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During my youth, I was immersed in a culture of extraction and consumption. I was born in the heart of the Aryan nation in a small mining town in the panhandle of Idaho and I grew up in a tiny, redneck, back-woods logging town. Consumption was, and is, the prevailing culture in the United States. As with the extraction of ore and timber needed to support the unquestioned goal of economic growth, the consumption of materials and the costs associated with that consumption rarely are brought before the citizenry for critical evaluation. We live in the Age of Entitlement, assuming we deserve all we unquestioningly consume.

Although a majority of my school-age classmates denigrated education and wound up working in the mines or in the woods, I took a different route. Inspired by the words and examples of my parents — both lifelong educators — I vigorously pursued advancement through education, and completed a Ph.D. only nine years after I graduated from high school. Not surprisingly, my university degrees in forestry and range science focused on the production of natural resources. Higher education led to a twenty-year career at a major research university, where my teaching and research focused initially on management of natural resources and, later, on a life of excellence.

During my final decade in the classroom, I took a strongly Socratic turn, asking my students how to pursue a life of excellence. Bound together as a corps of discovery in the classroom, we focused on the six questions Socrates found so relevant to the human condition and a life of excellence: What is courage? What is good? What is justice? What is moderation? What is piety? What is virtue?

Throughout my career in higher education, I nurtured the personal and professional growth of students and I questioned myriad aspects of contemporary American culture, typically via guest commentaries in various newspapers. Neither individual attention to students nor questions about culture were welcomed by university administrators, but my tenured status and international reputation for excellent scholarship allowed me to pursue the work I loved. In addition to writing numerous articles and books, I delivered about ten presentations each year to a wide range of audiences, from student anarchists to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Working at a major research university required me to live in a in a city, the very apex of empire. For years, I avoided the nagging voice in my head as it pointed out the horrific costs of imperial living: destruction of the living planet, obedience at home, and oppression abroad. Eventually, though, I could no longer ignore the powerful words of Arundhati Roy in her insightful 2001 book, Power Politics: “The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.”

And then there’s the philosophy of Camus, which reminds us about the absurdity of our existence as well as finding worth in the act of rebellion. Rebellion cannot be meaningfully pursued while one is shackled to an imperial institution, as Chris Hedges points out in this week’s excellent essay, “Calling All Rebels.”

I departed university life for many reasons, among them to dedicate more time informing the world’s citizens about the consequences of the way we live. My message centers on the twin sides of the fossil-fuel coin: global climate change and energy decline (commonly known as “peak oil”). After all, the most important race in the history of humanity is under way, although the world’s governments and the mainstream media have failed to give notice. The world’s climate is changing at an accelerating rate, with profound implications for nature and the humans who depend on the natural world. In addition, the world’s energy supply is rapidly declining, which is leading to significant contraction of the world’s industrial economy. These unprecedented phenomena impact every aspect of life on Earth, notably including our ability to protect the living planet on which we depend for our own survival. Time is not on our side.

If we continue with business as usual, we likely are committed to a 4 C rise in average global temperature by mid-century. Such a profound and rapid rise in global temperature will reduce, to near zero, human habitat on Earth. A reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 80% represents the single remaining hope to save the living planet on which we depend. Such a reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases will require either a near-term trip to the post-industrial Stone Age or a rapid accounting for the actual costs associated with consuming fossil fuels. The latter will require immediate recognition of the explicit links between environmental protection, social justice, and the human economy and therefore an unprecedented transition to physical economics. Either way, we’re nearing the end of the Age of Entitlement and drawing inexorably closer to the Age of Consequences.

Although ecological forecasting is fraught with uncertainty, there is little doubt that some options have been permanently closed and others pose significant challenges in the years ahead. For example, long-term economic growth is precluded by inaccessibility to inexpensive sources of energy, and we are committed to at an average global temperature increase of at least 2 C. Dealing with the two sides of the fossil-fuel coin — global climate change and reduced energy availability — will require enormous courage, compassion, and creativity.

In addition to inspiration and motivation, we need practical, local solutions to mitigate for climate change and energy decline (it is too late for societal-level solutions to either predicament). Local solutions must be based on a realistic set of assumptions about climate and energy, and my message centers on the moral, philosophical, and pragmatic aspects of climate change and energy decline. My writing and presentations describe the nature of our predicaments, offer a series of assumptions based on forecasts for climate change and energy decline, give a general template for action, and then deliver a series of practical solutions within the realm of strengthening the links between environmental protection, social justice, and the human economy.

But, as should be obvious, I’m having damned little impact. I know exactly three people who, influenced by my message, have changed their lives in any way at all. I am one of them. The other two made minor changes in lifestyle when they began sharing their property with me. Considering how difficult it is to change ourselves, we shouldn’t expect to be able to use words to change others.

At the height of a productive career characterized by frequent awards for teaching and research, my moral compass drove me away from the relative ease of a highly paid job in exchange for the joy of stewarding life in a small community. More than two decades after I started down the academic path that led to a productive career in the ivory tower — and much to the amazement and criticism of my colleagues — I returned to my rural roots to live in an off-grid, straw-bale house where I practice my lifelong interest in sustainable living via organic gardening, raising small animals for eggs and milk, and working with members of my rural community.

I am fully aware that rural life has its benighted side. Walking to school at the tender age of ten, a classmate three years my senior aimed a rifle out his bedroom window at the base of my neck. I kept walking, and failed to mention the unremarkable event to my parents for two decades. It simply never came up. But society has changed during the last forty years, and my new rural community is not as benighted as the community of my youth. We understand and appreciate diversity in various forms, and members of the community seek to emphasize the attributes that bring us together, rather than those that drive us apart.

As I look out the picture windows of the mud hut this overcast morning, snow-capped mountains in the nearby wilderness provide a stunning backdrop to the last few sandhill cranes in this small valley. The cranes are among the last to leave their winter home before heading north for an Idaho summer. They remind me that some things are worth supreme sacrifices. Some things are worth dying for, the living planet included.

It’s not at all clear that my decision to abandon the empire was the right one. I know it will extend my life when the ongoing economic collapse is complete, and I know it is the morally appropriate decision (as if a dozen people in this country give a shit about morality). But Albert Einstein seems mistaken, at least in this case: “Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means.”

My own example has generated plenty of scorn, but essentially no influence. On the other hand, the imperialism of living in the city and teaching at a university has rewards that extend well beyond the monetary realm. I miss working with young people every hour of every day. I miss comforting the downtrodden, notably in facilities of incarceration, every day. And I miss afflicting the comfortable, notably hard-hearted university administrators, at least weekly.

So here I sit, alternately staring at the screen of empire and staring out the window into timeless beauty. I contemplate the timing of imperial collapse and the implications for the tattered remains of the living planet. Half a century (and one week) into an insignificant life seesawing between service and self-absorption, I wonder, as always, what to do. My heart, heavy as the unbroken clouds overhead, threatens to break when I think about what we’ve done in pursuit of progress.

Spring’s resplendence lies ahead, with its promise of renewal. Is there world enough, and time? Will we yet find a way to destroy a lineage 70 millions years old, or will the haunting call of the sandhill crane make it through the bottleneck of human industry?

Indebtedness is a form of servitude, usually involuntary, and, in extreme cases imprisonment. Consider, for example, current rates of interest, usurious compared to what savers earn on their savings in the same banks that charge that interest. Many religious organizations loath interest rates as immoral and criminal. According to all four gospels in the Christian bible, even the normally passive, peaceful prophet of Christianity got so worked up about usury in a temple he started acting like Bobby Knight on the sidelines of a basketball game.

Purchases by consumers (this awful word is used here only because that’s what we have become — involuntarily) drive the world’s industrial economy. And purchases by consumers depend on the confidence of those consumers, so that consumer confidence underlies commercial success. If a potential consumer has no confidence in his ability to purchase an item, then he won’t. If enough potential consumers lose confidence in their abilities to purchase and pay for any particular item, the sales of that item will plummet, causing the manufacturer and sellers of that item to fail.

Considering the current financial situation, which will no doubt crash again within the next year, we can help create a situation that will both change behavior for the better and prevent people from getting into financial trouble. The latter portion is vital to getting wide support, and will be a huge challenge for hopelessly optimistic, reality-challenged members of the industrial economy.

How do we convince people they definitely cannot afford to take out loans to buy things? More impact will be realized by targeting luxuries such as houses, cars, and appliances than small “goods.” The Obama administration recognizes this, and has therefore rewarded people for purchasing houses, cars, and — most recently – appliances, by giving them huge financial incentives (i.e., taxes on other Americans who might not even be tempted to play the “consumer” game).

Loans are required for most people to purchase these “durable goods” (which are no longer durable or good). Loans traditionally are seen as safety nets, but it has become clear they really represent traps. Never mind the psychological or ecological implications of consumerism — there exists no evidence suggests anybody has minded so far — the focus here is on the trap into which each potential consumer falls by taking out a loan to mindlessly invest in transient baubles. Every loan is a bad deal for the borrower, although credit cards represent the largest trap (even with the new rules).

The system needs you to keep borrowing. If you stop borrowing, then who knows what could happen.

The risk levels described below are approximate and will vary according to your personal situation and the jurisdiction in which you operate. Seek legal advice if you are uncertain.

No risk:

Don’t take out a loan for anything. If you need it — and probably you don’t — save your money and buy it, or barter for it.

Encourage others to join you. Start by sharing your car, your garden, your yard, and your lawnmower. Pass stuff on. Give it away. You don’t need that loan, and neither do the people you care about. Caveat: Sharing leads to liability.

If you already have loans, and most recent students do, then seek deferral under economic hardship. Odds are pretty high you’re actually experiencing economic hardship, so this is no big deal. And even if you’re not, there’s no sense feeding the beast if the beast defaults down the road. Caveat: If you lie about economic hardship, your claim about hardship is legally fraudulent.

Low risk:

Start a “misinformation” campaign (from the point of view of the loan companies).

1) Via snail mail, send out false press releases from loan companies and banks to media outlets such as local radio stations, local press and even the nationals if you are brave enough. These press releases should discourage people from taking out loans because, after all, people don’t really need all the toys they buy on credit. If you make the “press releases” as complete as possible, and word them so that responses are not required, then there is a good chance they will be run without questions being asked.

2) Do a bit of subvertising, on the internet or (for a little higher risk) on billboards: focus on loans companies and banks changing the messages to emphasise the theft aspect of loans. Alternatively, just remove loan adverts entirely. For more information on techniques, read this post.

Other potential actions along these same lines include:

Obvious satirical routines can be developed for a variety of venues. This strategy should hold particular appeal to artists.

Medium risk:

Walk away from your mortgages, as suggested by Dave Pollard: Many Americans are now living in homes with mortgages that are greater than the value of their property. Why would anyone continue to pay a debt that is higher than the asset it secures? After all, big corporations view pulling the plug on unsuccessful ventures and sticking the debtholders and shareholders a key business strategy. The whole idea of “risk capital” is that the interest and other fees you earn for lending to risky borrowers compensates you for the risk, so that if the borrower defaults you accept the loss and chalk it up to experience. Yet for some reason homeowners feel some moral obligation to throw good money endlessly after bad. This of course is exactly what the corporatists, who have no such moral compunction, are counting on, what economists call moral asymmetry. The logical response would be to tell the lender to write off the excess of the mortgage beyond the property value, and refinance the mortgage accordingly. Apparently in some US states (called “recourse” states) this moral asymmetry is institutionalized — that is, lenders can go after a mortgagee’s personal assets if they default. There is, of course, no recourse when the corporatists walk away from debts, offshore their operations, and stiff the taxpayers whose subsidies and bailouts paid for the corporatists’ ventures.

Where is the sense of outrage here? Have the education system and media so dumbed down the citizens that they can’t see this scheme for the cruel and criminal con it is? If everyone with a mortgage greater than the value of their home either walked away from it, or was legally empowered to require the excess to be written off as the “bad debt” it is, then of course there would be many bank failures and plunging profits. That’s how the market system is supposed to work. The lenders, of course, want it both ways, and Obama and the citizens consumers seem blithely willing to let them have it.

Walking away from your mortgage entails medium risk because it will damage your credit rating. Obviously, this doesn’t matter in the long term, but it still causes concern for many people. Additional risks vary among states, up to and including loss of assets for every person named on the mortgage.

Via electronic communications, send out false press releases from loan companies to media outlets. These press releases would discourage people from taking out loans because, after all, citizens don’t really need all the toys they buy on credit. This scheme requires technical expertise: The instigator will hide behind an alter-ego and fake domain.

High risk:

Taking a step beyond abandoning your underwater mortgage, don’t pay off your mortgage even if you’re not underwater. Simply default but continue to occupy your house. Ditto for other loans (but kiss your car goodbye when the repo man does his job). In many cases, lenders can ill afford to tell their stockholders about toxic loans, so — if you avoid undue attention and your loan is too small to “bother” with — the borrower gets the loan for no payments while the lender gets stuck. This point was viewed as radical as little as a year ago, but the idea has been receiving plenty of attention from the media, and even CNBC is on board.

Tactics for throwing off the shackles of debt

These actions are high risk because they could bring criminal proceedings related to fraud. Probably they won’t. But stranger things have happened, so we issue the following disclaimer:

Recognizing that even civil disobedience is illegal, the authors and the host of this web site do not condone any actions that break the law under the jurisdiction where the described activity is taking place.

Which, of course, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them at your own risk.

What we’re trying to do here is help bring down a house of cards: People feeling forced to pay debts far greater than the real value of the assets that secure them. People seduced into getting into debt needlessly. People paying usurious interest rates and fees because the banks own the politicians. It’s a debtors’ prison without locks and doors, and it’s immoral. Please help us bring an end to it.
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This essay is part of a larger collaboration between the authors. It represents the third month of the Monthly Undermining Tasks

Indeed, Prescription for the Planet promises to save the planet. But instead, it develops a prescription for furthering the industrial economy and therefore killing the planet. Saving? Killing? Apparently some people think these words are synonymous.

Ultimately, Blees’ plan boils down to two “solutions,” both of them extremely suspect. First, he claims we can we can ramp up production of renewable energy systems and also fourth-generation nuclear reactors to keep the power on. Indeed, Blees claims our lives depend on electricity. As such, he dismisses the first two million years of the human experience. If our lives depend on electricity, it’s because we’ve abandoned a viable, durable set of living arrangements in exchange for endless opportunities to destroy the living planet. Second, Blees promotes the notion that boron-powered automobiles will keep us on the highways. And he thinks that’d be a good thing. After all, boron seems to be essentially limitless on this world. Just as crude oil seemed, not so long ago.

First, let’s consider and dismiss Blees’ electrical option. Figures on energy supply and efficiency are readily available for renewable systems, so it is relatively simple to evaluate Blees’ map to determine whether “alternative” energy sources can fill the void at the scale of a world with nearly seven billion people.

They can’t. And it’s not even close. I don’t know a single energy-literate individual who thinks we can replace fossil fuels with alternatives by 2030. Most people who write about energy issues have concluded we’ll be firmly in the post-industrial Stone Age well before 2030. I’ll not run the numbers here because I’ve run them many times already, and so have a lot of people a lot smarter than me. But I’ll start by picking a few nits, then I’ll move on to the big-picture moral issues we try so hard to avoid in our national conversations.

And, I’ve written about one kajillion times, all electrical power is derived from oil, even nuclear power. We use plenty of oil to transport nuclear materials (even the stuff Blees discusses). And also for maintaining the grid. And then there’s the massive mountain of concrete needed to build cooling towers for nuclear power plants. As a result, nuclear plants become carbon neutral only after about 20 years in operation, at which point we start shutting them down for safety reasons.

And what about those cars? Building a planet’s worth of boron-powered cars will require a lot of oil. My Prius uses less energy than the cars Blees writes about, but it still requires more energy to construct than a Hummer. I seriously doubt we have enough oil in the world to make enough cars to replace the U.S. fleet, much less get a billion Chinese cars on the road. And then there’s the issue of financing, in a world where credit is drying up faster than Lake Mead. Who will be able to buy a $40,000 car with cash?

If all goes according to Blees’ plan, the first fourth-generation nuclear power plant will be producing electricity in 2015. I strongly suspect, and hope, that we’ll be in the new Dark Age by then. This Dark Age will cause much suffering and death among industrial humans. And I think it’s our only chance to save the living planet, and our own species.

Further along Blees’ road to ruin, by 2020 plasma energy will fulfill 5% of our energy “needs” and boron-powered cars will be filling the roads. I cannot imagine a scenario in which we will avoid landing in the post-industrial Stone Age by then.

And even further along the route of Blees’ nuclear wet dreams, we’ll have all the nuke plants we need to satisfy the world’s demand for electricity by 2050. If we come even remotely close to that goal, there will be no humans on the planet to use the electricity. The latest (ultra-conservative) projections indicate extinction of our species by mid-century.

And that’s just the small stuff. The moral issues are much more daunting.

The further we go into ecological overshoot, the worse the outcome will be for every species on the planet, including our own. Maintaining the ability to produce more cars, and more babies, is a prescription for the planet, all right: a prescription for disaster. There are limits to growth. I strongly suspect they’re driven, in this country, by the price of oil. If not, rarity of other materials will force our hand.

Hopefully, our hand will be forced in time to prevent our extinction. It won’t happen, though, if we return to the American lifestyle of happy motoring. We certainly do not need to export car culture, and its many attendant consequence, to other nations.

Meanwhile, against Blees’ backdrop of fourth-generation nuclear ambitions, Barack Obama is pushing for an older version of nuclear dreams. He’s committing serious bling to build nuclear reactors in all the wrong places, ignoring the fact that nuclear power is the twentieth century’s most expensive technological failure. Even Time magazine knows this bet won’t pay off, that the nuclear dream is really a nightmare. Even as Obama pursues failed technology in the homeland –- while denying other countries the same option — he wants to maintain or expand our nuclear arsenal in the name of security (sic).

Fortunately, the next great economic crash is right around the corner. After the China bubble pops, the human population bubble surely will follow. It’s time to grow accustomed to chaos as an everyday event.

As usual, you can count on me for the good news associated with life in the doomosphere. Soon enough, we won’t be threatening the entire living planet with extinction via carbon dioxide emissions. Or by flooding the atmosphere with methane. Soon enough, we won’t be spending all your hard-earned tax money on oil, much less on securing that oil at the point of a bazooka. Soon enough, Afghanistan will be a distant memory instead of a broad expanse of imperial killing fields. Soon enough, Obusha will not be able to order the massacre of civilians on a whim. Soon enough, the world’s largest companies will not be able to cause $2.2 trillion worth environmental degradation each year. On the other hand, it’s time you started thinking about how to spend your own money, while sellers still think it has inherent value.

I know my message is not the one desired by industrial humans. We want our children to have more stuff than we had. Instead of more stuff, I want them to have more of the living planet, if only to insure their own survival (and that of our species). In contrast, Obama’s dream is the same as Ronald Reagan’s dream: economic growth at all costs, including obedience at home, oppression abroad, and the devastation of the planet and all non-Americans (with the possible exception of Israelis).

Western civilization is omnicidal. We need to stop murdering the living planet on which we depend, instead of attempting to extend the reach of western civilization. And we’re running out of time. Fortunately, the conquest of the living planet has turned into a war. And now, finally, this war has two sides. Which side are you on?

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This essay is permalinked at Island Breath.

One of the three goats we’re tending had triplets last night. This morning, Ruby and the as-yet-unnamed kids are doing well. Our infrastructure has passed another test. More importantly, we were witness to the miracle of life. And not just once, but three times.

That’s right, I used the word. And you know I don’t believe in miracles.

Click here for video

Next day update: We’re awash in baby goats. Cocoa had triplets this morning, adding two girls and a boy to yesterday’s two girls and boy. This short clip shows the babies immediately after they hit the ground, and this one shows them feeding less than an hour after birth.

Awash in baby goats. Awash in miracles. Life is good.

We are witnessing the economic down side of globalization. When the tide goes out on one part of the empire, it drags the rest of the empire down, too. In fact, when a lifeguard swims out to save a drowning man, the drowning man’s first reaction is to grab the lifeguard by the head and push down. This allows the drowning man to rise up and gobble a few breaths of water-free air, but it threatens to drown him and his savior.

At this juncture in the industrial age, we have two tired, one-armed lifeguards and a handful of victims. All eyes are on Greece — fittingly, the birthplace of western civilization — but Greece, which naturally turned to Goldman Sachs to try to hide its debt, is one tiny canary in a coal mine the size of Earth. Even as hope builds for some combination of Germany and France to save Greece, the entire Euro zone is going up in flames. Here in the homeland, seven states are drowning in financial waters deeper and choppier than the Mediterranean Sea. And the squeaks from those seven states cannot be heard over the din from every other state in the country, much less every country in the industrialized world. Seems a Greek crisis is coming to America. In the words of Chris Hedges, we’ve reached the zero point of systemic collapse. Along with Mickey Z, Hedges offers a few ways to resist the omnicidal dominant culture and save what’s left of our humanity.

Meanwhile, it has become generally known that it is mathematically impossible to pay off the U.S. debt, as I reported several months ago (more figures are available here, and the U.S. Debt Clock is always worth a look). And, lest you think there is help on the way, the sovereign debt crisis is just getting started, along with the collapse in commercial real estate.

The U.S. reflects mortgage holders, hopelessly underwater. The mortgage holders should be walking away, according to at least one professor of law. Unlike the mortgage holders, the U.S. cannot walk away, even though an economic recovery is hopeless at this point. And the U.S. is merely one of many countries hopelessly underwater. The global debt time bomb goes off soon, as even Europe and the U.S. will default. Even MarketWatch has begun, finally, to call this event the economic apocalypse. It’s too late for economic salvation, even as Business Insider understates the economic news, writing we’re somewhere between dire and disastrous.

Even as the greatest economic implosion in world history accelerates, the underlying cause — peak oil — remains chronically under-reported. Nonetheless, Sir Richard Branson finally is warning that the peak-oil crunch will be worse than the credit crunch (thereby failing to recognize the importance of the former in creating the latter), the Wall Street Journal is warning us to prepare for peak oil, and British oil companies and CEOs are sounding the alarm. These numbskulls have failed to notice we’re passed peak, and that it’s too late for societal-level preparations. The U.K. Telegraph is making fun of people who make personal preparations for peak oil and its economic consequences, but their laughter seems a little nervous to me. Even with the vaunted war machine, the ability of the U.S. to import oil is dwindling: Saudi Arabia has slipped from our number two supplier to number four while the new number two provider, Mexico, is in oil-supply free-fall.

Apparently failing to notice where empires go to die, the U.S. military has powered up the surge in Afghanistan even as the Pentagon admits U.S. taxpayers are forking over $400 for each gallon of gasoline used there. And most Americans think five bucks a gallon is an outrage when they pay it directly.

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This entry is permalinked at Energy Bulletin, Counter Currents, and Island Breath.

One way of looking at our current set of predicaments is that we’ve been on a binge, consuming energy considerably faster than it can be captured and stored by Earth’s ecosystems. While fossil fuels once appeared limitless (and still do to deniers of peak oil), and though we’re literally bathed in energy (in the form of sunlight), the disappearance of the fossil-fuel storehouse accumulated over millions of years isn’t something that can be replaced with anything nearly as convenient as fossil fuels. Solar, wind, wave, geothermal, nuclear, and hydropower simply don’t pack the same punch as fossil fuels, either singly or in combination. In short, we’re falling off the net-energy cliff, and there’s no lifeline to grab onto, no known technology to break the fall.

Long before the Industrial Era, work such as growing food, manufacturing goods, and distributing materials was accomplished via the limited power of human muscle (the monuments of the ancient world all being built with slave labor) and draught animals. Later, water wheels and windmills enabled us to convert force into mechanical power. The steam engine and combustion engine now allow us to tap the huge energy storehouse represented by fossil fuels and perform work we could not have done before, which translates into the sudden, exponential rise in human population and rapid destruction of the natural world. The differential between muscle power and simple mechanical power versus that harnessed by the application of fossil fuels can hardly be overstated. The trend from animal slaves (including humans) to fossil-fuel slaves seems like a one-way street, considering the paucity of draught animals and sanctioned slavery relative to the human population, but it isn’t. Enslavement to fossil fuels ends when the now-abundant supply turns to scarcity, at which point radical austerity sets in.

Three attributes of fossil fuels are particularly noteworthy. First, fossil fuels — especially crude oil — have amazingly high energy density. If you’ve burned oak in a wood stove, you have witnessed the heating power of 6,000 Btu per pound. Depending on the type, coal contains 8,000–14,000 Btu per pound. The devil’s excrement blows away wood and coal at nearly 20,000 Btu per pound. Once found, coal and oil are much more convenient to extract and deliver than wood, which explains in part why so many more railroad hopper cars are filled with coal than with firewood.

The second characteristic favoring consumption of fossil fuels is energy return on investment (EROI, sometimes expressed as EROEI for energy return on energy invested). Charles Hall is the primary authority on this subject, and his primer at The Oil Drum illustrates the importance of EROI while also showing how rapidly EROI has declined for U.S. oil. Specifically, average EROI of U.S. crude oil dropped from 100:1 in the 1930s to 30:1 in 1970 and down below 20:1 today while EROI for coal has varied from 40:1 to 80:1 during the same period. Meanwhile, firewood has an EROI of about 30:1, much higher than nuclear or solar photovoltaic (PV) and about the same as hydropower (we’ve nearly run out of rivers to dam, at least in North America).

The third big issue regarding fossil fuels is their potential energy. Coal and oil are just lying underground, containing dense sums of energy, begging us to gobble it up for our own immediate use, leaving nothing behind in the quintessential capitalist game of heedless maximization (e.g., Daniel Quinn’s theory of leavers and takers). There’s no need to turn a turbine with the quaint use of wind or water to generate electricity. There’s no need to bust apart atoms through exotic, risky, and expensive means that produce the nastiest of all wastes. Insatiable vampires, we jam our fang-like straws into the ground to extract easily combusted ancient sun-blood.

It’s easy to understand why we committed to crude oil early in the industrial game. Its energy density, EROI, and convenience of combustion are irresistible. It’s small wonder, then, that we developed an entire civilization based on fossil fuels. The physics underlying the conversion of energy into heat, power, force, or work is a tangle of interrelated concepts not easily sorted out by nonscientists. However, whether various inputs and outputs are measured in watts, Btu, calories, joules, newtons, or volts, what’s clear is that civilization is currently engorged, literally feasting on fossil fuels. But it’s not anything close to a zero sum game, where resources stay constant and are only shifted around over time. Rather, the Second Law guarantees there is always a diminishing return.

Ultimately, all this points to a future in which we will be energy poor because we’ve used up the storehouse of cheap, convenient energy. In the not-so-distant future, the purportedly nonnegotiable American way of life, which is based on inexpensive and rapid movement of humans and materials via conversion of stored energy to mechanical power, will no longer be possible. Put in more immediate terms, there will soon be a time when old folks say with some nostalgia, “Oh yeah, I remember warm showers.”

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The initial draft of this essay was prepared by Brutus, who contributed considerable editorial expertise toward later drafts.

This post is permalinked at BoilingSpot, Energy Bulletin, and Island Breath.

The editors at Energy Bulletin, reflecting contemporary culture, clearly do not understand sustainability. At every level, from the individual through the culture and even through the species, ours is a transient existence. We should be focused on developing a durable set of living arrangements in the few blinks we have between trips from and to the void. We should not waste our time chasing the impossibility of sustainability, regardless of corporate green-washing to the contrary.

But enough about that particular pet peeve. If you follow the headline’s link, you’ll land at a set of five articles excerpted from longer articles by five authors. Each article discusses the prospects of surviving in the post-carbon era.

As you can imagine, that takes me to yet another pet peeve. We should be developing a set of living arrangements focused on thriving, not merely surviving. If I believed the future was truly Hobbesian, I’d simply save a bullet for myself.

Well, maybe two. I’ve never been a very good shot.

And finally, the focus of the headline, as well as the tone of the articles, ignores a central tenet of this blog: morality. The focus on survival at the expense of consideration of the immorality of cities is not surprising. Imperialists are loath to consider the morality of empires, so our national conversation rarely turns to morality beyond the hand-wringing of what to do with a person for an individual act. The larger and considerably more important issue of how industrial culture destroys people from every non-industrial culture as well as the living planet simply escapes the attention of Faux News (the most-trusted network in the U.S., according to this poll). Cities are the very apex of imperial living, and they function only by extracting resources from surrounding areas in exchange for various forms of waste. But cities are embedded within, and emblematic of, industrial culture, which apparently is beyond our ability to discuss. As should be clear, reasons to abandon cities extend far beyond survival, as I’ve described repeatedly (recent examples can be found here, here, here, here, and here).

Maybe I’m just peevish today.

Toby Hemenway is the most adamant defender of city living. Writing in 2005, he concluded that we’re in for a long descent. But, as became clear at least five times during 2008 and 2009, industrial culture can reach its overdue close quite abruptly. Simply because it didn’t happen yet — saved by unprecedented illegal actions by the federal government — doesn’t mean it cannot happen. Peter Goodchild posts the definitive warning with this line: “Those who expect to get by with ‘victory gardens’ are unaware of the arithmetic involved.”

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This post is permalinked at Island Breath.

But if the government would get out of the way or, better yet, serve as an inspiration and provide resources, we could shape our society to deal effectively with economic contraction. We could focus on the delivery of water, the production of food, and maintenance of public health with a substantially re-localized, and significantly more durable, set of living arrangements. The alternative we are currently pursuing — a last-ditch attempt to maintain the impossible dream of endless suburbia followed by a rapid trip to the post-industrial Stone Age — is an unmitigated apocalypse in slow motion. I feel as if I’m watching a cheesy 1970s disaster film, waiting for the director to yell, “Cut!” so we can all go back to our pre-HFCS cheese doodles and soda pop.

Assuming we all jump on board the contraction train, we have several options at our disposable. I’m a fan of one of them, and I’ll present an alternative likely to be more appealing to most readers. These two routes are simply points along a continuum from (1) the omnicidal, destined-for-disaster business as usual and (2) its attendant massive die-off of humans as we enter the Stone Age without advance planning.

Route number one is such a durable outcome we did it for two million years. That’s essentially the entire human experience. We had easy lives, characterized by a few hours of work each week to supply our hunted-and-gathered food. We spent a lot of time communing with the natural world, and creating art that reflected our time with nature. We were a bit too spiritual for my own personal tastes, but that spirituality was rooted in ignorance. Now that we know better than to believe in spirits, the next trip to the Stone Age can be characterized by rational thought, free inquiry, intelligent discussions, and strong communities rooted in place.

Our lives will be short, relatively speaking, but they will be far from the Hobbesian wage-slavery in which we’re currently mired. All aboard the peace train, everybody.

The next stop is agricultural anarchy, in the spirit of Monticello. I know Thomas Jefferson’s model was built on the backs of slaves, and I know about the horrors of patriarchy. But again, we know better this time. The local, organic production of food will once again form the center of commerce, and also our lives. The animals we respect and nurture will provide power. We will honor soil as the life-giving entity it is.

If we pursue the latter route, we’ll need to abandon the cities en masse. We’ll need to develop a crash course in country living. If you think it can’t be done, you haven’t been reading this blog. Believe me: If I can develop the attitude and skills I’ve developed within a year, after spending an entire life as an imperialist educator, just about anybody else can, too. Surely people with fewer than my 49 years can do this, and without the physical pain that results from heaping large doses of physical abuse onto a long-neglected body. Had I known how long I was going to be using these old bones, I’d have taken better care of them, back when I was younger.

There you go, then: Two possibilities for a future with infinite possibilities. Neither involves long-distance travel, but the recent luxury of overseas, overnight is a big part of the problem. Ditto for the summer driving vacation and the long-distance commute to “live” in soulless suburbia.

Yes, we’ll need to work out myriad details. The transition will not be easy. But it will not be lethal to a majority of people in industrialized countries, either. Many other advantages come to mind, in addition to the ones I pointed out a few months ago. For example, we might not have to prepare for civil war, and we won’t be all atwitter about which bubbles are about to burst.

That’s my two cents, undoubtedly overpriced. And you?

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This post was inspired by a comment from vera.

carrying capacity: maximum permanently supportable load.
cornucopian myth: euphoric belief in limitless resources.
drawdown: stealing resources from the future.
cargoism: delusion that technology will always save us from
overshoot: growth beyond an area’s carrying capacity, leading to
crash: die-off.

Most people to whom I speak do not believe these definitions apply to us. Our species, they say, is way too clever to cause a crash in our own population.

As if the temporary access to inexpensive fossil fuels does not constitute the basis for human overshoot. As if we’re not already there, suspended like Wile E. Coyote. As if we’re not stealing resources from the future and, in the case of industrialized nations, from every other culture on Earth. As if we are not destroying, degrading, and desecrating the living planet that supports us all.

Look around. We are surrounded by cornucopians, and we’re drowning in cargoism. Delusion? Yeah, we’ve got that.

Ignore the delusions for a short time, and you’ll see we’re headed for a correction. At this late juncture in the industrial game, hoping for anything else requires a massive dose of wishful thinking.

Even a correction seems unlikely, unless by “correction” you mean “crash.”

Yet the overwhelming majority of people with whom I speak cannot wrap their minds around correction, let alone crash. Many of these folks are university faculty members. They’re supposed to be intelligent, although I’ve concluded that the average academic has below-average intellect. Many of them are ecologists, too, who have been learning about — and in many cases allegedly teaching about — limits to growth. We’ve known about limits to growth since at least 1798. Yet we’ve acted as if those limits do not apply to us. Indeed, we’ve acted as if a miracle would will save us.

Well, two miracles. First, we need a miraculous comprehensive substitute for crude oil. Then we need a miraculous removal of carbon from the atmosphere. We need the first miracle right now. We need the second within a generation.

In the two million years of the human experience on planet Earth, we haven’t had a single miracle. Now we need two.

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Let’s kick it up a notch. It’s not one of us with six months to live, it’s the industrial economy. Now whatcha gonna do?

Kunstler’s been wrong before, particularly with respect to timing. Me, too, for that matter. So we might be wrong again. But in this case Kunstler is synthesizing quite an impressive litany of thinkers with economic tendencies. And there is little doubt that the industrial age is nearing its end. If it’s not six months, it’s not much longer. So what if it’s five years? The same rules apply, as far as this game is concerned.

And even if the financial bandages applied by the world’s life-hating politicians manage to hold together the omnicidal industrial economy for a few more years, this is one of those cases in which it’s better safe than sorry. Getting on board a few minutes before the ship brings up the anchor is so much more comforting that striding onto the dock just in time to see the ship hit the open sea.

So, then, when do you call your children home? Or the ailing parents?

There is plenty to be done. For starters, nobody wants to be the last person into a community in disarray. Nobody wants to come skating in, unknown by the neighbors, when the food and water are running low. Nobody wants to be known at the new kid in town, regardless of her age. So there’s the central issue of building community in the community. As if that’s not difficult enough, in a culture anathema to community, there’s more.

It’s not just the human neighbors you’ll want to know. It’s the other, more indigenous, ones. Can you name ten edible plants native to your neighborhood? Can you grow them, or any others? What are the needs of the local animals? Where does the water come from? Does it require industrial treatment prior to human consumption? Is there an alternative source? Do you know how to treat the water so you, and other members of your community, can survive?

On the other hand, you can always take the Hemingway out. Many of the people I know, enamored with lives of comfort and unwilling to face the reality of the real world, claim to have selected this option. I suspect many of them will change their minds when the issue is forced upon them. Evolution — and its resulting absence of free will — is quirky that way.

One swing through the high price of oil took us directly to the Great Depression 2.0. What will the next swing bring? And when?

Time to start thinking. Time to start planning. The time to dig a well is not when you’re thirsty.

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