Survive- The Economic Collapse

by Piero San Giorgio

  Wind energy is very cheap, but only works 30 percent to 40 percent of the time, since wind conditions are rarely optimal.

  Biomass generates natural gas through fermentation of agricultural waste. This requires intensive agriculture, itself dependent on oil.

  Other energies such as thalasso-energy, geo-thermal energy, marine currents, also have their advantages and their limitations.

  These technologies are the starting points for some very promising efforts. In the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, the Masdar initiative expects to invest 200 billion dollars in the production of renewable energy between now and 2020 in order to replace entirely the production of electricity and water desalination (today dependent on oil) with photovoltaic electricity. There are massive wind energy projects in the North Sea, such as the German Baltic One project, with its 21 giant wind turbines that can supply 340,000 homes. In Germany, 16 percent of energy produced is from a renewable source. Other wind projects are planned on Europe’s Atlantic coast and on the north-south axis of the American Midwestern plains. Immense stretches of solar paneling are planned for North Africa and the American Southwest (Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, California). Following the example of Germany, Denmark, and Spain, Asian countries, including China, have also begun massive renewable energy projects—raising the price of the raw materials necessary to realize them, however.

  Nanotechnologies are promising as well: they allow for the construction of machines the size of a micron (one millionth of a meter), for working on matter at the molecular level, and for extracting minerals in a more efficient and less costly way (in low-grade mines and with less ecological impact). It is possible that we shall create catalyzers to perform the function of enzymes, and chemically break down pollutants. New, extremely light and resistant materials may be created, as well as new batteries storing more energy, requiring less rare metals, and polluting less. We may be able to develop new windows capable of automatically managing insulation and temperatures, and never needing to be washed.

  There is also good news in electrical-network-management technology. It is improving thanks to the reduced risk of massive cut-offs and the appearance of smart boxes that allow better analysis of electrical consumption.

  The Internet is another technology that allows groups of people scattered across the world to interact, learn, open themselves up to new ideas, discover new horizons, and see the world as interconnected. It allows people to go beyond official “truths,” finally silencing that “truth” Napoleon knew so well, of which he said, “History is but lies agreed upon.” Today, it is possible with a little work to discover information often hidden from us or filtered by the mainstream media. Thanks to the Internet, awareness is growing. Users can gather information and learn how to act for themselves and for their families and to influence decision-makers and politicians. Civic activism can then come to life in all sorts of forms: boycotting, lobbying, protesting and political mobilization.

  Advanced technology is not the only thing that allows for change. More traditional techniques are sometimes much better adapted for rehabilitating dying or damaged ecosystems or improving their productivity. Subsistence agriculture founded on permaculture and biodynamic agriculture is suited to low water, fertilizer, and pesticide consumption. Permaculture, popularized by agronomists like Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, allow agricultural land to be created, which copies the kinds of relations that exist in nature between different types of plants, while conferring greater productivity upon them.

  We have also observed how, after the collapse of the USSR, North Korea and Cuba reacted to the new reality, deprived of oil and industrial agricultural. North Korea, with its centralized organization, suffered a gigantic famine, which caused several million deaths. Cuba, by liberalizing agriculture, maximizing agricultural surface area (on the roofs of buildings, in parks, and vacant lots, etc.), and using permaculture techniques, succeeded not only in supporting its population, but also in increasing the production and quality of its food.

  As for housing, “passive houses” allow natural sunlight and heat to be taken advantage of, as in traditional architecture. Such techniques have been left behind due to cheap heating and air-conditioning; modern architects have long indulged in constructed buildings that are difficult to heat, cool, or air out.

  We have become familiar with economical light bulbs, air turbines, and solar panels, recycling of household waste and paper, the gradual suppression of plastic bottles and bags, hybrid or electric cars, carpooling, “slow food”, organic food . . . But these habits will have only a marginal effect if we do not learn to live with the least possible consumption of fossil energy.

  We must be realistic—Renewable energies are not compatible with the scale of systems developed by reliance on abundant fossil energy.

  Embracing Inefficiency

  Instead of trying to get a car to run on something other than gasoline, it is time to reflect on a way of life without cars. The social structure is going to have to evolve; we’re going to have to get rid of bad habits and accept limits: we cannot, for example, make commercial airlines fly on electricity, just as we don’t mold titanium turbines with electricity. It is our habits and culture as a whole that we must change. Without new values, we will not succeed.

  This explains how inefficiency has come to be admired in ecological milieus. As James Howard Kunstler, a brilliant critic of the modern urban, social and financial system, puts it, “Efficiency is the quickest road to hell.” An inefficient economy is more chaotic, indeed, more complex in certain respects, than an efficient economy that reduces the number of species cultivated, concentrates processes by augmenting their volume, and thus increases its own dependence on them. What we think of as technological complexity is really a simplification of flow. Now, the ecology of a prairie is not efficient. Numerous varieties of flowers and grasses keep the soil fertile and healthy. A single species cultivated in monoculture is certainly “efficient” . . . but will exhaust the soil’s nutritive elements, facilitate erosion, and rapidly destroy the soil for good. All of nature is an “inefficient” system!

  Besides inefficiency, we must learn sufficiency—being satisfied with enough, taking care of real needs rather than false desires. Measuring one’s own life by quality rather than quantity, by relations rather than things, is one of the keys to happiness, to which we may add imagination and the refusal of shackles and dogma. Let us be creative in finding solutions to problems, in discovering a healthy satisfaction in ways of life closer to our deeper nature, in order to promote positive models. We must learn to become a culture worthy of the Russian word непобедимый—nepobedimyi, i.e., invincible. We must learn to become invincible.

  We will have to learn to live with greater simplicity and frugality. Simplicity does not mean living badly or in poverty. It is enough to have what one needs and not desire what one doesn’t. As for cities and urbanism, the Romans knew how to construct five-story apartment blocks with reinforced concrete, and their empire was crisscrossed with roads. The ancient Chinese, 3000 years ago, already had a flourishing trade thanks to their network of canals and their science. A civilization without oil can exist and can thrive.

  But current world population and its programmed exponential growth prohibit any turning back. Aid programs for the so-called “underdeveloped” populations presuppose massive growth in GDP and food resources over the entire world. The question is not reducing growth but redirecting it toward certain and renewable resources. Agricultural production will have to double within the next 30 years, and this unprecedented productivity will have to be maintained indefinitely. Now, we do not know how to react in the face of the programmed loss of soil and resources. The challenge is to manage the contraction. The only possible response to such a challenge involves massive investments in research, irrigation, soil conservation, the organization and exploitation of marine resources, etc. Then the question will be not whether change is technically possible (undoubtedly, it is), but whether o
ur governments possess the will, the vision, and the competency necessary for coordinating a global effort to face these problems—and whether we have the time needed to do so before a major crisis arrives and we blithely head into a collapse of our economies and civilizations.

  The experience of these last decades leads one to doubt it.

  *

  Jack drives an hour each way to work.

  He only has time for McDonald’s. Smoking calms him down, though. One of his few pleasures is his annual vacation to the shore in August; to get there, he spends 10 hours in traffic jams both ways. He’s had so many tickets and accidents that they’ve threatened to revoke his license. He yells at his children and even slapped one once. He also likes to watch football games on TV. He doesn’t give a damn about ecology and similar liberal crap.

  Melany eats organic foods, is careful about her water consumption, and recycles plastic, aluminum, paper, and glass. Downtown, she walks or rides her bicycle and takes a plane only twice a year to go for a weekend in Cabo or Marrakech, and once a year for her winter vacation in Thailand or Bali. She votes for the Green Party. She knows she is just one link in the ecosystem, but she tells herself her little gestures are important in the permanent struggle for a better world. She does not hesitate to condemn those who do not do their part, notably her colleague Jack, whom she also suspects of voting right-wing.

  Of the two, it is Melany who has, by far, the larger “carbon footprint.”

  By contrast, Mamadou, a peasant in the Dogon area of Mali, has a minuscule carbon footprint. Especially since he lost his farm. He followed the government’s advice, which, under pressure from the IMF, has urged peasants in his region to plant cotton. He had to go into debt to buy pumps to irrigate his crop. The first years went well. But massively subsidized American cotton is rapidly becoming so cheap that Mamadou had to sell at a loss. The bank quickly became insistent about his late payments and ended up seizing the farm. It looks like the land is going to be used for an apartment project. Now Mamadou has nothing.

  Fortunately, his uncle and his uncle’s family took him in, in their village. There is no cotton here: only traditional agriculture, and some raising of chickens and guinea fowl. On the other hand, the rules are strict: you don’t eat if you don’t work, and you cannot marry and have children until you have proven that you are a responsible adult by passing one of the traditional rites. This year, in spite of the dryness, the village produced a good surplus that will be sold in Sangha, the neighboring village. With the profits, the village is buying a solar pump in order to improve the provisioning of drinking water. The future is looking good, in spite of the thieves who steal the chickens. Last month, one of them got caught and was immediately judged by the tribal leader. He was stoned to death. No one came to claim the body. Food is a serious matter.

  Part II: The Collapse

  <
  It’s the end of the world as we know it.

  It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

  r.e.m.

  musicians

  _document

  /1987/

  < and where even the down-and-out wear neckties and speak a discernible variant of regular english, where hoboes say and where, in short, there is something like a common culture of shared values. we’re a nation of thugs and louts with flames tattooed on our necks, who call each other and are skilled only in playing video games based on mass murder. the masses of roosevelt’s time were coming off decades of programmed, regimented work, where people showed up in well-run factories and schools and pretty much behaved themselves. in my view, that’s one of the reasons that the u.s. didn’t explode in political violence during the great depression of the 1930s—the discipline and fortitude of the citizenry. the sheer weight of demoralization now is so titanic that it is very hard to imagine the people of the usa pulling together for anything beyond the most superficial ceremonies—placing teddy bears on a crash site. And forget about discipline and fortitude in a nation of a.d.d. victims and self-esteem seekers.

  james howard kunstler

  writer

  /2009/

  Mechanisms of Collapse

  <
  john dos passos

  author

  //1896-1970//

  <
  graeme taylor

  researcher and writer

  /2011/

  <
  we don’t need no water let the motherfucker burn,

  burn motherfucker burn.

  rock master scott & the dynamic three

  musicians

  /1984/

  Historically, we are witnessing the death of the ideology of progress. Since the 18th century, thinkers and humanists have affirmed that utopian, socially and economically perfect, civilizations are possible. Voltaire thought that reason could bring justice and reforms. Condorcet saw in history an inevitable march toward justice and equality. These are the basic ideas that inspired the American (1776), French (1789), European (1848), and Russian (1917) revolutionaries.

  At each new stage of civilization, at each new form of society, the following three conditions must be met:

  a new way of creating meaning from the new reality (economic, social, structural . . .) and a new way of interpreting this reality;

  institutions that respond to the social aspirations of the population, in other words, a new social contract;

  a new technology that permits increased productivity.

  The industrial era could only appear in the 19th century because these three conditions were met:

  A rational (“Enlightened”) and productive vision of the world emerged, which gave a new meaning to life.

  A new social contract was put in place, more complex than the preceding, and resting upon democracy and individual liberties.

  Science, technology, and especially fossil fuels brought a hitherto unimaginable increase in productivity.

  Industrial societies were thus more dynamic and creative than the agrarian societies that preceded them, because they encouraged permanent economic development. Agrarian societies found their meaning in the monarchic and religious system, which symbolized the continuity of order and natural cycles: the rhythm of life was composed of an unchanging revolution of the seasons and the tradition of faith in God. By contrast, industrial society has faith in progress: the individual should improve his life by work, invention, and creativity; and societies should always grow, extend themselves, and innovate in order to survive and flourish. Even service economies depend on the flow of energy and resources; for example, mass education, which is a very significant investment in technical capacities and social capital, is only possible through a will to centralization and through the wealth constituted by the exploitation of natural resources.

  In an agrarian society, the economy is governed by social relations—rights, permissions, and obligations toward others, which were themselves informed by status and social class. Markets were only secondary, and their only goal was to facilitate the exchange of goods. In a world where faith and duty were the highest values, commerce represented a low and immoral social status. This is why in the great monotheistic religions, such as Christianity and Islam, lending at interest was forbidden between believers. This worldview is quite the opposite of that of an industrial society, where material wealth is socially valued. Societies are governed by financial transactions and by access to capital, which is necessary for the initial investment in industry—purchasing machines, constructing factories, putting in place industrial processes, etc. The purpose of markets is not only to facilitate the exchange of goods but, above all, to increase capital. The entire economy is in the service of a financial system designed
to support an infinite expansion of capital. Capital grows above all by lending and by return on investment. Money is created by debt and, because interest can never be entirely repaid, money must constantly be created, all the way to infinity. Consequently, infinite growth and expansion are not just beneficial but entirely necessary.

  In a world with limited resources, this system inevitably ends in collapse.

  The way of looking at the world and the meaning assigned to reality by individuals and institutions in the agrarian era were suited to a society of local, poorly connected economies with few people and a lot of resources. The industrial era, however, has rapidly transformed the world into a global village, highly interconnected, with a very large population and increasingly scarce resources.

  This system has become dysfunctional, cannibalistic, and destructive. Its end is nearing, for it is obsolete. Its collapse is inevitable.

  Why do certain societies collapse? Few people can imagine that the rich and powerful societies in which they live might collapse. But societies are dynamic systems, which constantly shift their equilibrium in response to internal changes and external influences. Major changes create tensions that can be constructive and creative (new ideas and technologies) or destructive (wars, invasions, uprisings and civil wars, epidemics, natural catastrophes, declines in agricultural productivity or energy). If a society does not succeed in adapting itself to destructive changes, tensions can become uncontrollable crises; and if nothing corrects the situation, the society starts to disintegrate.

  All societies in history have had to confront such crises. This is why the vast majority of past societies no longer exist in their original form. Among recent examples, some have declined slowly, like Imperial China, while other have declined rapidly, like the Soviet Union. And others, like Great Britain, have transformed themselves, evolving from feudal monarchies into industrial societies and post-industrial mass democracies.