Collapse Happens, You Just Aren’t Being Told About It Frequently Enough
2,056 ViewsLonewolf sent me a bunch of links. Peter Goodchild has a long article that basically say’s “it’s all over folks”. Sorry No Gas is a lengthy read, and I think most of the points he covers have been written about here.
I remain absolutely convinced that a) nobody is listening, and b) almost nobody truly understands the severity or the magnitude of the problems headed our way. Goodchild tries to explain that, but only fails in a couple of areas (imo).
Don’t sweat 2030 when oil production is down by half. We definitely will not make it that far. Collapse will have happened much sooner then that. The desperate race to secure energy supplies will spawn all types of wars and widespread death and destruction. Goodchild also failed to cover the severity of the issues with climate change, which will also ensure our demise on a global scale. Otherwise, it’s a good read, just too long.
Other links that are definitely related: Syria Becomes Oil Importer and Peak Oil Is Past. And there’s this from another superpower nation: Russian Oil Declines 1% Per Day and Mexico’s Cantrell Field Falls 36%. Then there is the trapped C02 that is going to be released in the Arctic, Global Warming Time Bomb.
I know I’m all “doom and gloom”, but it is the consistent failure of the sheeple and their talking pundits to appreciate the sheer magnitude, severity and global consequences of a world without energy, or a livable climate that makes me so.
Goodchild also has an article that mentions “Eco-Silliness“. I agree, my position on Ecovillages has been crystal clear — don’t bother. Don’t even bother with alternative energy either, this is already a waste of time and effort with diminishing returns increasing over time. The Industrial Age is already on a permanent decline, it was all supported and built by oil, and when that is gone, so is all of the alternative energy “solutions”.
“The quest for alternative sources of energy is not merely illusory; it is actually harmful. By daydreaming of a noiseless and odorless utopia of windmills and solar panels, we are reducing the effectiveness of whatever serious information is now being published. When news articles claim that there are simple painless solutions to the oil crisis, the reader’s response is not awareness but drowsiness. We are rapidly heading toward what has been described as the greatest disaster in history, but we are indulging in escapist fantasies. All talk of alternative energy is just a way of evading the real issue: that the Industrial Age is over.”
Goodchild also hits the nail again here:
… “At one point, the money problem will be everything. A few decades later, the money problem will be nothing. Money is only a symbol, and it is only valuable as long as people are willing to accept that fiction: without government, without a stock market, and without a currency market, such a symbol cannot endure. Money itself will be useless and will finally be ignored. Tangible possessions and practical skills will become the real wealth. Having the right friends will also help.”
Only those “things” that will help keep you alive, warm, safe, healthy and fed are going to be considered “valuable”. All the rest is just dross and will be considered useless. Yet I am surprised at the lack of awareness of this fact. Value is intrinsic to usefulness (and demand); in a oil-saturated world, even a jet ski has value for entertainment value, but will be absolutely useless without oil.
Food and water is one of the most valuable commodities there is, which is why the current food situation remains so grim for billions of people. We CANNOT produce the amount of food we are going to need without oil, it’s a categorically impossible. Factor in that human populations are at least 100 times naturally sustainable levels and we are facing a global catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.
Nobody needs a jet ski or a yacht or even a second home or a HumVee sitting in the driveway, but you will need those thing that are intrinsically valuable to keeping you alive.
Go deeper, look harder and ponder more. If you have even the slightest hope to securing your future or that of your children, you absolutely MUST start preparing and planning for post-oil survival. All these “escapists fantasies” are illusions, and they will KILL YOU in time. Failing to adapt NOW to a post-oil world is going to be catastrophic for billions of people. Don’t be one of them, look ahead now and build your crashstead while you still can. What you are doing is not only for yourself, but for your kids too. They are the ones who are going to need it more then you did.
August 25th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I just finished moving into my crash pad in the Ozark Mountains. I got lucky. This place is 17 acres with 15 of them in fields where I can plant an orchard and massive garden. I have local water plus a year around spring. I may make a spring box and get a windmill pump to save the spring water in a tank. My neighbor told me that this place grew millet and some other grain two years ago. Across the road, that guy grew red winter wheat. It rains a lot here, like Hawaii. I checked the U.S. Drought Monitor http://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html for over six months to make sure this place has water. On the way here in the moving van, I kept thinking that something was going to stop me, but it was just fear. You can do it. The property taxes, property costs, and cost of living are extremely low. Everyone, it seems, wants to live on either of the coasts. That is foolish. I’ve always been a coast person, so this is a new experience for me. I’m glad I made the move. I now feel that I have something of a chance. Admin: I enjoyed seeing your root cellar come together. My neighbor has one and his garden is on his mother-in-laws old place. She had a garden in her time that was as big as a football field. He’s a master organic gardener, so I hope to apprentice under him, humbly.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Producing the required amount of food for the population without use of oil is difficult but not impossible.
From a purely statistical point of view, there is over 3/4 acre of arable land on the planet for every man, woman and child at a population of 6.678Bn people. The problem is the distribution of that population. Concentrating populations in cities is not the only way of living.
18% of the US is considered arable land, yet only 0.21% is dedicated to permanent crops. I think the US is probably as close as any country to being agriculturally self sufficient. Yet, only a tiny amount of land is used; 0.02 acres per person (303.8 million people) is permanently in crops compared to the 1.5 acres of arable land per person available. Just think what the US could do if it didn’t waste so much effort manufacturing mountains of consumer goods.
There is food enough and land enough for everyone on our little planet, even without oil. We could double or triple the world’s population and still produce enough food, given the land available, if we stopped wasting acreage to feed livestock. The only thing missing is the willingness of the population (and non-interference from the PTB) to grow their own food and give up all the wasted energy (petro and human) that goes into less important pursuits. I know this is sheer fantasy but the potential is there.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
AM$ - you have no idea how much water and/or nutrient) it takes to produce ‘food’ - ntm sane cooperative people - all of which are not found in abundance, to state the mild case
August 26th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Security Makes U.S. Conventions Virtual Fortresses
August 26th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
LW
There is plenty of water and nutrients available for food production. We just need to decide that it makes more sense to close the cycle of nutrients by using the products of our digestive processes as fertilizer than to treat it as waste and flush it away with a gallon or more of drinking water, where it is no longer readily accessible to plants. Sane, cooperative people are what is in short supply! The only really sane, justifiable “occupation” is farming. If you aren’t producing your own food, just how can you say that what you do is of greater importance?
For the record, I do not produce all my own food but I produce enough that my family and I have developed the skills necessary to be able to “ramp up” production when everything else stops being available. I still work for a salary because my “better half” thinks that is more important than the farm we live on. Like most guys realize, you can be right or you can be married; just not both at the same time.
August 26th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Also for the record, “Never argue with anyone more ignorant than yourself.” IF this was a ‘perfect world’ - and wholly vegetarian” - maybe. Since it’s nor and we ain’t -4geddaboutit. Feed yourself and stew the morons (for a palatable texture). The last thing this planet needs is to keep more moronic ecocidal bipedal egos alive.
August 26th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
As admin says, here is wasting your time:
Protesters surrounded by riot police
August 26th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I am absolutely certain you are over-simplifying the issue. For starters, we are in severe population overshoot, over 100 times the naturally sustainable levels for humans on this planet. This all happened because of modern agriculture and oil and a few other things, such as modern medicine.
Without oil inputs, we cannot maintain our existing populations levels. The claims that state we can are over-simplifying several critical points. Arable land is not a sufficient ingredient, there must be several other important elements to “make food”. Macro-nutrients, fertilizers, water, climate and a global distribution system are all necessary. Without oil, we will have very few of any of these.
Water is pumped out of the ground using oil. Fertilizers come from natural gas and processed resources, all ‘produced’ by oil. A efficient global distribution system is impossible without oil, no need to go into that. Climate is a huge factor, there are crop failures occurring all over the world due to climate change, so “arable land” is really a meaningless measurement nowadays.
I can categorically state that the world cannot maintain its present population, or even half of its present population without oil inputs making it all possible. This is the same reason the world did not exceed 3 billion people before the discovery of oil, and it won’t exceed it again either without oil.
Human “energy” is often equated with oil energy and they are not the same thing, not even close.
It is oft assumed that sheer human energy (and willpower, NTM wishful thinking) will replace oil energy, but this is a totally bogus fallacy with no basis in reality. You and I simply cannot work hard enough to do what a single barrel of oil can do in todays world — not without working ourselves to death and drastically increasing our caloric requirements (and thus food consumption and required agricultural production) in the process (and shortening our life spans dramatically).
There is a reason the world never achieved the mega-populations we have today. Oil is that reason beyond any other factor. Calorie intake, massively increased agricultural food production and the corresponding consumption and reproduction of the human race was the “output” of all those trillions of barrels of oil inputs we have consumed to make today’s world, a world built upon a precipice of terrifying proportions.
We will NEVER achieve the present populations levels again, unless we find a cheap, nearly “free” energy source, AND meet all the important elements to make food — and this will never happen. We are in for a drastic population reduction that will correspond quite nicely with the decline in oil production.
Finally, if making food was so easy WITH the oil that is still readily available today, then there would be NO starvation or hunger anywhere in the world. But this is not the case. The arable land is basically useless, or the ground is to salinized, or there is simply no topsoil, or no water available, or the region is suffering from severe drought, civil war, or war lords, or the farmers like in South Africa have all been killed or run off, or any number of reasons.
But the main point remains the same — we’re not doing it now, because we CAN’T. People are dying around the world because we can’t. The entire basis for civilization is food production, it is the #1 reason why we have built our civilizations, over and over again. But it is the failure to produce food in sufficient quantities for the burgeoning populations (and declining eco-systems) that causes our civilizations to also collapse, over and over again. This is simply history repeating itself.
It is overtly optimistic to believe despite all the existing evidence to the contrary that we can make enough food without oil. We can’t do it now, we certainly cannot do it “then” either. And we won’t, the world is facing global starvation on a massive scale.
August 26th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Another reason we cannot feed the present population is depleted soils. Agriculture in first world has been gradually depleting soil of essential trace minerals, as well as other minerals. The only thing conventional fertilizers do is pump that old famous trip, NPK, into the soil. Problem is with the removal of crop each and every year, we have removed copper, boron, and other elements necessary for production of nutritional foods. The USDA has known for decades that the vitamin and mineral content of conventionally produced foods has continued, consistently, to decline year after year, after year.
So even if the acreage were there, which I’m not convinced it is, we have acres and acres of a dead medium in which farmers prop up plants, in hopes that they stand up long enough to harvest.
Then too there’s the issue of the many aquifers whose water levels are dropping many feet per year, and which will not be replenished in the lifetime of anyone alive on the planet today.
August 27th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Nutrients are not “depleted” in that they are not destroyed. They may be locked up chemically where they can’t be used by plants and by extension animals, like a landfill, but they are not depleted, ever.
The point I’m trying to make is that if everyone’s primary occupation was to grow enough food for themselves and their families (which was done without oil for millenia before oil’s widespread use) INSTEAD of doing something else which is exchanged for food grown by others we would all be better off. As Admin points out Civilization grew up to allow us to grow food. We were able to grow food without civilization but it was civilization that allowed us to band together to protect the food that was grown. This was done by defence specialists who exchanged their skills and blood for the food they needed. This is probably the only justifiable occupation other than farming in a world where many would rather take what others produce than be troubled to produce it themselves. Of course, civilization was also the start of religion because some sly old dog was able to convince the farmers that his efforts were required to get the gods to provide water, sunshine, fertility etc, all in exchange for an “offering” to the gods. As soon as people did anything other than farming there was a requirement for trade which soon resulted in laws to regulate trade which resulted in that most heinous of evils the LAWYER! And its all been downhill from there….
August 28th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
While it is true soil nutrients that have been depleted from a given tract of soil have not been destroyed, they have indeed been removed (depleted) from said tract of land, via the yearly growing of crops that take these micronutrients from the soil up into their leaves, stems and fruits. Once those micronutrients are gone from the soil, they are gone. No, they have not been destroyed, but they are “somewhere else”. That is a major problem with any and all conventional agricultural lands–millions and millions of acres.
Organic farmers/gardeners know this, or at least most of them do, and that is the purpose of mulch, compost, and other sustainable soil amendments–to replenish the soil so that it will produce well again next year, and the next year, and so on.
If we as a specie think we can feed ourselves by suddenly using these depleted soils, without massive inputs of organic compost (where would that come from?) and other amendments, to grow food instead of Bt corn or some other such nonsense, then we are 100% delusional.
I agree wholeheartedly that if everyone’s primary occupation were to grow enough food for themselves and their families, we certainly would be better off. But when one looks around, even at this late date, one is hard pressed to see any evidence, even with skyrocketing food prices that very many are even pondering growing their own food. I hear a neighbor constantly bemoaning the prices of food and gasoline, and living on 80 acres but not growing even one measly tomato plant!
Just imagine how cool it WOULD be if everyone suddenly had an eureka moment and suddenly began growing all sorts of garden crops, which would lead to barter, sharing and more. That’s what John Lennon said, “Imagine”.
August 30th, 2008 at 1:18 am
zippy, if you’re in the Ozarks, I’d say you’re livin’ the dream! Abundant wood, clean water, plenty of fish and game, tiny population, low taxes, cheap land. Parts of the Ozark Mountains are spectacularly scenic–and almost unbelievably remote an inaccessible. What with the endless oak-hickory forests, you could probably live on nuts, acorns, and fish and game up in there.
If I were able to move, that would be where I’d relocate to. My impression is that the soil is rather poor in many areas, but there is plenty of biomass available to make it fertile.
The only area I like equally well is the northern Missouri area around Kirksville and LaPlata–which, I am told, has the largest concentration of Intentional Communities in the US. Three of these are Dancing Rabbit, Sandhill, and Wrensong. There is also a large Amish population in the area.
The Ozark Mountains are prettier, though.
Right now I have to settle for second-best–rural Missouri near the I-70 corridor. The local economy here is potentially vibrant. There’s quite a bit of local food production: cattle, poultry, market gardening, and bee-keeping–and oddities like llamas and emus are ceasing to be oddities. There are a lot of skilled people here, too. The old skills and the old ways survive, even if they are not exactly universally practiced. People still gather elderberries and wild cherries, and make them into jam and wine.
BTW, the hickories are loaded with nuts this year, in case you hadn’t noticed!
I’ve often thought that Missouri could have a local cuisine that would rival any in the world (and put Tuscany to shame), if Missourians actually depended on local foods. You’ll see what I mean, if you think about it.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Zippy and Sharon…I used to think the soil in the Ozarks was poor until I read abook called Biogeochemistry, which showed that those clay/clayey soils, considered by some to be thick, useless muck, are actually jam-packed with minerals and other micronutrients. The main problem is getting this mucky soil aerated so that the plant roots can “breathe” and thus survive. This is where compost and mulches come in. After the first season of sitting on top the soil, surrounding tomato, or other plants, they eventually break down enough that they can be incorporated into the soil, thus aerating it. Eventually you have nice rich black loamy stuff in which you can grow very nice crops.
BTW, congratulations Zippy on your new purchase, as it might be the best thing you’ve ever bought. I feel our place in the Ozarks is the best purchase we’ve ever made.
Speaking of local foods, one year I gathered hickory nuts in drywall buckets just to see how feasible it would be in a survival situation. Piece of cake. But that’s only in the years of good nut production, and some years are “off” years. That’s the way it is with most nuts, including one of my favorites–Burr Oak acorn. It’s large and high in protein, being in the White Oak family. It’s easy to process for making flour which I do in the years of plenty.
Another local food I’m hoping to sample this year is the Honey Locuts pods. A book on wild edibles talks about the pods, when dried and ground, making a high-protein flour, and the seeds being a good substitute for peas. The pods are numerous on some trees so this year will be a test.
Also, last week I did an experiment. Since the honey locust tree is a legume, I figured maybe regular bean pods would also be edible, so after picking and hulling the first picking of Cherokee Trail of Tears beans, I ground the pods into flour and mixed it with chestnut flour from our neighbor’s trees. Even at a half and half mixture of chestnut and bean pod flour, it made a decent flatbread. Just mix the chestnut and beanpod flours together, and add enough water (I used whey instead) to make a dough. Take blobs, flatten them out (dust them with more “flour”), bake at low temp. Am going to experiment with sun cooking of flatbreads next week.
Sharon’s right about there being plenty of local foods available right under our noses.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Lynda, I have tried the beans from the Black Locust. The flavor is a bit bland, and it sure is hard to gather very many of them. I think I may have looked for them at the wrong time, so that the squirrels were ahead of me. It is also a bit tiresome trying to get them out of the pods.
Wikipedia says that the pods of the Black Locust, Robinia pseudoacacia, are toxic: ” Unlike the pods of the honey locust, but like those of the related European Laburnum, the black locust’s pods are toxic. In fact, every part of the tree, especially the bark, is considered toxic, with the exception of the flowers. However, various reports have suggested that the seeds and the young pods of the black locust can be edible when cooked, since the poisons that are contained in this plant are decomposed by heat.”
But you are talking about the Honey Locust, Gleditsia triacanthos–the one with the menacing thorns, which seem to average about three inches long, but are often much longer, and even branched. Wikipedia says the pulp inside the pods “is edible and sweet.”
I’ve always been fond of the Honey Locust, and there is one growing less than 50 feet from my house. I may try the beans and pods, myself, this fall.
We have Burr Oaks around here, and I should get out and look for the acorns. I’ve tasted Burr Oak acorns, and they are quite good.
In Barbara Kingsolver’s book, “Pigs in Heaven,” she mentions the Cherokee dish, knutchka, which is hominy seasoned with hickory-nut paste. I’m dying to try this.
I’m a big fan of elder. Every summer I gather elderflowers in June and make elderflower champagne for July 4th. In August, I made over two quarts of elderberry jam. I was going to make elderberry wine, but I couldn’t bear the thought of not even getting to taste it for a year. If you add elderflowers to gooseberry jam, it gives an excellent flavor to it. If you put the flowers in at the end of cooking the jam, you get a pretty “calico” effect of the tiny flowers floating in the jam.
Elderflowers make a lovely cordial, and so does red clover. I have about a dozen pints of red clover cordial put up, and a gallon of red clover wine fermenting (my first experiment with wine-making).
You might want to check out online recipes for Homesteader’s Honey. I made two quarts of this early in the summer–basically a highly sweetened floral “tea,” thickened to honey consistency with pectin.
My next wild foods project is to pick wild cherries. There are whole acreages of abandoned pastures covered with wild cherry trees. I think they are the kind called Pin Cherries, which were actually cultivated by the pioneers. You can use them to make cherry juice, cherry jam, and cherry sauce (the Native American wojapi). The last time we had abundant wild cherries, we ate winter squash with cherry sauce–and pork chops. I think I’ll try wild cherry wine this year.
Euell Gibbons would get PHAT around here.
I’m growing Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans this year, too!
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Never thought of grinding dried bean pods for “flour.” If they are edible and nourishing when young, why not after they mature and dry on the vines?
I think the Honey Locust is closely related to carob, or St. John’s bread.
September 4th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Yesterday I discovered one lonesome honey locust pod on the ground under the large old tree near our barn. It had fallen a little early, as it is greenish with a hint of yellowing as are all those still high up in the tree. According to my book sources, it says not only are the pods edible when dried and made into flour, but the Honey Locust seeds can be eaten like peas. So I removed the 17 beautiful green seeds which resemble limas (slightly smaller than Christmas Limas) and put them in the freezer.
When a few more pods fall and these seeds have been incorporated into a meal, I’ll post an update on the taste and texture of this new wild food (new to me).
Hmmm, maybe they can be combined with ground nut (Apios Americanus) for an authentic wild food dish.
September 11th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Lynda, how do you process the Burr Oak acorns? I’ve been scouting my area for Burr Oaks. There seem to be a lot of them. I don’t think the acorns have begun to fall yet.
The hickory nuts are barely starting to fall, but I have already shelled about a pound of nuts and put them in the freezer.
I’ve been gathering “wild cherries” and making “wild cherry butter”–like apple butter with the cinnamon and brown sugar–and wild cherry jam.
I’m in a bit of confusion, however. It turns out that the “cherries” I’ve been picking and eating for the past few years don’t match any description of any known wild cherry. I’ve even contacted the Missouri Department of Conservation, and they don’t know of anything of this description. I guess I’ll have to take a branch in for identification.
I figure if the fruit is this delicious, it can’t be poisonous, and the 50 or so “cherry” trees around here are loaded with fruit!
I haven’t learned to recognize the ground nut. Must look into that!
September 13th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Well, I found out what those “cherry” trees are. They are Autumn Olive. (A friend suggested the name of a horticulturist who knew.)
The good news is, Autumn Olive berries are a wild fruit that has recently been “discovered”–because of their high nutritional value. They are so high in lycopene (17 times as much as tomatoes) that they are being considered for neutraceutical use. They are also very high in other nutrients.
Autumn Olive is worth a Google search, if you want to know about a superb wild food. Check it out!
September 14th, 2008 at 9:21 am
“Autumn Olive is worth a Google search, if you want to know about a superb wild food.”
Well….technically, it’s not wild, it’s considered an invasive due to the fact that they planted huge areas along the highways with them and they spread from there.
I have some here…I’ll try to keep them in check, but I agree…a great foodsource!
(Oh, and the bees LOVE them when they are in flower)