Plan Be Unplugged

Fit the First

Unless you're living in South Africa, you're probably unaware that the country is in the midst of an Energy Crisis. Rolling blackouts are the order of the day; even the mines -- traditionally the mainstay of the economy^[1] -- are having to deal with major power-cuts.  Stories abound of commuter trains stranded, traffic snarl-ups due to non-funtioning traffic lights, hospital patients dependent on breathing machines having to be "breathed" by manual labour, telephones and network connections that stop working because the local telephone exchange exhausts its backup power. Nobody is untouched. Every one of us has a story of somebody we know being affected in a life- or income-threatening way.

My youngest brother, Richard, owns a factory that produces sugar sticks -- great lumps of crystalised sugar at the end of a stick, for stirring into coffee (or even -- ugh, gods forbid! -- tea!) Signpost to the pointymost peak of Peak Everything Civilisation, I suppose, but there it is. Trouble is, the process of producing a sugar stick takes 3 days. Three days of pernickity temperature differentials, maddeningly-critical evaporation rates and inexplicably unstable solution-flow rates. Three days. Unless the power fails. Then you get to throw away an entire batch -- 5 tonnes -- of sugar solution, and start again, hoping against hope that the power stays up long enough to make a living. It would be one thing if the business were a well-established one, with a stable, understanding and patient customer base, but it's not. They're still a startup. They produce the best quality sugar sticks in the world, at one third the price of their closest competitors, but they're The New Kids on the Block. They've signed some great customers. But those customers will evaporate if they can't deliver the goods. The fact of power-cuts every second day will produce sympathy from the individuals involved who understand the whys and wherefores; but the fact remains... the customers will go away.

The "current" energy problems are totally the responsibility of the government. Despite the public anger at Eskom, the state-owned-and-run electricity monopoly. More than ten years ago (in 1998, to be exact,) Eskom was warning government that, given government's economic growth targets, Eskom would need to build several more baseload power stations to meet the demand. Given that it takes about ten years to build a significant baseload power-station -- not to mention the getting through all the Environmental Impact Assessments and Community Consultation and Planning requirements. At the time, it was Not Politically Convenient to hear this message, so Mbeki's cabinet ignored it. So we sit with Economically Significant Power Cuts.

Recently some government schmuck tried to suggest that the power shortage was a result of Apartheid-Era Planning -- The Usual Scapegoat. Oh how we laugh! (I'll bet it was my "friend" Arshole Alec, the Arithmetically Challenged Minister Who Has Shot His Bolt. Whilst the apartheid regime certainly left us with lots of horrible legacy, this particular clusterfuck came about on the ANC's watch. The Old Nats (may they rot in hell) would never have permitted such sloppy planning! (whatever else they may have turned a blind-eye to...)

Premonition of the Great Unwinding. We South Africans are the Pathfinders. We are the first to glimpse the course of Energy Descent. Not with a bang, but with a whimper, we go.

Fit the Second

For the couple of years I've had DSL internet service, it has been great. In the face of country-wide complaints (verging on rioting, mayhem and life-threats to Telkom's management) about the Totally Fucking Useless National Telco I have been a lone voice in the wilderness saying what a great DSL service I get. Well bite my shiny metal ass blow me down. A major service outage about ten days ago. Two days of frustration and stress and hours (literally!) on hold. "Thank You For Your Patience. Your Call ''Will'' Be Answered As Soon As A Customer Service Agent Is Available." It wears a little thin after an hour, I'll tell you! This, right at the time when the small flow of money I'm earning is totally dependent on that thin strand of copper I call "The Internet." It all came right in the end, only to be followed by another failure last Friday. The line is still down.

Fit the Future

So this is the face of the powerdown. Not in a cataclysmic implosion, does our civilization die, but little piece by little piece. Some things will undoubtedly get better even as other parts of the technological iceberg disintegrate. Not a single all-in-one unravelling of the Jersey of Warm Fuzziness, but one loose thread at a time.

Even as cellphone service improves and prices fall, fixed-line service goes down the toilet. Even as our air-force's latest toys scream by overhead, petrol prices are at an all-time high, and people are wondering why food prices seem to have skyrocketted, too. Can there really be such a disconnect in peoples' understanding?

'Tis the season for Growing Corn in Rheenendal, and never before have I seen as much acreage^[2] dedicated to growing Maize. Most of it, I am guessing, contracted to American biofuel companies. Why do I not feel Warm and Fuzzy like this is a reasonable and sustainable way to provide the energy needs of 6 or 10 or 12 billion people striving to live a first-world lifestyle, driving their Hummers to collect the kids from school^[4], annual holidays in another hemisphere and fresh Canadian Salmon for Summer Snacks?

The Unterste Schürer^[5]

In a low-energy future -- and we're going to have one, whether we like it or not -- the planet cannot sustainably support so many of us. I realise that I risk the wrath of feminists everywhere (and The Pope^[7]) but we face simple choice: reduce our numbers in a managed way, or have Gaia reduce them in an unmanaged way.

What's your choice?

----
[1] South Africa still produces something like 50% of the world's gold each year, not to mention a host of rare and obscure minerals that turn out to be totally essential to modern industry. Stuff like Cadmium and Tantalum, Vanadium, Ytterbium^[3]. In recent years, though, tourism has generated more jobs and revenue to than even gold mining.


[2] Somehow "hectarage" just doesn't sound the same.


[3] http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html


[4] I couldn't make it up if I tried. Not to mention that home and school are the daunting distance of some 800m apart! I sure that Little Darling's legs would break if they walked that far.


[5] Yiddish^[6]. "The Bottom Line".


[6] Spelling optional.


[7] Not noted for his Feminist sympathies, I'll note^[8].


[8] "A note? A-Flat^[9], I'm sure.  My Mother gave the gift of perfect pitch, you know!"


[9] ...or, given the state of the electrically-disconnected South African gold mines, A-Flat-Minor!

Oil Be Seein' Ya

Hail on the chief!

Power to the peakle!  Piss in the powder and praise the ambulation.  Prop up the prayerful.  Lead us not in too uncertainty, but deliver us our pizza.  Mine us the glory, the power of the vampire...  at least until we've passed the peak, empirical evidence not with standing.  At least until we've picked the bones of the past.  At least until we're pissed.

Pickled in their owned whine, pickled in a peck by their own henpecked pack, their feeding frenzy turns on their own insecret urgents, kundaleaning on their puppets, saintgeorging their dragons.  Landgrabbing at their own psychotrophies, paxing their blags.  Pack to the future: the ünteröberfuerher's articulated cargo culture backed to the gills by their spindizzy illumiknotty cranking the turingspindle, fueling the smouldering krankenfear, winding the springs of smalldering souls.  Fed to the gills on fantasy freelunches, fast boxlunch combustibusiness, massmart instalodges beating the ploughshares the landcares the earthwares into swards of instagratafie.  Burgeoning crapitalism winnowing the crashcrops and salting the earth.  Dah-doo enrunrun, dah-doo enrun.

Their disconnect, their triple-sec, piped pap for crumbfort -- thrice nine I lived there.

Take no heed the surgeon-general's warnings

Robotman's sexpak, empire sturmtrouper, freedom's child backs from the front, back from the udder side, sucks hind tit, sucks on exhaustgas of mannamachina running on empty, running on fumes, fuming and fulminating and running on emptation, "Where is my playcheck? You bastards! You've eaten it!"  Sadly attempts reconstructing the undeconstructible kaputznik intellogies, slides down the slippery slopium in epimenidisney daze.  Glide down the path of disticulated blatherbots' future imperfect, misstilling their weird from the sweat of my own frothers brow.  Small beer in my contigulum.

Nightout in the diskriegulum

Back.  Back from the utter realms of desolated trendfeldenkreit; back from the spam and the spin, the spick and the span, the tucked and tanned desertifed and stratified panglobulous hemi-semi-demi-quavered, the fucked and fanned transmogrified powerpack semisold into wageslavery.  Back from where the normalisms rain.  Back from the bangling headnoise of the neocrims and quaquaquaqua econofascisti; their blathering, their blistering ignoramofarten dismalism ranting and islamowailing "Let rip the warcrimes! Unleash the packs of lunchmeat!"  Crunching bongbots.  Thieving slavetakers.

Bring jah paper, bring jah fire.  Fill up the rightbrothers with righteous fury and fire the eagle's nest;  smoke the whitehouse wasps from their paper castle.  Matchless we march the halls of terregnum, the walls of interment, the malls of terrafie.  Donner und blitzen the gorgon's lair the liars creedpots the krankensteins castle.  Galileo lift thy head raise thy eyes past the neohorizon.  Il papa, il duce, spare us your sanctity.

No cheer for the menschless

So build aye my fortnot my safehouse my madhouse, my powerless mousehole.  With walls inside out and doors of perception flung wide.  And welcome aye the rain and sky, the earth and sun in roofless untermensch obscurity.  Let fall the fools of power where they may, the tools of destiny.  Enchancingly cast spells of remake; cultivate what's left of us an earthward spiral way.  Mine is no disgrace.

Coal-to-liquid Myths

An article over on ifenergy.com carries a quote to the effect that

SASOL, a South African energy and chemicals firm, to build two
coal-to-liquid fuel plants in China. These plants, costing $3 billion
each, are reported by the Financial Times to jointly produce 60 million
tons of liquid fuel (440 million barrels) a year.
...
raw material and capital costs of a barrel of fuel would fall under $10
and other costs would not bring total costs over $15
...
If these newspaper reports about the SASOL costs and
volumes are correct, they would indicate a breakthrough. The SASOL
costs are also far less than those of current US technology.

As a South African I am not inclined to believe a single word put out by SASOL.  If the figures are so good, why do we South African taxpayers continue to (involuntarily) subsidise these arseholes to the tune we do, year after year after year, despite the high price of oil?

Not to mention that coal-to-liquid tech -- no matter how good, cheap and efficient -- is still going to add to the atmospheric carbon load, continuing to drive global climate change.

The "we can continue live our soccermom-driving-4.8litre-Land-Cruisers lifestyle just by using some magically-more-sustainable energy source" propaganda machine rolls on.

Pigs to Fly by 2030

A WorldChanging article caught my eye, about New York City's endeavours to become a "sustainable city" by 2030. My immediate thought was

"Pigs To Fly By Flapping Their Pink Little Ears By 2030".

I think their efforts are admirable, but doomed.  I saw no mention of "Where's the food going to come from?" and "How is the food going to get here in the absence of cheap oil?"

So I'll stick to my piggie little guns: "sustainable city" is an oxymoron. Besides which, NYC, along with Cape Town and lots of other cities may by then already be faced with Seriously Rising Tides.

What to Feed the Dog

And now, something more to the core theme of this blog: Surviving the Next Ten Years and Beyond. For some time now I've been thinking about, and working out something more substantial to offer on Transition Strategies, and I promise to start sharing it soon. Meanwhile, let me start you on some of the questions that prompted all the heavy thinking in the first place.

Assuming that we pass the oil peak sometime in the 2008/9 timeframe (which seems to me the most plausible prognostication) and that the Olduvai Theory is roughly correct in its predictions and timescale

  * How do we make fire without easily-available Matches?
  * What will I feed the Dog?
  * What should we use for Toilet Paper?

Sometime between 16 December last year and 2035, we humans will pass the point where oil is abundant and cheap.

If even the oil-industry experts are unable to say with any real degree of certainty when that is likely to be, how can ordinary people like us plan, prepare and begin to transition ourselves out of our current lifestyle and production/consumption patterns?

And the Sins of the Fathers...

A recent essay at The Survival Acres blog touches on many of the terrifying issues that confront us – global warming, peak-oil, overpopulation, the deep degradation of the environment necessary to sustain all life.

If there's any conclusion there, then it would seem to be, "What is going to kill us off first: Global Warming and its consequences for the global food supply that the over-abundant human population relies upon, or Peak Oil and the resulting collapse – starting potentially within 2 to 6 years – of industrial/technical society?"  Either way, the results would seem to be eerily similar – mass starvation, coupled with lawlessness, roving hordes searching for food, burning the last of the trees to keep warm...  The stuff of so many D-grade sci-fi movies.

Let anyone who doubts the sort of behaviour outlined above go to a squatter camp anywhere in Africa and count how many trees remain, how much vegetation, how many animals are left.

The heart of the question is, "Is it at all possible to maintain any form of technological society in the face of the impending human disasters before us?"  Or are we doomed to a collapse back to Stone Age technologies and Stone Age human population levels – perhaps only a few hundred-thousand human beings on the planet?

The author of Survival Acres seems pessimistic.  Or perhaps that's just "realistic".

Perhaps I am just a little too unwilling to give up a fantasy.  The fantasy that we can keep something of our modern technological ways.  Perhaps even improve on our present society, creating something more humane, more attuned to our needs and the needs of the rest of the ecosphere about us.  But we certainly cannot do it at current human population levels, and we certainly cannot do it at First World levels of energy consumption, even assuming much-reduced human numbers.

How many people can the Earth sustain?  For a long time the conventional wisdom seems to be that a population of about 1 billion (that's the American "billion" –  1 000 000 000) though recently I have seen some writing suggesting that 2 billion might be sustainable.  Personally I doubt the higher figure, but either way we are in for a hell of a ride as the population crashes from the present levels of somewhere betwee 6.5 and 7 billion!

Can we live on much lower energy levels?  Certainly!  Concensus among experts I have read seems to suggest that the most energy we could reasonably expect to sustainably generate would be around 20% of current First World consumption.  (Not sure if this is purely at a household level, or whether it includes the massive industrial and industry-agricultural inputs.  Anyone?)

The problem and the challenge is how to manage a transition from our present societal structures and dependence on Big Energy to something that will simultaneously allow us to go forward retaining the good bits of our society (and I would call the Internet one of the Good Bits) whilst also surviving the terrible, tragic process that surely faces us.

Transition Strategy

I had a visit yesterday from my wonderful friend and neighbour, Debs.  We connect on many levels, and share much common thinking on the coming energy-collapse popularly being called Peak Oil. We spent quite a bit of time discussing the Olduvai Theory (pdf), and the surprising number of people we've both met recently who have become aware of the Peak Oil/Energy Descent debates, and are actively implmenting plans to cope with a looming energy, economy and possibly population crash, with the attendant social problems that may possibly ensue.  It surprised both of us at the unlikely suspects who were among the names mentioned.


A common meme seems to be "how to manage a transition strategy". On the one hand we live in the ordinary early-21st-century Western "market-economy" materialist-lifestyle world - or, as I have long termed it, "The Golden Age of the American Empire" - with all the things that it means.  On the other hand, we wish to prepare for a very different future that we believe likely to unfold.  The status-quo is harshly unforgiving of alternative lifestyle and economic choices.

According to the Olduvai Theory, we should expect rolling blackouts to become a permanent feature of life throughout the world starting in about 2008 and getting worse as time goes by.  Of course in the Western Cape we've been experiencing quite a lot of rolling blackouts recently, and we expect more this coming Winter.  Some will argue that the current blackouts result from unusual circumstance and should not be connected with hypothesized energy-descent blackouts.  They're wrong.  The theory makes no statement or prediction on the source or reason for blackouts.  The theory further predicts that some day some blackout will simply become permanent.


The only real questions about the energy descent are "how fast"  and "how far".


And these are precisely the questions we have to grapple with in planning and implementing a transition strategy, whether at a personal level, community level, regional level, national or global level.  Taking the personal case, how do I remain functional in the current status-quo while at the same time getting structures and systems in place that could make me, my family, friends, neighbours and community self-sufficient in a very short space of time, and with little or no warning or lead time? In truth, self-sufficiency is a concept that is only realisable at the community level. It is unattainable by an individual or family group.


We did not come up with any good solutions (yet), except for some tentative discussions of how to begin sensitizing and preparing our own community.  But at least the debate is broadening.