tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post1212183479058715263..comments2024-03-08T14:23:31.503-05:00Comments on A Puff of Absurdity: An Unprecedented EmergencyMarie Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13872774009526266579noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-58740529215865056042013-06-30T17:08:09.631-04:002013-06-30T17:08:09.631-04:00Hey Lorne - Yes I've read Rubins. I quite lik...Hey Lorne - Yes I've read Rubins. I quite like the idea that we'll stop using fossil fuel before we run out because we'll have to. I'm dubious about his optimism, yet hopeful. My concern is, how late in the game will it be that people start to change course? And Jane Jacob's Dark Age Ahead is another book in the genre that shows us how similar we are to the end times in previous civilizations.<br /><br />Mound - I loved Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, but haven't gotten to Collapse yet. I'll have to add it to my list! Even without climate change, earthquakes and <a href="http://drgrumpyinthehouse.blogspot.ca/2013/06/history-reruns.html" rel="nofollow">meteors</a> can do a number on us. We're a fragile lot. I have a piece of land up north, much further from the U.S. border, just in case of anything military happening, and a bit cooler in the summers. Sometimes I feel paranoid; other times I think I'm just one of few people paying attention! I think we should be teaching kids how to can food in schools. Even if the end isn't near, it's a handy skill to have in case of drought or food transport issues. Marie Snyderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13872774009526266579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-46717628317956838082013-06-30T15:19:28.844-04:002013-06-30T15:19:28.844-04:00Mound, your reference to collapse put me in mind o...Mound, your reference to collapse put me in mind of another sobering book, A Short history of Progress, by Ronald Wright which traces the history of civilizations and their propensity for destroying their own habitats. He argues we are now doing this on a worldwide scale but, unlike in the past, there are no new vistas that offer the opportunity for replenishment.<br /><br /><br />Lornehttp://www.politicsanditsdiscontents.blogspot.canoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-23210340822775423842013-06-30T15:04:34.376-04:002013-06-30T15:04:34.376-04:00Marie, if you've ever read Jared Diamond's...Marie, if you've ever read Jared Diamond's "Collapse" you'll know that advanced societies end quite abruptly and at their zenith. In part that's due to the pattern of conjuring acts they adopt to continue their quest for ever more - wealth, numbers, power. Past civilizations, just like our own today, become utterly dependent on counterproductive, short-term practices and Diamond cites evidence that we do this even when we know the consequences will be both inevitable and catastrophic.<br /><br />We may be nearing our zenith now. We're seeing dramatic climate change, most notably severe, extended drought; recurrent, severe flooding; and major storm events of increasing frequency and intensity. We continue to look at each of them in isolation, failing to connect the dots to discern their real meaning. <br /><br />I use the analogy of a prize fighter. You're not betting on whether that boxer can take a punch. Of course he can, that's how he got into the title fight. What you're betting on is how many punches he can take over several rounds without winding up sprawled out on the mat. How many mega-floods, how many mega-droughts, how many crop failures, how many hurricanes and tornadoes, how much sea level rise can a society withstand before it suddenly winds up on the mat, that's the question.<br /><br />Where I live we're overdue for a once-every-300 years mega-quake. It's expected to possibly exceed the Fukushima quake. Vancouver Island, we're told, all 300 by 100 miles of it, will be moved 15-feet eastward.<br /><br />That reality has made survivalists, preppers if you like, of most of us. Our government encourages us to keep ample stores of food and emergency supplies because it could be several weeks before we can all be helped. It also furnishes a nice legitimacy to preparing for climate change and, yes, that means guns and knowing how to use them. I have the gear and knowledge to harvest food from the sea - clams, oysters, mussels, crab, prawns, salmon, cod and halibut. I can hunt game for meat - deer, elk, bear, cougar (I'm told they're delicious). Now I need to work on veggie gardening although I have a good supply of fruit trees and berry bushes.<br /><br />Could it happen? I doubt it but if need be I at least have most of the stuff necessary and enough knowledge of how to use it effectively.<br /><br />Like you, Marie, I worry far less about myself than about my kids. I too have grave doubts about whether they should have children but, having voiced my reservations, it's not right that I should hector them.The Mound of Soundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09023839743772372922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-61612748866353125472013-06-30T14:02:22.111-04:002013-06-30T14:02:22.111-04:00I enjoyed your post, Marie, as disturbing as it wa...I enjoyed your post, Marie, as disturbing as it was. Have you read either of Jeff Rubin's books, Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller, or The End of Growth. His thesis in both of these books seems to be that whether we like it or not, economics and a scarcity of cheap resources, especially oil, will ultimately force a massive change in our lifestyles. While I'm not sure that I agree with all of his prognostications, he does offer a scenario that is far less grim than the one we seem inevitably headed towards.Lornehttp://www.politicsanditsdiscontents.blogspot.canoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-68064410813665241782013-06-30T12:40:36.708-04:002013-06-30T12:40:36.708-04:00Mound- Thanks for the resources! You'd think ...Mound- Thanks for the resources! You'd think we'd have big enough brains to figure this all out, but we don't. A few millennia back, Plato lamented our lack of skill in the art of measurement - knowing how to measure short term vs long term gains. It seems just to be human nature. Our collective tragic flaw. Marie Snyderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13872774009526266579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-47994638260432537242013-06-30T12:06:23.763-04:002013-06-30T12:06:23.763-04:00Hello Marie Snyder of Waterloo, Ontario. We behav...Hello Marie Snyder of Waterloo, Ontario. We behave like a patient with emphysema who won't give up his 3-pack a day habit.<br /><br />The advent of cheap energy allowed our species to embrace a growth paradigm that, by virtue of our very finite planet with its very finite resources, prescribed self-destruction. We grew in production and in consumption and in population. We pursued environmental conjuring acts, pure sleight of hand, to overcome (if only temporarily) obstacles to growth.<br /><br />If you're not familiar with it, you should visit www.footprintnetwork.org, the home of the Global Footprint Network. Scientists there monitor what's called "overshoot" or our over-consumption. World Overshoot Day is the day each year on which mankind exhausts a full year's worth of renewable resources - water and biomass. A few years ago Overshoot was pegged at late October. Now it's arriving in early September. (BTW, the footprintnetwork folks have worked out that the maximum viable population of mankind should be about 3.5-billion)<br /><br />We get by after Overshoot day by "eating our seed corn." We fish species to exhaustion, collapsing global fisheries in one part of the world before moving on to the next, most desirable fish species. Our industrial fishing fleets are hunting down fish species that just a few years ago were considered junk.<br /><br />Visible to the naked eye from space are the spreading ravages of desertification. In many countries they now work their farmland to exhaustion, using ever more fertilizers and irrigation to keep growing crops until the core nutrients and biomass in the soil is gone and it is transformed into desert. Those massive dust plumes that come out of China and are photographed crossing the Pacific to North America are the tell tale.<br /><br />We have to decouple our civilization from this lethal growth paradigm and return to the "steady state" or "full earth" economics that served our species reasonably well for millennia. We can't do that so long as we refuse to decarbonize our societies and our economies.<br /><br />James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia Theory, suggests our civilization's only hope lies not in sustainable development but sustainable retreat, shrinking consumption, doing better with ever less. Unfortunately we've been conditioned to see a better future as something quite different to that. Consider it one aspect of our societal mental illness.<br /><br /> The Mound of Soundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09023839743772372922noreply@blogger.com