The Agenda Restated

February 5, 2007
      Out in the public arena, people frequently twang on me for being "Mister Gloom'n'doom," or for "not offering any solutions." I find this bizarre because I never fail to present audiences with a long, explicit task list of projects that American society needs to take up in the face of the combined problems I have labeled The Long Emergency. That the audience never hears this, and then indignantly demands such instruction, only reinforces my sense that the cognitive dissonance in our culture has gone totally off the charts.

     Insofar as I just returned from a college lecture road trip, and heard the same carping all over again, I conclude that it's necessary for me to spell it all out a'fresh. I think of this not so much as a roster of "solutions" but as a set of reasonable responses to a new set of circumstances. (Not everything we try to do will succeed, that is, be a "solution.") So, for those of you who are tired of wringing your hands, who would like to do something useful, or focus your attention in a purposeful way, here it is.

• Expand your view beyond the question of how we will run all the cars by means other than gasoline. This obsession with keeping the cars running at all costs could really prove fatal. It is especially unhelpful that so many self-proclaimed "greens" and political "progressives" are hung up on this monomaniacal theme. Get this: the cars are not part of the solution (whether they run on fossil fuels, vodka, used frymax™ oil, or cow shit). They are at the heart of the problem. And trying to salvage the entire Happy Motoring system by shifting it from gasoline to other fuels will only make things much worse. The bottom line of this is: start thinking beyond the car. We have to make other arrangements for virtually all the common activities of daily life.

• We have to produce food differently. The ADM / Monsanto / Cargill model of industrial agribusiness is heading toward its Waterloo. As oil and gas deplete, we will be left with sterile soils and farming organized at an unworkable scale. Many lives will depend on our ability to fix this. Farming will soon return much closer to the center of American economic life. It will necessarily have to be done more locally, at a smaller-and-finer scale, and will require more human labor. The value-added activities associated with farming -- e.g. making products like cheese, wine, oils -- will also have to be done much more locally. This situation presents excellent business and vocational opportunities for America's young people (if they can unplug their Ipods long enough to pay attention.) It also presents huge problems in land-use reform. Not to mention the fact that the knowledge and skill for doing these things has to be painstakingly retrieved from the dumpster of history. Get busy.
• We have to inhabit the terrain differently. Virtually every place in our nation organized for car dependency is going to fail to some degree. Quite a few places (Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami....) will support only a fraction of their current populations. We'll have to return to traditional human ecologies at a smaller scale: villages, towns, and cities (along with a productive rural landscape). Our small towns are waiting to be reinhabited. Our cities will have to contract. The cities that are composed proportionately more of suburban fabric (e.g. Atlanta, Houston) will pose especially tough problems. Most of that stuff will not be fixed. The loss of monetary value in suburban property will have far-reaching ramifications. The stuff we build in the decades ahead will have to be made of regional materials found in nature -- as opposed to modular, snap-together, manufactured components -- at a more modest scale. This whole process will entail enormous demographic shifts and is liable to be turbulent. Like farming, it will require the retrieval of skill-sets and methodologies that have been forsaken. The graduate schools of architecture are still tragically preoccupied with teaching Narcissism. The faculties will have to be overthrown. Our attitudes about land-use will have to change dramatically. The building codes and zoning laws will eventually be abandoned and will have to be replaced with vernacular wisdom. Get busy.
• We have to move things and people differently. This is the sunset of Happy Motoring (including the entire US trucking system). Get used to it. Don't waste your society's remaining resources trying to prop up car-and-truck dependency. Moving things and people by water and rail is vastly more energy-efficient. Need something to do? Get involved in restoring public transit. Let's start with railroads, and let's make sure we electrify them so they will run on things other than fossil fuel or, if we have to run them partly on coal-fired power plants, at least scrub the emissions and sequester the CO2 at as few source-points as possible. We also have to prepare our society for moving people and things much more by water. This implies the rebuilding of infrastructure for our harbors, and also for our inland river and canal systems -- including the towns associated with them. The great harbor towns, like Baltimore, Boston, and New York, can no longer devote their waterfronts to condo sites and bikeways. We actually have to put the piers and warehouses back in place (not to mention the sleazy accommodations for sailors). Right now, programs are underway to restore maritime shipping based on wind -- yes, sailing ships. It's for real. Lots to do here. Put down your Ipod and get busy.
• We have to transform retail trade. The national chains that have used the high tide of fossil fuels to contrive predatory economies-of-scale (and kill local economies) -- they are going down. WalMart and the other outfits will not survive the coming era of expensive, scarcer oil. They will not be able to run the "warehouses-on-wheels" of 18-wheel tractor-trailers incessantly circulating along the interstate highways. Their 12,000-mile supply lines to the Asian slave-factories are also endangered as the US and China contest for Middle East and African oil. The local networks of commercial interdependency which these chain stores systematically destroyed (with the public's acquiescence) will have to be rebuilt brick-by-brick and inventory-by-inventory. This will require rich, fine-grained, multi-layered networks of people who make, distribute, and sell stuff (including the much-maligned "middlemen"). Don't be fooled into thinking that the Internet will replace local retail economies. Internet shopping is totally dependent now on cheap delivery, and delivery will no longer be cheap. It also is predicated on electric power systems that are completely reliable. That is something we are unlikely to enjoy in the years ahead. Do you have a penchant for retail trade and don't want to work for a big predatory corporation? There's lots to do here in the realm of small, local business. Quit carping and get busy.
• We will have to make things again in America. However, we are going to make less stuff. We will have fewer things to buy, fewer choices of things. The curtain is coming down on the endless blue-light-special shopping frenzy that has occupied the forefront of daily life in America for decades. But we will still need household goods and things to wear. As a practical matter, we are not going to re-live the 20th century. The factories from America's heyday of manufacturing (1900 - 1970) were all designed for massive inputs of fossil fuel, and many of them have already been demolished. We're going to have to make things on a smaller scale by other means. Perhaps we will have to use more water power. The truth is, we don't know yet how we're going to make anything. This is something that the younger generations can put their minds and muscles into.
• The age of canned entertainment is coming to and end. It was fun for a while. We liked "Citizen Kane" and the Beatles. But we're going to have to make our own music and our own drama down the road. We're going to need playhouses and live performance halls. We're going to need violin and banjo players and playwrights and scenery-makers, and singers. We'll need theater managers and stage-hands. The Internet is not going to save canned entertainment. The Internet will not work so well if the electricity is on the fritz half the time (or more).
• We'll have to reorganize the education system. The centralized secondary school systems based on the yellow school bus fleets will not survive the coming decades. The huge investments we have made in these facilities will impede the transition out of them, but they will fail anyway. Since we will be a less-affluent society, we probably won't be able to replace these centralized facilities with smaller and more equitably distributed schools, at least not right away. Personally, I believe that the next incarnation of education will grow out of the home schooling movement, as home schooling efforts aggregate locally into units of more than one family. God knows what happens beyond secondary ed. The big universities, both public and private, may not be salvageable. And the activity of higher ed itself may engender huge resentment by those foreclosed from it. But anyone who learns to do long division and write a coherent paragraph will be at a great advantage -- and, in any case, will probably out-perform today's average college graduate. One thing for sure: teaching children is not liable to become an obsolete line-of-work, as compared to public relations and sports marketing. Lots to do here, and lots to think about. Get busy, future teachers of America.
• We have to reorganize the medical system. The current skein of intertwined rackets based on endless Ponzi buck passing scams will not survive the discontinuities to come. We will probably have to return to a model of service much closer to what used to be called "doctoring." Medical training may also have to change as the big universities run into trouble functioning. Doctors of the 21st century will certainly drive fewer German cars, and there will be fewer opportunities in the cosmetic surgery field. Let's hope that we don't slide so far back that we forget the germ theory of disease, or the need to wash our hands, or the fundamentals of pharmaceutical science. Lots to do here for the unsqueamish.
• Life in the USA will have to become much more local, and virtually all the activities of everyday life will have to be re-scaled. You can state categorically that any enterprise now supersized is likely to fail -- everything from the federal government to big corporations to huge institutions. If you can find a way to do something practical and useful on a smaller scale than it is currently being done, you are likely to have food in your cupboard and people who esteem you. An entire social infrastructure of voluntary associations, co-opted by the narcotic of television, needs to be reconstructed. Local institutions for care of the helpless will have to be organized. Local politics will be much more meaningful as state governments and federal agencies slide into complete impotence. Lots of jobs here for local heroes.

      So, that's the task list for now. Forgive me if I left things out. But please don't carp at me, by letter or in person, that I am not providing you with anything to think about or devote your personal energy to. If you're depressed, change your focus. Quit wishing and start doing. The best way to feel hopeful about the future is to get off your ass and demonstrate to yourself that you are a capable, competent individual resolutely able to face new circumstances.

Comments

[Eligere]

Yes, and let's hear it for the failure of the media conglomerates. Maybe when we return to local and regional papers actually written and published locally and regionally, we'll start getting meaningful news again. There is a long and honorable history of small publication in this country, and I for one will be very happy to see it return in force. Because the papers currently available in my city, all controlled and largely written off-site, are not fit to line a birdcage.

[jm coulomb]

Hello Jim,

This is your best post ever! Your best bet as a writer is to imagine and describe for others what the future looks like, not necessarily as a catastrophic sequence of events, but rather as a time of enormous reality coping work.

This is what TEST, a non profit, is doing right now in France.

Our view is that a "revolution" is down the road, but people need to extract themselves from the current monetary system, preferably before it collapses, if you want them to visualize the future positively.

2007 will be the turning point in people's perceptions. Truly traumatic time is ahead.

Jim, "you can stand too much reality", but regular folks cannot. Try to keep hope alive as well!

[ryan costa]

Maybe we won't have to go down quite so low.

Trucking will revolve around trucks the size of the Isuzu Elf.

The bright side of their being little more "canned" entertainment is that there is already so much canned entertainment it would take several lifetimes to watch it all.

Reform of education and medicine means doing away with the career-path sequences of credentials and post-degree certifications these industries currently use to haze out potential professionals and justify their salaries, perks, and working conditions.

[Baby Nutcase]

Dude it is so like February not January now.

[donna]

Excellent post, Jim. Thanks for the ideas.

[Australian Peaker]

Dear Jim

I have been reading your books and articles for the last two and half years and found the information very interesting and disturbing at the start. I went through the stages of fear, angry, depressed and now acceptance. You, in being the messenger have given the message that make people afraid and people will attack what they perceive to be the easiest target which more often than not is the messenger. Remember the message warning you are writing about is that every thing they have grown up to believe in is about to change.

Both my Grandfathers never owned a car, had successful happy lives interrupted by both world wars and great depression, raised successful children, worked hard and were very much self sufficient. I’m not forgetting my Grandmothers who did more than their fair share of work as well and were equal partners in providing for a successful family life. They did not have the same things we did over 60 years ago but managed to get by.

I decided that if they could do it I can do it. 90% of preparing for peak oil is mental. Learning to live with less and learn to rely and work with family and friends for the common good. One thing the military is good for is to teach people team work, discipline (all discipline is self discipline), and living without comfort and still getting by. It’s the politicians who use the military as an extension of politics that I have a problem with (but that’s another issue)

We have the skills and knowledge to reorganize our lives to a sustainable level and still live comfortable lives. If our forefathers could do it so can we.

I personally ride a pushbike to work, caught the train to visit my parents instead of driving or flying and use the car a least as possible. The Australian national train system make the US train system look good. Climate change, drought, water, transport are the topic being discussed for the next elections and how we are going to deal with these topics.

Information equals power and the people need information to regain there power.

[donna]

Very much apropos to this week's post, John Michael Greer scores again with his article, "Technological Triage":

>As peak oil and other aspects of the predicament of industrial society begin pushing it down the slope toward catabolic collapse, sorting out what [technology] can be saved from what must be jettisoned will become a crucial task. Thinking about the options now could give us a head start.

Full article here:

http://www.energybulletin.net/25502.html

[Doug]

Forget "Next Day Air". Sell your FedEx stocks.

[ryan costa]

Information may be power, but it is false or useless information that is currently most marketed. Bill O'Reilly, Stephen Moore, Thomas Friedman, white house press releases.....

[dangerbird]

Personally, I think a 3000 mile caesar salads taste much better. Also, my next Hummer2 is on order from 3000 miles away. It will be shipped by big ole sweaty Diesel truck. Ain't modernity great. I know it spins some people's heads. But there it is.

[ryan costa]

The three thousand mile caesar salads may taste great, but they won't be affordable for much longer.

You may need the H2 to get through all the potholes that will open up on the roads once so few people are driving there isn't a popular tax base for keeping so many of them repaired.

[Dr.Doom]

Ah Jim, great post BUT...

Some of us would like to know the timelines for these new ways of living. One assumes it's probably coming soon, within the lives of the generation you address. Planners certainly need to know. For example, we all know that life is finite, so telling someone they’re going to die is going to get a nod and a yawn. Telling them they’re going to die next week or tomorrow will get their attention.

There seem to be too many souls hanging around most cities and perhaps even rural areas for the kinds of retrenchment you are suggesting. You may be correct about the ultimate outcomes, but if so many are to be "disenfranchised" there will be some heavy social loads to carry. I wonder where and how these extra folks will be accommodated (farm work, hitched as human plow teams?), and how this process will affect the psyches of those lucky and/or "fit" enough to carry on?

You are aware of the degree of disappointment of those in the higher education arena once they will be told to downsize or pack it in. There may be a more than a few Ted Kaszinski's that result. I already can taste a bit of jaded and pessimistic attitude in the graduate students, sensing that the era of big government grants may be closing. Still, we'd better keep some of that higher education alive. One of the brighter ones just may figure out how to contain a sustained fusion reaction.

[Doug]

We are the last human beings to enjoy a relatively decent life on planet earth. The following human beings will inherit a world of shit.

[Laura Louzader]

It will be time for 'higher education' to get back to being exactly that.

It is NOW time for our cities to redensify, and get over the idea that everything must be 'upscale' to be good. Will our city leaders be able to divert attention from stuffing their back pockets with contributions from the megabucks beneficiaries of TIF developments in time to realize that there is more to being energy self-sufficient than a prototype wind turbine and a few green roofs? Will they stop giving our taxes away to megabucks developers and use them to build more train lines?

We can also make our cities more business-friendly in the sense of making it possible for people to run small manufacturing facilities without incessent bureacratic obstruction and harrassment, and we will have to let people do things like keep a goat or horse on their property, use their homes as places of work, including light industry, and allow street venders to operate as they once did before our leaders decided to 'Disneyfy' Chicago and NYC to pander to rich suburbanites.

I have a few little enterprises in mind, for goods that can be manufactured in the kitchen, that people actually need. Now to bring down the cost per unit.

[Jerry Johnson]

Dr Doom asks the key questions. Timelines and coalescing events.

For Starters might the US emulate the USSR between now and 2010? How many aparatchicks in 1988 would have thought the end of the USSR was imminent?

As Dmitry Orlov points out repeatedly we might be the worse off of the two " superpowers".

[kd]

Jim, last week's post was good, but this one's even better. Each "solution" is concise, free of technical jargon & newspeak, to the point. Excellent the way you begin each with a clear statement (ie: "We have to inhabit the terrain differently.")

I hope it will spark a lot of interesting discussion. Many thanks!

[ryan costa]

The U.S. has about 300,000,000 people.

China had over 400,000,000 people about 60 years ago. We have more arable land than China. Potentially - we have a much greater library of agricultural knowledge and diversity. We shouldn't have any starvation, if we do things right. We could still have a great deal of abundance, just different abundance than what we're used to.

[donna]

Laura L,

What sort of goods do you have in mind?

[Doctor G]

I don't see why the big universities would collapse. They tend to be pedestrian friendly, with students housed densely on or near campus, and often lots of room for gardens and new buildings. Those with agricultural colleges even have working farms on or near campus. And we can joke about academic cluelessness, but in fact there are a lot of very smart, very resourceful people on any campus, who are likely to find a way to survive if there is one. So I think a small city or town with a large university might be one of the best places to ride out this storm.

[jill mayon]

Jim is so cool to try and keep us in January; Feb has not been kind to some of us weather-wise. If we all close out eyes and wish it were so....

[djc]

Its a shame that Jim's columns are not more widely disseminated. I have a hunch that in the future people will wonder why we didn't follow much of what Jim speaks of in his writings....

djc

[r-selection rules!]

Farms should breed mass littering
livestock like mad.They also tend to convert more food into body mass than slow breeding livestock.
Good examples:

Birds:

Ratites in the form of emus, rheas and ostriches.

galliformes like chickens,turkeys,
peafowl,quails,guineafowls.

anseriformes like muscovy and common domestic ducks and geese.

Mammals:

rodents like guinea pigs(cavies)

lagomorphs like rabbits.

Suid artiodactyls(pigs)

Horses,cattle,sheep,goats,llamas
Camels,etc, are high-end, high maintenence single yearly offspring breeders.They usually demand quite a lot of resources,
sometimes for fairly little return.

Every farm should have a pond designed to hold fish,frogs,muskrats and so on for the dinner table.A large woodlot(communal hopefully) extensively permacultured should provide "wild" fruits and game animals such as deer,feral pigs,bear perhaps.

Large remaining tracts of forests in Eastern North America would be ripe for estensive "rewilding" with feral pigs,feral cattle,feral horses, introduced mammals and ratite birds of many types to increase diversity of resource usage.The more game animals, the better, if one stock has a bad year, other stocks can shore up losses.

[kd]

Many, many people are thinking about it:

Mad Max Meets American Gothic: Is there a friendlier option for the post-peak future?

http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/05-6om/McKibben.html

The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide & Cookbook

http://www.raisethehammer.org/index.asp?id=481

http://peakoilmedicine.wordyblog.com/category/survival/

[Flippin' the Bird]

Hey pigeon head, if I see your Hummer, I'll be sure to shoot the tires right out. And because of backward thinking fools like you, in a few decades time, no one, whether they want them or not, will be able to have anchovies on their Caesar Salad. I expect the other ingredients will be hard to come by. But if they aren't, and you are still around and eating solid food, may you choke.

[ross]

Nice article from McKibben, kd. But he's wrong about oil depletion not being a straight forward law. Oil is a finite resource, and every day that we extract it and use it, we have less of it. That's a fact as immutable as the constituent parts of oxygen.