There is an awful lot of academic banter in which we try to “identify” emergencies before they happen. Pedantic issues are categorized and specifics are assigned to them as potential resolutions. This is not a “flawed” approach, but it’s endemic in the American mindset, which is obsessed with Micromanagement.

In order to distance ourselves from the details, which are too stochastic and specific, we can generally state that an emergency is a shortage of resources.

Resources can be defined as:

1. Air
2. Shelter
3. Water
4. Food
5. Security

It’s important to examine the relationship between these emergencies, as they’ll directly relate to how we categorize emergencies. For example, Air, while in the greatest supply of the above, gives rise to the most pressing emergency when in short supply. This continues as we descend the list.

This lack of resources can be adapted to define everything from a local snowstorm, to Hurricane Katrina or the well-orchestrated, disastrous attack launched in Mumbai, India. In each of these events, there was a breakdown of modern civil structure:
EMS, Police, Food and Water, energy and transportation were compromised, and emergencies ensued. An emergency can be said to occur when there is a shortage of anything required to sustain life, in other words.

So the question still lingers, “How do we categorize Emergencies?”

Duration and Intensity

Over the years, my understanding of emergencies has evolved to reflect not the specifics, but the protraction of the emergency and the urgency the lack of resources presents. In any case of shortage, be it breathable air or the ability to defend yourself, four key elements are always present and can be expressed as a balance between each pair of concepts:

Intensity Duration and Probability Proximity

Even a very survivable situation can be deadly when coupled with a protracted duration, because with duration, we see the emergence of secondary and tertiary emergencies as a result of lack of resources. What are these?
Things like dehydration, infections, starvation, blood loss, thermal Injury and so forth.

These things in and of themselves are negative, and become more severe the longer they go untreated.
So to put it in “Direct” Terms: the longer you take fire, the lower your odds of survival.

Because of this, our immediate emphasis is always on preventing secondary and tertiary emergencies – and the way we can do this is by managing the primary situation to shorten its duration as quickly as possible.

Part 1: Emergency Assessment

Intensity/Duration

Intensity can be a very difficult thing to define. Each and every individual has their own set of skills, experiences, strengths and weaknesses that define how they react to emergencies – but in general, we can still define the following as events that would be commonly regarded as emergencies.

Type 1. High Intensity – Short Duration
A High intensity situation would be a situation in which you and/or others have minimal time to escape imminent harm. However, high intensity situations are limited by environmental factors, and are accompanied by very brief durations as a rule. Because of this, things like eating, communication with loved ones and other similar concerns need not be considered – they can wait. These emergencies represent situations where “immediate action” is required – whether it’s fight or flight, and typically last between one second and twenty four hours.
The equipment necessary to solve these problems is your EDC – 1^st line. For that reason, keep these things on your person whenever you’re dressed – discussed later.

Incidences of “high intensity” are:

• Drowning event
• A House Fire
• Being stranded in the wilderness
• Violent Attacks, such as a robbery
• Violent Attacks such as an “active shooter” scenario where you’re amongst the targeted.
• Violent contact with gangs or gang members
• Abrupt natural disasters, such as earthquakes or tornados
• Sudden Traumatic Injuries, such as auto accidents, equipment accidents or events that could result in a more protracted emergency, such as a Plane Crash.
  

Type 2. Moderate Intensity – Short/Moderate Duration

Moderate Intensity situations include scenarios that carry a very real threat of violence or injury, but injury to you is either unintended or woUnderstauld be incidental; in other words, you’re not the target, but you could become one by happenstance. As a corollary, you may have to consider providing social services for yourself, to include Medical, Security, Food, Water and Sanitation. While you’re not actively being targeted, you may be pressed into defending or providing for yourself. While the ‘Short Duration’ emergency figure (1 second – 24 hours), Moderate intensity events generally affect their victims for “moderate” durations – these could last between two days and one week. It’s important to note that while these situations may “seem” very intense, they differ from immediate, high-intensity emergencies in that you’re not being actively targeted or directly affected by the emergency. In other words, food may become scarce, but it’s not because someone is taking it from you.

The equipment to negotiate these problem sets is a combination of your 1^st and 2^nd Line Equipment, discussed later.

Incidences of “moderate intensity – short/medium duration” are:

• Riots
• Blackouts
• Large-scale infrastructural damage, such as accompany Hurricanes/Earthquakes
• Temporary Weather emergencies, such as Significant Winter Weather Events or flooding.
• Invasion by a military (first week)
• The ‘event’ of an economic collapse (first week)
• Breakdown of law/gang violence

Type 3. Low Intensity – Protracted Duration

These events represent the most varied and dangerous situations, because they occur along a very long timeline. Low intensity events also be understood as the vectors for many of the “worst case” scenarios, as they’re typically created by a more traumatic, short-term, moderate intensity situation; as such, the challenges they present are often the “secondary” or “tertiary” concerns discussed earlier. While these events do not affect you on a ‘person to person’ level, they fundamentally change the dynamics of your interactions for their duration – which is indefinite. These problem will require all the skills, mindset and equipment of all three lines of gear, plus anything you can scavenge using your skills/equipment. More on this in the “Gear Concepts and Lines” below.

Perhaps most important when considering Low Intensity – Protracted duration events is that within these events, the probability of Type One and Two events increased drastically. That is to say, in an economic collapse, for instance, you’re far more likely to face a situation in which you’re facing a resource shortage or are being targeted directly. 

Incidences of “low-moderate intensity – protracted duration” are:

• Occupation by military
• Depression
• Economic collapse
• Pandemic outbreak of a deadly disease
• Nuclear War
• Revolution
• Being shipwrecked

Probability/Proximity

With the above grim prospects to consider, we would be awash in fears, it would be almost impossible to nail down any way to provide a sound “solution” to the problems, and perhaps most importantly – how to take the first step.

Enter Probability and Proximity. While no one can foresee the future, most can clearly see that the position we find our global community in is laden with economic, socio-political and military encumbrances that cannot be reconciled. Each of us individually must scrutinize for ourselves what we believe to be the most likely situations, and how our local area will be impacted. The needs of someone in Detroit, Michigan will be significantly different than someone living in the countryside of Belgium. Again, we apply the idea of “Consistency across Categories” – a concept from Martial Artist Marc Denny – which means that we take steps to prepare for any emergency by using a combination of skillset, mindset and tactics that are “generic”, rather than specific.

The general approach is to work from the outside in - that is, the longest, most unlikely situations first. The reasoning behind that is this: Most of the situations that are of shorter duration and intensity are precursory to the larger event, and therefore, you can eliminate the most likely emergencies and focus on the plausible ones.

It’s important to re-evaluate these consideration every so often, or when you move to a new location, have a change in life; such as a marriage, birth of a child, death in the family et cetra.

For example, I believe Nuclear War to be a very remote possibility at this time, but an Economic Collapse is very likely within the next few years; from this, we can say that the more immediate concerns would be things like riots, delays in shipments/deliveries, loss of purchasing power, and even more ‘close to home’, increased petty crime – such as theft, assault, robbery, home invasions and perhaps more violent crimes as well.

This allows us to “funnel” the possibilities into a simple package that we can then begin to assess.

Part II. Where to Start – Practical Preparation, Identification of Solutions

As we begin the process of identifying the “most likely” scenarios, it is of critical importance to prioritize and make a workable plan. Don’t simply buy thousands of pounds of bulk foods, stockpile ammunition or build a bunker. These are irrational approaches that do nothing to “solve” the problem.

A common theme amongst Preppers is having reserves. This is a sub-component of our just in time delivery system, and the need to go out and buy goods for later consumption is soon to be outdated. What we attempt to mitigate when we behave this way is another concept of shortage, in short, a Microscale emergency in which we “project” we will not have enough.

The only cure for this is skillset, and www.chrismartenson.com has an excellent intellectual workshop here: http://www.chrismartenson.com/category/blog/what-should-i-do

As you identify your needs; Food, security, shelter and community, make your first step by asking the following: “What do I need to know in order to address this problem?”

The conundrum of this exercise is sometimes the answer is that you can’t possibly know enough because it’s outside your area of expertise or you don‘t know where to start.

The question then becomes: “Who do I need to know in order to address this problem?” or “Where can I learn the skills necessary to work this out?”

Once you switch gears from acquisition of material to acquisition of skills, you can begin orienting yourself to mitigating emergencies.

OODA Introduction

Air Force Colonel, John Byrd devised a method of analyzing how we act and react under stress. His model, known as “OODA” was a continually repeating process of Observation, Orientation, Decision and Action. While this process in and of itself doesn’t “train” us in a measurable way, you will notice that under stress, this is precisely how the mind thinks. With that in mind, in any crisis, it’s important to recognize Col. Byrd’s contribution as an extremely valuable tool for any emergency - regardless of its intensity and duration.

With this in mind, each situation is going to require that you either use the OODA loop to assess the situation make good decisions and act upon them, or follow someone else’s lead. For this reason, training, martial arts, rehearsals and other exercises to ‘flex’ your decision making ability can greatly reduce the time it takes to make difficult decisions under pressure.  

PACE Introduction

The military loves acronyms, and there are dozens of them available that can be easily committed to memory and used to plan in harsh situations. Like OODA, PACE is an acronym that we can use before, during and after an emergency, and must be occasionally reassessed.

PACE Stands for:

• Primary – The “standard” action to be taken for the situation.
• Alternative -An alternative, if some obstruction to your standard plan exists.
• Contingency – A backup plan in case the Standard and Alternative plan become untenable.
• Emergency – A plan to be used in the event that an emergency occurs during the execution of your plan.

Keeping this in mind as you plan, it will be easier to communicate and execute your plan to those in your family, circle or community. A firm standard can help us cycle more quickly through our OODA in any type of crises , and thus, we can look at OODA like an “Operating System” on our computer, and PACE as Software used to accomplish our goals.

PACE is one of my favorites because it can be used for almost anything; Communications plans for Frequencies, Routes of Travel, Avoiding potential trouble areas and Escaping if necessary. The “If/Than” mentality that it teaches will help you remain flexible, but still have a cogent set of criterion with which you can communicate with other people in a secure fashion.

In addition, it’s self explanatory, each letter corresponds with a plan that will be defined by the user. The modularity, simplicity and utility of this acronym can be a great asset when planning.

GOTWA Introduction

The third and final acronym for this series is GOTWA. Primarily employed by military combat units, it is an outline for travel away from a known safe area – whether it’s a bivouac, Firebase, LP/OP (Listening/Observation Post) or a campsite – it can be modified for your needs to help alleviate the dangerous of traveling without high-tech communications by framing what each party can expect.

It’s important at this point to revisit Survival 101 – “Shelter”. From there, we can recall some vital information for the setup of such a camp, if you’re unfortunate enough to have to hold up while traveling, as well as procedural words, duress words and challenge words. While I do not intend to make this a “tactical” primer, it should be understood that things like light, litter and noise discipline will increase your odds of remaining undetected. Like proper defenses, these increase the odds of your survival, which is what this series is all about. Use this information, but be flexible! It doesn’t have to be a primitive wilderness camp – you can use these concepts at a friends home, your own home, or a spot you stop to regroup at while traveling to your destination.

GOTWA will help you address things that may be tough to consider in normal times, such as what to do if you encounter others who are starving or scavenging, hostile groups of bandits, other survivors or procedures on how to safely rendezvous with your own group in case of splitting up. Keep in Mind, for this latter situation, a well-defined PACE plan will go a long way towards securing your trip.

GOTWA stands for:

• G – Where I’m Going
• O – Others With me
• T – Time I will be gone
• W – What we’re doing
• A - Actions upon:
  • Contact (non-hostile)
    • Base team
    • Away team
  • Contact (hostile)
    • Base team
    • Away team

While this seems boorish to even consider in the first world, it is a subject best thought about before it is needed. In almost all incidences, breaking contact – meaning disengaging communication or hostilities – is a priority. If you’re trying to return safely, getting caught up in transient affairs is a poor ingredient in the recipe for success.

Preparation

While proper equipment is important, it’s secondary to your ability in every respect. If we view this as analogous to a house, having the equipment is like having the building materials. Without the skill to assemble them into a structure, you’ll find they do you little or no good. For this reason, it’s absolutely paramount that your equipment selection matches your level of skill, and as you learn and develop an increased capacity, you will want to revisit your equipment.

Over the years, I’ve had scores of people ask me “what should I get?” and then proceed to buy something I’d found to be ineffective, practically useless or of faulty design because it was cheap, or promised a quick fix. There are absolutely no magic bullets in this world. You must invest the time in yourself – only then will your equipment provide you with the comfort you seek. Many of the tasks we could find ourselves in are as dependant on chance or fortune as they are on our abilities or equipment. For this reason, we must make every attempt to use our OODA loop to assess situations as we enter them.

Traveling

One of the most underappreciated luxuries of our time is our ability to travel great distances with little or no inconvenience, cost or risk. While I’m certain others will disagree, traveling in a “post-collapse” society will carry with it some extreme risks that in my opinion will present the most dangerous situations imaginable. In history and more modern failed states, road agents, highwaymen, gangs and hostile members of other societies or communities have used “safe passage” as a method of extracting wealth. From taxes to attacks, traveling presents a number of problems that must be examined.

Before I go further, I want to make a note that this is my belief, and a situation I think many of us think about. That said, it will be heavily opinion based and largely theoretical. Further, study of our current occupations in the Middle East will provide an enormous wealth of information on how travel based incursions happen, are combated and some of the reasons they’ll be an attractive option for both those on the side of order, and chaos.

Like our other topics, travel can be broken down systematically into subsets that have “common” elements – for example, there will be drastic differences between travel by foot, by animal or by mechanical means. Similarly, traveling alone provides you unique advantages and disadvantages when compared to traveling in a group. For this reason, when we plan to meet an emergency, it should be thoroughly considered.

While these situations are important, there is no specific way to predict how they’ll play out. We can loosely define our travel as either on foot or in a car & alone or with a group.

While there is no “certain” way to judge how any of these situations could go, putting these as row & column headers in a 2×2 matrix (or Punnett Square)  to plan can be a useful tool. In each box, use PACE/GOTWA to sketch an idea of what you expect and how you’ll deal with it.

Once you’ve identified the threats, problems and solution, you can start thinking about what you’ll need to address these concerns, and as always, assess your deficiencies now!

Part III. Gear and Lines and Concepts

Most of the time, this discussion is what you hear when you hear “survivalists” consider their options. It’s the equipment – what rifle for deer? What this to accomplish that? It’s intentionally placed halfway through this article, because before we decide on any sort of equipment, it’s imperative that we shape our demands, and our demands are not equipment – our demands are skills. A set of lockpicks aren’t going to do you any good if you’re trying to escape a dead city and you cant tell a rake from a torsion wrench.

In short, our priorities are:

1. A cogent assessment of the situation.
2. A detailed plan on what you have, lack and need, in terms of skill set, mindset and know-how.
3. The skills to perform the given task
4. The tools to perform the given task.

With skill comes mindset, with mindset comes tactical thinking. Therefore, when we are skilled, we can “think on our feet”, and any “tool” will do because you understand the objective. This is especially true of firearms, though it applies equally to many other things.

In the spirit of “Consistency across Categories“, I arrange my equipment to correspond with the levels of Crisis discussed above in the “Intensity/Duration” section, which is to say, each of the three “lines” of equipment meet the demands of their respective emergencies.

Furthermore, integration of each line should be additive – your line two should commensurate your first and third line. If you’re left with only your first line, you should have the Mindset, Skill set and Tactical knowledge to “procure” any of the other items you may need.

Consider a few other points: 

1. Try not to look conspicuous. Dress appropriate for what you’re doing. Carry clothes that are inconspicuous for your area – make sure you’re comfortable (not just physically).
2. Don’t overload yourself. Try and stick to the target weights, or define your own as needed.
3. Make sure your equipment is secured and doesn’t rattle. Tie it down with Paracord and make sure your pouches are secure. Zippers and Velcro makes noise. Buttons make less.
4. Buy quality, cry just once. Don’t buy equipment off the bargain rack to fill a perceived insufficiency – use the skill axiom first! If you can’t over come the deficiency with just skill (such as in an emergency like a house fire) buy reliable, quality tools to augment your knowledge.
5. Try and find objects that are “multi-purpose”, but be aware that some things will always be “special purpose”.

Often enough, people ask “what do I need?” This of course depends greatly on what skills you possess, your perceived dangers and what you’ll actually carry. That said, I will do my best to make my recommendations.

First Line

• Method of Carry: EDC “Every Day Carry”; on person
• Target weight: 1-5lbs
• Purpose: Mitigation of Immediate Emergencies and violent encounters; supplementing second and third line in more protracted emergencies.
• Components
  • Pocket knife (I prefer the CRKT M16-12Z)
  • Lighter/Matches
  • Thumb Drive (on key ring)
  • P-38 can opener (on key ring)
  • Multi-Tool (I prefer Gerber – Leatherman pictured)
  • A notepad with pens
  • A rubber band or two
  • Safety Pins
• Optional
  • Sidearm (I prefer a Glock in 9mm)
  • A reload for your Sidearm
  • A fixed blade knife (I prefer a Shivworks Clinch Pick)
  • A Paracord Bracelet – deconstructed, these can provide you an amazing amount of material to use as rope, fishing line, snare wires, or thread – the limits are only in your mind.

Second Line – Kit

• Method of Carry: Lightweight satchel or low signature chest rig
• Note: NOT a backpack – a backpack is your third line.
• Target Weight: 5-10lbs
• Purpose: Putting emergency plans into effect; geared towards Moderate Intensity, Medium Duration situations.
• Components
  • Water container
  • Zip Ties
  • Siphon Hose
  • Spare Magazines
  • Head Lamp
  • Flashlight (I prefer the Surefire C2)
  • Pocket Chainsaw – this is an endorsement – it rocks.
  • Snare wire and fish hooks (tied on their Leaders)
  • Notepad and Pens
    - Magnesium fire starting block
  • Medical Kit
  • GPS/Compass
  • A few pieces of Silver
  • More Paracord
  • Cyalume flares
  • Water Bottle
  • Idiosyncratic items (Kestrels, GPS, Maps, reading material; whatever makes you comfortable
• Optional
  • Rifle (Legal and Ethical)
  • Spare Magazines (Pistol/Rifle)

Third Line – Backpack

• Method of Carry: Backpacks
• Target Weight: 25-40lbs
• Purpose: Providing more advanced gear that supplements 1^st and 2^nd line, and affords the ability to exist in transit for >1 week , depending on level of skill and need.
• Components
  • Food (I prefer MRE Entrees with the cardboard [for fire starting])
  • Sleeping bag or insulated blanket
  • Mylar sleeping bag and/or Space blanket
  • Fixed blade knife
  • Rope
  • Hydration system (3Litre)
  • Plastic Bags
  • Medical Kit
  • Capilene underwear, shirts and socks (2 pairs each)
  • Stainless steel or aluminum cook-set (with utinsel)
  • Fishing Line/Hooks/Power-bait
  • Water Purification (Tablets, Pur Hiker/Katadyne etc)
  • Canteen with Cup
  • Extra items; Lighters, pens, trading items (cigarettes, silver, etc)

Keep in mind that a heavier 3^rd Line might include more food, water and a better sleeping bag.

Costs and Practicality

This list may seem long and costly – and it is.

The skill-sets presented in this series are meant to be the foundation that if practiced properly, will see your basic needs are met. It is incumbent upon you to develop them. 

Turning these words into practical, useful skills will require an investment in time, energy and patience. It will cost money, pride and comfort. But as you invest in yourself, and build confidence in the things you can accomplish, you’ll see the investment return itself to you all of what it’s taken.

The journey of self development is very long, lonely and at times will have you questioning your motives, intent and possible outcomes. It should be harsh, painful, rewarding and humbling.

The training you complete is an investment in your most integral asset – yourself. Budget for it as you would any other expense, and continually view it as a way to weather yourself against the unexpected challenges.

Some of the most simple things you can do are:

1. Take martial arts.
2. Take good care of yourself physically
3. Find two courses per year that you’ve never taken before – budget for, and attend them.
4. Consider equipment only after you’ve identified need. Continually re-assess yourself based on your observations.

Skill-set, Mindset and Tactics

This is a point I return to over and over again because I want to clearly emphasize – especially after talking gear – that owning equipment and never training speaks to a misallocation of time, money and bent priorities.

Many people do not like to train because it compromises their self-image. To be hurt physically by someone who trained harder than you, to be challenged mentally by being forced into an austere situation, such as Urban Escape and Evasion or a Woodland survival class is not comfortable.

It is also important to recognize that some skills are based on knowledge and experience and others are more physically intensive, demanding more repetition. At this point, you should have a good understanding of what possible emergencies exist.

We have presented situations not to fear them, but to understand them. The clarion call of this particular addition to the Survival 101 series is that now, you’ve been exposed to some fundamental skills, you’ve been exposed to some of the calculus behind preparation and we’ve loosely defined sets of emergencies that could impact us – so it is now time to take action.

While it is important to assess yourself for strengths, weaknesses and abilities, it is of far more value to test yourself, and to know how to handle emergencies.

With these things in mind, it’s critical that we set realistic priorities that focus on what is practical, realistic and uncomfortable. Don’t fall into the routine of taking classes over and over again – if you find yourself comfortable with the material, you’re not being challenged.

Think of how ridiculous it would be to take ‘Writing 101′ over and over again. You could turn in the same work, modify it to the teachers’ expectations and correct yourself ad infinitum. But will it improve your ability to write?

In this same way, martialism, physical fitness, primitive survival skills and experience in dealing with adversity must be continually nurtured and pressed beyond what you know.

 “The true science of martial arts means practicing them in such a way that they will be useful at any time, and to teach them in such a way that they will be useful in all things.” 
— Miyamoto Musashi

This What Should I Do? blog series is intended to surface knowledge and perspective useful to preparing for a future defined by Peak Oil.  The content is written by ChrisMartenson.com readers and is based in their own experiences in putting into practice many of the ideas exchanged on this site.  If there are topics you’d like to see featured here, or if you have interest in contributing a post in a relevant area of your expertise, please indicate so in our What Should I Do? series feedback forum.

If you have not yet seen the other articles in this series, you can find them here:

• A Case Study in Creating Community (SagerXX)
• Peak Certainty, Food Resilience, and Aquaponics (Farmer Brown)
• Creating Healthy Snacks from Your Garden (EndGamePlayer)
• The Essential Gardening and Food Resilience Library (Old Hippie)
• Installing A Solar Energy System (rhare)
• The Keys to Transitioning Healthcare: Empowerment, Education, & Prevention (suziegruber)
• A Quiet Revolution in Bicycles: Recapturing a Role as Utilitarian People-Movers – Part 1 (Cycle9)
• A Quiet Revolution in Bicycles: Recapturing a Role as Utilitarian People-Movers – Part 2 (Cycle9)
• Practical Survival Skills 101 – Fire Starting (Aaron Moyer)
• Raising Your Own Chickens (Woodman)
• Dealing With a Reluctant Partner (Becca Martenson)
• Making the Urban-to-Rural Transition (joemanc)
• Prepping on a Shoestring (Amanda)
• Practical Survival Skills 101 – Water (Aaron Moyer)
• Small-Scale Beekeeping (apismellifera)
• Making Soap (maceves)
• Woodworking (bklement)
• Practical Survival Skills 101 – Obtaining Shelter (Aaron Moyer)
• Extending the Harvest in Your Home Garden (Woodman)
• Problem Solving: Improvise, Adapt, Overcome (Mooselick7)
• Cultivating Inner Resilience in the Face of Crisis (suziegruber)
• Protecting Yourself Against Crime and Violence (thc0655)
• Managing Pain Without Meds (JAG)
• How to Explain the Current Economic Situation to Friends & Family (rhare)
• Practical Survival Skills 101 – Understanding Emergencies (Aaron Moyer)

This series is a companion to this site’s free What Should I Do? Guide, which provides guidance from Chris and the ChrisMartenson.com staff on specific strategies, products, and services that individuals should consider in their preparations.

Our best minds could figure-out how to take the nuclear fire out of the oven and bring it into our neighborhoods, but they could not guarantee a fail-safe way to go about this—yet, they enthusiastically urged our leaders to dot the countryside with these nuclear pipe-bombs, euphemistically dubbed “reactors.” A “REACTOR” is an abomination, classified as “science.” Here is an untechnical description of a reactor operation:

Inside a closed metal and concrete container, a piece of uranium is ignited, like a piece of coal that is partially smothered, enough to prevent the glowing coal from bursting into open flames. The glowing uranium rod is prevented from open ignition by smothering in special high-temperature coolant. The heat released by this partially burning rod of uranium evaporates water into steam, which flows through pipes like a modern equivalent of a steam engine. The nuclear-powered steam engine turns an electrical generator, which sends electricity flowing through the wires.

If the uranium rod is allowed to burn too hot, it creates more heat than the coolant can transfer and the REACTOR begins to melt, before the fuel rods melt.

If the water system shuts-down for an extended time, the steam being created can’t flow, the pressure builds until the REACTOR explodes, leaving the burning fuel rods fully exposed. The rods melt, burning through the floor of the REACTOR.

If all goes well, none of this ever happens, but like all things made by the hands of man, every mechanical system eventually breaks-down. Our best minds knew all these risks before the first reactor was ever built, yet they recommended that reactors should be built in every country on the face of the earth. Our scientists didn’t care to consider that the day might come when the earth would bite back.

The tragedy of Fukushima is a tragedy for all mankind. We do not yet see it, but this event will be remembered as a turning point in the development of humanity. From this point forward, if nothing else, Fukushima will give pause to every politician, or technocrat in the future who holds up the torch of “nuclear power” as the great hope for our energy-starved planet. But the greater ramifications of the environmental impact from this event will echo down through the corridors of human time, in both subtle and more obvious ways. The first concrete way that this will impact future lives will be in the horrible mutations suffered by those exposed to burning-type of radiation, near the site of the explosion. Children of the workers and neighbors of this plant, and their children, will suffer much higher rates of extreme deformation of their future fetuses, produced after this event.

The more subtle widespread genetic damage is produced by the release of enormous amounts of highly-radioactive dust into the atmosphere, as it is carried around the planet, is something which we can only guess at from our perspective. Today, we cannot foresee the end of this tragic catastrophic event. The only thing we know for certain, is that it is all ending very badly.

Our scientists all thought that something like this would never happen, or so they said. The truth is, they played the odds and lost, or rather the Japanese people lost. Nuclear power has always been a cosmic roll of the dice, with the fate of every living being on planet earth riding on the outcome of the roll. Our great leaders fully understood that bad things might happen, yet they confidantly invested your tax dollars, in order to gamble your lives that one day the radioactive wolf would not come knocking at your door. Well the wolf is outside and he is starting to howl.

Scientists are so caught-up in their own self-worship that they convince themselves that they know what is best for all of us, especially if it means profit or power for them. The self-proclaimed “geniuses” who have unleashed the nuclear genie for our advancement, have made decisions for us which God Himself, chose to leave alone. Human evolution comes about when the species reaches a dead-end, requiring the species to grow (evolve) in some way, in order to go forward. Human technology follows the same pattern of growth–forward momentum reaches a point of impasse, until the impeding wall is breached, allowing forward momentum to resume.

Nuclear power has always been thought-of in these terms–the technology which was built upon the discovery of the thermonuclear reaction, thinking that “nuclear power” was a great leap forward….IT WAS NOT. As I have explained in my steam engine analogy, nuclear power is pseudo-science. It is the adapting of Nineteenth Century technology over the discovery of the thermonuclear reaction and calling it a “REACTOR,” claiming that it was a great leap forward for all mankind, alleviating us from our addictions to coal and oil-fired electricity. We have our need for electricity–vs–unlimited energy from enriched uranium. We have not bridged the gap between them with so-called “nuclear power” (really steam power).

When we have fully understood nuclear science we will have naturally progressed to the knowledge of converting atomic energy into electricity. Until then, we are just burning-up a very limited resource, while endangering all of our lives. In our effort to understand the true science involved in the thermonuclear reaction we will come to understand the real science of nuclear fusion. Until we learn to harness the astronomical amounts of energy being released in the fusion reaction, we will just be spinning our tires, stuck in the same old mud, with our heads still firmly in our asses.

It may be, that when we finally really understand exactly what we have gotten our hands on, we will figure-out that somehow, our evolution as an intelligent species has required a radioactive environment, in order to cause specific species’ mutations that we have not even dreamed of. Who knows? Maybe God had this on His mind all along. Since He is the hidden hand behind our evolution, He must have had reasons for allowing man to open the nuclear nutshell. The discovery of atomic energy was a natural outcome of our primitive scientific quest, just as the discovery of converting fusion energy into electrical energy must be the next step in our quest to improve the species.

Perhaps He who sees all things before they happen put “nuclear power” before us to become the great wall to human progress which together we muct breach. Perhaps we will see this phase in our technological development for what it is, a failed experiment, so that we may absorb the lessons learned from the tragedy at Fukushima and go on. This is my great hope.

It is time to leave nuclear power behind.

“At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass,” said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Reports from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy estimated the 8.9-magnitude quake shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters).

The temblor, which struck Friday afternoon near the east coast of Japan, killed hundreds of people, caused the formation of 30-foot walls of water that swept across rice fields, engulfed entire towns, dragged houses onto highways, and tossed cars and boats like toys. Some waves reached six miles (10 kilometers) inland in Miyagi Prefecture on Japan’s east coast.

The quake was the most powerful to hit the island nation in recorded history and the tsunami it unleashed traveled across the Pacific Ocean, triggering tsunami warnings and alerts for 50 countries and territories as far away as the western coasts of Canada, the U.S. and Chile. The quake triggered more than 160 aftershocks in the first 24 hours — 141 measuring 5.0-magnitude or more.

The quake occurred as the Earth’s crust ruptured along an area about 250 miles (400 kilometers) long by 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide, as tectonic plates slipped more than 18 meters, said Shengzao Chen, a USGS geophysicist.

Japan is located along the Pacific “ring of fire,” an area of high seismic and volcanic activity stretching from New Zealand in the South Pacific up through Japan, across to Alaska and down the west coasts of North and South America. The quake was “hundreds of times larger” than the 2010 quake that ravaged Haiti, said Jim Gaherty of the LaMont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

The Japanese quake was of similar strength to the 2004 earthquake in Indonesia that triggered a tsunami that killed over 200,000 people in more than a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean. “The tsunami that it sent out was roughly comparable in terms of size,” Gaherty said. “[The 2004 tsunami] happened to hit some regions that were not very prepared for tsunamis … we didn’t really have a very sophisticated tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean basin at the time so the damage was significantly worse.”

The Japanese quake comes just weeks after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch on February 22, toppling historic buildings and killing more than 150 people. The timeframe of the two quakes have raised questions whether the two incidents are related, but experts say the distance between the two incidents makes that unlikely.

“I would think the connection is very slim,” said Prof. Stephan Grilli, ocean engineering professor at the University of Rhode Island.

CNN’s Ivan Cabrera contributed to this report

It’s the largest underground freshwater supply in the world, stretching from South Dakota all the way to Texas. It’s underneath most of Nebraska’s farmlands, and it provides crucial water resources for farming in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and even New Mexico. It’s called the Ogallala Aquifer, and it is being pumped dry.

See the map of this aquifer here: http://www.naturalnews.com/images/O…

Without the Ogallala Aquifer, America’s heartland food production collapses. No water means no irrigation for the corn, wheat, alfalfa and other crops grown across these states to feed people and animals. And each year, the Ogallala Aquifer drops another few inches as it is literally being sucked dry by the tens of thousands of agricultural wells that tap into it across the heartland of America.

This problem with all this is that the Ogallala Aquifer isn’t being recharged in any significant way from rainfall or rivers. This is so-called “fossil water” because once you use it, it’s gone. And it’s disappearing now faster than ever.

In some regions along the aquifer, the water level has dropped so far that it has effectively disappeared — places like Happy, Texas, where a once-booming agricultural town has collapsed to a population of just 595. All the wells drilled there in the 1950′s tapped into the Ogallala Aquifer and seemed to provide abundant water at the time. But today the wells have all run dry.Happy, Texas has become a place of despair. Dead cattle. Wilted crops. Once-moist soils turned to dust. And Happy is just the beginning of this story because this same agricultural tragedy will be repeated across Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas and parts of Colorado in the next few decades. That’s a hydrologic fact. Water doesn’t magically reappear in the Ogallala. Once it’s used up, it’s gone.

“There used to be 50,000 head of cattle, now there’s 1,000,” says Kay Horner in a Telegraph report (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/83…

). “Grazed them on wheat, but the feed lots took all the water so we can’t grow wheat. Now the feed lots can’t get local steers so they bring in cheap unwanted milking calves from California and turn them into burger if they can’t make them veal. It doesn’t make much sense. We’re heading back to the Dust Bowl.”

The end of cheap food in America?

It’s a sobering thought, really: That “America’s breadbasket” is on a collision course with the inevitable. A large percentage of the food produced in the United States is, of course, grown on farmlands irrigated from the Ogallala. For hundreds of years, it has been a source of “cheap water,” making farming economically feasible and keeping food prices down. Combined with the available of cheap fossil fuels over the last century (necessary to drive the tractors that work the fields), food production has skyrocketed in North America. This has led to a population explosion, too. Where food is cheap and plentiful, populations readily expand.

It only follows that when food becomes scarce or expensive (putting it out of reach of average income earners), populations will fall. There’s only so much food to go around, after all. And after the Ogallala runs dry, America’s food production will plummet. Starvation will become the new American landscape for those who cannot afford the sky-high prices for food.

Aquifer depletion is a global problem

It’s not a problem that’s unique to America, by the way. The very same problem is facing India, where fossil water is already running dry in many parts of the country. It’s the same story in China, too, where water conservation has never been a top priority. Even the Middle East is facing its own water crisis (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/…). This has caused food prices to skyrocket, leading directly to the civil unrest, the riots and even the revolutions we’ve seen taking place there over the last few months.

The problem is called aquifer depletion (http://www.eoearth.org/article/Aqui…), and it’s a problem that spans the globe. It means that today’s cheap, easy food — grown on cheap fossil water — simply isn’t sustainable. Once that water is gone, the croplands that depend on it dry up. Following that, erosion kicks in, and the winds blow away the dry soils in a “Dust Bowl” type of scenario.

A few years after that, what was once a thriving agricultural operation is transformed into a dry, soilless death pit where nothing lives.

“The Ogallala supply is going to run out and the Plains will become uneconomical to farm,” says David Brauer of the Ogallala Research Service, part of the USDA. “That is beyond reasonable argument. Our goal now is to engineer a soft landing. That’s all we can do.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/83…)

Such is the legacy of conventional agriculture, which is based almost entirely on non-sustainable practices. Its insane reliance on fossil water, petroleum fertilizers, toxic pesticides and GMOs will only lead our world to agricultural disaster.

Be prepared and be safe

I want all NaturalNews readers to be prepared, informed and safe when facing our uncertain future. We know that trouble is stirring around the world, and much of it is either caused by or will lead to food shortages.

The GMO companies, of course, will exploit this situation to their advantage, claiming that only GMOs can grow enough food to feed the world. This is a lie. GMOs and patented seeds only enslave the world population and lead to great social injustice. The days of food slavery are fast approaching for those who do not have the means to grow at least a portion of their own food.

As part of our effort to help people become more self-reliant — with greater food security — throughout 2011 and 2012 I plan to bring you more articles, videos and webcast events that focus on home food production, self-reliance, family preparedness and sustainable living. Recently we announced a live webcast event on financial preparedness but the available seats at that event sold out in a matter of days (http://www.naturalnews.com/Economic…).

Based on the huge demand for this event, we have decided to roll out a second preparedness event in April, focused on food preparedness and security. Watch for an announcement on that soon.

In the mean time, I am personally working on growing more of my own food and will be creating a new series of videos and articles based on some of what I learn along the way. From living in South America and producing quite a large amount of food there, I have a fair amount of experience on home food production, but of course there’s always more to learn, right?

My gut feeling on all this is that learning to grow and store some portion of your own food is going to become a crucial survival skill over the next few years. And that means understanding water, soil, open-pollinated seeds, organic fertilizers, soil probiotics, insect pollination, growing with the seasons, sprouting, food harvesting, food drying, canning, storage and much more. It’s a whole set of skills that have faded away in America in just two generations, leaving very few people who now know how to live off their own land.

What’s becoming increasingly obvious from events such as the drying up of aquifers is that home food production is going to become a critical survival skill. I want NaturalNews readers to know and practice these skills as much as possible so that you can experience the comforts (and freedoms!) of genuine food security.

Watch for more stories about preparedness, home food production and self-reliant living here on NaturalNews.

This article is the fourth excerpt from Chapter 3 of Richard Heinberg’s new book ‘The End of Growth’, which is set for publication by New Society Publishers in September 2011. In the previous installment, Richard discusses water as one of the various factors external to financial and monetary systems that is effectively choking off efforts to restart growth. Below, Richard discusses the role of FOOD as a limitation to economic growth. 

In addition to water, people need food for their very existence. Thus food is also essential to economic growth.

Content on this site is subject to our fair use notice.

Energy Bulletin is a program of Post Carbon Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the world transition away from fossil fuels and build sustainable, resilient communities.

Source URL: http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-03-10/earths-limits-why-growth-wont-return-food

Links:
[1] http://www.postcarbon.org/article/272062-earth-s-limits-why-growth-won-t-return
[2] http://www.newsociety.com/
[3] http://www.postcarbon.org/article/254838-earth-s-limits-why-growth-won-t-return
[4] http://www.postcarbon.org/article/260011-how-markets-may-respond-to-resource
[5] http://www.postcarbon.org/article/269759-earth-s-limits-why-growth-won-t-return
[6] http://www.postcarbon.org/end-of-growth-chapters/
[7] http://www.postcarbon.org/report/41306-the-food-and-farming-transition-toward
[8] http://www.earth-policy.org/data_center/C24
[9] http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2882

Individuals, businesses and policy makers are made aware of the speed with which seemingly incremental price gains can topple global dominoes.

(In what should be a startling wake up call to industrial society, the Korean government ordered power to be shut off in the bustling metropolis of Seoul to save on fuel costs. Violators face $2700 fines.)

1. THE GLOBAL ECONOMY UTTERLY DEPENDS ON CHEAP OIL

CHRIS MARTENSON (Post Carbon Institute Economy & Personal Preparedness Fellow)

The unfolding social and political unrest in the Middle East/North African (MENA) region are emblematic of changes that will be visiting the rest of the developed world in the near future.  Yes, dictators, corruption, and weak justice all play into the MENA situation but underlying those insults is a deeper structural flaw that rests on the relentless math of energy depletion and its relationship to economic growth.  The short version of the story is this: the global economy utterly depends on cheap oil to function. Without cheap oil, the economy will not work quite the same as it did before.

We have irreversibly slipped into a world of ever-increasing energy costs and those, predictably, are dragging down the weaker players first. By failing to appreciate the fundamental and irreplaceable role of energy in fostering economic growth, the world’s high priests and priestesses of monetary and fiscal policy have placed the developed world in the exact same situation as the MENA countries.

No, printing more money and manufacturing more debt to promote more consumption will not help anything. In fact these efforts are harmful because they distract us from what’s really at the heart of the issue; instead we should honestly admit to ourselves that we have a gigantic energy-based economic and monetary predicament on our hands. One that requires a clear-eye diagnosis, and adult-sized conversations about what sorts of intelligent responses make sense here.

Assuming the west fails to heed the warnings and lessons being served up by the MENA region, the predictions are easy enough to make. Fiscal and monetary crises will sweep inwards from the weaker regions towards the center.  Markets will violently gyrate but ultimately destroy wealth. We still have time, but not a lot, especially considering that the leadership of the developed world is, for the most part, operating with the wrong narrative in place. The right one would consider energy and other critical environmental resources equally alongside economic goals.  
 

2. OIL SPIKES UNDERCUT ALTERNATIVE ENERGY PROGRAMS

DAVID FRIDLEY (Post Carbon Institute – Renewable Energy & Biofuels Fellow)

Since 2008, oil demand in the developed countries of the OECD has declined by 4 million barrels/day. Over the same period, oil demand in the rest of the world has risen by 4 million barrels/day. In 2011, the world has returned to the precarious balance of oil supply and demand that we faced in 2007 and 2008, when rising demand and stagnant production sent prices soaring to nearly $150.

The uprising in Libya, removing 700,000 b/d from the market, yet sending crude oil prices up 15%, reminds us both of how fragile that balance is as well as of how little has changed since 2008 in terms of our preparedness for such price shocks. If unrest were to spread to the core of the Middle East producing area in Saudi Arabia, disruption of exports from there could produce a price spike unlike any experienced in the past. And with the spike would come another economic crash.

The events since January highlight important vulnerabilities: one is the mismatch between the long lead times of our programs to develop alternatives to oil and the rapidity with which crude oil supply can be disrupted, sending markets into turmoil and undercutting the same programs attempting to mitigate such impacts. A second is reliance on strategic and critical inputs that are sourced from a small concentration of producers. As the US looks to move away from oil for transportation, it is at the same time moving to import dependence on other critical inputs such as lithium for batteries and rare earths for hybrid-car motor magnets from a small concentration of producers. This leaves our energy system open to the same types of supply and price shocks as we are witnessing today. 

3. LIBYA & MIDDLE EAST UNREST WIDEN A VICIOUS CIRCLE 

COLIN J. CAMPBELL – Post Carbon Institute Adviser

Oil and gas were formed in the geological past, meaning that for every gallon used, one less remains. Although the details are masked by unreliable data and ambiguous definitions, it becomes evident that Oil Age is about half over. Growing oil production during the First Half facilitated the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade and agriculture, allowing the population to grow six-fold. Declining production during the Second Half will likely give a corresponding contraction.

Shortages appeared following the peak of Regular Conventional oil production in 2005, and led to a surge in oil price in 2008, which gave an economic recession and financial crisis, killing oil demand. Prices then fell back to 2005 levels before Governments intervened to stimulate consumerism under outdated economic principles. Oil demand recovered to again threaten the supply barrier, such that prices had risen to almost $100 by the end of 2010.

The transition to the Second Half threatens to be a time of great social, political, financial and economic tension, as recent events, ranging from student demonstrations in London to revolutions in North Africa, confirm. Some of the affected countries, including Libya, are important oil producers, run by authoritarian regimes controlling underlying tribal conflicts. Oil revenues allowed the elite to amass colossal wealth but also bred a corresponding resentment, which exploded when the people at large faced soaring food costs and rising unemployment.

Oil production will fall in Libya whatever the political outcome, and it will not be easy to replace it elsewhere. Oil prices are accordingly likely to rise again prompting a certain vicious circle: the higher the price, the greater the social tension and the risk of further cuts in supply. A critical element is of course Saudi Arabia, responsible for more than ten percent of the world’s supply of conventional oil, and it is significant that tensions have been rising in Bahrain, an island off its coast, and in the neighboring countries of Yemen and Oman. 

If this vicious circle widens, it will represent a turning point for mankind of historic proportions. 

4. HEY TEACHER: LEAVE THOSE AUTOCRATIC REGIMES ALONE!

RICHARD HEINBERG (PCI Senior Fellow-in-Residence)

Many in the US cheered as decrepit dictators in Egypt and Tunisia fell. But now that more democracy for North African and Middle Eastern nations seems to translate to higher gasoline prices for American motorists, the real motives for, and costs of Western nations’ decades-long support for autocratic regimes in oil-rich nations are becoming apparent. This was a strategy to control the world’s most important resource, but it was wrong-headed from the start because it could not be sustained on the backs of millions of people with rising expectations but declining ability to afford food and fuel.

If somehow the uprisings can be confined to Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain, oil-importing nations may be able to weather 2011 with minimal GDP declines resulting from $100 oil prices. But that is a big “if.” It is really only a matter of time until Saudi Arabia is engulfed in sectarian and political turmoil, and when that happens we will see biggest oil price spike ever, and central banks will be unable to stop the ensuing economic carnage.

It’s both comic and sad to see certain economists insisting that a 10 percent rise in oil prices will translate only to a certain smaller percentage of decline in GDP growth. There are thresholds—such as $5 a gallon gasoline for US motorists—that will make hash of such forecasts. Energy is not a segment of the economy; it IS the economy.

I think we’re probably in for a very nasty ride these next few months.

5. CHINA & THE INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY: BOOKS BALANCED?

TOM WHIPPLE – Post Carbon Institute Peak Oil Fellow

Prior to the unrest breaking out in the Middle East, all eyes were on China for an answer to the question of “How high will oil prices go in the next year or two?” In 2010 the demand for oil surged ahead by 2.8 million b/d, much more rapidly than had been expected. Much of this increase in demand came from China where a number of factors converged to push demand to new highs.

To avoid predicting a growth-killing price spike this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) decided that the increase in demand for oil in 2011 would be only 1.5 million b/d. This forecast assumed that the seriously overheated Chinese economy would have to cut back markedly on the annual growth of its oil consumption this year in order to control price inflation.

In order to balance the books IEA envisioned OPEC slowly increasing production in 2011 out of its spare productive capacity. The IEA now recognizes that production from newly opened oil fields is very close to balancing declines in production from older fields, so not much increase in total world oil production is expected in the future.

We have a whole new game. After working through Tunisia and Egypt, the Middle Eastern unrest came to a significant oil producer, Libya, which had been exporting circa 1.3 million b/d of the world’s best crude. Now it is exporting little if any oil and world prices are $15+ a barrel higher. 

As it became apparent that the loss of Libyan crude exports was going to be a major economic problem for the European economy, the Saudis stepped in to say they would increase production from what they claim to be 3 or 4 million b/d of spare productive capacity. As the Saudi’s are reluctant to announce production above their OPEC ceiling, they have relied on leaks to get out the message that they are now producing somewhere over 9 million b/d – various reports have their output at 9.2, 9.3, or even 9.4 million b/d, up from 8.4 million in January. A few other OPEC states with spare capacity are said to be increasing production by another 300,000 b/d. All this makes it look, on paper, that should Libyan oil production remain shut-in for weeks or months, the missing oil output will be replaced and oil prices should move lower.

This happy scenario, however, does not take into account China and its voracious appetite for imported energy. Should the IEA be overestimating OPEC’s real spare capacity, or underestimating the size of China’s demand for imported oil, or should unrest force another Middle East producer to slow or halt its output, the global oil world will be a different place by the end of the year.

6. ADDICTS EVENTUALLY PAY THE PRICE

DAVID HUGHES – Post Carbon Institute Fossil Fuels Fellow

We need to prepare for the inevitable crises that will upset the apple cart on oil supply. Macondo was just an appetizer. So far, the Libyan revolt is only an unforeseen precursor that has caused indigestion in the oil importing countries. The Saudi’s are numero uno when it comes to a major case of the oil deprivation flu. If they go at it, all bets are off. And if Iran goes, watch out world.

The worst case scenario I usually toss out in my talks is the obvious: If Israel takes aggressive action against Iran, Iran will in turn shut down the Strait of Hormuz, shutting off 20% of the world’s oil supply.

If the Libyan revolt is contained and either someone sane or maybe even Gaddafi retains power, then oil prices will stabilize—for awhile.

American’s are broke and hopelessly oil addicted–this could be the wakeup call needed in terms of high oil prices and potentially even supply restrictions that will make Americans believers in the vulnerabilities of their current lifestyle.

The implications of the current unrest for the global economy and the industrialized world, which imports over half of its oil consumption, should be obvious.

Content on this site is subject to our fair use notice.

Energy Bulletin is a program of Post Carbon Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the world transition away from fossil fuels and build sustainable, resilient communities.

Source URL: http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-03-10/6-energy-experts-address-economic-impact-middle-east-unrest

Links:
[1] http://www.postcarbon.org/blog-post/275142-6-energy-experts-address-the-economic
[2] http://www.postcarbon.org/
[3] http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFTOE72704Q20110308
[4] http://www.whec.com/news/stories/S2008566.shtml?cat=566
[5] http://www.postcarbon.org/person/36205-chris-martenson
[6] http://energybulletin.net/person/36207-david-fridley
[7] http://www.postcarbon.org/about/advisers/
[8] http://www.postcarbon.org/person/36200-richard-heinberg
[9] http://www.postcarbon.org/person/36222-tom-whipple
[10] http://www.postcarbon.org/person/36208-david-hughes
[11] http://www.postcarbon.org/donate
[12] http://www.postcarbon.org/publications/newsletters/
[13] http://www.postcarbon.org/about/reposting_policy/

Joseph Tainter speaks at the conference “Advances in Energy studies” in Barcelona, in October 2010.  Tainter is an outstanding presenter: he speaks slowly, clearly, and in a deep voice. Once you start listening to him, you are hooked; you can’t miss a single world of what he says – not even if you don’t like it. Indeed, at the end of the talk, we had someone from the back rows shouting, “some more optimism, please!” Understandable, perhaps, but it is said that a pessimist is someone who has had to listen to too many optimists.

At the end of his monumental study titled “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” Edward Gibbon discusses the question of whether what happened to the ancient empire could happen in modern times, that in the late 18th century, when Gibbon was writing. His answer is that it could not; new hordes of barbarians couldn’t destroy the civilized world because of gunpowder, cannons, modern armies and the like.

It is clear that Gibbon saw the Roman collapse as mainly a military event:  the Romans were overwhelmed by one wave of Barbarians after the other. But, like many other historians before him, Gibbon chronicled events without normally interpreting them in the sense we give today to the term – that is finding social, economic or political reasons to explain what happened.

Gibbon, living in the thriving and expanding world of 18th century Britain, just couldn’t see that there was much more in the Roman collapse than a simple military problem. It would take time for historians to see the collapse of the ancient world as something related to our own destiny. With collapse impending, or perhaps already started, we can start seeing that the Roman times are a foggy mirror of our times.

Joseph Tainter is the historian who, today, has grasped this relation better than anyone in the past. He is well known for his book “The Collapse of complex societies” (1988) and for the articles he has written on this subject. Here, I am summarizing the talk that Tainter gave at the “Advances in Energy studies”  conference in Barcelona, in October 2010. It was not the first time that I heard him speak and I had read his book (and more than once!). But every time you hear Tainter speak, you have this sensation that he is going deeper and deeper into the problem; that he can present more and more evidence of the relevance of the past for the present. History does not necessarily repeats itself, but when facing similar challenges, people of all ages will tend to react in the same way. That’s the relevance that history has for us today and, in particular, the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

Tainter’s main point is related to complexity. He does not exactly define the term, but it is clear from the context that he means all the economic, social, bureaucratic, and military structures that societies create. Complexity is the characteristics of what we call “civilization”. Tainter dismisses the view – that he calls the “progressivist” viewpoint – that complexity is the automatic result of the availability of resources; mainly energy. Correctly, he says that complexity creates resources just as resources create complexity. Tainter doesn’t use the terminology of system dynamics, but if we see things within that framework, then we can say that complexity and resources are in a feedback relationship with each other. Resources allow the creation of more complex societal structures and these structures help exploiting resources faster and more efficiently.

In earlier works, such as in his 1988 book, Tainter dismissed also the idea that collapse, intended as a rapid reduction of complexity in a society, could be caused by resource depletion. He would define it as related only to the diminishing returns of progressively increasing complexity. In his talk in Barcelona, however, I think that I can interpret his view in terms closer to the “depletionist” viewpoint. In this sense, Tainter’s point is that there is a strong relationship between resources and complexity. It is clear that complexity cannot exist without resources – not for a long time, at least. But the relationship is far from being linear: with resources diminishing, complexity does not decrease – on the contrary it keeps increasing. It is the result of the benefits that complexity gives: resource depletion can be counteracted by increasing complexity, but only up to a certain point and with ever-reducing returns. At some moment, returns become negative, society cannot support any longer its complex infrastructures and the result is collapse.

In his talk in Barcelona, Tainter gave the example of the Roman Empire during the 3rd century A.D. At that time, the Empire faced a serious military crisis: invasions of foreign peoples and internal civil wars. The crisis was solved by Diocletian by doubling the size of the army, increasing taxes and enlarging bureaucracy; overall it was a considerable increase in complexity. Transforming the Roman Empire into a sort of an early version of the Soviet Union was a solution – of a kind – that retarded collapse of a couple of centuries but that, in a certain way, made it unavoidable. The Roman Empire could not afford such a large army and, eventually, it destroyed itself in the attempt of maintaining it. Not unlike the modern Soviet Union.

According to Tainter, we are doing more or less the same. Perhaps our society is not so heavily military oriented as the Roman one, but we are reacting to the crisis much in the same way. Despite all the talk of “saving” or “conserving” resources, it is clear that our society is not doing anything like that. We strive, certainly, towards more efficiency, but the resources that are saved in some areas of the economy are used in some other areas. Being more efficient in extracting resources means that we are running out of resources faster. Being more efficient in using resources means that we are able to create more complex structures that use those resources faster. It is the so called “Jevons paradox” in its strongest form.

The Romans could never fully understand what was befalling on them and they went down kicking and screaming, always thinking that a few more legions could solve all the problems. That was also because they had no structures – research centers, universities or the like – that could alert them. We do have such structures and we have had good warnings since the time when “The Limits to Growth” was published, in 1972. But we also have structures built expressly to demonize and destroy those who bring warnings, we call them “media spin” or “media based consensus building”. These structures have been efficiently used to play down the warnings we had from “The Limits to Growth” and are being used now to play down the warning about global warming that we are received from climate scientists. So, having computers is not a great advantage for us over the Romans. It seems that we are going their way.

You can read an excellent summary of Tainter’s book “The Collapse of Complex Societies” written by Anatoli Karlin. Some (long) ruminations of mine about the fate of the Roman Empire can be found in this post on the oil drum, titled “peak civilization”. You can find Tainter’s slides for his 2010 Barcelona presentation at this link. ]]> http://transition-times.com/blog/2011/03/10/joseph-tainter-talking-about-collapse/feed/ 0 http://transition-times.com/blog/2011/03/09/addiction-and-recovery-as-partners-for-transition/ http://transition-times.com/blog/2011/03/09/addiction-and-recovery-as-partners-for-transition/#comments Thu, 10 Mar 2011 03:18:56 +0000 globaleditor http://transition-times.com/?p=4063 During the weekend of February 25-27, hundreds of people gathered at the Millenium Harvest House in Boulder, Colorado to attend the “Our Local Economy: Lives in Transition” conference organized by Transition Colorado founders, Michael Brownlee and Lynette Marie Hanthorn. While the official topic of the conference concentrated on food security and the local economy, it appears participants were ready and willing to have a more fundamental discussion of how to shift the collective mindset to a more thoughtful, intentioned, and collaborative way of living—especially from within the community’s own means.

During the weekend of February 25-27, hundreds of people gathered at the Millenium Harvest House in Boulder, Colorado to attend the “Our Local Economy: Lives in Transition” conference organized by Transition Colorado founders, Michael Brownlee and Lynette Marie Hanthorn. While the official topic of the conference concentrated on food security and the local economy, it appears participants were ready and willing to have a more fundamental discussion of how to shift the collective mindset to a more thoughtful, intentioned, and collaborative way of living—especially from within the community’s own means. 

Inherent in the discussion of how to best support local farms and food producers, as well as the local economy, was the question of how to find and communicate this way of living. This “different” way of living, known well by the majority of our ancestors, many current indigenous populations , and those still on the fringes of  modern globalized culture, is based on a set of straightforward values:  the need for community with one’s neighbors, strong relationships to the food and land on which one lives, the importance of contributing to the welfare of those people, beings, and ecosystems that in turn provide true security and “life insurance” in a constantly changing world, and thinking ahead to the long-term consequences of individual and collective decisions for how to eat, work, spend money, and play.

Perhaps provoked by the kick-off premiere of the 2011 documentary “The Economics of Happiness” on Friday night, discussions in the conference seemed to repeatedly take a turn toward mentioning the need for a new framework of living, based not on greed, selfishness, or scarcity, but instead on collaboration, creativity, and generosity.

When reflecting on the notion of transitioning to a new way of life, it’s worth considering the concept of “Transition” in general.  Perhaps best known in psychological circles, author and scholar William Bridges popularized this term in the 1980s after publishing the bestselling book “Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes”. 

Bridges identifies three stages of transition, simplified loosely as: letting go (or Endings), “The Neutral Zone”, and new beginnings.  These stages, while deceptively simple and straightforward in their categorization, provide a helpful framework for understanding what happens to the human psyche when faced with life changes one chose, or was chosen by. Bridges concentrates on the personal transitions so common to human life: moving, finding or losing work, redefining one’s life purpose, gaining a family member, losing a loved one, undergoing a major illness, or the ultimate transition of death. 

Bridges eventually expanded his work to include organizational shifts, and what happens within work culture that creates psychological ripples for all involved. Of course, communities go through transitions as well: Think how New York City needed to adjust after 9/11, or New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Life, as known by the people living and working in those cities, was radically altered within a day. This sort of collective transition has also been happening throughout the span of human history; crops upon which a community depends may get wiped out in an afternoon hail storm, earthquakes shake down a village, new political or military regimes take control.

Surely, the current examples of community-wide, country-wide, world-wide transitions are abundant. For better or worse, the paradigms which groups of people constellate around get shaken, and crumble. Natural disaster, political change, a wave of unexpected violence, an industry shuts down; basically, some way of living—or indeed, some aspect of life once taken for granted– ends, and there is inevitably a period of groundlessness wherein no one knows exactly what may happen next. Perhaps some have a desire to hang on to the old way—through denial, or actions that try to take back what was lost, to restore some sense of normalcy.

While some may argue that they have the answers for exactly why something happens or what needs to happen next, in reality, no one does. In a true transition, this period of groundlessness is an in-between state that can produce feelings of insecurity, fear, confusion, and the sense of being lost.

All of this groundlessness, this “Neutral Zone”, as Bridges calls it, is a necessary phase in any true transition before new beginnings can take form. In other words, this lost, in-between zone after something has ended and before something new takes its place is a fertile time that could be used to make the internal shifts necessary for a new beginning to be, well, new-–more than simply a recapitulation of old ways of operating, dressed up in a new costume.

In a subsequent 2001 text titled The Way of Transition: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, Bridges makes the distinction between change and transition: “The relation between change and transition is further complicated by the fact that some people actually utilize external changes to distract them from the harder business of letting go of their subjective realities and identities. They make changes so they won’t have to make transitions… they are addicted to change, and like any addiction, it is an escape from the real issues raised by their lives.”

The theme of the Boulder conference constellated around changes many attendees expect to come within the next decade: financial insecurities including the possibility for hyperinflation or deflation, the possibility of industrial food shortages and disruption to the supply chain, increasing oil prices, political upheavals, problems with meeting energy needs,  increased climate change making for curious weather patterns and altered growing seasons, and more potentially volatile situations that effect “life as we know it”.

When considering the changes that we may face as a regional community, it helps to have some system of working with the questions and emotions that inevitably arise.  It appears that having an understanding of, and allowance for, trust in the process is useful—that is, a willingness to hang out in the Neutral Zone without needing to react defensively, act reflexively, or trying to control the outcome through manipulation based on “knowing what’s best.” 

On Sunday afternoon at the conference, attendees had an opportunity to participate in an “open space technology” lab which allowed those who felt called to initiate a conversation had a chance to do so. Conversation topics were supposed to revolve around creating positive change for the local food system. Those who wanted to initiate a conversation needed to write on a large sheet of paper what their topic was, and then be open to forming groups with the audience to discuss the issues and write the results of the collective brainstorm. The rules included: “whatever happens is what is meant to happen” and “whoever shows up is who is meant to show up”and “it’s over when it’s over.” Perhaps unsurprising to a creative process, the methods and outcome were unclear.  Nobody knew what exactly would come of the spontaneous aggregation of people and conversations. It was a bit messy; there was confusion about who would meet who where, and who was to take charge. This is classic neutral-zone:  Confusing at points, a lot of unknowns, and no guarantees of any specific  outcome. Nonetheless, the  underlying message inherent in the instructions–whether or not it was heard– was to trust the process.

One could argue that the principles common in addiction recovery hold much wisdom for a transition process. To truly “recover” from an addiction one must go through the transition of recognizing first that one’s way of life is not working—the compulsion with the behavior or substance is getting in the way of one’s relationships, health, future well-being, and growth. In other words, one recognizes their desire to consume is insatiable and destructive, and a change is needed. Once this realization happens, there comes the need to wander in the unknown, not having answers for what to “do” about it. The questions, “how exactly do I get from this destructive way of life to something healthy and useful—a way of living that doesn’t hurt me or others?” How must I change my thinking and acting in order to step into this wholly different way of life?”  The answers to these questions are not easily won; oftentimes, people find they need to find some personal sense of spirituality or meaning in order to find answers. 

In 2007, Chellis Glendenning updated her provocative 1994 eco-psych. text, My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization, in which she draws parallels between the symptoms of individual and collective trauma and addiction.  As arrogant as the premise sounds, it does seem as if Western culture, as currently operating, is addicted—not only to oil, but also to numbing through entertainment and materialism.  It appears that most of us are addicted to some activity that distracts from the scary realities of climate change, continued population growth, the growing divide between rich and poor, or the collective stresses that seem to be consuming the citizenry. This makes sense, given the scary realities of this time. It’s a bit mind-boggling to try and process this level of information without feeling overwhelmed.

 These distractions, whether due to collective issues or more personal manifestations of life stressors, come in many forms– including busyness, making money, compulsive eating or exercising, alcohol, drugs, the internet, TV, or texting and checking email. Even trying to control others can be a compulsive, distracting process.  This desire to step away from fear, anxiety, grief, despair, and anger is inborn—as humans, we are designed to protect ourselves from pain. However, whether or not we are consciously seeking personal growth and awareness, it’s clear that our lack of willingness to deal with the realities of our lives at this point in history is going to catch up to us sooner or later, likewise with every person suffering from an addiction. 

Similar to the destructive and harmful behaviors inherent  in an active addiction, the average American way of life, (what Dick Cheney referred to as “non-negotiable”) is unsustainable. It’s clear that we can no longer continue consuming as we have been. The question then becomes, how do we get ourselves out of this mess?

Twelve Step programs, brought to the world first through Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1930s and now operating in hundreds of fellowships internationally, offer some guidelines for how to recover from destructive behavior. The following suggestions, when adapted for the collective issues at hand, seem especially relevant to the changes needed at this time: admission of insanity with regard to how we are living; willingness to trust there is something greater than the human will that could restore a sane way of living; need for a moral inventory of our collective behavior; a willingness to make amends for the harms we’ve caused; a need for widespread contemplative practices in search of guidance on how to live;  and continued acts of service for the greater good.

The last event of the conference allowed attendees to share in one word their predominant feeling as a result of the weekend. “Hope”, “excitement”, “love”, “inspiration” were shared—perhaps seemingly incongruous terms for a group of individuals ready and willing to delve into the difficult issues facing the world today. However, due to the willingness to take an honest look at what problems we currently face, what actions can bring about a more resilient community, and a desire for a better quality of life in the future, it appears that, at least in this one community of individuals brought together by a common desire, a true transition is taking place.  If nothing else, it may be helpful to remember the message behind the often-cited Serenity Prayer shared at the end of 12-Step Meetings: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

 Teri Dillion, MA,  offers psychotherapy and coaching services in the Boulder/Denver area to individuals and groups seeking greater clarity and meaning in their lives. Her website can be found at www.WakingHeartTherapy.com.

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The report, Agro-ecology and the Right to Food, released yesterday, reveals that small-scale sustainable farming would even double food production within five to 10 years in places where most hungry people on the planet live.

“We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations,” Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and author of the report, said in a press release. “The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.”

The report suggests moving away from the overuse of oil in farming, a problem that is magnified in the face of rising prices due to unrest in the Middle East. The focus is instead on agroecology, or eco-farming. “Agroecology seeks to improve the sustainability of agroecosystems by mimicking nature instead of industry,” reads a section.

The report shows that these practices raise productivity significantly, reduce rural poverty, increase genetic diversity, improve nutrition in local populations, serve to build a resilient food system in the face of climate change, utilize fewer and more locally available resources, empower farmers and create jobs.

Of 57 impoverished countries surveyed, for example, yields had increased by an average of nearly 80 percent when farmers used methods such as placing weed-eating ducks in rice patties in Bangladesh or planting desmodium, which repels insects, in Kenyan cornfields. These practices were also cost effective, locally available and resulted from farmers working to pass on this knowledge to each other in their communities.

While the report admits that agroecology can be more labor-intensive because of the complexity of knowledge required, it shows that this is usually a short-term issue. The report underscores that agroecology creates more jobs over the long term answering critics who argue that creating more jobs in agriculture is counter-productive. “Creation of employment in rural areas in developing countries, where underemployment is currently massive, and demographic growth remains high,” states the report, “may constitute an advantage rather than a liability and may slow down rural-urban migration.”

Mark Bittman put it aptly in his column on the UN report at the New York Times, saying:

Agro-ecology and related methods are going to require resources too, but they’re more in the form of labor, both intellectual–much research remains to be done–and physical: the world will need more farmers, and quite possibly less mechanization.

This is not the first time such a report has declared more productive ways to feed the world other than leaving that important task to large corporations. In April 2008, the IAASTD report (the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development)-which was supported by the World Bank, the UN Food & Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization, among others, with the participation of over 60 world governments and 400 experts-found that not only would industrial food production not be able to feed the world in the long term, but the practices being employed are actually increasing hunger, exhausting resources and exacerbating climate change. However, the U.S., under the Bush Administration, was one of the countries that decided not to endorse the findings.

Though agroecological farming has benefits for industrialized countries too, both reports focus largely on what to do in the least-developed nations on the globe. The status quo for U.S. foreign policy in agriculture up until now has been to leverage our political muscle to force countries to except our subsidized crops, even if it meant destroying local agricultural economies. (Former President Bill Clinton apologized for this policy last year, saying that it has “failed everywhere it’s been tried,” and “we should have continued to work to make sure [Haiti] was self-sufficient in agriculture.”) Will the Obama Administration be more receptive to these findings and could there be a change in the way we work with other countries in our support for agriculture?

Looking back at this (proudly pro-business) administration’s follies in hiring a pesticide lobbyist as our Agricultural Trade Representative, maintaining the USDA in the confusing role of promoting and regulating agriculture, and focusing on “improved seeds,” which usually means funding for the development of genetically modified crops for poor countries and you might be discouraged.

But De Schutter argues that real change to improve the livelihoods of rural farmers requires governments to be on board. “States and donors have a key role to play here,” he said. “Private companies will not invest time and money in practices that cannot be rewarded by patents and which don’t open markets for chemical products or improved seeds.” In other words, feeding the worlds hungry should not be left to the market alone.

The report makes these specific recommendations for governing bodies:

• making reference to agroecology and sustainable agriculture in national strategies for the realization of the right to food and by including measures adopted in the agricultural sector in national adaptation plans of action (NAPAs) and in the list of nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) adopted by countries in their efforts to mitigate climate change;

• reorienting public spending in agriculture by prioritizing the provision of public goods, such as extension services, rural infrastructures and agricultural research, and by building on the complementary strengths of seeds-and-breeds and agroecological methods, allocating resources to both, and exploring the synergies, such as linking fertilizer subsidies directly to agroecological investments on the farm (“subsidy to sustainability”);

• supporting decentralized participatory research and the dissemination of knowledge about the best sustainable agricultural practices by relying on existing farmers’ organizations and networks, and including schemes designed specifically for women;

• improving the ability of producers practicing sustainable agriculture to access markets, using instruments such as public procurement, credit, farmers’ markets, and creating a supportive trade and macroeconomic framework.

The report also gives recommendations for donors seeking to decrease hunger and improve rural livelihoods and for research organizations.

You can read the full report here [PDF]