doing Trivial Things – local politicians, writers, therapists;
• · Three: Give Us Selected Freedom – national politicians, judges, dictators;
• · Four: Pretend We Have A Choice – vehicle salespeople, travel agents, shop assistants;
• · Five: Sell Us A Dream – advertisers, educators, missionaries;
• · Six: Exploit Our Trust – scientists, military officers, office managers;
• · Seven: Lie To Us – economists, government ministers, public relations officers;
• · Eight: Scare Us – journalists, broadcasters, customs officers;
• · Nine: Abuse Us – soldiers, police officers, property developers;
• · Ten: Give Us Hope – religious and spiritual leaders, company directors, environmentalists.

There is a whole web of integrated and interdependent interests whose primary goal is to ensure that every single member of this culture, including themselves, is kept dosed up with the same heady, addictive cocktail. So completely are the different interests immersed in their roles that it is no longer possible to establish individual responsibility. This web of interests is, to put it simply, the system itself:

It is not merely individuals acting in accord with their perceived needs and acquired desires, but the global treadmill of production itself that has become the main culprit in the ecocidal endgame. This treadmill has been churning for some time, creating predicament that is at odds with the ecological health of this planet.[xliv]

Of course, there are some who would appear to benefit far more than others. The “Elites”, the people who have more influence, and more material and financial wealth than the rest of us have played the system as far as it is possible to play it. History shows these Elites’ influence stretching across oceans, commanding armies, shipping fleets and masses of slaves in a giant imperial game of Risk. One false move and entire empires could collapse: and so they did, through carelessness or the greater power of other empires, commanded by their own Elites. What is unique about this new civilization – the most pervasive in history – is that pure power is no longer desirable: with power comes tremendous responsibility, and tremendous risk. What is far more desirable now is wealth. Wealth can be accumulated; it can provide status symbols; it can provide a lifestyle that completely cuts the holder off from any disruptive influences – as if that is a desirable state to be in. This adoration of wealth propagates from the top to the bottom, by influence, generating a mad clamour for a particular lifestyle: “I can be like him! I can have a big car; a big house; fly to exotic places and eat exotic food – and even if I can’t, I can aspire to live such a life (such a lie). I can surround myself with goods and read about the rich and famous, while imagining what it would be like.”

We buy into the trappings of this lifestyle because it makes us feel like we are taking a step up the ladder. What also happens is that the profit that is generated from our purchases and activities goes back upwards, giving a little cut to everyone involved; right up to the Elites, who can create for themselves an even more luxuriant, disconnected lifestyle.

* * *

Unless you are born into it, sheer wealth does not come easily: it takes time to build up capital, and most often a great deal of effort; in fact, it almost always requires the holder to also be in a position of power, whether that be as the head of a media organisation, an oil company, an agricultural conglomerate, a retail chain, or as the despotic leader of a nation. The truly powerful are the wealthy; and the truly wealthy are the powerful.

The problem for them, and for us, is that humans are simply not evolved to cope with such power and wealth – we have evolved as connected beings who must work together, and with nature, in order to survive. Cooperation is an essential part of life: a plethora of ancient tribes survived for many thousands of years because of the close cooperation of their members and, of course, their close connection to nature. Unlike civilizations that have come and gone in sudden urgent spikes of activity, ancient tribal societies gradually developed to reach a state of balance with their environments – they were not intending to go anywhere soon. Were it not for the activities of those people, at all levels of Industrial Civilization, who have helped to displace, disenfranchise, infect and slaughter tribal people, then we would still have many of these ancient tribes; but, sadly, there are precious few remaining.

Despite the close level of cooperation within tribes, loose hierarchies and leaders do exist – leadership is essential for a wide range of tasks. Unlike Industrial Civilization, leadership is always based on ability:

Among the most primitive societies, i.e. the hunters and the food gatherers, authority is exercised by the person who is generally regarded as being competent for the task. What qualities this competence rests on depends much on the specific circumstances; generally they would include experience, wisdom, generosity, skill, “presence”, courage. No permanent authority exists in most of these tribes, but an authority emerges in the case of need. When the qualities on which the authority rests disappear or weaken, the authority itself ends.[xlv]

This is known as a meritocracy: you earn your place in society by virtue of your usefulness to the group as a whole – you are not born into any position of privilege; you cannot fight or buy your way to the top. Furthermore, as Daniel Quinn writes: “Tribes have leaders, and sometimes very strong leaders, but leadership carries little or nothing in the way of special benefits that are denied to other members of the tribe.”[xlvi] Our ancestral background has not prepared the Elites for their position in society: nothing can prepare the human mind for the incredible rush of power that comes to those at the very top. The outcome is megalomania; pathological, terrible, megalomania that makes those people feel that this really is the life; the only life that is possible, and so others must think like them: “You are not going to think for yourselves; you are going to be told how to think, and you will learn to see this as the only way to think.”

I feel sorry for them.

Is that such a bizarre statement to make? Well, let’s put it this way: there are leaders; they do have immense wealth and power over large parts of humanity and – through their leadership and the way they manipulate the system to their own ends – over the fate of the Earth; but they are still following the same toxic dream as the rest of us. We are all playing our part in the toxic dream. It seems terribly simplistic to say, “Society is to blame”, but it does eventually come down to that. The Industrial Civilization we live in has taken on a life of its own, and we are all swimming around in its effluent trying to grab hold of whatever solids are floating by. Those at the top merely sit on a larger pile of excrement than the rest of us – disconnected and completely at odds with the way we need to live in order to give us a future.

A friend wrote to me recently. She said: “When I watch documentaries or read books about indigenous tribes, I can see the ancient wisdom in their eyes, the experiences of life with the land etched on their faces, and I envy them their beautiful fulfilled lives – and mourn the lost lives we will never live: growing up free and learning from our elders the real skills of life; not algebra or humanities, but how to live with the land”. I don’t know if we deserve another chance, but I think that if there is a way of reclaiming those lost lives then it has to be worth a try.

The Beginning

If, by now, I haven’t managed to convince you that Industrial Civilization has to end then you are probably not ready to be part of the solution. Most people who have been brought up in this Culture of Maximum Harm still believe that this is the only way to live – the forces that have stopped you thinking for yourself and making the connection between the fate of this planet (on the brink of catastrophe) and the primary motivation for being human (to survive) are immensely powerful.

But, if you do want to take up the challenge, and ensure the survival of those you care about, then read on: there is a lot to do, and a great adventure to be had…

Read the rest at: http://www.amatterofscale.com/

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Keith Farnish on the hypocrisy of the annual greenwashing event known as ‘Earth Day’:

I want you to forget about April 22, 2009. Just do whatever you normally do on that day; don’t write anything in your diary; don’t put a circle round the date on your calendar; don’t make a special effort to talk about the environment. Why should you? If you are not a hypocrite then Earth Day will mean nothing special to you because like all other days it will just be sustainable living as usual.

Alternatively – like the idiot businessman who gives up his daily aircraft commute to “respect the Earth”, but just on that one day – you could treat it as something special, a day to make huge symbolic waves that, miraculously, make no one wet, and leave no one with a long-lasting feeling that they are living lives that are not their own. If you think I’m being overly cynical, don’t forget that Earth Day 2008 was a horror story of excessive consumption on behalf of The Planet™, and it is looking like Earth Day 2009 is going to be even worse:

April 22 will mark Earth Day, an annual event celebrated around the world as the greenest of holidays. Established in 1970, it was created to call attention to the environment.

Earth Day coverage has grown exponentially over the past decade and will get substantial coverage in most media outlets — including national television, radio, newspaper, magazines, blogs, etc.

Earth Day creates an excellent opportunity for companies to promote their environmental activities and concerns to a broad base, as well as to their local community.

What will your company do for Earth Day to stand out to its base and capture the attention of its public? How will you let your customers, prospects, employees and/or shareholders know about your efforts to reduce carbon emissions, use more eco-friendly materials, reduce waste in packaging, start a recycling campaign, cut emissions, etc?

My suggestion: Don’t forget the kids. Children are Our Future.

A national research study commissioned by the National Environmental Education Training Foundation noted that children placed the environment third in a list of 10 issues behind only AIDS and kidnapping. This contrasts greatly with adults, for whom the economy, crime, and drugs are of greater concern. Children worry about long-term issues such as damage to the ozone layer and destruction of the rain forest.

Did you know that 99% of children in America today have access to environmental classes in school, and 31 states require schools to incorporate environmental concepts into virtually every subject in all grade levels?

Reach out to children. Children have influence over parents’ buying habits. as well as being an influencing force for recycling and conservation activities.

If you have a local business, work with a school district and get imprinted eco-friendly promotional items, which are educational, into the students’ hands. Try to target elementary or middle schools for best response and maximum impact.

I genuinely feel sick, reading this. I encourage you to post your own blogs, and send your own letters in about what you think of this kind of cynical, bloated marketing behaviour. Earth Day has become the perfect example of why business has no place in the future of this planet!

The fact that corporations can get away with this greenwashing tripe shows how far removed much of the ‘green’ movement is from realising the truth behind the problems this planet is facing – that economic growth and civilisation itself is unsustainable and must be dismantled and replaced.  Green technology or Green capitalism cannot and will not get us out of this mess, only a true systemic revolution to reclaim the earth from those who wish to profit from its demise whilst disguising it with greenwashing such as ‘Earth Day’.  I reccomend a visit to Keith’s blog ‘The Unsuitablog‘, which exposes greenwashing in all its forms, for inspiration on how to oppose green hypocrisy.  Let’s not let them get away with this greenwash!

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by Dmitry Orlov, reprinted from Energy Bulletin.

The following talk was given on February 13, 2009, at Cowell Theatre in Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, to an audience of 550 people. Audio and video of the talk will be available on Long Now Foundation web site.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for showing up. It’s certainly nice to travel all the way across the North American continent and have a few people come to see you, even if the occasion isn’t a happy one. You are here to listen to me talk about social collapse and the various ways we can avoid screwing that up along with everything else that’s gone wrong. I know it’s a lot to ask of you, because why wouldn’t you instead want to go and eat, drink, and be merry? Well, perhaps there will still be time left for that after my talk.

I would like to thank the Long Now Foundation for inviting me, and I feel very honored to appear in the same venue as many serious, professional people, such as Michael Pollan, who will be here in May, or some of the previous speakers, such as Nassim Taleb, or Brian Eno – some of my favorite people, really. I am just a tourist. I flew over here to give this talk and to take in the sights, and then I’ll fly back to Boston and go back to my day job. Well, I am also a blogger. And I also wrote a book. But then everyone has a book, or so it would seem.

You might ask yourself, then, Why on earth did he get invited to speak here tonight? It seems that I am enjoying my moment in the limelight, because I am one of the very few people who several years ago unequivocally predicted the demise of the United States as a global superpower. The idea that the USA will go the way of the USSR seemed preposterous at the time. It doesn’t seem so preposterous any more. I take it some of you are still hedging your bets. How is that hedge fund doing, by the way?

I think I prefer remaining just a tourist, because I have learned from experience – luckily, from other people’s experience – that being a superpower collapse predictor is not a good career choice. I learned that by observing what happened to the people who successfully predicted the collapse of the USSR. Do you know who Andrei Amalrik is? See, my point exactly. He successfully predicted the collapse of the USSR. He was off by just half a decade. That was another valuable lesson for me, which is why I will not give you an exact date when USA will turn into FUSA (“F” is for “Former”). But even if someone could choreograph the whole event, it still wouldn’t make for much of a career, because once it all starts falling apart, people have far more important things to attend to than marveling at the wonderful predictive abilities of some Cassandra-like person.

I hope that I have made it clear that I am not here in any sort of professional capacity. I consider what I am doing a kind of community service. So, if you don’t like my talk, don’t worry about me. There are plenty of other things I can do. But I would like my insights to be of help during these difficult and confusing times, for altruistic reasons, mostly, although not entirely. This is because when times get really bad, as they did when the Soviet Union collapsed, lots of people just completely lose it. Men, especially. Successful, middle-aged men, breadwinners, bastions of society, turn out to be especially vulnerable. And when they just completely lose it, they become very tedious company. My hope is that some amount of preparation, psychological and otherwise, can make them a lot less fragile, and a bit more useful, and generally less of a burden.

Women seem much more able to cope. Perhaps it is because they have less of their ego invested in the whole dubious enterprise, or perhaps their sense of personal responsibility is tied to those around them and not some nebulous grand enterprise. In any case, the women always seem far more able to just put on their gardening gloves and go do something useful, while the men tend to sit around groaning about the Empire, or the Republic, or whatever it is that they lost. And when they do that, they become very tedious company. And so, without a bit of mental preparation, the men are all liable to end up very lonely and very drunk. So that’s my little intervention.

If there is one thing that I would like to claim as my own, it is the comparative theory of superpower collapse. For now, it remains just a theory, although it is currently being quite thoroughly tested. The theory states that the United States and the Soviet Union will have collapsed for the same reasons, namely: a severe and chronic shortfall in the production of crude oil (that magic addictive elixir of industrial economies), a severe and worsening foreign trade deficit, a runaway military budget, and ballooning foreign debt. I call this particular list of ingredients “The Superpower Collapse Soup.” Other factors, such as the inability to provide an acceptable quality of life for its citizens, or a systemically corrupt political system incapable of reform, are certainly not helpful, but they do not automatically lead to collapse, because they do not put the country on a collision course with reality. Please don’t be too concerned, though, because, as I mentioned, this is just a theory. My theory.

I’ve been working on this theory since about 1995, when it occurred to me that the US is retracing the same trajectory as the USSR. As so often is the case, having this realization was largely a matter of being in the right place at the right time. The two most important methods of solving problems are: 1. by knowing the solution ahead of time, and 2. by guessing it correctly. I learned this in engineering school – from a certain professor. I am not that good at guesswork, but I do sometimes know the answer ahead of time.

I was very well positioned to have this realization because I grew up straddling the two worlds – the USSR and the US. I grew up in Russia, and moved to the US when I was twelve, and so I am fluent in Russian, and I understand Russian history and Russian culture the way only a native Russian can. But I went through high school and university in the US .I had careers in several industries here, I traveled widely around the country, and so I also have a very good understanding of the US with all of its quirks and idiosyncrasies. I traveled back to Russia in 1989, when things there still seemed more or less in line with the Soviet norm, and again in 1990, when the economy was at a standstill, and big changes were clearly on the way. I went back there 3 more times in the 1990s, and observed the various stages of Soviet collapse first-hand.

By the mid-1990s I started to see Soviet/American Superpowerdom as a sort of disease that strives for world dominance but in effect eviscerates its host country, eventually leaving behind an empty shell: an impoverished population, an economy in ruins, a legacy of social problems, and a tremendous burden of debt. The symmetries between the two global superpowers were then already too numerous to mention, and they have been growing more obvious ever since.

The superpower symmetries may be of interest to policy wonks and history buffs and various skeptics, but they tell us nothing that would be useful in our daily lives. It is the asymmetries, the differences between the two superpowers, that I believe to be most instructive. When the Soviet system went away, many people lost their jobs, everyone lost their savings, wages and pensions were held back for months, their value was wiped out by hyperinflation, there shortages of food, gasoline, medicine, consumer goods, there was a large increase in crime and violence, and yet Russian society did not collapse. Somehow, the Russians found ways to muddle through. How was that possible? It turns out that many aspects of the Soviet system were paradoxically resilient in the face of system-wide collapse, many institutions continued to function, and the living arrangement was such that people did not lose access to food, shelter or transportation, and could survive even without an income. The Soviet economic system failed to thrive, and the Communist experiment at constructing a worker’s paradise on earth was, in the end, a failure. But as a side effect it inadvertently achieved a high level of collapse-preparedness. In comparison, the American system could produce significantly better results, for time, but at the cost of creating and perpetuating a living arrangement that is very fragile, and not at all capable of holding together through the inevitable crash. Even after the Soviet economy evaporated and the government largely shut down, Russians still had plenty left for them to work with. And so there is a wealth of useful information and insight that we can extract from the Russian experience, which we can then turn around and put to good use in helping us improvise a new living arrangement here in the United States – one that is more likely to be survivable.

The mid-1990s did not seem to me as the right time to voice such ideas. The United States was celebrating its so-called Cold War victory, getting over its Vietnam syndrome by bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age, and the foreign policy wonks coined the term “hyperpower” and were jabbering on about full-spectrum dominance. All sorts of silly things were happening. Professor Fukuyama told us that history had ended, and so we were building a brave new world where the Chinese made things out of plastic for us, the Indians provided customer support when these Chinese-made things broke, and we paid for it all just by flipping houses, pretending that they were worth a lot of money whereas they are really just useless bits of ticky-tacky. Alan Greenspan chided us about “irrational exuberance” while consistently low-balling interest rates. It was the “Goldilocks economy” – not to hot, not too cold. Remember that? And now it turns out that it was actually more of a “Tinker-bell” economy, because the last five or so years of economic growth was more or less a hallucination, based on various debt pyramids, the “whole house of cards” as President Bush once referred to it during one of his lucid moments. And now we can look back on all of that with a funny, queasy feeling, or we can look forward and feel nothing but vertigo.

While all of these silly things were going on, I thought it best to keep my comparative theory of superpower collapse to myself. During that time, I was watching the action in the oil industry, because I understood that oil imports are the Achilles’ heel of the US economy. In the mid-1990s the all-time peak in global oil production was scheduled for the turn of the century. But then a lot of things happened that delayed it by at least half a decade. Perhaps you’ve noticed this too, there is a sort of refrain here: people who try to predict big historical shifts always turn to be off by about half a decade. Unsuccessful predictions, on the other hand are always spot on as far as timing: the world as we know it failed to end precisely at midnight on January 1, 2000. Perhaps there is a physical principal involved: information spreads at the speed of light, while ignorance is instantaneous at all points in the known universe. So please make a mental note: whenever it seems to you that I am making a specific prediction as to when I think something is likely to happen, just silently add “plus or minus half a decade.”

In any case, about half a decade ago, I finally thought that the time was ripe, and, as it has turned out, I wasn’t too far off. In June of 2005 I published an article on the subject, titled “Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century,” which was quite popular, even to the extent that I got paid for it. It is available at various places on the Internet. A little while later I formalized my thinking somewhat into the “Collapse Gap” concept, which I presented at a conference in Manhattan in April of 2006. The slide show from that presentation, titled “Closing the Collapse Gap,” was posted on the Internet and has been downloaded a few million times since then. Then, in January of 2008, when it became apparent to me that financial collapse was well underway, and that other stages of collapse were to follow, I published a short article titled “The Five Stages of Collapse,” which I later expanded into a talk I gave at a conference in Michigan in October of 2008. Finally, at the end of 2008, I announced on my blog that I am getting out of the prognosticating business. I have made enough predictions, they all seem very well on track (give or take half a decade, please remember that), collapse is well underway, and now I am just an observer.

But this talk is about something else, something other than making dire predictions and then acting all smug when they come true. You see, there is nothing more useless than predictions, once they have come true. It’s like looking at last year’s amazingly successful stock picks: what are you going to do about them this year? What we need are examples of things that have been shown to work in the strange, unfamiliar, post-collapse environment that we are all likely to have to confront. Stuart Brand proposed the title for the talk – “Social Collapse Best Practices” – and I thought that it was an excellent idea. Although the term “best practices” has been diluted over time to sometimes mean little more than “good ideas,” initially it stood for the process of abstracting useful techniques from examples of what has worked in the past and applying them to new situations, in order to control risk and to increase the chances of securing a positive outcome. It’s a way of skipping a lot of trial and error and deliberation and experimentation, and to just go with what works.

In organizations, especially large organizations, “best practices” also offer a good way to avoid painful episodes of watching colleagues trying to “think outside the box” whenever they are confronted with a new problem. If your colleagues were any good at thinking outside the box, they probably wouldn’t feel so compelled to spend their whole working lives sitting in a box keeping an office chair warm. If they were any good at thinking outside the box, they would have by now thought of a way to escape from that box. So perhaps what would make them feel happy and productive again is if someone came along and gave them a different box inside of which to think – a box better suited to the post-collapse environment.

Here is the key insight: you might think that when collapse happens, nothing works. That’s just not the case. The old ways of doing things don’t work any more, the old assumptions are all invalidated, conventional goals and measures of success become irrelevant. But a different set of goals, techniques, and measures of success can be brought to bear immediately, and the sooner the better. But enough generalities, let’s go through some specifics. We’ll start with some generalities, and, as you will see, it will all become very, very specific rather quickly.

Here is another key insight: there are very few things that are positives or negatives per se. Just about everything is a matter of context. Now, it just so happens that most things that are positives prior to collapse turn out to be negatives once collapse occurs, and vice versa. For instance, prior to collapse having high inventory in a business is bad, because the businesses have to store it and finance it, so they try to have just-in-time inventory. After collapse, high inventory turns out to be very useful, because they can barter it for the things they need, and they can’t easily get more because they don’t have any credit. Prior to collapse, it’s good for a business to have the right level of staffing and an efficient organization. After collapse, what you want is a gigantic, sluggish bureaucracy that can’t unwind operations or lay people off fast enough through sheer bureaucratic foot-dragging. Prior to collapse, what you want is an effective retail segment and good customer service. After collapse, you regret not having an unreliable retail segment, with shortages and long bread lines, because then people would have been forced to learn to shift for themselves instead of standing around waiting for somebody to come and feed them.

If you notice, none of these things that I mentioned have any bearing on what is commonly understood as “economic health.” Prior to collapse, the overall macroeconomic positive is an expanding economy. After collapse, economic contraction is a given, and the overall macroeconomic positive becomes something of an imponderable, so we are forced to listen to a lot of nonsense. The situation is either slightly better than expected or slightly worse than expected. We are always either months or years away from economic recovery. Business as usual will resume sooner or later, because some television bobble-head said so.

But let’s take it apart. Starting from the very general, what are the current macroeconomic objectives, if you listen to the hot air coming out of Washington at the moment? First: growth, of course! Getting the economy going. We learned nothing from the last huge spike in commodity prices, so let’s just try it again. That calls for economic stimulus, a.k.a. printing money. Let’s see how high the prices go up this time. Maybe this time around we will achieve hyperinflation. Second: Stabilizing financial institutions: getting banks lending – that’s important too. You see, we are just not in enough debt yet, that’s our problem. We need more debt, and quickly! Third: jobs! We need to create jobs. Low-wage jobs, of course, to replace all the high-wage manufacturing jobs we’ve been shedding for decades now, and replacing them with low-wage service sector jobs, mainly ones without any job security or benefits. Right now, a lot of people could slow down the rate at which they are sinking further into debt if they quit their jobs. That is, their job is a net loss for them as individuals as well as for the economy as a whole. But, of course, we need much more of that, and quickly!

So that’s what we have now. The ship is on the rocks, water is rising, and the captain is shouting “Full steam ahead! We are sailing to Afghanistan!” Do you listen to Ahab up on the bridge, or do you desert your post in the engine room and go help deploy the lifeboats? If you thought that the previous episode of uncontrolled debt expansion, globalized Ponzi schemes, and economic hollowing-out was silly, then I predict that you will find this next episode of feckless grasping at macroeconomic straws even sillier. Except that it won’t be funny: what is crashing now is our life support system: all the systems and institutions that are keeping us alive. And so I don’t recommend passively standing around and watching the show – unless you happen to have a death wish.

Right now the Washington economic stimulus team is putting on their Scuba gear and diving down to the engine room to try to invent a way to get a diesel engine to run on seawater. They spoke of change, but in reality they are terrified of change and want to cling with all their might to the status quo. But this game will soon be over, and they don’t have any idea what to do next.

So, what is there for them to do? Forget “growth,” forget “jobs,” forget “financial stability.” What should their realistic new objectives be? Well, here they are: food, shelter, transportation, and security. Their task is to find a way to provide all of these necessities on an emergency basis, in absence of a functioning economy, with commerce at a standstill, with little or no access to imports, and to make them available to a population that is largely penniless. If successful, society will remain largely intact, and will be able to begin a slow and painful process of cultural transition, and eventually develop a new economy, a gradually de-industrializing economy, at a much lower level of resource expenditure, characterized by a quite a lot of austerity and even poverty, but in conditions that are safe, decent, and dignified. If unsuccessful, society will be gradually destroyed in a series of convulsions that will leave a defunct nation composed of many wretched little fiefdoms. Given its largely depleted resource base, a dysfunctional, collapsing infrastructure, and its history of unresolved social conflicts, the territory of the Former United States will undergo a process of steady degeneration punctuated by natural and man-made cataclysms.

Food. Shelter. Transportation. Security. When it comes to supplying these survival necessities, the Soviet example offers many valuable lessons. As I already mentioned, in a collapse many economic negatives become positives, and vice versa. Let us consider each one of these in turn.

The Soviet agricultural sector was plagued by consistent underperformance. In many ways, this was the legacy of the disastrous collectivization experiment carried out in the 1930s, which destroyed many of the more prosperous farming households and herded people into collective farms. Collectivization undermined the ancient village-based agricultural traditions that had made pre-revolutionary Russia a well-fed place that was also the breadbasket of Western Europe. A great deal of further damage was caused by the introduction of industrial agriculture. The heavy farm machinery alternately compacted and tore up the topsoil while dosing it with chemicals, depleting it and killing the biota. Eventually, the Soviet government had to turn to importing grain from countries hostile to its interests – United States and Canada – and eventually expanded this to include other foodstuffs. The USSR experienced a permanent shortage of meat and other high-protein foods, and much of the imported grain was used to raise livestock to try to address this problem.

Although it was generally possible to survive on the foods available at the government stores, the resulting diet would have been rather poor, and so people tried to supplement it with food they gathered, raised, or caught, or purchased at farmers’ markets. Kitchen gardens were always common, and, once the economy collapsed, a lot of families took to growing food in earnest. The kitchen gardens, by themselves, were never sufficient, but they made a huge difference.

The year 1990 was particularly tough when it came to trying to score something edible. I remember one particular joke from that period. Black humor has always been one of Russia’s main psychological coping mechanisms. A man walks into a food store, goes to the meat counter, and he sees that it is completely empty. So he asks the butcher: “Don’t you have any fish?” And the butcher answers: “No, here is where we don’t have any meat. Fish is what they don’t have over at the seafood counter.”

Poor though it was, the Soviet food distribution system never collapsed completely. In particular, the deliveries of bread continued even during the worst of times, partly because has always been such an important part of the Russian diet, and partly because access to bread symbolized the pact between the people and the Communist government, enshrined in oft-repeated revolutionary slogans. Also, it is important to remember that in Russia most people have lived within walking distance of food shops, and used public transportation to get out to their kitchen gardens, which were often located in the countryside immediately surrounding the relatively dense, compact cities. This combination of factors made for some lean times, but very little malnutrition and no starvation.

In the United States, the agricultural system is heavily industrialized, and relies on inputs such as diesel, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and, perhaps most importantly, financing. In the current financial climate, the farmers’ access to financing is not at all assured. This agricultural system is efficient, but only if you regard fossil fuel energy as free. In fact, it is a way to transform fossil fuel energy into food with a bit of help from sunlight, to the tune of 10 calories of fossil fuel energy being embodied in each calorie that is consumed as food. The food distribution system makes heavy use of refrigerated diesel trucks, transforming food over hundreds of miles to resupply supermarkets. The food pipeline is long and thin, and it takes only a couple of days of interruptions for supermarket shelves to be stripped bare. Many people live in places that are not within walking distance of stores, not served by public transportation, and will be cut off from food sources once they are no longer able to drive.

Besides the supermarket chains, much of the nation’s nutrition needs are being met by an assortment of fast food joints and convenience stores. In fact, in many of the less fashionable parts of cities and towns, fast food and convenience store food is all that is available. In the near future, this trend is likely to extend to the more prosperous parts of town and the suburbs.

Fast food outfits such as McDonalds have more ways to cut costs, and so may prove a bit more resilient in the face of economic collapse than supermarket chains, but they are no substitute for food security, because they too depend industrial agribusiness. Their food inputs, such as high-fructose corn syrup, genetically modified potatoes, various soy-based fillers, factory-farmed beef, pork and chicken, and so forth, are derived from oil, two-thirds of which is imported, as well as fertilizer made from natural gas. They may be able to stay in business longer, supplying food-that-isn’t-really-food, but eventually they will run out of inputs along with the rest of the supply chain. Before they do, they may for a time sell burgers that aren’t really burgers, like the bread that wasn’t really bread that the Soviet government distributed in Leningrad during the Nazi blockade. It was mostly sawdust, with a bit of rye flour added for flavor.

Can we think of any ways to avoid this dismal scenario? The Russian example may give us a clue. Many Russian families could gauge how fast the economy was crashing, and, based on that, decide how many rows of potatoes to plant. Could we perhaps do something similar? There is already a healthy gardening movement in the United States; can it be scaled up? The trick is to make small patches of farmland available for non-mechanical cultivation by individuals and families, in increments as small as 1000 square feet. The ideal spots would be fertile bits of land with access to rivers and streams for irrigation. Provisions would have to be made for campsites and for transportation, allowing people to undertake seasonal migrations out to the land to grow food during the growing season, and haul the produce back to the population centers after taking in the harvest.

An even simpler approach has been successfully used in Cuba: converting urban parking lots and other empty bits of land to raised-bed agriculture. Instead of continually trucking in vegetables and other food, it is much easier to truck in soil, compost, and mulch just once a season. Raised highways can be closed to traffic (since there is unlikely to be much traffic in any case) and used to catch rainwater for irrigation. Rooftops and balconies can be used for hothouses, henhouses, and a variety of other agricultural uses.

How difficult would this be to organize? Well, Cubans were actually helped by their government, but the Russians managed to do it in more or less in spite of the Soviet bureaucrats, and so we might be able to do it in spite of the American ones. The government could theoretically head up such an effort, purely hypothetically speaking, of course, because I see no evidence that such an effort is being considered. For our fearless national leaders, such initiatives are too low-level: if they stimulate the economy and get the banks lending again, the potatoes will simply grow themselves. All they need to do is print some more money, right?

Moving on to shelter. Again, let’s look at how the Russians managed to muddle through. In the Soviet Union, people did not own their place of residence. Everyone was assigned a place to live, which was recorded in a person’s internal passport. People could not be dislodged from their place of residence for as long as they drew oxygen. Since most people in Russia live in cities, the place of residence was usually an apartment, or a room in a communal apartment, with shared bathroom and kitchen. There was a permanent housing shortage, and so people often doubled up, with three generations living together. The apartments were often crowded, sometimes bordering on squalid. If people wanted to move, they had to find somebody else who wanted to move, who would want to exchange rooms or apartments with them. There were always long waiting lists for apartments, and children often grew up, got married, and had children before receiving a place of their own.

These all seem like negatives, but consider the flip side of all this: the high population density made this living arrangement quite affordable. With several generations living together, families were on hand to help each other. Grandparents provided day care, freeing up their children’s time to do other things. The apartment buildings were always built near public transportation, so they did not have to rely on private cars to get around. Apartment buildings are relatively cheap to heat, and municipal services easy to provide and maintain because of the short runs of pipe and cable. Perhaps most importantly, after the economy collapsed, people lost their savings, many people lost their jobs, even those that still had jobs often did not get paid for months, and when they were the value of their wages was destroyed by hyperinflation, but there were no foreclosures, no evictions, municipal services such as heat, water, and sometimes even hot water continued to be provided, and everyone had their families close by. Also, because it was so difficult to relocate, people generally stayed in one place for generations, and so they tended to know all the people around them. After the economic collapse, there was a large spike in the crime rate, which made it very helpful to be surrounded by people who weren’t strangers, and who could keep an eye on things. Lastly, in an interesting twist, the Soviet housing arrangement delivered an amazing final windfall: in the 1990s all of these apartments were privatized, and the people who lived in them suddenly became owners of some very valuable real estate, free and clear.

Switching back to the situation in the US: in recent months, many people here have reconciled themselves to the idea that their house is not an ATM machine, nor is it a nest egg. They already know that they will not be able to comfortably retire by selling it, or get rich by fixing it up and flipping it, and quite a few people have acquiesced to the fact that real estate prices are going to continue heading lower. The question is, How much lower? A lot of people still think that there must be a lower limit, a “realistic” price. This thought is connected to the notion that housing is a necessity. After all, everybody needs a place to live.

Well, it is certainly true that some sort of shelter is a necessity, be it an apartment, or a dorm room, a bunk in a barrack, a boat, a camper, or a tent, a teepee, a wigwam, a shipping container… The list is virtually endless. But there is no reason at all to think that a suburban single-family house is in any sense a requirement. It is little more than a cultural preference, and a very shortsighted one at that. Most suburban houses are expensive to heat and cool, inaccessible by public transportation, expensive to hook up to public utilities because of the long runs of pipe and cable, and require a great deal of additional public expenditure on road, bridge and highway maintenance, school buses, traffic enforcement, and other nonsense. They often take up what was once valuable agricultural land. They promote a car-centric culture that is destructive of urban environments, causing a proliferation of dead downtowns. Many families that live in suburban houses can no longer afford to live in them, and expect others to bail them out.

As this living arrangement becomes unaffordable for all concerned, it will also become unlivable. Municipalities and public utilities will not have the funds to lavish on sewer, water, electricity, road and bridge repair, and police. Without cheap and plentiful gasoline, natural gas, and heating oil, many suburban dwellings will become both inaccessible and unlivable. The inevitable result will be a mass migration of suburban refugees toward the more survivable, more densely settled towns and cities. The luckier ones will find friends or family to stay with; for the rest, it would be very helpful to improvise some solution.

One obvious answer is to repurpose the ever-plentiful vacant office buildings for residential use. Converting offices to dormitories is quite straightforward. Many of them already have kitchens and bathrooms, plenty of partitions and other furniture, and all they are really missing is beds. Putting in beds is just not that difficult. The new, subsistence economy is unlikely to generate the large surpluses that are necessary for sustaining the current large population of office plankton. The businesses that once occupied these offices are not coming back, so we might as well find new and better uses for them.

Another category of real estate that is likely to go unused and that can be repurposed for new communities is college campuses. The American 4-year college is an institution of dubious merit. It exists because American public schools fail to teach in 12 years what Russian public schools manage to teach in 8. As fewer and fewer people become able to afford college, which is likely to happen, because meager career prospects after graduation will make them bad risks for student loans, perhaps this will provide the impetus to do something about the public education system. One idea would be to scrap it, then start small, but eventually build something a bit more on par with world standards.

College campuses make perfect community centers: there are dormitories for newcomers, fraternities and sororities for the more settled residents, and plenty of grand public buildings that can be put to a variety of uses. A college campus normally contains the usual wasteland of mowed turf that can be repurposed to grow food, or, at the very least, hay, and to graze cattle. Perhaps some enlightened administrators, trustees and faculty members will fall upon this idea once they see admissions flat-lining and endowments dropping to zero, without any need for government involvement. So here we have a ray of hope, don’t we.

Moving on to transportation. Here, we need to make sure that people don’t get stranded in places that are not survivable. Then we have to provide for seasonal migrations to places where people can grow, catch, or gather their own food, and then back to places where they can survive the winter without freezing to death or going stir-crazy from cabin fever. Lastly, some amount of freight will have to be moved, to transport food to population centers, as well as enough coal and firewood to keep the pipes from freezing in the remaining habitable dwellings.

All of this is going to be a bit of a challenge, because it all hinges on the availability of transportation fuels, and it seems very probable that transportation fuels will be both too expensive and in short supply before too long. From about 2005 and until the middle of 2008 the global oil has been holding steady, unable to grow materially beyond a level that has been characterized as a “bumpy plateau.” An all-time record was set in 2005, and then, after a period of record-high oil prices, again only in 2008. Then, as the financial collapse gathered speed, oil and other commodity prices crashed, along with oil production. More recently, the oil markets have come to rest on an altogether different “bumpy plateau”: the oil prices are bumping along at around $40 a barrel and can’t seem to go any lower. It would appear that oil production costs have risen to a point where it does not make economic sense to sell oil at below this price.

Now, $40 a barrel is a good price for US consumers at the moment, but there is hyperinflation on the horizon, thanks to the money-printing extravaganza currently underway in Washington, and $40 could easily become $400 and then $4000 a barrel, swiftly pricing US consumers out of the international oil market. On top of that, exporting countries would balk at the idea of trading their oil for an increasingly worthless currency, and would start insisting on payment in kind – in some sort of tangible export commodity, which the US, in its current economic state, would be hard-pressed to provide in any great quantity. Domestic oil production is in permanent decline, and can provide only about a third of current needs. This is still quite a lot of oil, but it will be very difficult to avoid the knock-on effects of widespread oil shortages. There will be widespread hoarding, quite a lot of gasoline will simply evaporate into the atmosphere, vented from various jerricans and improvised storage containers, the rest will disappear into the black market, and much fuel will be wasted driving around looking for someone willing to part with a bit of gas that’s needed for some small but critical mission.

I am quite familiar with this scenario, because I happened to be in Russia during a time of gasoline shortages. On one occasion, I found out by word of mouth that a certain gas station was open and distributing 10 liters apiece. I brought along my uncle’s wife, who at the time was 8 months pregnant, and we tried use her huge belly to convince the gas station attendant to give us an extra 10 liters with which to drive her to the hospital when the time came. No dice. The pat answer was: “Everybody is 8 months pregnant!” How can you argue with that logic? So 10 liters was it for us too, belly or no belly.

So, what can we do to get our little critical missions accomplished in spite of chronic fuel shortages? The most obvious idea, of course, is to not use any fuel. Bicycles, and cargo bikes in particular, are an excellent adaptation. Sailboats are a good idea too: not only do they hold large amounts of cargo, but they can cover huge distances, all without the use of fossil fuels. Of course, they are restricted to the coastlines and the navigable waterways. They will be hampered by the lack of dredging due to the inevitable budget shortfalls, and by bridges that refuse to open, again, due to lack of maintenance funds, but here ancient maritime techniques and improvisations can be brought to bear to solve such problems, all very low-tech and reasonably priced.

Of course, cars and trucks will not disappear entirely. Here, again, some reasonable adaptations can be brought to bear. In my book, I advocated banning the sale of new cars, as was done in the US during World War II. The benefits are numerous. First, older cars are overall more energy-efficient than new cars, because the massive amount of energy that went into manufacturing them is more highly amortized. Second, large energy savings accrue from the shutdown of an entire industry devoted to designing, building, marketing, and financing new cars. Third, older cars require more maintenance, reinvigorating the local economy at the expense of mainly foreign car manufacturers, and helping reduce the trade deficit. Fourth, this will create a shortage of cars, translating automatically into fewer, shorter car trips, higher passenger occupancy per trip, and more bicycling and use of public transportation, saving even more energy. Lastly, this would allow the car to be made obsolete on the about the same time scale as the oil industry that made it possible. We will run out of cars just as we run out of gas.

Here we are, only a year or so later, and I am most heartened to see that the US auto industry has taken my advice and is in the process of shutting down. On the other hand, the government’s actions continue to disappoint. Instead of trying to solve problems, they would rather continue to create boondoggles. The latest one is the idea of subsidizing the sales of new cars. The idea of making cars more efficient by making more efficient cars is sheer folly. I can take any pick-up truck and increase its fuel efficiency one or two thousand percent just by breaking a few laws. First, you pack about a dozen people into the bed, standing shoulder to shoulder like sardines. Second, you drive about 25 mph, down the highway, because going any faster would waste fuel and wouldn’t be safe with so many people in the back. And there you are, per passenger fuel efficiency increased by a factor of 20 or so. I believe the Mexicans have done extensive research in this area, with excellent results.

Another excellent idea pioneered in Cuba is making it illegal not to pick up hitchhikers. Cars with vacant seats are flagged down and matched up with people who need a lift. Yet another idea: since passenger rail service is in such a sad shape, and since it is unlikely that funds will be found to improve it, why not bring back the venerable institution of riding the rails by requiring rail freight companies to provide a few empty box cars for the hobos. The energy cost of the additional weight is negligible, the hobos don’t require stops because they can jump on and off, and only a couple of cars per train would ever be needed, because hobos are almost infinitely compressible, and can even ride on the roof if needed. One final transportation idea: start breeding donkeys. Horses are finicky and expensive, but donkeys can be very cost-effective and make good pack animals. My grandfather had a donkey while he was living in Tashkent in Central Asia during World War II. There was nothing much for the donkey to eat, but, as a member of the Communist Party, my grandfather had a subscription to Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, and so that’s what the donkey ate. Apparently, donkeys can digest any kind of cellulose, even when it’s loaded with communist propaganda. If I had a donkey, I would feed it the Wall Street Journal.

And so we come to the subject of security. Post-collapse Russia suffered from a serious crime wave. Ethnic mafias ran rampant, veterans who served in Afghanistan went into business for themselves, there were numerous contract killings, muggings, murders went unsolved left and right, and, in general, the place just wasn’t safe. Russians living in the US would hear that I am heading back there for a visit, and would give me a wide-eyed stare: how could I think of doing such a thing. I came through unscathed, somehow. I made a lot of interesting observations along the way.

One interesting observation is that once collapse occurs it becomes possible to rent a policeman, either for a special occasion, or generally just to follow someone around. It is even possible to hire a soldier or two, armed with AK-47s, to help you run various errands. Not only is it possible to do such things, it’s often a very good idea, especially if you happen to have something valuable that you don’t want to part with. If you can’t afford their services, then you should try to be friends with them, and to be helpful to them in various ways. Although their demands might seem exorbitant at times, it is still a good idea to do all you can to keep them on your side. For instance, they might at some point insist that you and your family move out to the garage so that they can live in your house. This may be upsetting at first, but then is it really such a good idea for you to live in a big house all by yourselves, with so many armed men running around. It may make sense to station some of them right in your house, so that they have a base of operations from which to maintain a watch and patrol the neighborhood.

A couple of years ago I half-jokingly proposed a political solution to collapse mitigation, and formulated a platform for the so-called Collapse Party. I published it with the caveat that I didn’t think there was much of a chance of my proposals becoming part of the national agenda. Much to my surprise, I turned out to be wrong. For instance, I proposed that we stop making new cars, and, lo and behold, the auto industry shuts down. I also proposed that we start granting amnesties to prisoners, because the US has the world’s largest prison population, and will not be able to afford to keep so many people locked up. It is better to release prisoners gradually, over time, rather than in a single large general amnesty, the way Saddam Hussein did it right before the US invaded. And, lo and behold, many states are starting to implement my proposal. It looks like California in particular will be forced to release some 60 thousand of the 170 thousand people it keeps locked up. That is a good start. I also proposed that we dismantle all overseas military bases (there are over a thousand of them) and repatriate all the troops. And it looks like that is starting to happen as well, except for the currently planned little side-trip to Afghanistan. I also proposed a Biblical jubilee – forgiveness of all debts, public and private. Let’s give that one… half a decade?

But if we look just at the changes that are already occurring, just the simple, predictable lack of funds, as the federal government and the state governments all go broke, will transform American society in rather predictable ways. As municipalities run out of money, police protection will evaporate. But the police still have to eat, and will find ways to use their skills to good use on a freelance basis. Similarly, as military bases around the world are shut down, soldiers will return to a country that will be unable to reintegrate them into civilian life. Paroled prisoners will find themselves in much the same predicament.

And so we will have former soldiers, former police, and former prisoners: a big happy family, with a few bad apples and some violent tendencies. The end result will be a country awash with various categories of armed men, most of them unemployed, and many of them borderline psychotic. The police in the United States are a troubled group. Many of them lose all touch with people who are not “on the force” and most of them develop an us-versus-them mentality. The soldiers returning from a tour of duty often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. The paroled prisoners suffer from a variety of psychological ailments as well. All of them will sooner or later realize that their problems are not medical but rather political. This will make it impossible for society to continue to exercise control over them. All of them will be making good use of their weapons training and other professional skills to acquire whatever they need to survive. And the really important point to remember is that they will do these things whether or not anyone thinks it legal for them to do be doing them.

I said it before and I will say it again: very few things are good or bad per se; everything has to be considered within a context. And, in a post-collapse context, not having to worry whether or not something is legal may be a very good thing. In the midst of a collapse, we will not have time to deliberate, legislate, interpret, set precedents and so on. Having to worry about pleasing a complex and expensive legal system is the last thing we should have to worry about.

Some legal impediments are really small and trivial, but they can be quite annoying nevertheless. A homeowners’ association might, say, want give you a ticket or seek a court order against you for not mowing your lawn, or for keeping livestock in your garage, or for that nice windmill you erected on a hill that you don’t own, without first getting a building permit, or some municipal busy-body might try to get you arrested for demolishing a certain derelict bridge because it was interfering with boat traffic – you know, little things like that. Well, if the association is aware that you have a large number of well armed, mentally unstable friends, some of whom still wear military and police uniforms, for old time’s sake, then they probably won’t give you that ticket or seek that court order.

Or suppose you have a great new invention that you want to make and distribute, a new agricultural implement. It’s a sort of flail studded with sharp blades. It has a hundred and one uses and is highly cost-effective, and reasonably safe provided you don’t lose your head while using it, although people have taken to calling the “flying guillotine.” You think that this is an acceptable risk, but you are concerned about the issues of consumer safety and liability insurance and possibly even criminal liability. Once again, it is very helpful to have a large number of influential, physically impressive, mildly psychotic friends who, whenever some legal matter comes up, can just can go and see the lawyers, have a friendly chat, demonstrate the proper use of the flying guillotine, and generally do whatever they have to do to settle the matter amicably, without any money changing hands, and without signing any legal documents.

Or, say, the government starts being difficult about moving things and people in and out of the country, or it wants to take too much of a cut from commercial transactions. Or perhaps your state or your town decides to conduct its own foreign policy, and the federal government sees it fit to interfere. Then it may turn out to be a good thing if someone else has the firepower to bring the government, or what remains of it, to its senses, and convince it to be reasonable and to play nice.

Or perhaps you want to start a community health clinic, so that you can provide some relief to people who wouldn’t otherwise have any health care. You don’t dare call yourself a doctor, because these people are suspicious of doctors, because doctors were always trying to rob them of their life’s savings. But suppose you have some medical training that you got in, say, Cuba, and you are quite able to handle a Caesarean or an appendectomy, to suture wounds, to treat infections, to set bones and so on. You also want to be able to distribute opiates that your friends in Afghanistan periodically send you, to ease the pain of hard post-collapse life. Well, going through the various licensing boards and getting the certifications and the permits and the malpractice insurance is all completely unnecessary, provided you can surround yourself with a lot of well-armed, well-trained, mentally unstable friends.

Food. Shelter. Transportation. Security. Security is very important. Maintaining order and public safety requires discipline, and maintaining discipline, for a lot of people, requires the threat of force. This means that people must be ready to come to each other’s defense, take responsibility for each other, and do what’s right. Right now, security is provided by a number of bloated, bureaucratic, ineffectual institutions, which inspire more anger and despondency than discipline, and dispense not so much violence as ill treatment. That is why we have the world’s highest prison population. They are supposedly there to protect people from each other, but in reality their mission is not even to provide security; it is to safeguard property, and those who own it. Once these institutions run out of resources, there will be a period of upheaval, but in the end people will be forced to learn to deal with each other face to face, and Justice will once again become a personal virtue rather than a federal department.

I’ve covered what I think are basics, based on what I saw work and what I think might work reasonably well here. I assume that a lot of you are thinking that this is all quite far into the future, if in fact it ever gets that bad. You should certainly feel free to think that way. The danger there is that you will miss the opportunity to adapt to the new reality ahead of time, and then you will get trapped. As I see it, there is a choice to be made: you can accept the failure of the system now and change your course accordingly, or you can decide that you must try to stay the course, and then you will probably have to accept your own individual failure later.

So how do you prepare? Lately, I’ve been hearing from a lot of high-powered, successful people about their various high-powered, successful associates. Usually, the story goes something like this: “My a. financial advisor, b. investment banker, or c. commanding officer has recently a. put all his money in gold, b. bought a log cabin up in the mountains, or c. built a bunker under his house stocked with six months of food and water. Is this normal?” And I tell them, yes, of course, that’s perfectly harmless. He’s just having a mid-collapse crisis. But that’s not really preparation. That’s just someone being colorful in an offbeat, countercultural sort of way.

So, how do you prepare, really? Let’s go through a list of questions that people typically ask me, and I will try to briefly respond to each of them.

OK, first question: How about all these financial boondoggles? What on earth is going on? People are losing their jobs left and right, and if we calculate unemployment the same way it was done during the Great Depression, instead of looking at the cooked numbers the government is trying to feed us now, then we are heading toward 20% unemployment. And is there any reason to think it’ll stop there? Do you happen to believe that prosperity is around the corner? Not only jobs and housing equity, but retirement savings are also evaporating. The federal government is broke, state governments are broke, some more than others, and the best they can do is print money, which will quickly lose value. So, how can we get the basics if we don’t have any money? How is that done? Good question.

As I briefly mentioned, the basics are food, shelter, transportation, and security. Shelter poses a particularly interesting problem at the moment. It is still very much overpriced, with many people paying mortgages and rents that they can no longer afford while numerous properties stand vacant. The solution, of course, is to cut your losses and stop paying. But then you might soon have to relocate. That is OK, because, as I mentioned, there is no shortage of vacant properties around. Finding a good place to live will become less and less of a problem as people stop paying their rents and mortgages and get foreclosed or evicted, because the number of vacant properties will only increase. The best course of action is to become a property caretaker, legitimately occupying a vacant property rent-free, and keeping an eye on things for the owner. What if you can’t find a position as a property caretaker? Well, then you might have to become a squatter, maintain a list of other vacant properties that you can go to next, and keep your camping gear handy just in case. If you do get tossed out, chances are, the people who tossed you out will then think about hiring a property caretaker, to keep the squatters out. And what do you do if you become property caretaker? Well, you take care of the property, but you also look out for all the squatters, because they are the reason you have a legitimate place to live. A squatter in hand is worth three absentee landlords in the bush. The absentee landlord might eventually cut his losses and go away, but your squatter friends will remain as your neighbors. Having some neighbors is so much better than living in a ghost town.

What if you still have a job? How do you prepare then? The obvious answer is, be prepared to quit or to be laid off or fired at any moment. It really doesn’t matter which one of these it turns out to be; the point is to sustain zero psychological damage in the process. Get your burn rate to as close to zero as you can, by spending as little money as possible, so than when the job goes away, not much has to change. While at work, do as little as possible, because all this economic activity is just a terrible burden on the environment. Just gently ride it down to a stop and jump off.

If you still have a job, or if you still have some savings, what do you do with all the money? The obvious answer is, build up inventory. The money will be worthless, but a box of bronze nails will still be a box of bronze nails. Buy and stockpile useful stuff, especially stuff that can be used to create various kinds of alternative systems for growing food, providing shelter, and providing transportation. If you don’t own a patch of dirt free and clear where you can stockpile stuff, then you can rent a storage container, pay it a few years forward, and just sit on it until reality kicks in again and there is something useful for you to do with it. Some of you may be frightened by the future I just described, and rightly so. There is nothing any of us can do to change the path we are on: it is a huge system with tremendous inertia, and trying to change its path is like trying to change the path of a hurricane. What we can do is prepare ourselves, and each other, mostly by changing our expectations, our preferences, and scaling down our needs. It may mean that you will miss out on some last, uncertain bit of enjoyment. On the other hand, by refashioning yourself into someone who might stand a better chance of adapting to the new circumstances, you will be able to give to yourself, and to others, a great deal of hope that would otherwise not exist.

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by Eric deCarbonnel, on GlobalResearch.ca

After reading about the droughts in two major agricultural countries, China and Argentina, I decided to research the extent other food producing nations were also experiencing droughts. This project ended up taking a lot longer than I thought. 2009 looks to be a humanitarian disaster around much of the world

To understand the depth of the food Catastrophe that faces the world this year, consider the graphic below depicting countries by USD value of their agricultural output, as of 2006.

Now, consider the same graphic with the countries experiencing droughts highlighted.

The countries that make up two thirds of the world’s agricultural output are experiencing drought conditions. Whether you watch a video of the drought in China, Australia, Africa, South America, or the US , the scene will be the same: misery, ruined crop, and dying cattle.

China

The drought in Northern China, the worst in 50 years, is worsening, and summer harvest is now threatened. The area of affected crops has expanded to 161 million mu (was 141 million last week), and 4.37 million people and 2.1 million livestock are facing drinking water shortage. The scarcity of rain in some parts of the north and central provinces is the worst in recorded history.

The drought which started in November threatens over half the wheat crop in eight provinces – Hebei, Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Henan, Shandong, Shaanxi and Gansu.

Henan
China’s largest crop producing province, Henan, has issued the highest-level drought warning. Henan has received an average rainfall of 10.5 millimeters since November 2008, almost 80 percent less than in the same period in the previous years. The Henan drought, which began in November, is the most severe since 1951.

Anhui
Anhui Province issued a red drought alert, with more than 60 percent of the crops north of the Huaihe River plagued by a major drought.

Shanxi
Shanxi Province was put on orange drought alert on Jan. 21, with one million people and 160,000 heads of livestock are facing water shortage.

Jiangsu
Jiangsu province has already lost over one fifth of the wheat crops affected by drought. Local agricultural departments are diverting water from nearby rivers in an emergency effort to save the rest.

Hebei
Over 100 million cubic meters of water has been channeled in from outside the province to fight Hebei’s drought.

Shaanxi
1.34 million acres of crops across the bone-dry Shanxi province are affected by the worsening drought.

Shandong
Since last November, Shandong province has experienced 73 percent less rain than the same period in previous years, with little rainfall forecast for the future.

Relief efforts are under way. The Chinese government has allocated 86.7 billion yuan (about $12.69 billion) to drought-hit areas. Authorities have also resorted to cloud-seeding, and some areas received a sprinkling of rain after clouds were hit with 2,392 rockets and 409 cannon shells loaded with chemicals. However, there is a limit to what can be done in the face of such widespread water shortage.

As I have previously written, China is facing hyperinflation , and this record drought will make things worse. China produces 18% of the world’s grain each year.

Australia

Australia has been experiencing an unrelenting drought since 2004, and 41 percent of Australia’s agriculture continues to suffer from the worst drought in 117 years of record-keeping. The drought has been so severe that rivers stopped flowing, lakes turned toxic, and farmers abandoned their land in frustration:

A) The Murray River stopped flowing at its terminal point, and its mouth has closed up.
B) Australia’s lower lakes are evaporating, and they are now a meter (3.2 feet) below sea level. If these lakes evaporate any further, the soil and the mud system below the water is going to be exposed to the air. The mud will then acidify, releasing sulfuric acid and a whole range of heavy metals. After this occurs, those lower lake systems will essentially become a toxic swamp which will never be able to be recovered. The Australian government’s only options to prevent this are to allow salt water in, creating a dead sea, or to pray for rain.

For some reason, the debate over climate change is essentially over in Australia.

The United States

California
California is facing its worst drought in recorded history . The drought is predicted to be the most severe in modern times, worse than those in 1977 and 1991. Thousands of acres of row crops already have been fallowed, with more to follow. The snowpack in the Northern Sierra, home to some of the state’s most important reservoirs, proved to be just 49 percent of average. Water agencies throughout the state are scrambling to adopt conservation mandates.

Texas
The Texan drought is reaching historic proportion . Dry conditions near Austin and San Antonio have been exceeded only once before—the drought of 1917-18. 88 percent of Texas is experiencing abnormally dry conditions, and 18 percent of the state is in either extreme or exceptional drought conditions. The drought areas have been expanding almost every month. Conditions in Texas are so bad cattle are keeling over in parched pastures and dying. Lack of rainfall has left pastures barren, and cattle producers have resorted to feeding animals hay. Irreversible damage has been done to winter wheat crops in Texas. Both short and long-term forecasts don’t call for much rain at all, which means the Texas drought is set to get worse.

Augusta Region (Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina)
The Augusta region has been suffering from a worsening two year drought. Augusta’s rainfall deficit is already approaching 2 inches so far in 2009, with January being the driest since 1989.

Florida
Florida has been hard hit by winter drought, damaging crops, and half of state is in some level of a drought.

La Niña likely to make matters worse

Enough water a couple of degrees cooler than normal has accumulated in the eastern part of the Pacific to create a La Niña, a weather pattern expected to linger until at least the spring. La Niña generally means dry weather for Southern states, which is exactly what the US doesn’t need right now.

South America

Argentina
The worst drought in half a century has turned Argentina’s once-fertile soil to dust and pushed the country into a state of emergency. Cow carcasses litter the prairie fields, and sun-scorched soy plants wither under the South American summer sun. Argentina’s food production is set to go down a minimum of 50 percent, maybe more. The country’s wheat yield for 2009 will be 8.7 million metric tons, down from 16.3 million in 2008. Concern with domestic shortages (domestic wheat consumption being approximately 6.7 million metric ton), Argentina has granted no new export applications since mid January .

Brazil
Brazil has cut its outlook for the crops and will do so again after assessing damage to plants from desiccation in drought-stricken regions. Brazil is the world’s second-biggest exporter of soybeans and third-largest for corn.

Brazil’s numbers for corn harvesting:

Harvested in 2008: 58.7 million tons
January 8 forecast: 52.3 million tons
February 6 forecast: 50.3 metric tons (optimistic)
Harvested in 2009: ???

Paraguay
Severe drought affecting Paraguay’s economy has pushed the government to declare agricultural emergency. Crops that have direct impact on cattle food are ruined, and the soy plantations have been almost totally lost in some areas.

Uruguay
Uruguay declared an “agriculture emergency” last month, due to the worst drought in decades which is threatening crops, livestock and the provision of fresh produce.

The a worsening drought is pushing up food and beverage costs causing Uruguay’s consumer prices to rise at the fastest annual pace in more than four years in January.

Bolivia
There hasn’t been a drop of rain in Bolivia in nearly a year. Cattle dying, crops ruined, etc…

Chile
The severe drought affecting Chile has caused an agricultural emergency in 50 rural districts, and large sectors of the economy are concerned about possible electricity rationing in March. The countries woes stem from the “La Niña” climate phenomenon which has over half of Chile dangling by a thread: persistently cold water in the Pacific ocean along with high atmospheric pressure are preventing rain-bearing fronts from entering central and southern areas of the country. As a result, the water levels at hydroelectric dams and other reservoirs are at all-time lows.

Horn of Africa

Africa faces food shortages and famine. Food production across the Horn of Africa has suffered because of the lack of rainfall. Also, half the agricultural soil has lost nutrients necessary to grow plant, and the declining soil fertility across Africa is exacerbating drought related crop losses.

Kenya
Kenya is the worst hit nation in the region, having been without rainfall for 18 months. Kenya needs to import food to bridge a shortfall and keep 10 million of its people from starvation. Kenya’s drought suffering neighbors will be of little help.

Tanzania
A poor harvest due to drought has prompted Tanzania to stop issuing food export permits. Tanzania has also intensified security at the border posts to monitor and prevent the export of food. There are 240,000 people in need of immediate relief food in Tanzania.

Burundi
Crops in the north of Burundi have withered, leaving the tiny East African country facing a severe food shortage

Uganda
Severe drought in northeastern Uganda’s Karamoja region has the left the country on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. The dry conditions and acute food shortages, which have left Karamoja near starvation, are unlikely to improve before October when the next harvest is due.

South Africa
South Africa faces a potential crop shortage after wheat farmers in the eastern part of the Free State grain belt said they were likely to produce their lowest crop in 30 years this year. South Africans are “extremely angry” that food prices continue to rise.

Other African nations suffering from drought in 2009 are: Malawi, Zambia, Swaziland, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tunisia, Angola, and Ethiopia.

Middle East and Central Asia

The Middle East and Central Asia are suffering from the worst droughts in recent history , and food grain production has dropped to some of the lowest levels in decades. Total wheat production in the wider drought-affected region is currently estimated to have declined by at least 22 percent in 2009. Owing to the drought’s severity and region-wide scope, irrigation supplies from reservoirs, rivers, and groundwater have been critically reduced. Major reservoirs in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria are all at low levels requiring restrictions on usage. Given the severity of crop losses in the region, a major shortage of planting seed for the 2010 crop is expected.

Iraq
In Iraq during the winter grain growing period, there was essentially no measurable rainfall in many regions, and large swaths of rain-fed fields across northern Iraq simply went unplanted. These primarily rain-fed regions in northern Iraq are described as an agricultural disaster area this year, with wheat production falling 80-98 percent from normal levels. The USDA estimates total wheat production in Iraq in 2009 at 1.3 million tons, down 45 percent from last year.

Syria
Syria is experienced its worst drought in the past 18 years, and the USDA estimates total wheat production in Syria in 2009 at 2.0 million tons, down 50 percent from last year. Last summer, the taps ran dry in many neighborhoods of Damascus and residents of the capital city were forced to buy water on the black market. The severe lack of rain this winter has exacerbated the problem.

Afghanistan
Lack of rainfall has led Afghanistan to the worst drought conditions in the past 10 years. The USDA estimates 2008/09 wheat production in Afghanistan at 1.5 million tons, down 2.3 million or 60 percent from last year. Afghanistan normally produces 3.5-4.0 million tons of wheat annually.

Jordan
Jordan’s persistent drought has grown worse, with almost no rain falling on the kingdom this year. The Jordanian government has stopped pumping water to farms to preserve the water for drinking purposes.

Other Middle Eastern and Central Asian nations suffering from drought in 2009 are: The Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Israel, Bangladesh, Myanmar, India, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Thailand, Nepal, Pakistan, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Cyprus, and Iran.

Lack of credit will worsen food shortage

A lack of credit for farmers curbed their ability to buy seeds and fertilizers in 2008/2009 and will limit production around the world. The effects of droughts worldwide will also be amplified by the smaller amount of seeds and fertilizers used to grow crops.

Low commodity prices will worsen food shortage

The low prices at the end of 2008 discouraged the planting of new crops in 2009. In Kansas for example, farmers seeded nine million acres, the smallest planting for half a century. Wheat plantings this year are down about 4 million acres across the US and about 1.1 million acres in Canada. So even discounting drought related losses, the US, Canada, and other food producing nations are facing lower agricultural output in 2009.

Europe will not make up for the food shortfall

Europe, the only big agricultural region relatively unaffected by drought, is set for a big drop in food production. Due to the combination of a late plantings, poorer soil conditions, reduced inputs, and light rainfall, Europe’s agricultural output is likely to fall by 10 to 15 percent.

Stocks of foodstuff are dangerously low

Low stocks of foodstuff make the world’s falling agriculture output particularly worrisome. The combined averaged of the ending stock levels of the major trading countries of Australia, Canada, United States, and the European Union have been declining steadily in the last few years:

2002-2005: 47.4 million tons
2007: 37.6 million tons
2008: 27.4 million tons

These inventory numbers are dangerously low, especially considering the horrifying possibility that China’s 60 million tons of grain reserves doesn’t actually exists .

Global food Catastrophe

The world is heading for a drop in agricultural production of 20 to 40 percent, depending on the severity and length of the current global droughts. Food producing nations are imposing food export restrictions. Food prices will soar, and, in poor countries with food deficits, millions will starve.

The deflation debate should end now

The droughts plaguing the world’s biggest agricultural regions should end the debate about deflation in 2009. The demand for agricultural commodities is relatively immune to developments in the business cycles (at least compared to that of energy or base metals), and, with a 20 to 40 percent decline in world production, already rising food prices are headed significantly higher.

In fact, agricultural commodities NEED to head higher and soon, to prevent even greater food shortages and famine. The price of wheat, corn, soybeans, etc must rise to a level which encourages the planting of every available acre with the best possible fertilizers. Otherwise, if food prices stay at their current levels, production will continue to fall, sentencing millions more to starvation.

Competitive currency appreciation

Some observers are anticipating “competitive currency devaluations” in addition to deflation for 2009 (nations devalue their currencies to help their export sector). The coming global food shortage makes this highly unlikely. Depreciating their currency in the current environment will produce the unwanted consequence of boosting exports—of food. Even with export restrictions like those in China, currency depreciation would cause the outflow of significant quantities of grain via the black market.

Instead of “competitive currency devaluations”, spiking food prices will likely cause competitive currency appreciation in 2009. Foreign exchange reserves exist for just this type of emergency . Central banks around the world will lower domestic food prices by either directly selling off their reserves to appreciate their currencies or by using them to purchase grain on the world market.

Appreciating a currency is the fastest way to control food inflation. A more valuable currency allows a nation to monopolize more global resources (ie: the overvalued dollar allows the US to consume 25% of the world’s oil despite having only 4% of the world’s population). If China were to selloff its US reserves, its enormous population would start sucking up the world’s food supply like the US has been doing with oil.

On the flip side, when a nation appreciates its currency and starts consuming more of the world’s resources, it leaves less for everyone else. So when china appreciates the yuan, food shortages worldwide will increase and prices everywhere else will jump upwards. As there is nothing that breeds social unrest like soaring food prices, nations around the world, from Russia, to the EU, to Saudi Arabia, to India, will sell off their foreign reserves to appreciate their currencies and reduce the cost of food imports. In response to this, China will sell even more of its reserves and so on. That is competitive currency appreciation.

When faced with competitive currency appreciation, you do NOT want to be the world’s reserve currency. The dollar is likely to do very poorly as central banks liquidate trillions in US holdings to buy food and appreciate their currencies.

We are also seeing unemployment soar. All these people who are no longer employed in the formal economy could be growing food – closely packed vegetables, or edible perennials that require less water. We are definitely going to see ‘conventional’ or industrial food prices rocket in the next few months. We may well see less grains like wheat in our diets, but many of us us could be growing amaranth or quinoa in small plots, both in the city and out. Grow more than your family needs, and you could find yourself well valued in your local community, and able to sell, swap or barter those surpluses for other items that you need.

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by James Howard Kunstler, reprinted from Alternet.

Venturing out each day into this land of strip malls, freeways, office parks, and McHousing pods, one can’t help but be impressed at how America looks the same as it did a few years ago, while seemingly overnight we have become another country. All the old mechanisms that enabled our way of life are broken, especially endless revolving credit, at every level, from household to business to the banks to the US Treasury.

Peak energy has combined with the diminishing returns of over-investments in complexity to pull the “kill switch” on our vaunted “way of life” — the set of arrangements that we won’t apologize for or negotiate. So, the big question before the nation is: do we try to re-start the whole smoking, creaking hopeless, futureless machine? Or do we start behaving differently?

The attempted re-start of revolving debt consumerism is an exercise in futility. We’ve reached the limit of being able to create additional debt at any level without causing further damage, additional distortions, and new perversities of economy (and of society, too). We can’t raise credit card ceilings for people with no ability make monthly payments. We can’t promote more mortgages for people with no income. We can’t crank up a home-building industry with our massive inventory of unsold, and over-priced houses built in the wrong places. We can’t ramp back up the blue light special shopping fiesta. We can’t return to the heyday of Happy Motoring, no matter how many bridges we fix or how many additional ring highways we build around our already-overblown and over-sprawled metroplexes. Mostly, we can’t return to the now-complete “growth” cycle of “economic expansion.” We’re done with all that. History is done with our doing that, for now.

So far — after two weeks in office — the Obama team seems bent on a campaign to sustain the unsustainable at all costs, to attempt to do all the impossible things listed above. Mr. Obama is not the only one, of course, who is invoking the quest for renewed “growth.” This is a tragic error in collective thinking. What we really face is a comprehensive contraction in our activities, especially the scale of our activities, and the pressing need to readjust the systems of everyday life to a level of decreased complexity.

For instance, the myth that we can become “energy independent and yet remain car-dependent is absurd. In terms of liquid fuels, we’re simply trapped. We import two-thirds of the oil we use and there is absolutely no chance that drill-drill-drilling (or any other scheme) will change that. The public and our leaders can not face the reality of this. The great wish for “alternative” liquid fuels (bio fuels, algae excreta) will never be anything more than a wish at the scales required, and the parallel wish to keep all our cars running by other means — hydrogen fuel cells, electric motors — is equally idle and foolish. We cannot face the mandate of reality, which is to do everything possible to make our living places walkable, and connect them with public transit. The stimulus bills in congress clearly illustrate our failure to understand the situation.

The attempt to restart “consumerism” will be equally disappointing. It was a manifestation of the short peak energy decades of history, and now that we’re past peak energy, it’s over. That seventy percent of the economy is over, especially the part that allowed people to buy stuff with no money. From now on people will have to buy stuff with money they earn and save, and they will be buying a lot less stuff. For a while, a lot of stuff will circulate through the yard sales and Craigslist, and some resourceful people will get busy fixing broken stuff that still has value. But the other infrastructure of shopping is toast, especially the malls, the strip malls, the real estate investment trusts that own it all, many of the banks that lent money to the REITs, the chain-stores and chain eateries, of course, and, alas, the non-chain mom-and-pop boutiques in these highway-oriented venues.

Washington is evidently seized by panic right now. I don’t know anyone who works in the White House, but I must suppose that they have learned in two weeks that these systems are absolutely tanking, that the previous way of life that everybody was so set on not apologizing for has reached the end of the line. We seem to be learning a new and interesting lesson: that even a team that promises change is actually petrified of too much change, especially change that they can’t really control.

The argument about “change” during the election was sufficiently vague that no one was really challenged to articulate a future that wasn’t, materially, more-of-the-same. I suppose the Obama team may have thought they would only administer it differently than the Bush team — but basically life in the USA would continue being about all those trips to the mall, and the cubicle jobs to support that, and the family safaris to visit Grandma in Lansing, and the vacations at Sea World, and Skipper’s $20,000 college loan, and Dad’s yearly junket to Las Vegas, and refinancing the house, and rolling over this loan and that loan… and that has all led to a very dead end in a dark place.

If this nation wants to survive without an intense political convulsion, there’s a lot we can do, but none of it is being voiced in any corner of Washington at this time. We have to get off of petro-agriculture and grow our food locally, at a smaller scale, with more people working on it and fewer machines. This is an enormous project, which implies change in everything from property allocation to farming methods to new social relations. But if we don’t focus on it right away, a lot of Americans will end up starving, and rather soon. We have to rebuild the railroad system in the US, and electrify it, and make it every bit as good as the system we once had that was the envy of the world. If we don’t get started on this right away, we’re screwed. We will have tremendous trouble moving people and goods around this continent-sized nation. We have to reactivate our small towns and cities because the metroplexes are going to fail at their current scale of operation. We have to prepare for manufacturing at a much smaller (and local) scale than the scale represented by General Motors.

The political theater of the moment in Washington is not focused on any of this, but on the illusion that we can find new ways of keeping the old ways going. Many observers have noted lately how passive the American public is in the face of their dreadful accelerating losses. It’s a tragic mistake to tell them that they can have it all back again. We’ll see a striking illustration of “phase change” as the public mood goes from cow-like incomprehension to grizzly bear-like rage. Not only will they discover the impossibility of getting back to where they were, but they will see the panicked actions of Washington drive what remains of our capital resources down a rat hole.

A consensus is firming up on each side of the “stimulus” question, largely along party lines — simply those who are for it and those who are against it, mostly by degrees. Nobody in either party — including supposed independents such as Bernie Sanders or John McCain, not to mention President Obama — has a position for directing public resources and effort at any of the things I mentioned above: future food security, future travel-and-transport security, or the future security of livable, walkable dwelling places based on local networks of economic interdependency. This striking poverty of imagination may lead to change that will tear the nation to pieces.

Yes, not enough people are seeing what needs to be done. And not enough people are listening to those of us who can see what needs to be done. And too many of those not enough people, are expecting help to come from government, which was lost to corporatism many years ago.

We have to do ths ourselves. And hopefully, some people will see what those of us who can see what needs doing, are doing, and join in.

The next phase of collapse is about to hit, and we will see a lot of commercial real estate go into receivership very soon, which will make a lot more people unemployed, which will reduce the spendig power of society, which will see more shops and malls and businesses fold, which will see much more unemployment.

But there is much to do. The world is still working against us, and much of the old world will continue to wor against us until it is gone. And yet, we can still be busy building a new world as the old one crumbles.

We think that local food security is the priority, and a project that will need a lot of workers. Its time to forget consumerism and embrace permaculture.

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First of a proposed series of articles at The Oil Drum: Campfire, about adapting to the new paradigm/culture without having to move. By Sharon Astyk.

The first question to ask is whether we should take in-place adaptation seriously at all. Shouldn’t we, ideally, try and choose the best possible place to deal with the coming crisis?
Some analysts suggest we will have to have vast population migrations out of suburbia, say, to more densely packed and walkable cities, while others propose re-ruralization. My suspicion is that both of these will probably occur to some degree – but that the progression will be intermittent, not very well organized. And plenty of people will stay in place, either in their homes and apartments, or will settle in property known to them, owned or rented by family or close friends.

Why will they stay? Well, for millions of people who own a home, but aren’t in immediate danger of foreclosure, the option of selling, even if they are not “underwater” is problematic – with home sales at historic lows, most of us will be staying put, if we don’t lose or abandon our properties. They can’t afford to change jobs, because they will lose seniority and potentially get the axe. They can’t afford the additional costs of moving, buying a new property or paying first, last and security.

And if they do move? Some of us will migrate, but a lot of us have compelling reasons to live where we do – community, culture, and family. What most of us will probably do in dire circumstances is simply consolidate resources with people we can trust – we’ll take in boarders or move in with family or friends. In tough times, we are likely to need family and community more – thus staying close to elderly parents or grandparents who can help with childcare while parents look for work becomes more urgent.

Some of us may also decide where we are is the right place – it isn’t just a matter of not being able to move, but of believing that we are best in places we know. The time for the radical changes required by picking up and moving and starting over may have been a few years ago. More familiar projects may be wiser and better for many of us.

Another force pushing us to stay put, as I wrote in my book _Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front_, one of the most powerful strategies for mitigation is likely to be a move into the informal economy. Teodor Shanin, founder of Peasant Economics has observed that the formal economy (the one most but not all Americans operate in) makes use of only ¼ of all the world’s workers. Most economic activity takes place in the informal economy, and the informal economy generally expands in response to contraction by the formal economy. In an essay in “New Scientist” Shanin writes,

“The concept emerged in Africa 25 years ago. Researchers began to notice that there was no economic explanation for how the majority of the population survived. They didn’t own land. They didn’t seem to have any assets. According to conventional economics, they should have died of hunger long ago, but they survived. To understand this, researchers looked at how these people actually lived, rather than at economic models . They found that their way of life was completely the opposite of how a human being in industrial society survives. They didn’t have a job, pension, steady place to work or regular flow of income. Families held a range of occupations from farming and selling in the market to doing odd jobs or handicrafts. Their aim was survival rather than maximization of profit. Rather than earn wages, labor was used within family.”

Similar informal economies have emerged in undergoing collapse or economic crisis in Russia, Argentina, and elsewhere, and there is really no reason to believe that the informal economy – which includes domestic labor, cottage industry, illegal activity, under the table businesses, and family economics will not expand here . These economic activities generally make use of family, local, household resources and needs – the soil your home sits on, the wood on your woodlot, providing services to neighbors, making use of household space to operate a business. Where homes have been a major economic drain, they have the potential, for those not over-leveraged, to become a source of income.

It seems likely then that some people whose homes have been or can be made valuable to them – by improving soil, the starting of cottage industries, strong social, familial and community ties, and local economic initiatives will have strong incentives to stay in place. We may see the common pattern of Global South employment in which some family members are sent where formal jobs are available to work, while most of the family remains together. With more people per household, mortgage and property costs may become manageable, while the benefits of family and community are increased by our lack of fossil fuels.

Triaging Your Situation

This does not mean that everyone can or should stay in place. Those who bought homes with ARMs, or at the peak of the market, those already in financial trouble, or without community and family ties may wish or need to relocate. But I still anticipate that at least in the short term, a large number of people all over the world will respond to the present crisis by remaining in their present homes or in a place they have existing ties.

So it is worth asking – what are the first steps if you’ve decided to remain your home, with all its imperfections and disadvantages (and its perfections and advantages – remember, there is no perfect place)? Your goal is to be able to handle what is thrown at you, crises economic, energetic, ecological or political – or all of the above. And the first step, as always, is triage – setting priorities.

First Steps

We all need to get ready to deal with the kind of short term crisis that affects almost everyone sooner or later. Given the fragility of our systems, more and more of these disruptions are likely. Thus, our first project is a medium range systems problem – something that can be caused by ice storms, blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, geopolitical crisis, blackout… you name it. We need to be ready to get along for a few weeks to a month in a very messed up short term situation. This is useful even if what we face is a very messed up long term situation.

That means moving first to get basic needs met. Thus, we concentrate on first tier solutions. The qualities that these first tier solutions must have are these

1. They keep you alive and healthy.

2. They are simple, accessible and not too expensive – since everyone needs these

You need a reserve of food, and a way to cook it without power, lots of warm clothing and blankets if cold is a potential problem, and sufficient water and ways to keep cool if heat is the issue. You need stored water and a backup source of water. You will want some basic lighting and a way to manage toileting and hygiene issues, clean bodies and clothes. You need away to keep aware of events and communicate with family and community.

Other than the food, medications and water, the emergency measures could be quite cheap, because they don’t have to be comfortable and pleasant – for a few weeks, you can winter camp in your house, for a few weeks you can pee in a bucket, for a few weeks you can do laundry infrequently in another plastic bucket, light your evening with your headlamp and rechargeable batteries, communicate with your neighbors by trekking out to knocked together neighborhood bulletin board. That is, you can be uncomfortable and/or inconvenienced for the short term, in most cases. That doesn’t mean all the short term solutions are unpleasant – in fact, sometimes you’ll be surprised by how minor the inconvenience is, but the most important thing is that you have a way of meeting those needs, not that it be the perfect method.

For those who can’t tolerate much discomfort or inconvenience, because of health problems, age, disability or simple intolerance, then you will need to move up a little in the list to the next steps, the long term solutions to these problems. That is, you may need solar panels, expensive equipment or a generator, which come with attendant costs. But for most of us, the first-tier inconvenient but survivable solutions get us part of the way there, and many of them could be used longer if we had no choice.

But we all know that short term isn’t everything. What happens if we can’t afford electricity or gas anymore? What happens if we’re suddenly in the Long Emergency, not the short one? The preparations you’ve made for a short term crisis will get old really fast – but most of them will still serve you. That is, you will not like lighting your house with only a headlamp and two flashlights, and you will not like going to bed when it gets dark in December in the north, but you can do it if you have no choice. Some of us may already have second tier solutions in place – we might have a wringer washer already and not need the plastic buckets. Still, I recommend that you have the equipment or ability to use these minimal backup solutions, if only so you can teach others in your community.

The Second Tier

The next level of preparations are partly about survival, but more about creating a life you can live with in the long term. If you have money, these are easy changes to make. If you don’t have money, it will take time, and saving and scavenging to manage these systems – and you may be stuck with the original, inexpensive backups at times. Only you can decide what you can afford, have time to do, and what portion of your resources you can devote to improving your comfort and giving you more time – but my own observation is that these accommodations increase rapidly in value in tough situations.

This is where you begin going step by step through the systems you depend on, figuring out what you can do to allow you to live decently and comfortably. Step by step, you start replacing, adding or converting to sustainable systems that will serve you in the absence of existing infrastructure. My own belief is that while renewable energy systems are an excellent supplemental second tier system, your primary systems should operate a technological level you are like to be able to support even in the worst-case scenarios you think likely.

That is, even someone with a solar system large enough to run their washing machine should have a bucket at a minimum, and might want a small pressure washer. Even someone with a generator for their well pump might want a manual pump on their well or rain cachement. Someone with a chainsaw still needs an axe and bucksaw. The reason for this is that things break, supply lines can be disrupted, replacement parts may not be available. Redundancy is healthy – and can be essential. And if you must choose between the solar panels and manual well pump, my own feeling is that you should prioritize a system you can manage, repair and fully understand, whichever that is.

For those without much money, it is much easier to convert permanently to the alternatives in many cases, than it is to maintain both “normal” and “backup” systems. That is, it is hard, if you are poor, to afford solar lanterns – unless, of course, you use them as a lighting source and save money on your electric bill. Sometimes if things seem to costly, the problem may be that you are imagining them as a backup, not a conversion to a new way of life. You may prefer the old way, but if you are serious enough about your concern for the future, converting early isn’t the end of the world – our family has made this choice a number of times, in fact.

Some of the choices are easy and cheap – turning your lawn into a landscape of edibles can be quite inexpensive, if you can get slips and starts and divisions from people and buy plants and seeds from your cooperative extension. Converting to a composting toilet is inexpensive and can save you a lot of money on your water bill. Switching to eating out of your food storage can save a lot on your food budget. Sometimes you can do things on the cheap if you have time – but if you have neither time nor money, things get difficult, so you need to prioritize.

The Order and Ethics of Things

There are two good ways to prioritize, and honestly it makes sense to do both simultaneously. Prioritize by urgency, and by availability. Generally, you should concentrate on the things that will matter to your happiness and comfort the most – for a family with two kids in diapers, this might be not having to do laundry in a bucket, for someone who is always cold, a good heat source. But don’t also forget (and this is a great chore to delegate to elderly relatives, friends who want to barter or teenagers) to keep an eye on craigslist, freecycle, garage sales and to talk about what you are trying to do with others, so you can take advantage of opportunities. Try and have a list of all the stuff you’d like to do, so that when that old handwasher or treadle sewing machine shows up, you can cross that off your priority list.

While you are finding comfortable ways to keep cool, refrigerate food, keep safe, go to the bathroom and the rest, we can also begin thinking about the long term sustainability and community implications of these projects. That is, if you are going to burn wood, you need to be planting trees and harvesting carefully. You are just as vulnerable to diseases caused by human waste disposal problems as your neighbors – even if you don’t contribute to them, you may get sick when you water supply is contaminated. So after you deal with your own water system, share your knowledge. Renewable and lasting systems are central. If your private solutions are likely to contribute to the long term problems, pick different solutions.

In peasant economics, we find that most wealth accumulated by families is passed down through generations. Thus, as Shanin observes, a bicycle for a family may be expected to last until the family’s father is too old to ride it and the daughter can take over. Land and property are passed down, and mostly stewarded – they are not disposed of lightly, because they imply an obligation to future generations who are not expected to have enough wealth to replace what we are careless with now. It would behoove most of us, as we make our adaptation plans, to ensure that our strategies serve not just our present, but our future – if our adaptations destroy future capacities to warm, feed, slake thirst, protect other people, perhaps we need to find new adaptation strategies.

Finally, you should practice. That doesn’t just mean trying the solar battery charger once, or making sure you know how to cook on your woodstove – try living with these systems routinely, and turning off the ones you’ve depended on up until now. Consider a test run, when you turn everything off in the winter for a week, or where you live only on your stored and garden food for a month – these tests will tell you really basic things you need to know, and show you the holes in your system while you still have a chance to plug them.

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What does a doom prophetess do when the stuff she’s been predicting is already happening, asks Sharon Astyk at Casaubon’s Book.

Despite the fact that there are plenty of people out there who view me as wildly apocalyptic, I don’t actually consider myself a doomer. My own feeling is that while radical restructuring awaits us, our future probably won’t look much like _The Road_. I have argued that what we face due to peak energy, climate change and our financial crisis can best be described as “ordinary human poverty” – and we can do much to mediate our experience, that we can experience either an ordinary, survivable poverty or one that becomes pathological, based on our own choices.

On the other hand, compared to the mainstream culture, which tells us endlessly that things will stay the same or get better always, I am, of course, your friendly neighborhood Apocalyptic Dominatrix of Doom. That’s me, cracking the whip over my readers to get their gardens going, food storage in order, learn to darn socks and fix their own roofs, etc… Carolyn Baker was kind enough to mention me as a notable Dystopian chick in her well deserved rebuke to the New Yorker. So even though I often spend time observing “well, I don’t really think that we’re literally going to see TEOTWAWKI” I suppose I qualify as one of Cassandra’s descendents.

A while back, I wrote my doomiest post to date, when I sat down to compose a section of _A Nation of Farmers_ that described the changes in food and energy issues as of last April. I was so shocked at what the aggregate shift in our reality looked like put down on paper that I posted it as “We regret to inform you…”and I argued that we are, in fact, in the midst of a fast crash of our society. I wrote then,

“When climate change and peak oil thinkers run out of other things to worry about, there’s always the endless, inevitable debates about whether we are facing a “fast crash” or a “slow grind.” And I admit, I’m worried about my fellow environmentalists – because I think they are about to lose their favorite distraction. When no one was looking, we got an answer. Fast crash wins. And we’re in it now.

Wait a minute, you argue – that’s not right. If we were in a fast crash we’d be well on our way to living in a Kunstler novel. But we’ve still got cars, we’ve got food, things are slowing down, but at worst this looks like a slow grind – but the crazy lady at the blog is saying fast crash?!?!?

Before you argue with me (and you are both welcome and encouraged to), I’d like to post something a bit out of my usual style – it is simply a description of what has happened with food and energy in the last year – that’s all it is. Then tell me what you think – because it wasn’t until I began to write this introduction to the present food situation that I suddenly was struck by the fact that even a fast crash doesn’t always look fast when you live it – new normals arise and it turns out we assimilate faster than we panic.

So here we are – the “We regret to inform you that what you have imagined to be “civilization” is now falling apart” post. See if it strikes you the way it struck me.”

Although the major issues have changed somewhat – the collapse in energy prices has meant that now people can’t pay for heat because they don’t have a job, rather than because of the high price of energy, and the economic crisis has mostly numbed us to the growth of hunger in the poor world – I don’t see anything to suggest that we are not still in a rapidly accellerating crisis. The only thing is that even at my most apocalyptic, I would never have guessed how fast – and I think that that’s probably true of most “doomers.”

But I’m starting to feel like I ought to give back the quirt, the cat o’nine tails and that funky leather corset personally bestowed upon me by Richard Heinberg and Pat Murphy when I was inducted into the Ancient Order of Apocalyptic Prophets (you should have seen what they were wearing – I’m sworn to secrecy, but it was very fetching!) You see, I’m starting to feel I can’t compete with reality – any actual attention to events as they unfold points up the fact that my own doomiest imaginings are being wildly exceeded.

Let’s see – California is broke, functionally insolvent, and has stopped paying for just about everything, including its state police. Remember how often they trumpted that they were the 6th largest economy in the world – well, that’s kinda like saying the UK is insolvent…oh, and that actually might be not so far from the truth too, since they just had to nationalize their banking system. We’ve lost at least 300,000 jobs in two weeks. The New York Times may be out of business by spring. While neither rain nor sleet nor hail will keep the postal service from its appointed rounds, money probably will, and they are talking about cutting out Saturday deliveries. Homelessness and hunger are rapidly on the rise, as are suicide and murder suicide.

There’s rioting in Russia, China, Greece, and massive worker demonstrations in France and Britain. Australia is seeing record high temperatures, while many of the rest of us struggle with record lows. California’s drought may be the worst in a century. And the already hungry are among the deepest sufferers of the food crisis. The New York Times, Fortune Magazine, Bloomberg – they are all starting to use words like “Biblical proportions” “Deep Depression” “Apocalypse.” It is getting hard to compete with the mainstream doomers.

We’ve been “fixing” the problem – which is a big part of the problem – think of the word “fix” here as in “the fix is in.” We’ve just spent 8 trillion dollars bailing out the banks – more than all the wars in US history, the Louisiana purchase and the space program combined. And what did we get for it? Bank of America and Citi are still teetering, the jobs are still being flushed daily. The estimate is half a million a month – every month.

And people aren’t really very angry yet. They should be – think about what 8 trilliion dollars could actually have bought us, had anyone cared as much about the people as they do about the banks, and about the wealth of the fortunate. At some point people will realize that it isn’t going to work – and their anger will be frightening – and just. The New Hampshire state legislature is currently debating legislation that would assert that if the US implements martial law or abrogates the Constitution, it will effectively dissolve the Union. While one wonders where they were the last eight years, this is being taken quite seriously, and it would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

Eight trillion could have paid for free health care for every American, cradle to grave for a century. Eight trillion was sufficient to cover the cost of almost all the mortgage debt – every American could have been given their house and the “foreclosure crisis” ended instantly. Eight trillion was enough to build renewable energy infrastructure that could have softened the crisis, to reinsulate our houses, to provide basic food and health care to the world’s poor. The same eight trillion we were told we didn’t have when it was needed by those who wanted educations, basic medical care, decent shelter, a home, hope, a decent life, we had a plenty for the banks and the wealthiest people in the world.

A number of energy and environmental advocates don’t seem to grasp that the 8 trillion figure – and the monies spent by other nations – aren’t proof that we can build a renewable infrastructure or address peak oil if we really want to – instead, they are what we are doing *instead.* Yes, nations can print money, but in order to inflate our currency, we’d have to disentangle ourselves quite violently from the other nations with which we are economically intertwined, and that would have its price too. That is, our ability to keep bailing is limited – and the 8 trillion now buried in bank vaults and flushed down the toilet is money we don’t have for future adaptations. Think about it – we’re debating 3/4 of a trillion dollars for all the American people combined (and some of that will also make its ways into the coffers of the bank) – while we’ve already spent almost 9 times that much on the banks. 300 million Americans get 1/8 or less what the banks get. What does that say about us? And what does it say about the ability and willingness to mobilize funds for things that actually protect human lives?

So what’s a doomer chick to do but throw in the towel and her spiked mitts and admit she’s beat? I can’t out-doom the Wall Street Journal – Wall Street invented our doom, and who better to describe it. The old button ”I eat stranger things than this with my breakfast cereal” is increasingly true – me and my gardens and my ordinary human poverty are just plain dull.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to stop writing. But like Dmitry Orlov (who did threaten to stop writing, which would have been a tragedy), I’m getting out of the apocalyptic prophetess of doom job. Like Orlov, I’m now an observer – hardly impartial, but there’s no point predicting the future when we’re living it, and when the song of the apocalypse becomes the universal chorus.

Ordinary human poverty – yes, those of us who have had access to the wealth and privilege that oil has made available are about to find ourselves in the same boat as the majority of the earths human inhabitants, but thats a damn site better place than the poverty imposed upon the masses at the lower rungs of this pyramid scheme. We have to learn with less ‘things’, and stop expecting others to grow our food for us so we can dedicate ourselves completely to our oh so important work!

Although this is definietly a fast crash, many many people still do not see what is happening, do not understand, are expecting things to turn to normal. We hope that Sharon will continue writing stuff that makes the truth clear to readers, as there is plenty of advice needed, and plenty seeking some support and suggestions of what we should be doing. While the mainstream media continue to churn out lies and untruths, we need as many sources of clear perception of the mess we are in, so that more of us might start doing what needs to be done. Sharon, you have inspired many people and helped many others understand and see the truth, keep it up.

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Article on Surviving Peak Oil Blog.

Recent news headlines reveal that the U.S. economy is deteriorating rapidly: “Be Prepared for More Cutbacks,” “Mass Layoffs Continue at Rapid Pace,” and “Economy’s Plunge is Worst in Quarter-Century.”

The Work Bank forecasts that the recession of 2008 will extend into 2009 and probably to 2010:

“A pronounced recession is believed to have begun in mid-2008 in Europe, Japan, and most recently, the United States. This recession is projected to extend into 2009. The possibility of a serious global recession cannot be ruled out. Even if the waves of panic that have inundated credit and equity markets across the world are soon brought under control, the crisis is likely to cause a sharp slowdown in activity stemming from the deleveraging in financial markets that has already occurred and that is expected to continue.”

The World Bank sees some signs of optimism for 2010, but concludes that “global recession is likely to be protracted” and “an even sharper recession is likely.”

A variety of analysts of The Wharton School, forecast a deep recession extending through 2010 and possibly beyond.

Gerald Celente, Editor and Publisher of “The Trends Journal,” forecasts a global economic collapse beginning in 2009 (interview summary, not quoted directly):

The global economy will collapse in 2009, resulting in the worst recession in the post WW II period. The commercial real estate sector is highly leveraged and will collapse beginning in late February or early March as major retailers fail, leaving vacant rental space that will not be filled. This will lead to further failures in the finance and banking sectors and higher unemployment which is at 13% and growing.

Some two-thirds of the U.S. economy is based on consumerism, which is declining rapidly due to increasing unemployment. Declining personal income means a shrinking tax base and a need to raise state, local, and federal taxes and user fees.

This economic collapse, Celente believes, will lead to the “Greatest Depression,” more corporate fraud, increased street crime, taxpayer revolts, rioting, and revolution. Survival is now a real concept as people lose investments and jobs. A return to frugality and self-sufficiency will characterize the economy in years to come.

Financial analyst Gail Tverberg explains the economic crisis in terms of a “Tower of Debt.” Because most debt ultimately rests on personal income, as personal income declines most debts are at risk: unfunded pension liabilities, unfunded Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security debt, publicly held federal debt, government sponsored enterprises (such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), state and local government debt, financial businesses, businesses, and household debt (mortgages, credit cards, and education loans). This supports Gerald Celente’s forecast. When personal income declines (due to increasing unemployment), consumerism declines, retails businesses fail, highly leveraged commercial centers fail and default on loans, causing banking and financial institutions to collapse.

ASPO-Ireland examines the economy in light of Peak Oil (excerpts from the ASPO Newsletter):

“Oil demand had begun to outpace supply around 2005, when the production of Regular Conventional Oil passed its peak. The shortfall was however relatively small and was partly met without undue difficulty by a modest reduction in consumption.

But as prices began to firm, oil traders and other speculative financial institutions began to take a position in the market, which had the effect of driving up the price. Gradually the process built momentum as huge notional profits were reaped from the appreciating asset. In a conventional market such movements would soon be countered by increased production, but in the case of oil, there was no spare capacity to release, and the speculative surge fed on itself leading to an extreme escalation in price which reached about $150 a barrel by July 2008. However as this peak [in prices] was approached, the traders began to conclude that a limit was close and began to buy future options at lower prices, which began to undermine the price in a self-fulfilling process. In parallel the high prices began to undermine many other aspects of the economy with for example airlines and automobile manufacturers facing difficulties. They themselves relied heavily on debt, which itself was traded between banks without adequate genuine collateral, and were forced to unload their speculative oil positions in order to try to shore up their failing businesses. Gradually the whole edifice collapsed, and oil prices fell to around $50 a barrel, although nothing particular had changed in the actual supply/demand relationship.

The flaw in the system was to treat a finite resource whose production was largely controlled by the immutable physics of the reservoir as if it were a normal commodity capable of responding to ordinary market pressures. If the price of potatoes increases, farmers can grow more and the market responds, but oil is different.

Governments responded to the crash by pouring yet more money, itself lacking genuine collateral, into the system in the mistaken belief that this would restore the position of assumed eternal growth, and quite possibly the stock market will respond positively as traders sense a new upward direction. They have no real interest in reality: their job being to try to reap rewards from short term movements.

But if there is an economic recovery, that would serve to increase the demand for oil, which is in a sense the lifeblood of the modern world, and oil prices would again begin to surge. Probably, it will take several such vicious circles before governments and, more important, people at large at last come to grasp the reality of the situation, which will likely prompt radical changes in the human condition.

Meanwhile, desperate efforts are being made around the world to shore up the crumbling financial system. For example, the Bank of England has radically reduced interest rates in a country facing a severe recession, effectively taking money from savers to give to spenders.

The Government has evidently failed to grasp the underlying causes of recession and hopes that pumping a bit of money into the system will restore it to its previous condition. That was premised on eternal economic growth, which is a somewhat unrealistic proposition for a Planet of finite dimensions, but Governments subject to re-election are by nature short-term in their thinking.

One is led to conclude that the entire Stock Market, including especially the oil market, has become a thoroughly debased speculative institution. In earlier years, investors clubbed together to build a specific project, such as a canal or railway, with the resulting dividend being the prime motivation. Things seemed to have gone wrong when such investments were traded on markets by financial institutions which naturally can have no serious knowledge of the underlying business or the true value to be placed upon it.”

Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, like ASPO-Ireland, notes that today’s low oil prices and credit shortage will reduce investments needed for oil production, resulting in lower oil production in the future, followed by increasing oil prices as demand out strips supply, which will then cause another economic downturn in the future. Simmons also notes that the aging oil infrastructure of drilling rigs, rusting platforms, pipelines, and refineries must be renovated, requiring trillions of dollars in investments at a time when credit is tight..

Independent studies indicate that Peak Oil occurred between 2005 and 2008 and that global crude oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time, demand will increase. Oil supplies will be even tighter for the U.S. As oil producing nations consume more and more oil domestically they will export less and less. Because demand is high in China, India, the Middle East, and other oil producing nations, once global oil production begins to decline, demand will always be higher than supply. And since the U.S. represents one fourth of global oil demand, whatever oil the U.S. conserves will be consumed elsewhere. Thus, conservation in the U.S. will not slow oil depletion rates significantly. More and more oil is expended in oil production and processing as lower grades of oil are extracted from an increasing number of smaller oil fields that are located in hard to access ocean depths. These factors will increase the oil production decline rate above the six percent that is forecasted in a few years

These Peak Oil factors suggest that there will be no economic recovery following the economic collapse of 2009 and that the recession will deteriorate into a permanent economic depression that will worsen over time.

In 2007, the U.S. General Accountability Office (advised by a panel of 13 scientists of the National Academy of Sciences) examined the potential of alternative energies for replacing liquid fuels (that are vital for transportation and food production):

“An imminent peak and sharp decline in oil production could have severe consequences. The technologies we examined [ethanol, biodiesel, biomass gas-to-liquid, coal gas-to-liquid, and hydrogen] currently supply the equivalent of only about 1% of U.S. annual consumption of petroleum products, and DOE [U.S. Department of Energy] projects that even under optimistic scenarios, these technologies could displace only the equivalent of about 4% of annual projected U.S. consumption by around 2015. If the decline in oil production exceeded the ability of alternative technologies to displace oil, energy consumption would be constricted, and as consumers competed for increasingly scarce oil resources, oil prices would sharply increase. In this respect, the consequences could initially resemble those of past oil supply shocks, which have been associated with significant economic damage. For example, disruptions in oil supply associated with the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74 and the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 caused unprecedented increases in oil prices and were associated with worldwide recessions. In addition, a number of studies we reviewed indicate that most of the U.S. recessions in the post-World War II era were preceded by oil supply shocks and the associated sudden rise in oil prices. Ultimately, however, the consequences of a peak and permanent decline in oil production could be even more prolonged and severe than those of past oil supply shocks. Because the decline would be neither temporary nor reversible, the effects would continue until alternative transportation technologies to displace oil became available in sufficient quantities at comparable costs. Furthermore, because oil production could decline even more each year following a peak, the amount that would have to be replaced by alternatives could also increase year by year.”

There is no plan nor capital for a so-called electric economy. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and surface mining equipment.

The independent scientists of the Energy Watch Group conclude in a 2007 report titled: “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society:”

“By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame.”

With increasing costs for gasoline and diesel, along with declining taxes and declining gasoline tax revenues, states and local governments will eventually have to cut staff and curtail highway maintenance. Eventually, gasoline stations will close, and state and local highway workers won’t be able to get to work.

We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel and gasoline powered trucks for bridge maintenance, culvert cleaning to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, and roadbed and surface repair.

When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, large transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables from great distances.

With the highways out, there will be no food coming from far away, and without the power grid virtually nothing modern works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated building systems.

Governments, business and individuals should prepare for the impacts of Peak Oil.

If you aren’t already preparing for a different society, start. Quickly.

If you are already growing food, storing seeds, etc, its time to accelerate. The forecast of another phase of collapse, the commercial real estate sector, at the end of february or early march, could well be correct, and encourages us all to get even busier.

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