Nate, your insight was excellent. I'll think about it, answer later.

I continue to learn that humans still think that we humans (or some humans) are still in charge of our futures. We are not, perhaps we never were. As individuals we may control some aspects of our future. As a species we most likely control very little of our future. The non response to peak oil and the non response to climate change should convince us that we as a species cannot recognize the threat we pose to ourselves or if recognized act together to do anything about it. Globalized we must act together or we decline or perish together.

Hi gang. I've been largely absent from posting due to taking on the project of settling my mom's estate and refurbing her house, which has left little time for active involvement here.

I didn't learn anything this week. Make of that what you will.

But I will do an offhand comment on Nate's Insight.

My insight, in a nutshell, is that shouting to the world about the problems, isn't not working because people are afraid, or ignorant, or feckless, but because they don't know what to do. And this especially includes institutions. As such, my insight this week is that neither individuals, policymakers (current) or institutions are going to mitigate the energy/economic/environmental tsunami coming our way. There have to be new institutions, flexible and with urgency, formed to address the a)how to get through the financial bottleneck and b)how to move forward with different value systems other than growth/debt based models. WHERE ARE THOSE INSTITUTIONS??

Yet again, I'll note that incremental enlightenment is not all that useful at achieving significant societal change in a given direction. It simply feels as though it should be.

New institutions and arrangements will certainly happen; but they will be responses to the new environment and not really all that subject to 'intelligent design' beforehand. The exception to that would be when the system is subjected to steered collapse, so the new context is more knowable in advance. (I don't mean that in a sinister way; an airplane landing is a controlled crash).

I'll probably create an institution or two on general principles, but they will be templates rather than end products, in the tradition of Hari Seldon. I think the actual entities which evolve will be products of a necessarily unpredictable confluence of accidents, happenings and perceptions. We will get to them the way a pilot makes an emergency landing; a seat-of-the-pants running prioritization of which sorts of crashes would be less immediately acceptable.

and now, back to house repair....

Nate,

Enjoyed your comments about Lake Superior. Until 10 days ago, I hadn't seen the North Shore of Lake Superior since the late 50s. It's still beautiful and I'm glad I checked another box on my bucket list.

More to the point, now I'm back home, worried whether future generations can enjoy even a snipet of what I've enjoyed in the past 60+ years. What I fear most, beyond the buffoons that deny we have any problems, is that among our best and brightest, nobody has a clue has to how to proceed with addressing the myriad of problems that we (globally) are confronted with.

Nate:
Regarding your assertion that our fellow citizens and humans have no idea what to do seems spot on with regards to an episode that occured to me earlier this evening. I went out to dinner with some friends, a couple I've known for quite some time, and during the course of the meal they mentioned they had attended a zero point energy presentation recently and have come to believe that among other things perpetual motion machines can and do work, as well as believing that an engine can run on simple water. When I tried to explain to them all those modes of energy production or use violate the laws of physics as I understood them, they accused me of having a closed mind and not thinking 'out of the box.' I then tried to explain the simple issues of resource contstraint and overpopulation (ie 6.5, soon to 7 billion people on the planet, all of them wanting to live like suburban Americans). When I specifically brought up the energy needs for all those billions of us, one of my friends interrupted and made of joke of what I was talking about, stating I was just some doomer and in that case, we should all just kill ourselves. When I asked her if she ever thought about what sort of condition this country or even the planet will be in over the next 5 to 10 years, she replied that at least she had 'hope.'As well as accuse me of just rolling over and playing dead.
Now, besides the fact I have been living my life the past 5 years in ways that seek to significantly reduce my impact on the planet as well as learn new skills like gardening and carpentry that would provide a chance at my surviving what's coming a little bit better, I think it important to point out that for many folks, facts and figures are something can be ignored if you have a good enough story. My two friends are not morons...they are smart, otherwise educated people. If I get that kind of audience with people who are close to me, I am pretty sure no stranger is going to want to have that kind of conversation with me. I would like to know if any of you had something similiar happen.

Pete Deer

Kia ora Nate,

A very good read as always. I thought I'd chime in before the comments skyrocket and ask, what do you imagine these 'institutions' to look like? I ask because I'm funded by the Vodafone New Zealand Foundation to create social enterprise projects, with an adaptation focus, that foster future-relevant skill development of youth, therefore increasing their personal and community resilience to the challenges of climate, energy and economic change. I'm currently working on establishing a post-peak food production education centre that diversifies wealth into the human, social and environmental capitals. Soil remediation, seed production, skill and method research, human-powered machine development, and most importantly, food!

I'd love to hear you're thoughts about how to mainstream projects like this, or any insights you may have in this area of diversifying wealth. Cheers!

Nick

Well I learned something shocking this week:

Natural Gas is NOT a fossil fuel, according to minister for economics afairs Maria van der Hoeven in the Netherlands. (economic affairs deals with energy)

It's not that I believe her, but it's the reconfirming that we have the most incompetent person inmaginable doing this job. And somehow people are still supprised when I tell them that we are one of the, if not the least sustainable country in the EU...

Ohh, and in response to the question about institutions: I think you can imagine with a minister like this... My best bet for when TSHTF is to go accross the border to Germany, or almost any other EU country for that matter...

Edit:

#3
2^nd paragraph "isn't not" double negative.

Regarding: #3 Good (but unfortunately reaffirming) insight IMHO. When an ocean-liner takes 2 miles to stop and it's at full speed inside a mile and a half diameter harbor, a mile and a half looks decent from the far side - for awhile ";-^) Could be tough in the near future. Just a WAG. g

Nate - A few dissensions from your Campfire:

1- "There have to be new institutions". Replacing institutions has to be a very lengthy process in our current political system. Do you seriously propose to, for example, 1) abolish the Federal Reserve and then 2) create "Federal Reserve The Next Generation", a new institution with new people, new ways of doing business, new values ? This will take how long ? I assume that you attempt to start this revolution before the existing institution is carted off to the dustbin of history. After that, it is of course easier, but also a little bit late. And the same argument goes for any of the alphabet soup that governs our lives.

2- Why are the new institutions any smarter than the old ones ? If the existing institutions do not know what to do, how is it that the new ones will ?

3- Finally, the existing institutions "don't know what to do". I think the problem is one step further back than this. Any one who has read TOD for a while should be able to suggest something to do - IF people share the TOD "view" of our situation. Problem is, the TOD view is NOT universally accepted. Existing institutions do not have a view of our situation from which they believe they can act with confidence. That, I think, is a more precise understanding of their paralysis.

Norman

This week I learned:

1. John Deutch, (MIT professor who has held numerous governmental posts and was keynote speaker at the symposium I attended) thinks our energy policy is going absolutely nowhere. We have no energy policy, and no prospect of getting one anytime soon. In terms of GHGs, we have no way of convincing China and India to make changes that might affect these gasses, even if we make changes ourselves. In terms of technology, we have no at-scale solutions for our energy problems. With respect to Carbon Capture and Storage, we are nowhere. His conclusion is that we are not making any progress; we need a new approach. In his view, the new approach should come from the executive branch. Most of this is not really new information, but hearing it from someone who comes from government /academia was a surprise.

2. Kurt Yeager, past president of the Electric Power Research Institute, explained why our electrical system is so bad. It still relies on analog electro-mechnaical control, which is very slow. There have been no fundamental advancements in the electrical grid in 50 years. There has been no standardization of standards in electricity--there are 47 different systems, each with its own standards. Kurt claimed that we are now a "world follower" in electricity, with everyone else having more reliable electric service. Calling what we have a grid is misleading--it is really a radial system. Businesses are going elsewhere to set up their businesses, because our electricity is so unreliable. We don't even count outages that are less than 2 or 3 minutes. The current rules pit the stockholder against the customer. He believes a $400 billion transformation is needed. What is needed is not just money though. When he claimed that a change could be made in 5 to 10 years, I asked how that could be, with things organized the way they are currently. He then indicated that more fundamental changes were needed. Continuing on the road we are on will get nowhere, even over a much longer period, with more money added.

Insight:

1. The Patchwork Quilt Analogy. Mary Nichols, Chair of the California Air Resources Board, spoke in defense of the patchwork quilt approach to solving problems, such as our energy and CO2 problems. Back in colonial times, people put together patchwork quilts with bits and pieces of what they had, and even made beautiful designs from what had been cast-off garments. In Mary's view, the only way we have to solve our problems is in a piecework fashion, looking at what will work locally. Mary is an advocate of states working together to solve problems. I am not sure that this will really work--solutions to our current problems may have to be on a smaller scale that individual states. And some problems, like our electricity problems, probably cannot be solved with a patchwork quilt approach. It is not clear that they can be solved at all.

I relearned through my current corporate livelihood once again, that humans are short-term orientated. "We have budget this quarter" so this phase of the project will proceed.

#2. That the fed + Ben et al, are likely to come to grips with the term "Pushing on a string" soon. Coming soon to an economy near you. Peak oil demand coincides with peak credit demand. (Supply and credit are two sides of the same coin, and it takes two to tango eh?

#3 - Mitch Albom is a great storyteller. I knew this before and if you read any of his earlier works or his columns, then you know this. Just finished his "Have A Little Faith" book. We need more Rebs in this world, and we will get them, it's just going to be a hard road from here to there.

What I learned this week:

In my continuing research on the link between technology and the economy I read Mass Production, the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression by Bernard C. Beaudreau , which talks about Henry Ford’s assembly line and the gap between income and productivity before and during the 1930’s depression.

I also read My Life and Work by Henry Ford:
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=22786 Ford’s book is highly recommended, especially the parts about how mass production was developed. Surprisingly, Ford’s autobiography contains some of the best business advice ever written, especially when it comes to his philosophy of providing high quality affordable products, backed up by good service. Smil (below) discusses the 1914 article in The Economist that called Ford’s doubling the assembly line worker’s pay to $5/day and cutting their hours from 9 to 8 “the most dramatic event in the history of wages.” Ford talks about how he provided work for unskilled workers, many of whom were immigrants and who did not have to be able bodied and who were only expected to be productive enough to “pay for the amount of floor space they occupied.” $5 in 1914 is $110 in today’s dollars, more than minimum wage today and probably more than similar people in Europe made in a couple of weeks at that time. I have a whole new respect for Ford, despite the fact that we are running out of oil.

Also reading Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact by Vaclav Smil who has written some of the best books on technology and energy. Smil says that the great innovations like electricity, internal combustion and the chemical industry, unlike the First Industrial Revolution, were based science like thermodynamics and Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory.

For those who are interested in the link between the economy and technology see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave

Peak GDP growth occurred from 1895-1910. So much for Computer/Internet/Information Technology/Knowledge Economy.

We’ve read the story of life written in the languages of physics, biology and chemistry. We stand on a summit in the future and watch the expanding populations approach the chasm in the valley below. We yell, “slow down, single file, no pushing”, but no one can hear us, they are blind to what we can see, a single, narrow bridge crossing the abyss. We know that if they followed our advice, everyone could make it, but they keep surging forward. Then we wake up and we’re no longer on that comfortable summit, we’re in the middle of the great masses of the uninformed with our families beside us. It's no longer a comfortable intellectual exercise. We warn again, and explain that we’ve been to the summit and that a bridge exists. But it’s too late, their money is gone, traded to false prophets for pieces of paper that promise a cornucopia of future returns. They move in lockstep towards almost certain impoverishment and perhaps death.

What should we do? Continue to try and convert those that have bought the cornucopian dream? Get in the business of selling worthless promises of future returns? Move our families towards the bridge before the inevitable panic begins?

What did I learn this week? That it's time to hasten my escape from the herd, the difficult days of reckoning are fast approaching.

This week I learned how to make a pleated skirt - which seems one of the easiest things you can make without a pattern, I think. My younger daughter had one that was slightly too tight, so I took it apart more or less, modified the pleat spacing, added to the waistband, and resewed it. In the process learning how it was made and how to replicate it.

I also found a book at the library on shoemaking - the single book they had in our large library on the subject. It was from 1977 and rather funny on some dated points, but a good start. Making a pair of shoes would be quite a project...

And I dwelt quite a bit on one point that Nate made - that no one is in charge, or that there is no one and no group with a grasp of our situation actually steering an effective course. Both parties verge on what Greer would call "revitalization movements", and politically things become more depressing and disconnected from reality as the election cycle ramps up. The level of stupidity promoted through the media seems unprecedented...but probably it seems that way every time around.

I am also re-reading Gurdjieff, who I recall being fond of 25 years ago, in a different life. It is an interesting thing to revisit old writers and philosophies and see how they have aged, held up against the world as things are today.

1. I did a mental survey of my co-workers/colleagues, all of whom have strong scientific backgrounds and are highly analytical and nerdly. I could think of only a few who have awoken to the predicament we are in. It is frustrating trying to get these scientists to think more broadly, let alone take any mitigating action. Fact 1 is that scientists are entrenched as much as any other person in the current paradigm.

2. Deleting TV from one's life leads to increased happiness. A fact and a recent insight!

Insight: I need people like here on TOD in my life...i feel like if I could only know a few of you in person I'd feel better about things. I, like many of you, have nobody to talk to concerning these subjects.

fixie

I've been reading about John Maynard Keynes.

1. I read Robert Skidelsky's book Keynes: The Return of the Master. I almost put it down when the author shortchanged the idea that resource shortages (e. g. of oil) have anything to do with our current financial crisis, but kept reading and a very good thing because I found it very interesting. A key idea of Keynes' view of uncertainty in economics -- not "risk" which can be calculated and which markets can deal with, but just plain old flat-out uncertainty, when we don't even know the basic parameters. Uncertainty for Keynes drove people away from investment and towards cash (thus the Great Depression).

2. Not in Skidelsky's book but on another forum someone directed me to Keynes' ideas for an International Clearing Union, which would attempt to balance imports and exports, by penalizing countries with either a net trade surplus or a net trade deficit. (As opposed to, say, the creditor nations controlling all the levers of power in the IMF.) Surplus or trade would be based on "bancors," a unit of currency based on a range of commodities (which could include oil, coal, gold, etc.).

3. Insights -- if oil prices are volatile, and the whole economy is running on oil, then that creates uncertainty in the economy which will propel us to a depression (or keep us there, depending on your point of view). But, an international clearing union might allow us to stabilize the economy by focusing on commodities and natural resource shortages, sort of like the oil depletion protocol extended to all natural resources (a platinum depletion protocol, a wood depletion protocol, etc. etc.). Just an idea, not really an insight.

Well, so far this week, I've been learning to cook (I made crabcakes, two stews, and egg foo young) and learning how to play Japanese mahjong. The second part isn't really relevant, except as being one of the pastimes I expect will still be around in some form or other no matter what occurs.

The cooking, actually, has a point and was caused by a realization of my own semi-uselessness in the kitchen. I don't normally think of myself as a useless person, and certainly by the standards of the day I am fairly competent - I can handle computers and fixing them up to a degree, I can change a tire and change my oil - but in the kitchen I realized that, while I theoretically knew how to use the tools, I couldn't make much more than eggs and sandwiches. For people of my age, 29, this actually isn't that uncommon. There are an awful lot of people lacking basic skills (myself included), on top of which a lot of goods are unfixable or at least harder to fix today as well. We've specialized ourselves in a way that has rendered people dependent, and I think that is a direct result of fossil fuels. In a time of declining resources and high unemployment, a lot of people are going to have to learn a lot of things. This is fairly obvious, and many people have talked about this in depth, but it brings it home when you learn a basic skill for yourself.

Also, cooking from semi-scratch (I'm not at the stage where I make my own stock yet) as opposed to either buying things from resturants or making recipies from ready-make boxes really brings home how much of the "food" out there is factory produced. I read "In Defense of Food" and knew theoretically that shopping in the produce section was a good idea, but that's not the same as being able to do it and make something from it. We're really not all that far from the society of E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops". You know, I know the machine is harmful, but if it stops we're really in trouble.

As for the third thing, I was talking today to someone of political view very different from mine (commonplace enough), and we both saw the same problems (in housing and economics), and even many of the same solutions... It strikes me that the political game is almost entirely a distraction and way to divide people. Perhaps this is a game that plays itself, that is, you can realize it's a game but there is nobody directing it - the elites of Wall Street or Big Oil or whatever may not have the self-realization to know that they are playing the role of, well, privledged elites in the respective realms of economics and energy.

Like in mahjong, forces beyond our control determine much of our actions and what effect they have.

"US tax receipts are being matched, and then some by an increase in foreign borrowing and Fed balance sheet expansion. "

If those are cumulative, then it's not all bad ? the Tax receipts,
are only 1-2 years behind the cumulative debt ?

Or, put another way, Tax receipts need only increase slightly, to start to pull pack the debt.

1. Modesty in all things
2. Max Keiser is a revelation
3. Avoid foods that contain numbers for ingredients

Thinking a little more about "the financial bottleneck" - in spite of the seriousness of it, I can't bring myself to actually worry. The reason for that is that we have managed to levitate amidst an almost steady state of impending economic catastrophe for three decades at least. I have been reading hair-raising mind-boggling predictions of economic doom since the early 80's, all based on solid evidence, well-constructed models, history and reason. The juggler can't possibly keep those balls in the air for any length of time - its physically impossible and disaster is certain to come at any moment; yet check back in a month and not only has disaster not occurred, but now there are even more balls in the air! Year after year...

Not that I question the basic fact that the whole misconstrued edifice must come down, I just have no idea how it has gone on this long, and so no prediction as to how long it can be kept up.

On new institutions

By definition, it can't be any of the existing institutions, all of which have settled agendas, inertia, habits and stakeholders. One shouldn't expect radical change from AARP or NEA, for example.

Glenn Beck's "Back To God" platform is a step backward, more or less negating whatever ill-defined potential the Tea Party movement may have had. One pines for a Ross Perot or Jesse Ventura, but I think it's too late for that sort of common sense breakthrough phenomenon. It's anachronistic. Larry King retired and nobody watches CNN any more. Likewise newspaper op-eds, paid advertising and spam are useless in a mobile i-Pod i-Phone Facebook Twitter era.

In the 1960s, we were inspired and energized by music. Lyrical music is totally gone today, except geriatric rock, country and Christian ballads. Hip hop and techno are not lyrical. I don't think they can count past two, so debt monetization is wa-a-a-y over their heads.

Maybe the solution is staring us in the face. Not exactly a "new" institution, but a fairly new, mature institution -- the blogosphere. People who read and think and retransmit. For instance, Seeking Alpha has 500,000 users, of which 10,000 apparently follow whatever I infrequently post. Gregor Macdonald has a huge footprint. So do you, sir.

The new institution is us.

Thanks, Nate,

I wanted a place to share this!

I just heard a little bit - not the whole thing - of something that's short to begin with, namely, a re-play of this piece from "This American Life."

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/177/american-limbo

"Act One. The Family That Flees Together, Trees Together.
The Jarvis family, a group of eight, goes on the run from the law—for seven years. They live on a boat, in a treehouse in a swamp. They escape capture time after time. And how do the kids turn out, living a life outside of society, as fugitives? Surprisingly great. (22 minutes)"

Several things struck me about the snippets I heard, and my final thought was: "This is a family that will survive peak oil!"

The kids, according to Ira Glass, have in common a devotion to each other. (No animosity, jealousy.)
The Mom sounded really nurturing, the Dad as well - (let's leave aside the reason to "fugit") - and the kids grew up learning and loving to learn and create.

Ira to one of the daughters: Was it hard to make friends? (This is a really, really interesting part.) She said "No, I never thought of myself as inferior to anyone." (This, despite their obvious "outsider" status and their obvious poverty.)

Another thing: they sounded genuinely, extremely happy! To be alive. They also sounded fairly incapable of being upset about their surroundings, because being together, laughing, joking and learning is what made them happy. A lot of love, is what it sounds like.

Like I said, I only heard part of it. And, of course, the Dad regrets his breaking the law that led them into this in the first place. But it sounds to me like the positive aspects would have been there, had that not happened. And those are the things that I responded to.

The update mentioned the next generation (Grand-kids), and that the now-grown kids are saving up to buy a large piece of property so they can all live next to each other.

1. I learned that education has become the new Untouchable Sacred Cow. People are now worshiping at the altar of education the way they used to worship at the altar of money. Education is the new Magic Carpet Ride that is going to miraculuosly save us all. LMAO

2. I learned to check the carton when you know damn well there's a massive egg recall going on, before you eat the stupid French Toast.

I was too busy puking to have any insights...

a)On an individual level a financial bottleneck will be bad if you lose your job. And if you dont lose your job your going to have to support those that do through taxes to prevent unrest. Everyone is going to have to get used to living on less wether they like it or not. I've noticed a few European politicians have started to adress this problem. President Sarkozi in particular has made several speeches about replacing GDP as a measure of economic growth with something that incorporates wellbeing. David Cameroon has also made similar moves in Britain.

b)Two major hurdles must be crossed before some sort of steady state economy can be formed. The seperation of state and corporate interests and the reduction of the current economy to a level that can be supported by the environment. How to do that in time I havn't got a clue. But new institutions can form or existing ones can adapt rapidly in emergency situations. At the start of WWII it was the Ministry of Agriculture which took over rationing in Britain. What about FEMA in the US?

Lessons I have paid dearly for.

1. Handle your own money. Never trust anyone else with it. Not even Pension Funds. (My Gratuitous advice. Get out of debt.. Now.)

2. Family cannot be replaced.

3.It takes a lot longer than you think to make anything. Better get started.

Fun facts:
We are all walking ecosystems. (Swamps if you please). There is no barrier between me and Gaia. I am a subsystem of the planet.
Even my mind is permeable. Do other peoples thoughts not occupy "me"? Is this thought not entering "your" mind?
"Mind" is divisible and emergent.

My God is the God of the Yawning Chasms.
(Don't ask me what it is all about. I am as lost as you are.)

Insight: reading a splendid essay in a dutch newspaper this weekend about the psyche of the meat-eater, also has relevance on the topics discussed on TOD (it is the same psyche as the coal-burner). It discusses the fact that most people with some education should know what is going on the intensive bio-industry. But that doesn't stop many from buying the cheapest piece of pork possible any ways. The author claims this is because humans tend to avoid any unpleasant of diffucult situations, it's just not part of our instincts. We know we should quit the habit, but it just tastes so damn nice.

Also the fact that the relation between the individual and the collective has become diffuse and anonymous doesn't help us either. If we would still live in little communities of say 50 people and would have to smell the pig-dung each day, do the butchering ourselves etc, before the meat would end up on our plate, the fact that it just tastes so damn nice would become less relevant straight away. In our modern life, we just see the nice piece of meat on our plate, and can completely forget about the misery of the animal, the strain it puts on the soil and climate of our earth etc. We all do it without shame because: we all do it. The consumer thinks: "what can I do about it?", the farmer thinks: "well, why don't they buy the meat of the pig that had a better life" and the politician doesn't do anything about it since he knows that the voter cares much more about what he/she has to spend than animalrights, environmental issues,3rd world etc.

The author claims we all live in a state of "pluralistic ignorance". We all think that if it was really that bad, someone else would take up the task to handle the problem. Psychology calls it the bystander-effect. The more bystanders witness an accident, the less chance you get that someone will actually get up and help the wounded.

The author ends with a citation of Edmund Burke which has stuck in my mind straight away. I translate freely: 'Evil only needs thing for victory; good and willing people doing nothing'. And boy, this problem (society eating the cheapest meat possible, cheaper than catfood usually) seems to me much easier to fix than to move to an society free of oil and coal burning.

2 facts:

1) I've wonders what part of "law" the phrase "possession is 9/10ths of the law" came from as I'm working with various parties WRT their real estate.
The system in the US of A is based on common law.
The 9/10ths comes from Admiralty Law.
2 different systems - can't really square that circle unless the wack-jobs with their gold fringe flag crap are right.

2) Just popped up on the radar - it seems the quest for a lack of microbe exposure claims another. Seems that hyper-clean water prevents a layer o slime from forming in the copper pipe and that layer helps prevent pin hole leaks. Joy - so much for copper pipe being a 'lifetime' solution.

3 - Insight. Meh. Most of 'em have been re-affirmation of what I already know. (I guess the closest is non profit I work with needs more 'adults' watching the 'children" who are board members.)

I (re) learned this week that money runs the United States and unfortunately, these players, like the Koch brothers, have usurped what is left of our democracy for their own selfish ends. These ends are completely antithetical to doing anything about global warming, peak oil, or endless, destructive growth in general. The deck is stacked worse than ever and the Citizens United case has sealed our fate for the upcoming elections and beyond.

People could take to the streets but they would be under surveillance from thousands of cameras. People have given up their freedom for security.

This week I have reached a new low of doomerism.

A couple of things:

1, We have the biggest sockeye run since 1913 on Johnstone Straits....apparently 7,000,000 + estimated. I have no idea where this 1913 came from because Fisheries and Oceans are a joke with pretty much everything they do. But there are a lot of fish.

2, They are at times fickle to bite, and yet sometimes are voracious lure hunters. We can pretty much predict the bite window by the tide. It lasts no more than an hour for the most part.

Insight:

Wistfulness felt at the inevitable decline. It feels like things are going very well as my wife and I put our lives together in a deliberate way. I am contented and marvel at the beautiful place we live. The shadow is one of sadness for want of a better word, or a sense of loss. However, the small things are precious and I now make an honest effort to cherish, enjoy, and not waste time doing and feeling negative....

Yesterday, as I was fishing from my small boat, 3 orcas swam under (I could see them), and surfaced 15 feet ahead. Wow. It was pretty neat and I just wanted to share it. A few years ago I would have been pissed off and muttered, "How many of our fish have you eaten today"? Not too many years ago commercial fisherman shot them on sight. There are positives.

in response to Nates insight....

I think people and institutions addressing these problems have a creative failure in coming up with ideas or solutions again stems from the inability to plan or think in long term time scales..

some institutions already in place could be made more effective if they had a mandate of 50-100 years rather than 5-20

squaring that with current political practice looks an ask

the one things i learnt and my insight

1. behavioral economics is tainted by an observer syndrome where peer oversight skews the result in favour altruism and experiments designed to test altruism produce more self interested behavior as the potential gain increases

2. At first glance this suggests self interested models of individuals is perhaps not a dead concept but ironically suggests to me that deregulation increased oppurtunity to steal only increases theft rather than promotes societal good by default... so while Lists new insights into behaviorism is touted by the Hyack crowd as "told you so" it really demonstrates why that self organizing model needs to be controlled by just oversight and why it does't work..

I mean if it was all self organizing and altruistic it should be a just world...yet increased deregulation increases the opportunity to steal from your fellow human beings.

moral oversight is cultural.. this universe will be what we make of it..there is no excuse for crumby behaviour

Great post Nate.

I think the solution requires a change in scale - revert to a human scale. Too much power has been centralized in government, business, the wealthy, the fed, energy sources, etc. Diversity is more sustainable. Smaller scale is more sustainable.

So the answer is to help the public realize that their lifestyles are not sustainable unless they embrace self-reliance and sustainability. This means moving closer (physically and in our heads) to our water and food sources and learning to live with less (junk). If the majority lived truly within their environments resource means, the whole would become less reliant on central power structures and our civilization would become naturally more sustainable.

This is one of the core reasons I blog about tiny houses.

We (bloggers) must find a way to make these ideas and information palatable to the main stream, show them how it's a better way to go anyway, in order for the majority to jump on board.

I say bloggers because the main stream media is run by a central power source which has been naturally corrupted by advertising dollars. No conspiracy here... the media has simply succumb to the forces of economics and has to make news entertaining in order to stay in business - so they tell the news people like to watch in a way they like to watch it.

We can't rely on any central power source (like our government) for the same kind of reason. They are a product of a chain of events and the core problem. They can't fix it because it would require a complete reinvention of everything they have become. In other words they would need to revert back to a more primitive state.

As you point out above nobody is going to choose this path.

So the natural conclusion is that this gigantic ponzi-economy is going to collapse. There is no force that can stop it now. The Fed is proposing unheard of changes and if congress bites may give it a few more years - but the end result is the same.

This is why the only thing that can keep the peace is all of us. If we all chose to live immune-to-economic-collapse lifestyles and lived closer to water and food and in homes just big enough for us to maintain ourselves without oodles of oil we'd become the anti-bodies to their virus.

-Michael Janzen

We are thinking about similar things. I find myself this weekend writing about institutional fatigue, and noting how the economic descent is becoming a convenient explanation for individuals in policy making roles. You hear it from the FED, you hear it from Treasury, you hear it from the White House: "don't expect us to control all outcomes." More broadly, an old social dynamic is coming into play even more forcefully: socially it is better to fail conventionally, than to try and succeed uniquely. You can tell that everyone from the President, to pension and university endowment managers are progressing now towards that view. Post-war economic declines, such as was seen in Britain, are instructive here. There's a kind of rigor-mortis that is fated to set in, as the alignment finally breaks down hard between the performance that clients or the electorate would like to enjoy, and the risk that an individual would need to undertake to achieve that. In a no-growth world, all current position holders/job holders convert to a new incentive: just hanging on, and hugging, the average. Accordingly, at a time when they system needs increased risk-taking, risk-taking also declines. Perhaps this is why these periods are fertile ground for fanatics or other very-passionate individuals: they are able to arbitrage malaise and the shortage of risk-taking to their own advantage.

G

An institution that I think will emerge are those that can develop single person transportation vehicles, somewheres between a velomobile and a smart car.

Learned: a bit of a refresher on sanitary engineering.

The sanitary sewer running down the street in front of my house is an 8" vitrified clay pipe from 1913. It's holding strong. The side sewer connecting to it was installed in 1929. It's a series of oversize cement Lego tubes. Each is 31" long with a straight end and a bell end. The bells give it a little flex.

The business end, running under the sidewalk and across the street, appears to be fine. The house end was not fine. The sophisticated low tech design failed due to insufficient sand under the pipe, not tamped and not enough, and the massive root ball of a Douglas fir tree that was buried near the SS line when the house was built in 1929. The tree was burned and the root ball just left there. Being Doug fir, it lasted a long time. The ground must have moved a bit, because the near sections of Lego tube were back falling, deteriorating, and causing problems to propagate towards the house.

Repairs at the house end in 1957 and 1994 were also rotted out.

Insight: Low tech is fine, hand dug SS is fine, but the engineering has to be right. They should gotten a horse team and pulled the stump right at the beginning.

Not so much learned brand new, but was reminded of some things in reading through the comments.

An institution is an organization which manages a collection of programs, in the Daniel Quinn definition, each of which is stick planted in the middle of a raging torrent in an attempt to re-direct it. Do you want a new set of sticks, or do you want some sort of dam or trenching, which confounds and obstructs the flow? We already have an invention that stops and redirects the flow of everything that comes at it: government. Government is so effective at confounding and obstructing flows, it will even confound and obstruct itself, unfortunately making it impossible to wield as a tool from the outside.

At this late stage of the game, inventing and creating a new institution or a new governmental body would be like knitting a parachute after you've jumped out of the plane. Knitting a parachute might be a great idea, later, if you survive the fall.

Another thing I was reminded of is that fun is under-rated. Doing something fun, just because it's fun, isn't a waste of the limited time we have left.

I learned:

1) Do not go to the bank on Friday afternoon (Valencia, Venezuela). It seems that the crowds of construction workers go to cash their pay cheques on Friday and armed robberies happen all the time. Since the robbers hold up the people in the line, not the bank tellers, the manager does not call the police, notify mall security or interrupt his lunch for long. (Insight: We all sit round buying handguns and installing security cameras yet they don't seem to prevent anything)

2) You need a good electrical system to make CF bulbs work well. I spent a month being nauseous until I switched to an incandescent bulb, most likely because the old old electric system in the house I rent makes the bulbs flicker and emit a sickly light. In one room the CF bulbs simply will not turn on at all when an incandescent will.

3) Insight: If you care about an issue and no-one else does you might beat your forehead bloody banging it against the wall of people's indifference. BUT you still get further than if you give up and stop caring too.

I've learned that while we have a rather good grasp of trends, what we know about how people are responding and may likely respond to coming dislocations and constraint is...not much. What we seem to have is:
- a lot of anecdotal evidence of various sorts of denial from people we meet in the circles within which we move (and I doubt anyone among us would claim the TOD readership, whatever we are, is anything like a representative demographic);
- extrapolation of known patterns and relationships, which is fraught with error (a most hilarious example of which is the National Lampoon feature years ago on the 1939 New York World's Fair - what people thought the future would be like; one was a diesel typewriter);
- some insights from cognitive psychology, anthropology, history (how people have dealt with tough times, expected or not), etc.;
- occasional startling realizations like Nate's, or what Gail reports of John Deutch, that no institutions are developing to deal with what seems to be coming.

I generally find myself following Tainter. As the trends we collectively foresee here strengthen, people are going to start withdrawing support of large scale institutions in ways they can and can get away with. Effects will play out strongly by social class position and by region; elites will try hard to profit from the collapse, but may find themselves in the crosshairs. The poor will almost certainly take the brunt of it, but may find they have unexpected resources of social and cultural capital. As bricoleurs, people will utilize cultural materials to construct what they can to deal with the problems they encounter. It will be creative, desperate, innovative, destructive.

On a lighter note - I also learned, because I finally took the moment to look it up (in this wonderful digital age, the best of all possible worlds) that "Olly olly oxen free" is thought to derive from "All ye, all ye 'outs' in free". I can sleep at night now.

This week I learned what most of the people I know really think of people like me, even if they are still too polite to say so to my face.

This week I learned of another native tribe not yet completely contaminated/destroyed/absorbed by industrial cilivization.

My insight, in a nutshell, is that shouting to the world about the problems, isn't not working because people are afraid, or feckless, but because they don't know what to do - they are helpless, ignorant creatures.

I realized they do not know what to do because they are Adult-Sized Children completely dependent upon their collapsing industrial ecosystem.

I realized Adult-Sized Children of a failing industrial ecosystem can be extremely dangerous when they do not get their kibbles.

I realized I better leave the land of adult-sized children before they turn rabid and begin consuming anyone that does not look, smell, sound, feel and taste like them.

Systemic Paralysis-

OBI:Don't just stand there - Do something!

Benny: What?

OBI:I dunno, anything. Print money. Borrow. Lend. Default. Whatever, but look busy and like you know what you're doing.

Benny : And if TSHTF

OBI: It's your funeral bro, but we'll all be going down together anyway, so don't be too upset.

Benny: You'd just say it was my idea and have me canned. Why don't you let the congress do the dirty work, I'm sick of being the point man...What you laughing about man? You need a doctor? Talk about dying laughing. OK now seriously maybe you could just declare martial law or something like that, I mean, they could only impeach you.

OBI: Are you wired or something? Is this a trap?

Benny : I'm totally serious and no I'm totally clean, no cables. Desperate times need desperate measures.

OBI: I ain't no Texan.

Benny: Since when did Chicago boys suddenly big have moral scruples? Get your *ss in gear!

OBI: I can do without pep talks from finance profs on how to take care of things.

Benny: You're just squeamish. I totally expanded the sense of my power in the emergency to the tune of trillions just like the last guy in your office understood legal limits in a very flexible manner.

OBI: He had congress on the run. They were kissing his *ss. They won't give me the time of day.

Benny: Patriot act and all that are still on the books. Just say that banks are unpatriotic potential terrorists and have to lend money to small business and little guys at 0% for thirty years or go to Gitmo.

OBI: They'd rather face the firing squad. Why don't you just send a million bucks each to all the poor bastards in America so they can buy more junk?

Benny: That's my worst nightmare. Giving money to the poor. Maybe Timmy could bring it over himself, he worked in the 3rd world. Besides, the stores would just up their prices overnight, just like the French shops on the Champs Elysee up their price for a croissant according to the dollar course of the last five minutes.

OBI: You're right. God this job gives me such a headache. Man, like I shoulda listened to my Mama and become a preacher. All that Harvard stuff and politics is a crock of s**t.

Benny : Yeah like my Mama wanted me to be a dentist. But I wasn't into pain. Now I think maybe there was no difference.

I finished reading Odum and Odum's Prosperous Way Down this week, and was generally disappointed. What I haven't figured out is exactly why I was disappointed. I think it was because the whole thing felt inconsistent to me — the pieces didn't fit together into a consistent whole. Or at least they didn't address several critical questions that need to be answered to make the descent "prosperous".

For example, they write about the need for rapid electrification, and that the long-term sources will be hydro, fission, and the rest of the coal. It is difficult to reconcile burning the world's coal reserves with the environmental stewardship pushed elsewhere. The question of electrifying agriculture seems to be ignored, but maintaining a fission level of technology requires (again IMO) that it be done. Either that, or it requires a two-tiered society, with a largish population of peasants producing the food, and an elite group reaping the benefits of nuclear-level technology.

Perhaps most important is that here are two Americans writing about social changes, but nowhere summarizing that they have proposed a government that is enormously more intrusive than currently. They propose (or at least imply) radical restructuring of employment, education, and medical care, along with very significant restrictions on the goods and services to be produced. If the intended mechanism for implementing these changes is not government coercion, than they beg Nate's question of what institutions can be expected to accomplish it?

what I learned this week:

to begin, I'm a first time poster... been reading/ appreciating TOD for years now though, all through graduate school as embodied energy is a huge concern in archtiectural studies. now an intern architect, I'm excited about new cultures possible with new arrangements of space...

1)
I understand more clearly each day of each week that what Nate said is true: people see the problems, they even want to fix them, are willing to sacrifice... but don't know what to do or how to start working toward the positive future of our imaginations. that goes for everyone in my observation, from the highly educated, well financially situated, to the other end of the spectrum.

Not knowing is an education issue. Inability to act, seems to me, to be largely a liability issue. People are tied down to the obligations of the system and it's bills... all sorts of golden handcuffs, time commitments. Inventing and living out a different culture requires not only the ability to live into that new future, but the capital and resources to create a way of life which frees them from the obligations which hold them in the status quo in the meantime, while they transition over.

2)
The good news is, the education is happening: the conversation I share with friends in west texas on this saturday morning is to the tune I seem to hear everywhere I go these days... a shift away from demand for the jet set, the speed, the glamour of the young, mobile, individual... there seems to be a renewed interest in rest, leisure time, family time, meal time, quality, not quantity etc... Could it be that all the young americans traveling the world ( like myself ) return home after their travels to the middle of america with a different set of cultural outlooks/ possibilities in mind? Could it also be that in the wake of the recent recession, people are spending their unemployed, less employed downtime remembering better times, back when america had neighborhoods and shaded sidewalks? I also think that some invisible threshold is being crossed by the mass media in regards to how much baloney the masses can be force fed. I see a skeptical attitude toward the news and digital media realm all around me. so thanks to these phenomena and more, people in west texas are talking about: farmers markets again... organic local food sources, biking, walkability, yoga, ( and our 5a state championship high school football team...), but I mean, yoga too... ya know?

3)
finally, I've learned this week that three solar panels is barely enough energy ( but enough ) to live in a tiny house with yachting appliances as long as I do my cooking outside ( the wood stove is a bit too much warmth in the summertime ). anyhow, the tiny house is a prototype on a scale that makes it entirely free of liability ( no bills ) and gives me more time to lay around outside in a hammock ( less house cleaning ) and invent. besides ( I thought as I abandoned the idea living a "normal" american life ) I guess I've lived enough interesting places in the world that american suburbia has lost all appeal to my senses. here's the blog about how I'm working toward a sustainable, alternative reality where I grew up: http://attheland.blogspot.com/

a friend of mine used to say one thing when I told him about the world's problems: "be the change" - pretty annoying...

It wasn't a good week for learning truly new things. But I did just realize that the clause:

There have to be new institutions, flexible and with urgency...

seems utterly unintelligible in this context. "With urgency" strongly suggests a hidden dimension of scale since a mere handful of people acting or reacting in private, no matter how rapidly and urgently, wouldn't alter even a single pixel of the Big Picture. The trouble is, the combination of "institution", "flexible", and "at scale" seems a good match for the clichéd trio "cheap", "quick", and "excellent" - in either case you may be able to pick as many as two, but not all three.

An even worse trouble might be the additional hidden dimension of coercion, inasmuch as many of the supposed mitigations commonly bandied about in academic and similar circles simply aren't going to happen on their own on any significant scale. Specifically, people are unlikely to vote to commit the sort of economic suicide that seems regularly to be called for by some who apparently cannot perceive on-the-ground reality from the vertiginous heights of the ivory tower. And usually it's government that's called upon to form directly (or actually to become itself) the institution(s) of large-scale coercion. That clashes violently with "urgency", since it's pretty hard to imagine anything in this universe possessing greater inertia and rigidity than government - save perhaps for neutron-star matter.

I suspect existing institutions will get you 75% or more toward where you want to go. It's a matter of getting them in your grasp....

...which I think is what yawl are working up to. One hell of a thrust to get yer little grippers on the machinery of the state.

That kinda struggle used to worry little ol' me. Could be like being trapped in a pen with elephants that hate each other. And have boils.

But then I realized:

We remain alert so as not to get run down, but it turns out you only have to hop a few feet to one side and the whole huge machinery rolls on by, not seeing you at all. -- Lew Welch

But go ahead. It's destiny and will make quite a show.

Not sure if I've had any startling insights this week. Many of the things I've read above I've gradually come to believe over a period of time, so there's rarely an "aha" moment to look back on.

I do fear the debt bomb. But I think it is artificial, basically paper promisies of future payment. Not the same as real physical needs of society, like energy, food, etc. So I think we can find a way to muddle through these issues. Money, and debt are just ways to motivate others, not an intrinsic thing actually. But the fear that government debt will get us is paralysing itself. We need to make major investments in energy transition, but that will cost more money -so we will put it off because we fear the financial consequences. So just when we need physical investment in different infrastructure, we are most reluctant to organize the many unemployed to do it.

I learned this week that my wife loves the Saturday auctions around here in southern Iowa. It is amazing how low some things are sold for. A gas furnace for $5. 100 feet of fencing for $20. A chest freezer for $15. Sometimes your stuck with buying what you don't want to get what you want. My wife wanted some tackle boxes for her sewing stuff but had to take all the junk inside it. OTOH some folks paid $50 for an antique I wouldn't give a second look. A lot of folks are like that. The real fun she has is she knows what a bargain some things are which most folks don't notice. Still looking for a band saw to complete my shop.

>most of the people that are effecting change now are not thinking about the Federal Reserve death spiral in the coming 5 years, and what that implies for social stability and the future of global energy supplies and interconnected trade relationships.

If these predictions carry weight, we should bear in mind that USA exports constitute sixty percent of the global grain market.

A collapse in these exports from any cause might make trouble for many people.

What I learned:

1. If one has a perfectly decent recipe for Jamaican vegetarian bean curry which has provided tasty meals for many evenings don't go improvising and expect to enjoy one's evening meal. Improvisation is for the laboratory; real world needs - such as my evening meal - require proven recipes.

2. Having some dodgy Arab come along and buy Manchester City FC, inject £500m (yes, £500 million) to buy the world's so-called 'best' footballers (translation for you Yanks: Soccer Players) does not mean City are immune from Sunderland's dazzle - who have a squad 'valued' at acorns to City's Oak trees.

Sunderland 1 - 0 Man City.

Money ain't everything!

3. My insight: democracy is a self-fulfilling delusion. We the sheeple are being fed 'democracy' by the main parties (on both sides of the Pond) as our God Given Right. Personally, I'd rather settle for less of modern day 'democracy'. This weekend the EDL (English Defense League) which is purported to be a non-partisan group, held a rally in Bradford. The label the media gives them is 'far-right'. I will hold my own council on that one. Never the less, the reason the EDL are protesting is because of that old chestnut, you guessed it, immigration. Just as thorny an issue in Yorkshire as in Arizona. More particularly the EDL does not wish to see Islam spread further throughout the UK. So parallels there with the goings on at Ground Zero in NYC.

The delusion of democracy is that these groups, the EDL, BNP etc are being portrayed as something sinister to the 'proper function of a democratic country'. I will go out on a limb here and say that the rise of these groups is totally democratic, utterly in keeping with free-speech and should be a wake up call to the closet elites who are all pervasive at the top of our so-called 'democracies'. Don't like the way the people react? Then don't get involved in politics. Politics is not about fund-raisers and d!ckheads like Obama and Cameron smoozing the cameras. It is about action in order to secure our children a world worth inheriting. We give them the trappings of power. We can always take it away. By force if need be. The American Constitution is not kept in the National Archives, DC. It is kept under pillows at night and strapped in holsters on men's belts during the day. As a Briton, my defense against the politicians is limited to my fists and my refusal to assist their storm-troopers, the police. I will never aid a police-nazi in their 'investigations'. They work for the state, for the rich elite. Not for me. And for the time being, my defense against the crooks in power is a little old lady resident in SW1A 1AA, London who has always held this country together. God help us when she is no longer there.

So, my insight of the week is: democracy stinks. Unless we take back our democracy from the utter dross 'leading' us to their own betterment, we will fulfill Wells's prophecy and become nothing more than the Eloi to Big Capitalism's Morlock. And maybe we need to go through a period of dictatorship before we get to the other side.

FACT 1 -The sun wanders around in the sky! Proof- I stuck my super cheap solar water heater in exactly the right place on my near flat roof in April, and then I had to move it in July, and now, dad-blame it, I gotta move it again, what with all those really big trees all around our house doing their evil best to throw shade on my water heater.

This is flat out dangerous, what with my eyesight and erratic balance-- I could fall off to the patio and mess up the bricks. Why wasn't I warned?

FACT 2- Solar is the way to go if we want to save the planet. Proof- The current issue of Caltech E&S mag. has a good summary of that Great Book, Sustainable Energy without the hot air. By David MacKay. He says solar will do it, and shows the usual squares in the Sahara and Saudi Arabia that would be needed.

The reason this is a Great Book is that MacKay agrees with me. And he also does what I have urged forever- put all energy units into kW-hrs, and make them PER PERSON, so we get rid of all the stupid meaningless huge numbers that people cannot even name, much less think about.

INSIGHT. It is hopeless cubed for me, a mere atom of humanity, to even think of bringing into action a new heat engine. Every thing having to do with energy-how much we use, how much we spend on fuels of one kind and another, and so onandon, are way too much for me. MacKay says the average person in the USA uses energy at the rate of 10kW! (I came across that same number in the Sept 1990 Scientific American). Flabbergasting! But true; I see proof when my offspring visit and all the lights stay on all over the house.

So. Quit the stirling nonsense, and go for the automatic bike transmission that is out in the shop almost ready to hit the road. We are gonna drive the shift bike into the museum, and dominate the hundreds of millions of bikes business for the next century.

PS. MacKay says a bike gets 80 times the distance per kW-hr as a car does. And, in my case, its fuel comes out of a pot on the stove every morning. And tastes good.

PPS. Humans are NOT heat engines. They are fuel cells.

There are a number of really great comments above mine. Unfortunately, the pooch is screwed. The past is never coming back and few want to accept this. Neither Permatculture nor Biodynamics nor any other magical thinking is going to change the outcome.

I'm not going to go through the usual list of stuff - we all should know it by heart. You, and I mean you who are are reading this, are screwed. I say this because I am "better prepared" than many people and I have spent a lot of time considering the future...and even I will have a hard time knowing how I will respond as it all crashes.

Good luck.

Todd

I'll bite.

We humans seem to be ready to do anything for a good scare. The movies are getting scarier, the cars go ever faster, roller-coasters go higher and turn you upside down. How much does a bugatti veyron cost?

But when the scare concerns reality, we just don't want to know.

We can happily watch cowboys killing cowboys, cowboys killing injuns, cops killing robbers and robbers killing cops, psychopaths eating young ladies or inventing ingenious machines for killing people slowly and gruesomely.

But we never think of our own demise. We never think of drowning in one's own mucus, burning and suffocating in a fire, the pain of your organs slowly giving up, the agony of hunger or thirst. The best we can come up with is going to sleep and not waking up. Or at least a fast, merciful end. How many people do not go so pleasantly?

I do not think it possible to have a meaningful conversation about collapse with someone who has not come to terms with his own mortality.

I find that regarding my own death as a subject worthy of exploration and investigation gives me enough of a clinical distance to be able to contemplate collapse without collapsing myself.

Which brings me to a surprising conclusion. As worrying about death usually comes with age, were societies where elders had a bigger say better organized?

I have/am learning to hunt predators. Predators that kill my chickens that I can legally retaliate against (some I can't), i've learned some of their moves. For instance plush toy rabbits that vibrate will be taken by hawks and carted off to be used in their nests (for insulation?), that foxes will definitely come back to a chicken that they killed earlier. I've learned that falcons are unbelievably fast. And I've learned I don't really want to hunt them, so tomorrow I am going to start building a 3600 sqft aviary with my crew and completely enclose my free range chickens with plastic fencing (including on top).

I've also learned (again) how desperate people are getting when they think about where they are going to be in a couple of years when X,Y,Z runs out that they use to have a bunch of and how they have no trust in any government system to be there shortly. I also continue to find out that saying that they can just bring their trailer to the farm and we will make a hookup for them bring a sense of relief, not being homeless, a nearby friend or family member, and an ability to raise some food makes a big psychological difference.

I learned this week that the Economist editors think that Earthlings do not have to worry about being able to produce sufficient food for the next several decades...

[Truth-in-advertising] I re-posted this from DrumBeat..I almost never have done that..apologize to TOD if I transgressed...but this article is so contrarian to many of the views expressed on TOD that I thought it was worth wide dissemination here...

The Economist article has provided proof support that the Brazilians have created successful, large-scale agriculture, without much government subsides, and using huge-tract monoculture:

http://www.economist.com/node/16886442

This article has a graph of in-service vs. fallow/credible potential farmland which indicates that only as little as ~ 40% of the World's farmland is in-service. Brazil is shown to have more unused, reserve potential farmland than the next two highest-ranked countries combined. Brazil is represented as having plentiful water, smart productive farmers and farm industry, including a talent at remediating and building soils and cross-breeding crops such as soya to adapt to tropical temperatures and the acidic soils of the Cerrado.

The Economist article implies that Brazil's prowess could be applied elsewhere, such as in certain areas of Africa.

What say everyone?

Barring a nuclear exchange or asteroid strike, doom-by-famine is not in the cards, even at the 9-10 Billion human population level forecast for ~ 2050?

Three things I learned this, in a simular tuesday thru saturday moment. Are, 1 I can't solve your problems. 2, I have a solution, but it only works for me.

The insight to the above and what is your post Nate is this. I can deal with me and mine, I can eat what I grow on my own land, all be it a small hunk of land, I can get 20 pounds of Rice Locally, Riceland Foods being a BIG Arky thing, and I can get half a hog from a local CSA and milk and chickens too from the same group of local Arkansas farmers. This being the HUB city for anything in the region inculding the delta, which is things east of here into the Mississippi river system.

I can live on less than 1/6th an acre, I know how to do it, have proven to myself if not to others that I can handle the rainwater, for everything, even in a year that is still 7 inches below normal. In a year when the skins of the fruits were tough and half the fruit trees in the area were sickly with something or other. The fellow next door has some good figs, or will be good whent hey are ripe.

Pardon my dyslexia, I am getting the ones I see, but if I miss them, you know why.

Anyway, I know I can live on the land, so if I can do it then others can too. If they say thay can't that is their problem not mine.

As to wit about the FED, I am planning a trip to Washington state likely the last one my mother makes if I don't force her to make the effort. You see when you are a selfish person, if you really are selfish is the good kinda way you want people around you that you like, I like my parents.

My dad worries that my mom will be too lazy for her own good, and get in a funk and die on him, and then he'll be alone, now he is the type that won't die without her.

But she is one that will die without him, so keeping her fit is keeping him fit and keeping me fit is keeping them both fit and healthy, as we all tend to have to look out for the other.

The joy of not caring wht the FED has to have to have done is that we have most things paid for, in a year we'll be debt free again, the windows and siding and a few other bills set us back a bit. But We are getting other people out of the helping hand of ours( we still help the homeless, but now we have helped several to the non-homeless status).

So all that being said, one trip to go, by car, because I can't stand a long flight, blood clot risk, neither can mom, and dad likes to drive and so do I. More hassle or less, I'd be able to take the five tons of knives and the steel shells for bom boom booooom practice and all that, that flying would hassle us to death with.

Plus none of this. "Joey I want to get out and walk a bit dear, okay maude, stop the plane my wife needs to get out now, Land darn you, puts gun in pilots ear, and then...... " See the issues here?

Hugs from an Arky((( snickers, I loved it once I saw it)))

Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world.
Arkansas is not the center of the world, but don't tell Clinton that!

Nate,

You’ve raised some interesting questions, but I think you’re looking in the wrong direction for answers.

Institutions promote, organize and develop ideas/concepts that originate with individuals. Too soon however, an institution will degenerate into a life form with self preservation as its primary purpose. Individuals within such institutions are all too often frustrated and defeated when they try to introduce new ideas and concepts.

Energy independence, for instance, is an absurd concept. Just as we don’t look under the street lamp for things we’ve lost, but where we might have lost them; so too do we look for energy sources where they might exist, not where we would like to find them.

Cheap energy must be seen for what it is; the greatest boon civilization has ever experienced. First coal, then petroleum and now, despite vociferous objections, nuclear power is the only viable path open to us.

Stephen Hawing, an individual, has proclaimed that mankind must move out into the universe. Given that the world’s population doubles every 40 years (very conservative estimate), Earth’s population will exceed 1 trillion souls within 200 years. Hawking is very obviously correct. Our self preserving institutions however, are pushing wind farms, solar energy, ethanol and population control. Those ‘solutions’ will result only in disease, starvation, war and genocide.

No, institutions are not the answer. Individuals are now, as they have always been, the only answer. Organized institutions implement solutions; they are never the source.

I learned from Time Magazine (Sep 6) that single family houses are a very BAD thing - potentially the ruin of our fair nation. Did anyone else read this article?

On one hand, I think this is a subject that really merits discussion; on the other hand, I had some very serious disagreements with the general direction of the article: for example, the use of GDP as such an important metric.

I really took exception to the idea that most US citizens should value employment mobility over home ownership (which might limit their mobility). This implies that one of our highest values is to serve the needs of global corporations. Strengthening local communities seems to be a secondary concern.

However, my biggest concern is what they did not mention: the whole issue of private homes being managed as "community assets" whereby the current owner is viewed as a temporary occupant who may or may not have the "best interests" of the local taxing authority as their first priority. This mentality leads to all sorts of laws, rules and regulations as to the building/lot size, appearance, connection to utilities, construction timeline, trade licensing, and a ton of other restrictions and penalties. It all comes down to getting the initial building permit and then the final "occupancy" permit. All of these laws force the kind of stupid mortgage/investment paradigm we see in the vast majority of US communities. Note: I think basic building codes that address legitimate safety issues, are a good thing.

Over 30 years ago, we were very lucky to have started our home ownership in a sleepy backwater where all of the above rules were very lax or non-existent. We built our home primarily with sweat and very little borrowing - we took a long time to build our house and never worried about it being "finished". We could not repeat this experience in our community today. Today, we would be forced into a conventional builder/banker paradigm.

Curious to know if anyone else read the article and your thoughts?

Good evening.
This is your Captain.
We are about to attempt a crash landing.
Please extinguish all cigarettes.
Place your tray tables in their upright, locked position.
Your Captain says: Put your head on your knees. Your Captain says: Put your head on your hands. Captain says: Put your hands on your head.
Put your hands on your hips.
Heh heh.
This is your Captain-and we are going down.
We are all going down, together.
And I said: Uh oh.
This is gonna be some day.
Standby.

Put your hands over your eyes.
Jump out of the plane.
There is no pilot.

- "From the Air" (abbreviated), Laurie Anderson, 1982 (f/the album: Big Science)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hedIexysvK4

After spending a week behind The Orange Curtain, and clubbing in LA, what I have learned is no one is thinking about these things, and it isn't even available to reject.
We are truly screwed.
Also Nates insight on an elite or agency taking a stance and guidance -- it does not exist, and this process is leaderless and random.

Nate you talk about institutions as if they themselves can fix things.

What you might fail to have thought of as most people seem to think of this in this manner is that there is not anything on Earth that is not made up of Humans. Companies are Humans, homes, and churchs and anything else tht comprises the stuff that we call institutions (sp) I am not going to be picky today and fix my spelling errors.

I am part of the problem I am a go between person, just like Ethan Hawke is in Gattaca, a non-valid living in a valid only world.

I just spent a few days behind bars, oh the nice kind the ones labeled for people like me, the mental ward of the newest one on the block the State Hospital's newests cell block, fitting that it has been what Jan 2007 and Aug 2010, I did a whole year and 7 months without being in a mental ward and this time it was only because I was having a bad day at the races.

I was trying to get money together for a smoke( tobaccoo )Was going there when I was acosted by the same two dogs that have been a bane on my walk to the store all week long. The guy who owned the land must have changed hands with it, or got himself two new dogs or something, I was told that some guy's uncle owns the dogs, but some guy I have no clue about is nothing to me. I thought I was top dog in this block. Yes I howl, yes the dogs on my block know me, I can pet most of them, most of them and I have a working relationship, I protect the place and so do they.

I have been a dog person longer than I knew I was, Told that I have a way with animals longer than most anything I have ever heard told about me.

The dogs in this yard are afraid of me. When I am out there with them out of their fence, they back off if I look at them, and bite at my heels if I look away or turn my back on them. But they back off when I turn and growl or approach them so they aren't wild dogs.

I have only met one wild dog and he backed down, don't know what a pack of them and I would have to deal with, I can howl awful darn loud, firemen love to hear me howl, they kinda like the presentation I can make. My friend the Wilderness EMT knows I am good that way, LOL, I slid down a hill the last time I was in his park, and was laughing and asked him a serious question, because of my well mental condition and the other facts most of which he knows about more than anyone on this list even those whom I privately write to. He said, they'd say, Charles is in the Park. Then again I also know his bosses, They did not know me at the time, I am sure it'll get back to them, but they had been giving him a tough time the day before and I wanted to put in a good word without them knowing me first. Tough days for park people, he is the only full time employee, for a park that ranges over 2.5 miles and is as wide as 1/2 a mile in places. Every grss blade I am sure he knows about, that day over 2 weeks ago on monday or tuesday next, ie in the morning of this post or the next day, So it's tuesday, then, ah memory of where I have been in the past.

Anyway the things we call man made things, are man made, so if a man were to say I stand here this is the line in the sand and no one crosses it or I kill maim, or legal draw them out, if they cross it. Then you might get something done.

I say,

You it!

Or,

You aren't it?

I be it on my block, only people that can stop me here and now are the cops, next year it might be josh next door killing me with his pistol or rifle cause the cops not be in charge, but then again if the cops not be in charge, he won't be here in town he'll out hunting elsewhere and I'd still be it. HUmmmmm Thinks. Doomers might come and go, but I am here to stay. So if the doomers all flee, then it is me and whomever decides to envade the burbs and we are kinda at the edge of town still, and then there is Camp Pike and Camp Robinson still just over the hill. They know me, I stand and salute them whenever I see them, don't have too, just do it, gives them a heads up to where I stand. They ahve also heard me howl, and seen me smoke, and breath fire too.

That's me a fire breathing human dragon kinda guy with a walking stick that I know the police call a Ninja Stick in the offical documentation, and by the way they also know about my website, I heard them chatting about it the other night. YOu be the judge.

Nate I love you. TOD hugs, if we are to be a change we have to be the change, you can't pass the buck, you have to stand.

Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world, one day at a time.

I think the most interesting thing Keynes said was

"Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally"

Add to that more integrated and complex systems and you have the making of an absolute disaster. I think we need to stop spending time on figuring out how to avoid the problem and more time on how we are going to survive it. The same thing is true about climate change-we will not be able to stop it so lets figure out how as individuals and communities we are going to survive it. Would be interested in hearing peoples thoughts.

My top suggestion- lets start building the large wall on the southern border to prevent it inevitable flood of climate refugees and start hardening our hearts to the inevitability of having to turn away hundreds of thousands of refugees.

All are US centric comments:
1) the amount of fertilizer used per bushel of corn is trending down

2) the amount of fertilizers other than NPK is increasing

3) the correlation between GDP and population is freakishly high

Rgds
WeekendPeak

A friend forwarded me in an e-mail this thread. Here is what I wrote to him that I thought I would post here.

Hi Ron,

Nate's thread was good as so many of his are. This realization that there are no institutions to turn to for mitigation is something I have thought about for the past couple of years. It is actually really frightening when you can no longer blame corporations or the elite or conspiracies or the Chinese. As long as there was a villain out there steering the ship the wrong way then you only needed to get rid of the villain. But when the problem is that there is no one steering the ship, never has been and no existing entities that even know where the steering wheel is (!) then that is really a frightening reality.

But also kind of hysterically funny also in that corner of dark humor.

7 billion urgently going NOWHERE. And yet believing they are.

We are funny fucking monkeys aren't we?

Jeff

What I learned this week:
Make music, even if you stink at it.

There is no substitute as support to the mind, body, and spirit.

Hi gang.
I have been very naughty.

Despite your advice, am investigating LENR

It is true. There is an excess of energy.

Look at this
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusion.pdf

You can be naughty too.
Isn't it exciting?

A thing I learned. The difference between wet barrels and paper barrels on the NYMEX and how much gambling really goes on there. Choice quote "“Everybody that works in this business has a little bit of a gambling junkie in them – otherwise, you wouldn’t be here,” says Remy Wagman, president of RJM Energy and a 14-year NYMEX veteran."

Another thing I learned. The tentacles of Koch Industries extends far deeper than I ever expected

An insight. My country, Canada is a little saner than the rest of the world for banning BPA.