My recent trip to the northeastern United States included 13 presentations. At least one was recorded. I presented on the topic of three paths to near-term human extinction to the New Roots Charter High School in Ithaca, New York on Tuesday, 3 April 2012. The incomplete video, in four parts, follows (big thanks to Wendy Bandurski-Miller for the venue and the video, and also big thanks to Vickey Kaiser for organizing the trip and hosting and to Karl Klein for hosting and loaning his vehicle to a stranger for nearly two weeks).

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There’s still time to support Mike Sosebee’s film. Click here.
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I’ll be presenting on Saturday, 2 June 2012 at the Bueno Vista Audubon Nature Center, 2202 South Coast Highway, Oceanside, California. Topic is “The twin sides of the fossil-fuel coin: Prospects for humanity in light of global climate instability and energy decline.” I hope to see you there.

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I’m featured in an essay published online today: Can you grow your own food?, by Cindy Salo

I’ve embedded one of the thirteen presentations I delivered over a span of eight days. It’s my final presentation, excluding Q&A (which might come later), which partially explains my on-and-off incoherence (the remainder is inexplicable, as usual).

The presentation includes a half-hearted pitch of my final book. The book is available, a couple months earlier than anticipated, and can be found at this link as well as the usual online outlets. If all goes according to plan, I’ll receive a few copies later today. The book has already been reviewed by Sandy Krolick, the kulturCritic and Cameron Conaway, the poet. Krolick’s review was picked up by Transition Voice, and Conaway’s review was run by Examiner.

I’m trying to produce video from my presentation at a Harvest Gathering Festival with a barn as venue. I may post it at a later date, if all goes according to plan. It includes no slides, and the material differs considerably from the one above.

Reaction was mixed, as usual. Some people, such as this college student, found my messages unbelievable. Others quibbled with the timing of the sources I presented (I carefully avoided pushing my own predictions). Standing ovations were rare — even though I begged for them — but in the end several people understood the importance of collapse if we are to extend our run as a species.

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Huge thanks to Shelley Youngman, who facilitated, organized, chauffeured, and hosted. A kindred spirit, Shelley was kind enough to make many of the arrangements and also to spend large blocks of time with me. Voluntarily, no less.

Thanks, too, to my many new friends and hosts (in the order I met them): Mike Draney and Vicki Medland (University of Wisconsin-Green Bay), Steve DeGoosh and Brooke Isham (Northern Michigan University), Sarah Redmond and Dan Redmond (Alger Community Transition), Shelley Youngman and Frank Youngman (Transition Cadillac), and Kimberly Sager and Aaron Wissner (Local Future).

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This post is permalinked at Plan B Economics and Survival Acres.

I was shooting video of this presentation, but my camera failed 15 minutes in. So we’re stuck with multiple audio files and the slides in the usual awkward format. And whereas the audio files are adequate during the presentation, the only microphone in the room was near me, so the question part of the Q & A is poor.

You get the original slides this time, along with the audio file. Plagiarize to your heart’s content. Share widely. Spread the news. But please keep your complaints about the quality of these materials to yourself, unless you have suggestions for improvement.

I was speaking in the capital of the state built, economically at least, by oil. As I was speaking, I could see the Capitol, which convened the following day to deal with the state’s $27 billion deficit. Gee, I’d have never seen that coming.

My presentation was greeted with the usual mix of profound denial and fatalistic acceptance. The very few anarchists in attendance could hardly compete with the majority, who could see absolutely nothing amiss with the industrial economy, western civilization, or American Empire.

Powerpoint

Introduction from Gayle Borst, Design~Build~Live

Presentation part 1

Presentation part 2

Presentation part 3

Presentation part 4

Presentation part 5

Presentation part 6

Presentation part 7

Q & A part 1

Q & A part 2

Q & A part 3

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Special thanks to Ken McKenzie-Grant from Shades of Green Radio for the considerable effort behind the audio files and to Gayle Borst for hosting (and all the associated work).

And then, there’s reality. I’ll go there. You’ve been warned.

We’re irrevocably broke. I’ve made that announcement before. Finally, though, mainstream financial analysts are joining the party of reality.

Perhaps our individual and collective bankruptcy (of every kind) explains why 79.6% of respondents to a Scientific American poll are unwilling to forgo even a single penny to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change. Scientific American readers undoubtedly are better informed than the general populace. And yet they won’t pay a thing to avoid extinction of our species. Kinda makes you warm and fuzzy all over, doesn’t it?

At the request of corporate CEOs and their minions, high-level politicians, we’ll spend, spend, spend to keep propping up the industrial economy that is making us crazy and killing us. Far be it for me to suggest those CEOs and politicians are killing us directly — I’ll leave that charge to others — but there is no doubt this system is destroying every aspect of the living planet on which we depend for our lives. In return, we’ll throw away fiat currency in the name of infrastructure so we can maintain our non-negotiable, completely disastrous way of life. But we won’t spend a buck a dime a single cent to preclude disaster for our children.

Excuse me, I need to retch into my composting toilet. I encourage you to do the same. I’ll wait.

Mind you, it’s too late to avoid terrifyingly bad climate change, and avoiding catastrophe seems increasingly unlikely, even to the mainstream media. The numbers keep coming at us, too: greenhouse gases are near the all-time peak, at least since the industrial era began. The United Nations concurs: We’re unlikely to avoid runaway greenhouse.

In short, we’re toast. For a brief yet comprehensive overview of recent assessments and projections, take a look at my latest essay at Transition Voice.

The numbers keep pouring in, faster even than we can keep track: 2010 will join 1998 as hottest since 1850. Or maybe it’ll break this most dire of records and become the warmest year ever. In light of this news, emissions are on the rise, and the talks in Cancun are set to fail. As I’ve indicated many times, there are no politically viable solutions to climate change. Politicians who propose cutting back emissions sufficiently to make a minor dent in the predicament will be drawn and quartered. Survivors will be hung. Then shot. If you needed further evidence, and it’s difficult to believe any rationalist would at this point, then consider this: The incoming class of thugs in the U.S. House of Representatives will kill the committee merely studying climate change.

The anticipated response from Homo consumicus: We don’t need no stinkin’ solutions. Overshoot? Not on my planet. Oppression? So what? We’re number one.

As with anthropogenic climate change, I’ve also pointed out the absence of politically viable solutions to peak oil and the attendant economic consequences. A minor example of the economic impacts of expensive oil occurs every time we eclipse $80 oil when, shortly thereafter, sovereign defaults fill the news. Iceland. Greece. Now the Eurozone debt crisis is escalating. Or, to put a finer point on it, the game is up in the Eurozone, with violence is on the rise. And, as it turns out, Japan and the U.S. are circling the same drain as the entire Eurozone, although most Americans haven’t figured it out yet because the fair and balanced pundits at Fox News haven’t told us.

Much to the chagrin and willful ignorance of the mainstream media and also editors at sites that focus on energy, including The Oil Drum and Energy Bulletin, the industrial economy could reach its overdue terminus quite soon. It’s far too late for a fast collapse of the industrial economy: By virtually every economic measure, we’ve experienced a lost decade already. The last superpower didn’t take this long to fall, and few civilizations have hung on as long as this, the worst of them. In the midst of economic turmoil and pathetic models, even economists admit they haven’t a clue.

Evidence for completion of the ongoing collapse of the industrial economy continues to mount. For starters, the smart money is selling out of U.S. stock markets as U.S. banks are hoarding funds instead of loaning. The American love affair with stocks is over. States are imploding one by one (and then, if we’re lucky, all at once). The Federal Reserve is bailing out a surprising array of corporations, foreign banks, and, of course, the big banks in the U.S. (the latter to the tune of $9 trillion). Unemployment compensation benefits just ended for another two million people in the U.S. The U.S. government’s attempts to reflate the housing bubble have been overtaken by economic reality. Meanwhile, we spend money we don’t have on the ongoing, never-ending war in Afghanistan, which — not surprisingly to regular readers here — is not about Afghanistan at all.

If there is any doubt about the moral hypocrisy underlying this empire, consider the governments of the “free world” joining Fox News and Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee in calling for the assassination of Julian Assange because he dares expose the truth about American Empire. In response, Amazon bows to political pressure by pulling the plug on free speech. And no wonder. It’s one thing to mess with Obomber and Chillary, but there’s no way Assange will get away with taking on a big U.S. bank. I’ll excuse you while you take another break to puke.

Increasingly, the blogosphere is filled with people who recognize the increasingly obvious ongoing economic collapse for what it is. Although there is little agreement about the causes, the consensus is growing about where we’re headed. A quick online search of a few of the following names gives a few clues about the breadth and depth of the people and organizations warning about and, in some cases, preparing for near-term collapse of the industrial economy (this list is not comprehensive): Niall Ferguson, Michael Ruppert, Karl Denninger, Rob Viglione, Gerald Celente, Jeff Rubin, Matt Savinar, Catherine Austin Fitts, Charles Munger, Gonzalo Lira, Joe Bageant, Dave Cohen, Jan Lundberg, Matt Simmons (recently deceased), Chris Hedges, Dmitry Orlov, Michael Snyder, Nicole Foss, Paul Craig Roberts, Marc Faber, Bill Bonner, James Wesley Rawles, Tony Robbins, Nouriel Roubini, Max Keiser, Tyler Durden, Chris Martenson, James Kwak, Simon Johnson, Chris Clugston, Kenneth Deffeyes, John Taylor, Samsam Bakhtiari, James Howard Kunstler, Bob Chapman, George Ure, Anthony Fry, Igor Panarin, G. Edward Griffin, Joseph Meyer, Harry Dent, John Williams, Richard Russell, Niño Becerra, Martin Weiss, Eric deCarbonnel, Robin Landry, John P. Hussman, Robert Prechter, Richard Mogey, Peter Schiff, Lindsey Williams, Hugh Hendry, Arthur Laffer, Bob Janjuah, Jeff Gundlach, Société Générale.

I am not suggesting even a slim minority of these fine people understand the good news associated with the ongoing economic collapse, and there is no consensus on the role of peak oil in triggering it. As nearly as I can determine, most of these folks view western civilization as a fine idea and, reflecting society, they prefer extinction of our species to the decline of civilization.

Personally, I don’t care what phenomenon gets the credit for bringing down the industrial economy, as long as it happens quickly. Peak oil? Fine. Overwhelming debt load leading to default? Superb. Hyperinflation? Good idea. Deflation to the point of Dow Zero? Wonderful. Take your pick, somebody’s touting it as the route to the industrial economy’s imminent demise.

As should be clear even to the casual reader, all roads lead to Rome. And Rome is burning.

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This essay is permalinked in the bottom half of this post at Island Breath, and at Vancouver Peak Oil and Counter Currents.

When I discuss mitigation for ecological and economic collapse, I stress the crucial role of human community. And I’m not the only one: A few students with whom I am working this semester are focusing on how to communicate in community, with full awareness where we are and where we’re headed. They have developed a blog, and I encourage your participation as we struggle to find our way in a world turned inside out.

Louisville, Kentucky public library Tuesday, 28 September 2010

Audio file (special thanks to Nate Pederson for recording and archiving the presentation — may he attract the attention of the government as a result)

Powerpoint (pdf)

International Bioenergy Days 2010 presentation Monday, 27 September 2010

Powerpoint (pdf)

When I present, I divide into bite-sized pieces the slides with considerable text. For example, the first slide below labeled “Climate chaos” is presented in six parts, with a bit of text added to each new slide; herein, I include only the final slide in the series.

I rarely use written notes, much less a transcript, so what you see is what I saw when I was delivering the presentation. I was interrupted by several ovations (some standing, but only because I begged) and abundant laughter. When I’m nervous, I go straight to spontaneous stand-up. Later, I can’t remember a single humorous line, so every presentation is unique. At this point, I couldn’t tell you what I said, but apparently some of it was funny. I’m pretty sure they were laughing with me instead of at me, but one can never be certain.

I visited with several people after the presentation. They liked it, of course, or they wouldn’t have stayed to visit. Reaction generally (very generally) varied with age. However, all age groups failed to recognize we’re already in the midst of economic collapse, that we’ve been here for at least a decade, or that the collapse would be complete soon. Similarly, all age groups failed to appreciate the moral imperative with how we live our lives. Many youngsters from the Aldo Leopold High School were present, and they invariably went to the bargaining phase: I can still have my cell phone, right? People older than me typically went to denial: I’m glad I’m old, so none of this will impact my life. People between those groups expressed appreciation for the human community in this area and disdain for politicians, local through national, for failing to deal with either side of the fossil-fuel coin.

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A pdf version of the Powerpoint file is archived here, courtesy of Keith Farnish. Thanks, Keith!

And, because the taxpayers are so easily swindled by TPTB, there is little doubt they will fail to notice or, more likely, will believe the inflation-induced salvation of Greece is a brilliant move by the Economists In Charge. Judging from today’s explosive jump in stock markets, the swindle worked brilliantly. But volatility in the stock markets is back, so today’s huge gain will be wiped out by week’s end, perhaps in a ten-minute spasm subsequently blamed on a computer glitch that cannot be rationally explained. Glitch? If you believe that, then I’ve sell you some ocean-front property in Arizona. Well, it’s not ocean-front property yet. But we’re certainly headed in that direction.

But let’s go back to that coffin. Following the lead of the last remaining hyper-power, Europe is generating a mountain of debt so high it cannot be imagined, and therefore cannot be dealt with.

The black hole of debt has gone global. We’ll never pay off the debt because it cannot be paid off. But the average American believes every word that ends with illion is the same as every other word that ends with illion, so he goes back to the television while sucking down cheap beer and cheese doodles. Failing to recognize the effects of debt for him and his equally ignorant children, he keeps cheering on the military while booing the politicians, gleefully following American Idol while bitching about the quality of the public schools, bemoaning those poor fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico while filling up his SUV with gasoline and blaming Obama for not fixing the deep-sea oil gusher, blaming his elected representatives for high taxes (sic) while demanding eternal solvency of Social Security and Medicare, and calling Barack Obama a socialist even as the president nominates a fascist to the Supreme Court.

Citizens have become consumers. (Ben Franklin: “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”) We have abandoned the pursuit of inquiry, thus trading skepticism for suckerism. (One every minute is a massive underestimate from people who cannot distinguish millions from trillions.) We traded in our union cards for the promise of free money without reading the fine print. Having thoroughly fucked the planet and ourselves, we’re all playing extend and pretend, wishing for economic growth for our own generation (while willingly shit-canning future generations, as we’ve always done).

Eyjafjallajökull blowing smoke, ice melting at an accelerating rate from Antarctica, oil covering the Louisiana coast, biodiversity taking the fast track to oblivion at our oil-soaked hand, and on and on until the real news becomes so sickening we readily, eagerly, happily turn to reality TV (sic) or other mind-altering substances to get us through the week. If I weren’t a rationalist, I’d swear the third rock from the sun was trying to even the score with its most clever species.

Fortunately, even Ben Bernanke knows the odds are dimming on an orderly collapse. Don’t look away from the television now, but the post-industrial Stone Age is coming into full view.

Will it arrive in time to save the last remnants of the living planet? Will it arrive in time to save our species? Considering the planet’s atmosphere currently holds 387 ppm carbon dioxide, with 350 ppm the likely upper limit humanity can tolerate for an extended period, I have my doubts. Toss in methane, which is far more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and we’re currently experiencing the equivalent of 460 ppm carbon dioxide.

If that seems problematic to you, perhaps you’re numerate enough to distinguish between millions and trillions. Consider yourself a rare industrial human.

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This essay is permalinked at Counter Currents and Island Breath.

I still keep hearing, “If things get bad, I’ll move to ….” And then fill in the blank with your favorite fantasy or nightmare, including these and many more:

“my sister-in-law’s property in Kansas”

“Mexico”

“the wilderness”

“a central America country”

“southern Europe”

“the coast”

First, let’s consider how “bad” things have to get. The first significant warning shot came in the 1970s, when people in the industrialized world felt the impacts of the U.S. losing its status as the world’s swing producer of crude oil. We were visited by expensive gasoline and long lines at the pumps, simultaneous inflation and economic contraction, a president who encouraged conservation, and many other consequences of relying heavily on crude oil for economic growth. More recently, we’ve witnessed a housing crash, bank failures, oil priced at nearly $150/bbl, near-collapse of the industrial economy, sovereign debt crises throughout the industrialized world, and hundreds of other symptoms of passing the world oil peak.

If you keep your eyes closed, you’re going to run off the road. This society has already driven into a ditch, but you are not required to join the crash. Again, then: How many warning shots do you need?

We could spend a lot of time pointing out the lunacy of all the safe havens listed above. Moving in with the in-laws? Have you even asked? Isn’t there a reason you don’t live with them already? Have you discussed economic collapse with them, or do you continue to ignore the most important topic in the history of western civilization, opting instead for polite conversation?

How ’bout them Red Sox? Nice weather we’ve been having, doncha think?

Stop me if I’ve mentioned this one before: If you keep your eyes closed, you’re going to run off the road.

And Mexico? Do you speak Spanish? Fluently? Do you think you’ll be welcome there, gringo? Do you think continuing our history of occupation is a good idea, even at the personal level? Again, as before, why don’t you live there already, if it’s such a great place to be?

The wilderness? Really? Without a grocery store?

And so on, down the list of ludicrous options.

Here’s a thought: How about starting to prepare for a world without ready access to cheap fossil fuels? That would entail securing a personal supply of water and food for you and your family. For the rest of your life, and theirs. If that’s simply too daunting a task for your lizard-like brain, you can take the route pursued by about half the people to whom I speak: “I’ll save a bullet for myself.”

Really? Evolution suggests otherwise. I foresee a lot of my “friends” showing up at the mud hut, unprepared and unrepentant, but too consumed with personal survival to take the promised Hemingway out. A friend in need, ….

Better days lie ahead for those of us who desire to see the living planet make a comeback. But if you believe life is not worth living in the absence of empire — in the absence of our unrelenting intent and ability to destroy every non-industrial culture and non-human species — why wait? Why not take the Hemingway out now, while you still can get a decent imperial funeral?

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This essay is permalinked at Counter Currents, Information Clearing House, Hidden Mysteries, and Island Breath.

As should be clear by now, we cannot grow the industrial economy while reducing use of energy. As a result, we cannot grow the economy while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Thus, we’re stuck in a politically untenable situation: To save the living planet, including habitat for our own species, we need to shrink the industrial economy. But the industrial economy requires growth. Recent research indicates we need to shrink the industrial economy to oblivion to save our species. In other words, what we really need is to kill the industrial economy before it kills us. And by us, I mean all of us: the entire collection of wise apes. As a society, clearly we have made our choice. But as an individual, you can choose to the contrary, with benefits for your psyche and quite possibly your survival.

Crude oil is the master material, the energy source that provides access to all others. Economic growth requires ever-increasing supplies of crude oil. As availability of oil declines the price goes up (with considerable variability, as we have observed during five years since we passed the world oil peak) and the industrial economy starts to sputter. When the price gets high enough, long enough, the economy simply, finally, expires. The world has been on an undulating plateau of oil availability for several years, but that plateau leads to a cliff. According to the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. military’s Joint Forces Command, the cliff comes in 8 months or so.

I know no energy-literate person who thinks we’ll be able to avoid the post-industrial Stone Age by 2025. Assuming a conservative 4% annual decline rate of crude oil between now and then indicates we will have access to the same amount of oil in 2025 as we did in 1970, when the planet held half as many people as it now does and the world was considerably less industrialized than it now is. And that’s merely the gross rate of decline, whereas the net rate of decline will be much more rapid because it takes so much energy to extract and deliver energy. Oil priced a $147.27 per barrel nearly brought down the industrial economy five times I know about, and we’re hardly out of the woods yet. There is little hope for the industrial era to persist more than a few years, and the next spike in the price of oil could very well be the trigger that brings the industrial era to a sudden close in an unprepared nation.

I suspect we’ll pass through a new Dark Age en route to the post-industrial Stone Age. Indeed, many countries in the world are already there because they lack the world’s reserve currency and the world’s largest military. Bully for us: We have both, thus ensuring a steady supply of fossil-fuel-driven energy into every city and town in the United States. Well, so far.

As an aside, how long do you think we can maintain a military and a functioning industrial economy if we keep spending 58% of our budget on the former? We could stop our involvement in wars, but that would be quite un-American, wouldn’t it?

The costs of maintaining the non-negotiable American way of life are huge, even beyond simple economics. The American suburbs are the antithesis of durable living, as they require us to live far from work, far from play, and far from the places we shop for disposable items in our throw-away culture. They require obedience at home and oppression abroad. American Empire is city living (i.e., civilized), writ large.

The relatively few people paying attention to the undercurrents of the industrial economy know the ship is taking on water faster than the governments can run the printing presses. As the industrial economy continues to lurch and stumble, the vaunted American consumer loses the ability to consume (in part because inflation is rampant on items that actually matter, notably including food). Because ours is a consumer culture, with personal consumption accounting for 70% of the industrial economy, the ship is listing. The next financial crisis is already unfolding — notwithstanding absurd reports from politicians, media, and the irrational exuberance, again, in the stock markets — and governments have nearly exhausted their supply of tools to deal with economic issues. We hit the iceberg of peak oil and, as government administrators busily rearrange the deck chairs, it’s time to launch the lifeboats, even if you believe consumption is a good thing. Personally, I think it’s not, in part based on the definition:

Consume:

1. To do away with completely; destroy

2a. To spend wastefully; squander
2b. Use up

3. To waste or burn away; perish

Consuming gives most people a temporary emotional “high.” We’re addicted to shopping. But I trust it’s clear why rational people want no part of the consumer economy. If we cannot terminate the industrial economy, and soon, we’ll exhaust all habitat for humans on Earth by the end of this century (and, if the models are to be believed, much sooner). Along the way, if we have our way, we’ll destroy every non-industrial culture and every non-human species.

In the face of a contracting industrial economy and the knowledge we’re headed for a situation with extremely limited access to fossil fuels, a quote from Peter Drucker comes to mind: “You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable.”

What’s an individual to do, in light of the imminent collapse of western civilization? In addition to hastening the collapse, some tools for which I’ve listed before, I describe four points along a continuum for your own, individual, post-carbon future: (1) transition towns, (2) agricultural anarchy, (3) hunting and gathering, and (4) traveling. I will describe each approach, briefly, as a means of generating thought, action, and perhaps even discussion.

Transition towns allow us the fantasy of keeping the current omnicidal culture going, albeit in slightly different form. This model assumes a long descent that allows time for cities to develop alternative energy sources. Think solar on every rooftop, for starters, and gardens in every suburban lot. For this approach to work, though, the food shed must be sufficiently nearby and sufficiently productive to support all the people in the transition town. This seems hugely problematic in sprawling western cities, especially those with more than a few thousand people. And for areas with limited supplies of water, or water that is several hundred feet below the surface of the ground, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario that doesn’t include massive suffering along the way to a huge die-off. The inability to store energy in the absence of fossil fuels beyond a few years in expensive, transient, and toxic batteries is a microscopic problem relative to the absence of ready access to water and food. And there’s an additional problem with the transition-town notion: I seriously doubt we have access to the fossil fuels needed to create the needed infrastructure for the 250 million city-living Americans, much less the 3.5 billion people who occupy the world’s cities. Solar panels and batteries simply won’t make the grade — there’s not enough oil left to pull this one off.

When the lights go out in the city, chaos often erupts. Is your city different? If so, will that difference persist when the lights don’t come back on, ever? I’ve often said and written that I would give my life to terminate the industrial economy, if only to alleviate the burden of oppression on the living world. I’ve no doubt, in fact, that I will make this sacrifice. And that’s okay: My insignificant life pales in contrast to the living planet and the persistence of our species. On the other hand, although I loved city life, my city was not worth dying for. So I left to prepare, recognizing that fortune favors the prepared. In contrast, Michael Ruppert moved to his home city of Los Angeles with full knowledge L.A. would be among the first cities to go up in flames. Ruppert is willing to die for the privilege of comforting the afflicted there.

Agricultural anarchy was offered as a model by Thomas Jefferson, and Monticello was the prime example before it became a museum. Contemporary examples are found in nearly every “third-world” country. A large proportion of the towns and cities in Central America and South America never have had ready access to abundant fossil fuels. As a result, communities have communal water sources and people dig shallow wells and harvest rain from rooftops. On a daily basis, local markets are filled with fresh food brought from nearby gardens and farms. The power goes out frequently, and nobody seems to mind because the towns and cities are actually located in livable areas in the absence of fossil fuels to heat or cool every building (cf. Tucson, Arizona). In short, agriculture has always been, and still is, at the center of everyday life.

Hunting and gathering will doubtless make a comeback for a very few hardy, quick-witted folks. This model resembles the prior Stone Age, and clearly is the most durable approach. It worked for the first 2 million years of the human experience, and we fled from it as recently as a few thousand years ago. But if you can’t find a tribe to go along, you’ll be as lonely as a Saguaro cactus on an ice floe.

Finally, individuals can largely avoid the ravages of collapse by traveling from spot to spot. History has been kind to travelers because people rooted in a particular place hunger for knowledge. If you’re to pursue this route, you’ll need to be quick-witted, good-humored, and willing to lend a hand when needed. Also, you’ll need to recognize and avoid danger. Traveling will be terrifying, but no worse than staying in one location. And you’ll get to see the world and live an adventure-filled life, just as promised by U.S. military recruiters.

None of these options offer a life similar to the one you’ve known. But a different life doesn’t mean a worse life, especially if you give a rat’s backside about anybody besides yourself. There will be plenty of opportunities to serve your community, as there has always been, in the months and years ahead. We’ll be living closer to our neighbors and closer to the living planet that sustains us all. For those courageous, compassionate, and creative souls willing to live in the world rather than in a cubicle, life’s about to get even more interesting. For the vast majority of industrial Americans, though, life is about to become miserable and surprisingly short.

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This essay was inspired by a comment from Danielle Charbonneau. It is permalinked at Counter Currents, Island Breath, and A Climate for Change.