Looking Ahead Seriously

[Tris Shirley]

 Last time, I suggested that production beyond the amount required for subsistence ultimately determines our post-transition standard of living.  To understand how this might work, consider the following three scenarios:

First, the least encouraging possibility.  Without all the non-renewable energy we consume now, productivity falls dramatically.  If individual productivity falls enough that a hard working, skilled person engaged in subsistence agriculture can’t supply themselves with the bare necessities of life, we have a situation that is not sustainable.   This is the doomster’s scenario.  Is it a real possibility?  We just don’t know. 

To explore a cheerier outlook, assume we are able to dodge the doom bullet.  Suppose we are able to be just productive enough to provide all the necessities.  This is an improvement,  but  there still  won’t be much left over to invest in highly desirable services.  For example,  imagine that each family in our community produces all they need.  Plus they each have a couple of beets, a handful of carrots, and a pint of jelly left over at the end of the year.

Even if an entire neighborhood of happy, well fed families chip in all their excess goods, that won’t build a single classroom or support even one school teacher.  Hence, there will be no educational system in this neighborhood.  Similarly, the neighborhood won’t be able to afford other “extras” such as  healthcare professionals, a judicial system, general governance, or much of a cultural life.  This might be better than doom, but it’s still pretty bleak.  Could this happen?  Again, we don’t know.

If our future productivity only falls a little because we’ve figured out all kinds of clever ways to get things done on a low energy budget,  then perhaps we’ll be able to produce quite a bit more than the bare necessities.  That excess of production over needs can be consumed, saved, or invested.

If some excess is consumed by exchanging it for non-essential but desirable goods and services, that will create a more diverse economy.  Wise investments can stimulate future productivity increases and improve standards of living.  The wisdom of saving is well understood.   Maybe we won’t end up with all  the elaborate goods and services we’ve enjoyed in the past.  But there could be enough margin above subsistence to preserve a good and reasonably secure quality of life.

In this, the best case, we could certainly escape the limits of subsistence agriculture and have the beginnings of a more elaborate economy.  Eventually we would expect to see a variety of jobs with which people might support themselves.  These might include basic services, trades,  and professions. But without assuming tremendous advances in low energy, productivity increasing technology, all of these other forms of employment would remain closely related to producing the necessities of life.

The problem I’ve been describing  is that we simply don’t know which scenario we face until we come up with some reasonable estimates of individual and community productivity in this low energy, localized economy everyone anticipates.  And until we actually have some statistics on which to base estimates, we can’t rule out any possibilities. Doom remains on the table.  Rather than ignoring the problem and quietly enduring a lot of anxiety, wouldn’t it be better to FIND OUT?

I believe we can and should start exploring our future in much clearer and more specific terms.  I think the easiest way to do that is to assume primitive but reliable technology and no economy. Then we examine how many hours of labor and what other resources it would take a person to supply themselves with only the bare necessities.

If it takes many more hours per week than a person could reasonably work, we have a problem.  If reasonable productivity gains from specialization and trade don’t help, we have a big problem.  And knowing we have a big problem, we could start looking for productivity enhancing solutions.

On the other hand, if obtaining the bare necessities  takes far fewer hours than a person could work per week, then we don’t have an emergency -  but we do have other questions.  Could this individual solution be scaled up to serve the entire population? What we must do to prepare for that?

And finally, if we end up with more energy than our investigation assumes, or unexpected new  technology that enhances low energy productivity, such good fortune will just make things easier.  My proposal  is to start with the simplest case (unfortunately, the worst one), and see what the numbers tell us.

[J. C. Walker,Jr.]

Tris, Before the last EDAP meeting, I chatted with David about observing a reluctance to acknowledge climate change throughout Transition, even referencing a video where Rob Hopkins said if an ice age comes to England the Transition movement is all for naught. I thought of Jared Diamond's stories of the Norse not learning from the Inuit natives on surviving through such conditions. I thought of the three scenarios you presented, it was the worst case, which was the most plausible. Where the other two might serve as transitory states, I was concerned the climate change topic could be the white elephant in the room.

In your second scenario you state "Even if an entire neighborhood of happy, well fed families chip in all their excess goods, that won’t build a single classroom or support even one school teacher. Hence, there will be no educational system in this neighborhood. Similarly, the neighborhood won’t be able to afford other “extras” such as healthcare professionals, a judicial system, general governance, or much of a cultural life."

In your third scenario you present " we could certainly escape the limits of subsistence agriculture and have the beginnings of a more elaborate economy. Eventually we would expect to see a variety of jobs with which people might support themselves. These might include basic services, trades, and professions. But without assuming tremendous advances in low energy, productivity increasing technology, all of these other forms of employment would remain closely related to producing the necessities of life."

And in saying "Climate change will reduce land and labor productivity as we struggle to adapt to weather conditions that may vary significantly from what we’re accustomed to." I think I was alluding to more of a disruption to the status quo than your summary suggest. In the future I'm referring to I think education will occur on the farm, medicines will come from the forest, cultural life could be celebrating making it through another season or just recollecting all the things I got wrong in my predictions.

And one last monkey wrench, I've wondered if anyone has done any calculations which included farm waste being incorporated back into fuel to run farm machinery .

Thanks again for starting the discussion it seems to have the wheels turning. J.C.

[Tris Shirley]

David - Thanks for the links. I've copied them to the EDAP workgroup's discussion on useful links.

I agree that many actions one might entertain to “address” peak oil would be inadvisable.  It doesn’t make sense to make one problem worse while attempting to solve another.  So yes,  plans to address both peak energy and climate change must be complementary. 

But perhaps I don’t understand your comment.  I’m not proposing anything to address either peak oil or climate change.  I was merely suggesting we do some research to understand the impact of expensive energy on land and labor productivity.

The idea is to find out what “income” we might have to sustain ourselves in an economy powered entirely by current sunlight – powered by whatever grows and the human and domestic animal muscle power thus provided.  If it turns out that we simply can’t sustain ourselves that way, we’ll know about it sooner rather than later.  At the completion of this research,  if we discover a problem,  we can start thinking about how to address it.

If my proposed research indicates we must , we can start thinking about how to increase productivity.  One way might be to look for additional sources of energy.  If we do that, then we will have to be sensitive to the climate change issue.  But that isn’t part of the research.  It is what possibly happens afterward.

The more immediate role of climate change in my proposal is that, as I deduced from C.J.’s comment, climate change will reduce land and labor productivity as we struggle to adapt to weather conditions that may vary significantly from what we’re accustomed to.  In other words, we need to consider the impact of climate change in our research, but we aren’t proposing anything that would affect it.

If I’m missing something here, please let me know.  It happens often enough...

[David MacLeod]

The Transition Handbook points out that you can get into trouble if you address peak oil and not climate change, and vice versa.  Address them both, and the idea of pursuing an Energy Descent plan is the one that makes sense.

 

Oakland and Cleveland have both now got Energy and Climate Action Plans (ECAP).  Looking briefly at the Oakland plan, I see some good things.

http://www.ellabakercenter.org/index.php?p=gcjc_ocac_policies

 

Eugene's plan is here:

http://www.eugene-or.gov/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_2_361126...

 

Here in Whatcom County we could take our previous Energy report (ERSPO) and the Climate report as building blocks for an Action Plan.

[Tris Shirley]

C.J. –

I suppose the cautious assumption regarding climate change is that the disruption of our familiar and generally benign climatic conditions will go on for a good long time – especially relative to human life spans.  In that case, there isn’t any particular value to my assumption that the disruptions will end at some point.  Whether or not there will be a new normal in a few hundred or thousand years needn’t keep us up nights. We will need to be on our toes, so to speak, and adapting to whatever happens for a good long while.

This is a worthwhile point to consider, and it does tie in rather closely with the analysis of my various scenarios.  I believe it means that we ought not be too hasty in predicting future agricultural productivity based on recent data.

The experiments to find out how best to deal with future conditions will have a cost .  Time and effort will be consumed and land will be allocated in the search for optimal practices.  Plus, greater diversification of crops may be required in order to increase the odds that something will do well under whatever conditions apply during a particular year. All of this will reduce the productivity of land and labor below what we now experience.

[Tris Shirley]

Thanks for the comment Walter.

I think that your work to highlight the efficiency  of small scale agriculture,  when done as you do it, is extremely valuable.  And you’re right, we don’t need new solutions as far as food is concerned.  You’ve proven that.   But I’m  suggesting that we also need to understand with equal rigor and clarity, how we obtain the other necessities of life.

I probably need to spend some time looking at your analysis that concludes 20% of the people can supply themselves and the other 80% of the population with food. The question I have is whether or not the 20% folks are working full time to do that?  

Since agriculture is about the only primary industry in the County with long term viability, I’m hypothesizing that agricultural efficiency (energy efficiency as you define it as well as efficiency with respect to time) is the key to whether or not we can have a prosperous local economy.  If this is nonsense, you’re just the guy to point it out and save me a lot of work.

If it is not nonsense, then for my worst case scenario where we start without any economy (as we know it), farmers will be spending a lot of time preserving food for their own consumption, obtaining fuel of some kind to use as an energy supply for heating and cooking, producing fiber for clothing and a lot of other time consuming tasks.

So I'd like to know whether farmers can produce surplus food when they are meeting all their other non-food needs at the same time.  Your results are encouraging in that they suggest farmers just might be able to do it.  But I’d have to see energy and time data on all of the other tasks, along with food production, to be confident they can.  That is the research I’m proposing in this blog.

[J. C. Walker,Jr.]

 

...and a brief follow up if you will. I'd like to suggest four books which illuminate future possibilities. The first being "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman. To his credit he circumvents this discussion between us by moving ahead in time by 200,000 years or so. Ice ages come and go with wonderful examples of natures resilience when left alone.

The second is " Eaarth " by Bill Mckibben. Not a real happy book. I've seen people put the book down and close it, as if that would keep climate change at bay. One thing I learned in the book is there's more moisture going into the upper atmosphere, staying there longer, and returning in greater quantities. You'll never look at the news of the day as a series of unrelated stories again. Quite the disturbing thread.

Third " Mycelium Running" by Paul Stamets. One characteristic of mycelium is to retain moisture in the soil. Building on natural strategies for solutions makes sense to me, and then there's mushrooms for dinner at the end of the day.

Finally "The Biochar Solution" by Albert Bates. He goes into to detail of making terra preta with biochar citing evidence from ice core samples indicating CO2 reduction achieved from Amazon forest grown in terra preta. I also learned of cool new company called WorldStove who is attempting to facilitate traditional cooking cultures with stoves which create biochar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[J. C. Walker,Jr.]

Tris, Thanks for contributing the discussion and for addressing my P.O.V.

Certainly transition can be viewed to have a finite quality, as in transition from point A to point B. In this manner, B could be said to be the target or goal, and hitting "it" or achieving "it" could be measured and rewarded. I run into problems when contemplating climate change in fixed terms as such. The runaway feedback aspect seems to defy so many attempts of comprehension. So for me, transition is defined by reacting or responding to an unknown which is susceptible to change, and if you're successful, you're resilient, for the moment. Albert Bates in the Biochar Solution states it this way,

"If you're species loses it's economic underpinnings your economic development chart could fall back to where you were in the 1930, or 1830, or even 1330, but you are still around as a species, assuming you don't totally lose your cool and nuke everything in sight on your way down.

In contrast, if your species loses it's climate underpinnings, it's "Game over, man." You not only take down the higher vertebrates, homo included, but everything alive on this third rock from the Sun, potentially even the microbes in deep caves and ocean depths. Earth meet Venus."

To me ( one of my favorite sayings is that I like being wrong ) climate change is here now. From Katrina, to the Russian heat wave last summer, to the melting glaciers, to the floods in Australia , to the recent tornadoes in the Midwest and east coast, to the snow at my place in late April, to the wild fires burning in Texas to date. The new normal is setting new records. A global problem, as you state, with the largest contributors to the problem coming from the developed nations. It is at our peril if we fail to embrace a new paradigm involving something beyond demanding economic expansion, and then lead by example, hopefully inspiring the rest of the world to let go of this brass monkey. To be sure we will let go, it's a matter of choice or not. Gaia, like God, will not be mocked.

[Tris Shirley]

Good comments J.C.  Made me think.  Here are the results:

I see climate change as a greater challenge than peak oil. It is greater in the sense of being more likely to affect us significantly, and greater in the sense of having consequences more difficult to mitigate.  I am also a climate change fatalist. It is a global problem faced by a global population that is increasingly demanding economic expansion.  And the tried and proven path to economic expansion is through greater energy use.  And the principal, immediately available sources of energy all contribute to climate change.

That said, and while I could easily be wrong, energy feels to me like the more immediate problem.  However, if we thoughtfully downscale and localize agriculture, along with the rest of our economy in response to expensive energy, we have already done what we can to reduce our contributions to climate change.  In addition,  should climate change derail the agriculture industries that supply food now, we will perhaps avoid the worst of those consequences.

In an earlier post, I was bemoaning the fact that we know the direction of change from expensive energy, but not the amount.  With climate change, we know neither.  Climate change will either make water more or less available, water more or less seasonal,  local agriculture more or less productive and dependable, energy for home heating more or less essential.  Whereas we can prepare for peak oil, it seems to me we just have to roll with the punches on climate change.  That is the brilliance of resilience.  If we do it right, we enhance our ability to roll with the punches. 

The purpose of my scenarios is to explore options for increasing resilience in response to the predictable effects of expensive energy.  But the same resilience will serve us well in dealing with the effects of climate change – whatever they are.  At least that is my hope.

I suppose the meaning of “Transition” is in the eye of the beholder.  It’s less important to agree than it is to get on with it.  I do see Transition as a distinct phase, bounded in time, and that is the conventional connotation of the word.  I’m no historian, but I believe the renaissance and the industrial revolution are generally accepted as being over.  At some point, Transition will be over too.  It may fill the entire 21^st Century -  or maybe only half of it. We will continue to innovate, expand our knowledge,  and evolve our technology, but sooner or later, most of the people will have made most of the adaptations necessary to respond to peak energy and climate change.  At that point, IMHO, we will have transitioned.

[J. C. Walker,Jr.]

The three scenarios seem to only cover responses to peak oil i.e. convenient truth. We have to somehow open our minds and the discussion, if it is to be relevant, to climate change. Also I see transition as a verb. Post-transition doesn't involve me nor is it aware of my where a bouts.