Death Grip: The Lesson for Climate Change

My last couple of posts about The Drought probably sounded like whining. They were. To some extent, anyway. But beneath that there's a lesson.

So many people -- the world around -- are hoping... waiting... assuming... praying... that there'll be some sort of Return To Normal.

There won't be. Get over it!

I well know that we cannot ascribe directly the current weather conditions to GCC (Global Climate Change a.k.a. Global Warming) -- that's just not how this thing works. After all,"climate" itself is nothing more than a mathematical fiction. An average of weather conditions over some short spane of recent decades. But the climate models -- no matter how deficient they may or may not be -- do predict a greater number of more-extreme weather events than we've historically seen. Still, whilst it is scientifically incorrect to connect our current drought conditions (or any of the other extreme or unusual weather events happening in the world) to GCC, there is one consequence we can note... one realisation that comes out of this drought...

Climate change screws up our ability to predict. For the farmer, the gardener, the self-sufficient, it is impossible to over-emphasize the impact this unpredictability has. Forever... for as long as we've been cultivators... we've pretty-much been able to predict.

"If I plant Beans now, I should see enough rain to get them growing, and in about 4 moons from now, I should be harvesting the next year's Bean Stew suppers."

But now, something seems to have slipped. Take our (anecdotal) local case: We had the Humid Season back in December, instead of now (February) as is "normally" the case. Our Windy Season -- normally September and October -- is still on-going. The Once A Week Rain that characterised the region 15 years ago is clearly now a part of History. Our Spring was long, exceptionally cool, and characterised by almost 2 months of permanent overcast, resulting in very slow Spring growth from most plants. It's as though the "seasons" have slipped forward by about 6 weeks.

Maybe so. Maybe not. That's not the point.

The point is that the weather has become just that much less predictable.

Until last year, I would have planted Maize in the 1st or 2nd week of January¹. This year the dry conditions stopped me. Perhaps fortuitously! Perhaps I should now plant Maize in mid-February... (If we get some rain.) But I don't know.

And next year? I won't know!

It's all gone Random. That's the real consequence of Climate Change.

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[1] In most parts of SA, people would plant Maize much earlier in the Spring and/or spray the plants with some Toxic Cocktail. Around here, early-to-mid-Jan is the Right Time for "organic" growers to plant Maize whilst avoiding the worst depredations of Corn Ear Worm.

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.