I could write to you about what is happening but I feel those of you who are seeing what you see, this would just be redundant. The pace of change is rapid and likely near the nonlinear phase. Yet, in the real world of nature there is something else. In nature there is the daily that life has always done. Do not lose touch with nature just because our world is in chaos. There is sanity among the savages.
When I walk about the farm, I don’t want the animals, both wild and domestic, to care or worry about me. I like being one of them. I do this by establishing a routine they get comfortable with. If I see a wild animal, I just ignore it and move on as they do with each other when they are unconcerned. I do not want to be special. In a way I am special because I have so much control over their habitat but it is their habitat. I am just the custodian.
In the world of men, I do not want to be famous. The insight I may have is not mine but from others. I have a blog and I comment on different sites about REAL Green but I do this not for myself but for others. I am anonymous and do not want anything in return. If I am found out fine if not better. In the world of men, I hope to be meek and unimportant.
This is the basis of green mysticism. It is about being found and lost. It is about the only effective way to deal with change in an unchanging way. My message now is don’t seek security but instead wisdom. This wisdom is one of being invisible but with profound responsibility that is deep in our DNA.
Our dualism is out of whack. If you recognize the cyclic nature of things then you see this is a determined thing. Just watch how science is expanding despite the governing force of diminishing returns which reality controls. Reality is telling us something is wrong.
On the other hand, or connection to the spirit or like I refer to it as “the Sacred” is in decline. Spirit is not in decline but man’s awareness of spirit is. We are lost pretending like we know more than ever before.
I partly include religion with science because religion attempts to control man’s understanding of spirit. This is the dogma and theological studies the religious elite claim to posses. The other part of religion is community and this is rightly a spiritual attribute. This is people being a people.
I am a Christian shaman. There is nothing special about this. For me this is much like the Osage Tribe and their merger of their culture with Christianity. They merged the two into what I like to think is what is needed in the future. I don’t think the Osage realize this but they should because our future needs this merger.
I am also a Taoist but this is more for enjoyment. You know knowing the Tao is not knowing it and all. There is lots of connectivity with Taoism and Native American culture. You may think the precontact Native Americans were savage and primitive but I would say look around and tell me are we not the real savages.
We have destroyed one of the most productive ecosystems in regard to wealth generation. Here I mean wealth in regards to habitat and generation of valuable biomass that benefits all life with the most energy absorbed from the sun where waste streams are nutrient streams, circular not linear.
Our science has taken us to amazing places but did we need to go to these places? Are we better off now? Maybe in an individual sense some of us are in the narrow metrics of health and welfare. Comforts from affluence are a wonderful thing there is no doubt but somehow, I feel the trade-offs are a loss of real value for a world of comforts and affluence. We are more alone than ever with all our toys. Sloth has replaced courage.
Science will destroy itself this is clear. This is especially true today now that secularist have elevated science though ideology to what is called Scientism. The religious elites are now secularist. This is just deception. The clever will be deceived is an old Taoist adage if I remember correctly. Now “the science” is what the elites say it is much like religion did a few hundred years ago. Apparently, we have learned nothing from our science after transforming this planet into a waste disposal racket.
In REAL Green I preach about green prepping. What is green is more prepped. You want to get pepped because science is a ticking timebomb and the elites who control science are the real savages. REAL Green also preaches acceptance of this process because it is determined by the cyclic.
We are now like a pendulum at its highest point where it is temporarily motionless. A swing back to spirit is coming. At least that is what I am experiencing as a Christian shaman. A spiritual world awaits us. What this means is a world of less science but more connection to the ground under our feet.
REAL Green preaches to use this world to leave it. Beat the rush by getting started now before it is too late. Realistically and relatively leave this world of Scientism and corruption to a world of more spirit and less corruption. This is a world of increasing wisdom which is how man must approach the spirit world.
Wisdom is basically the wisdom of knowing what knowledge to keep and what to reject. This sounds simple enough in theory but is very difficult in practice. This is because we are now in a world of Scientism with a scientific lifestyle that is in constant change. Currently the change has tipped over into declining value because of the diminishing returns of this change. New things are destroying old things that have more benefit.
The spirt world I speak of can’t be defined it can only be experienced. If you have had an authentic spiritual experience then you know what I am talking about. You don’t make it happen although you can open yourself up to it. You also need the right DNA because some people just don’t have the receptors for it. This is different than faith although once you have gone the mystic journey faith results.
I might add a spiritual experience is not necessarily something glorious. It is also dark and scary. The best ones are a combination of the two. I say this because the glory of it is reinforced by the terror of it. I am speaking of an individual which is different than what civilization experiences. Yet, the process of glory and terror is still present in the macro.
I am 60 now. Maybe this world will more or less be similar to what I have now by the time I die if I make it to my 80s. I feel my kids will be in a different world if they make it to 60. So, being a Christian shaman I am speaking of spiritual things for the kids in the room. This will be your world soon. I often say our mortal lives are so short we are already dead.
The primary message of REAL Green is be an eddy to an eddy. I canoed many a river in my youth. I always loved seeing an eddy spin out of the current. An eddy to an eddy is my thinking these days. Our current global civilization dominated by the affluence of science is an eddy to the life force. In the situation of diminishing returns our way of life is destructive now not productive. We are a natural force of succession so in this respect we are just following life’s way.
Being an eddy to the eddy is surreal because it means living a duality. Our civilization is going against the current of life. There is no way to leave this civilization. It is global and nobody can survive on their own for the most part. Even my permaculture homestead is just a few months from failure if civilization fails. All these years of learning and changing with green prepping and all I get from it is a few months, maybe.
Yet, what I did gain is a journey of wisdom and there is no price that can be put on this. I am an eddy to civilization’s eddy and by doing so I am spinning back into the current of life albeit within a civilization I am trapped in.
So, the most important aspect of REAL Green is using this world of Amazon and fast cars to leave it. You can best do this with a rural permaculture homestead in my opinion. The cities and most towns are so corrupted as to be wastelands for the spiritual.
Wisdom is the only tool for approaching the sacred. In today’s world this is the wisdom of less. Less science and its comforts. Do this relatively and realistically to the current of your community and family. Community and family is the “Body of Christ” and the Kingdom of Heaven is being nearer the Sacred by embracing family and community.
Reject Scientism’s heaven which is the merger of man and machine in their idea of immortally described as the “singularity”. Reject the anti-family policies being pushed today by the globalists which is just a Marxist power grab. The singularity is blasphemy. Marxism is the depth of man’s depravity of the isolated ego. Everyone has a bitch in this world of identity politics. This is Hell.
Wisdom is in our DNA and can’t be reduced. We are moral and practice science. Technology and knowledge are part of our nature and wisdom is the gatekeeper. Have less science through triage which means less affluence and comforts. Embrace the old ways before we had too much knowledge and technology. Fortify the old ways with some of the best aspects of the new world in a salvage.
This REAL Green hybridization will be what is needed for the journey ahead. The result is a lifeboat that is a refuge from the deadly serious condition of Scientism’s collective self-consciousness of an isolated ego unaware of the Sacred. Practice palliative care for your community and family because few can comprehend this simpler way.
Strap in because 2024 feels like a year of profound change.
“REAL Green adaptation is the name of a blog that explores the concept of green prepping, which is a way of living that combines environmental awareness, self-reliance, and resilience in the face of a changing and uncertain world. The blog is written by an anonymous author who calls himself the REAL Green Master. He shares his experiences and insights on how he is adapting his homestead and permaculture farm to the challenges of climate change, peak oil, and social collapse. He also discusses various topics related to sustainability, spirituality, philosophy, and psychology. The blog’s motto is “adapt and mitigate the decline process with a hybrid of the old ways and the new ways”
The above is the result of me asking my browser A.I assistant what is REAL Green adaptation.
There is much talk of the good and bad of AI. I personally don’t think AI has much of a lifespan ahead mainly because of the systematic decay of civilization currently in progress. AI requires copious amounts of energy and water to produce results. This will be on top of the already large energy usage of all the servers that support the internet.
Net energy decline is something that is constant and accelerating. Renewables will make this net decline worse in regards to ending fossil fuels. I feel renewable tech is a vital addition to a lifeboat strategy everyone needs to embrace but it will not save us or AI. What is needed is not large and centralized but dispersed, small scale, and simple. AI is not needed in a lifeboat strategy its instead a hindrance.
AI is going to be bled to death as the internet deteriorates and the economy needed to support this complex and complicated segment of the globalized economy breaks down. This view is fringe because few embrace the decline process but instead embrace a manifest destiny of a human future that AI is an example of. Civilization can’t comprehend its end so AI is going to be embraced and result in more malinvestment civilization can’t afford.
I have been a doomer and prepper for 23 years now. I look back on where I came from and where I am now and see I was right about many things and wrong about some very important details. I once thought it was all about energy and its degrading as the affordable life blood of civilization. This turns out to be only partially true.
Energy degradation is central to the gradual decline of civilization. This is all too apparent today with the last best attempt at business as usual being renewables and EVs. They won’t power what we have now. What we have now can only degrowth around the margins. What this means is we are rapidly approaching a break point where systematic degradation becomes the bifurcation. Energy is forcing this systematic breakdown but it is the very top 1% in society that are now the real driver of some kind of collapse.
There is not enough to go around is clear so the way the top gets around this is naked wealth transfer by disregarding the rule of law, corrupting free and fair markets, and disposing of honest politics. We are now at the imperial point where money and power prevail over proper policy. Proper policy to negotiate what the degradation of affordable energy to run our civilization is gradually leading to.
I say gradual but in relation to human time frame this gradual is really a rapid process. Humans slow boil because we are locked in the daily toil of survival. Few have the luxury of the study of decline and fewer still find interest in this study. The corruption of the leadership and the resulting internecine warfare with a group playing the deadly serious game of elite musical chairs will take us all down. A large bulk of the population has already been kicked out of the game. It is now the elites turn. They have a long way to fall.
I have focused my efforts in the last few years on energy with renewables for lights and cooling, biomass for heating and animal fodder, animals and garden for food, and wildlife for food. I have my water situation good. Most of all I have my attitudes correct about what is ahead. Even with all my efforts and solid attitude, facing a civilizational breakdown is daunting. The reality is my effort only will buy me a breather space to formulate a plan. There is no way to know for sure how this thing is going to blow. I hope it is gradual and with manageable intensity.
Yet, I am still engaged in the fossil fuel culture that has no long-term future. The best I can do is become very efficient with these efforts. I have some on-farm fuel stocks of diesel, gas, and propane. I invested in renewables to keep the lights on, run my heating and cooling, and keep my food cold. For the money renewables do very little but if properly organized what they can do is huge. I spent much more than most people can afford. This is more than money too. I have spent time learning which most people don’t have either.
I have done many other prep efforts that I do not have time to discuss but these are important too but the basics are energy related. Food, water, and shelter like they always have been. Try to find a way to localize your life because energy can go a long way if you are focused locally. Its about community too and that will soon localize once the internet becomes unreliable and there is not enough gas to commute.
Your mental resources are the other critical half to energy. Accepting fate but at the same time enjoying life is very important. All work and no play will make it hard to keep up with the rigors of maintain a prepped life. There will come a point where it is all work with no play but we are not there yet. I have been able to do this effort for 24 years by enjoying this lifestyle. I enjoy the academics of it. You must be specialized in something but also a jack of all trades too. It is this combination that keeps this effort interesting. It is discouraging too because of the required efforts and discipline with little reward.
My advice is to treat what is ahead like the aging process. I am turning 60 and my body and mind are degrading. What I like about my age now is all those cumulative experiences that contribute to what I call base wisdom. Much of the best parts of my wisdom are my many failures. What failure didn’t ruin me made me stronger. Civilization is at this point of age-related breakdown but it is trapped in path dependencies and a need for high quality energy of its youth. These are rapidly depleting and its way of doing things unsustainable. What is worse is the basics of civic society that allows us to face crisis is degrading faster than net energy decline.
REAL Green focuses on the individual but this does not mean you can take your eye off the global. There is no hiding from the global but there are places to go and grow within macro decline. If this decline phase is manageable then life will be reasonably rewarding even heroic for some. if you have made efforts to decline too then it will be much easier to mitigate the discomforts ahead. This is a key aspect of REAL Green. This is not rocket science it is just paradoxical in the sense that the global is unable to do this so you will live in the surreal in between two worlds. If you are in the surreal then you are over the target!
I am busy with the farm and family these days. I have made a big investment in green prepping that I will post details of once I have it completed and understand it enough to put a description of it in a post.
I am thinking about you but do not have the inspiration to comment lately. The unfolding of the end of life as we know it is gathering pace. We can’t know the future as we would like but we can know the unfolding of the future if we see with honesty and humility.
REAL Green is a way for a few to find meaning in a world in decline and decay. This way of life will not save the world but it can make your local of people and place better. That is if you find a local with a future in a civilization without a future. REAL Green is a rural way of life but orbiting the urban at a safe distance. It is about homesteading with efforts at permaculture in a world that has left this behind.
REAL Green is relative and realistic and realizes survival in a civilization of technology and systems requires living with them. You live with them to leave them is the gist of it. This is a paradox and surreal which makes the simple complicated. This dualism is why spirituality is so important because you will constantly ask yourself why am I doing this.
In a way you will be the eddy in the current but the reality is you will be going with the current and civilization is the eddy. The current of life and civilization are now departing in different directions. You are trapped in this turbulence.
I have spoken about overlap with a sudden and gradual unfolding of a process. This bifurcation of reality is a manifestation of the juxtaposition of life’s fractal expression against the arrogance of humanism. This arrogance is the denial of a process that supersedes and it is for this reason you should turn inward to your local of people and place but remaining global to catch the winds of change.
Turning inward in the sense of what has worked during all of the previous human experience. This is the local of people and place as the bulwark to catastrophic change. Do this with a relative and realistic approach to appropriate technology on the one hand. On the other hand, cultivate your spirituality. It is this combination of science and spirt properly balanced that offers hope.
I am not preaching a refuge but instead a life boat. This lifeboat requires a disposition of palliative care because suffering will be the result of the end of the age of affluence. In this unfolding of a new age, it will be meaning found with that special balance of science and spirit that will take its rightful place above affluence as salvation.
I leave you with a profound article that catches the flavor of our collective decline. I am including the conclusion in this post. The reason being it reflects key aspects of a REAL Green life.
“My young friends, the impact any one of us can expect to have in the face of world-historic trends before which the fates of nations and empires fly like leaves in the autumn winds is vanishingly small.” Already baked into the cake will be, I believe, hardships for you that we’ve become accustomed to think only happen to “other people” in “other countries” far away, not seen here since the Revolution and the Civil War, or maybe in isolated instances during the Great Depression: financial and economic disruption and, in some places, especially in urban areas, collapse; supply chains, utilities, and other aspects of basic infrastructure ceasing to function (what happens in major cities when food deliveries stop for a week?), even widespread hunger; rising levels of violence, both criminality and civil strife. These will be combined, paradoxically, with the remaining organs of authority, however discredited, desperately cracking down on the enemy within – no, not on murderers, robbers, and rapists, but on “science deniers,” “religious fanatics,” “haters,” “conspiracy theorists,” “insurrectionists,” “gun nuts,” “purveyors of “medical misinformation,” Russian or Chinese “stooges,” and, of course, “racists,” “sexists,” “homophobes,” and so forth. It’s the late Samuel Francis’ “anarcho-tyranny” nightmare come to life with a vengeance.
Nevertheless, for what it is worth, I put before you three practical tasks for your consideration.
Firstly, be vigilant against deception, in a day when assuredly evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. Admittedly, this is a tough one, given the ever-present lying that surrounds us and the suppression of dissent. Try to sift truth from falsehood but don’t become obsessed because, in many cases, you won’t be able to be sure anyway. Focus most on what’s proximate to you and on the people most important to you. … Be skeptical – about everyone. … There may be a cost. As Solzhenitsyn said, “He who chooses the lie as his principle inevitably chooses violence as his method.”
Secondly, as stewards of every worldly charge placed on us by God and by other people—as fathers and mothers, as husbands and wives, as sons and daughters, as neighbors, as students, as workers, as citizens, as patriots—we must prudently care for those to whom we have a duty within the limited power and wisdom allotted to us. Start with yourselves. Be as self-sufficient as possible. Get involved in your community; that leftist slogan is actually a good one: think globally, act locally. Befriend your neighbors. Learn a real skill – electricity, plumbing, carpentry. Farm! Don’t go to law school, for goodness’ sake. Get in shape. Eat and sleep right. Have plenty of the essentials: food, fuel, gold, ammunition. Learn to shoot. Limit computer and phone time. Experience nature. Cultivate healthy personal relationships – real ones, not virtual ones. Marry young, have kids, lots of them – especially women, don’t get seduced by all that “career” nonsense. Nobody on his or her deathbed ever said, “Gosh, I wish I’d spent more time at the office.” Read old books. Cultivate virtue. Go to church.
Simply being what used to be considered normal and leading a productive life is becoming the most revolutionary act one can perform. With that in mind, find the strength to be revolutionaries indeed! In the face of the culture of death and extinction, choose to affirm life.
You’ve seen the meme: Hard times create strong men; Strong men create good times; Good times create weak men; Weak men create hard times. Well, take it from the weakling Boomer generation that brought them to you: the hard times, they is a-coming. But they won’t last forever. If you live through them – and some of you will not – we’ll see what possibilities, as of now literally unimaginable, might then exist. But you will need to be personally fit to take advantage of them. You will also need to be part of some kind of sustainable community of likeminded people.
Thirdly, for those of you who are believers, particularly Christians, we must pray without ceasing, firm in faith that, through whatever hardships may lie ahead, even the very hairs of our head are all numbered, and the final triumph of Truth is never in doubt.
Thank you, and good luck. You’re going to need it.
I am in contemplation now. I am not sure when I will post again. I am turning to the land for connection.
We are in a spiritual war. I am seeking guidance for the fight ahead. I am waiting on that guidance. If it comes to me, I will report back. My message is not mine it comes from outside me. I must respect this understanding of that which is sacred and await my calling.
It may be the case I have said my peace and I will be put on a new journey. I have said much in the last few years. It is now time to go to the next level because we are now in it.
In this time of crisis where everything is falling apart it is worth considering what is enough. What is that right amount of life that is optimal. How much wealth should we have? Should we embrace less wealth to achieve more value? These days wealth is a trap just as much as poverty. Is there a middle path?
We are in a society that is incapable of knowing limits. The best society can do is financial limits. How much money you have available is not a good “limit” metric in a time of excesses. Time of excess heading into a crisis is a bad time to be in a wealth trap. Poverty in these times is precarious too because safety nets will be failing. We again get back to a middle road.
In some ways we are stuck in our lives as they are. Economically all will be under stress to maintain the comforts and security which we have grown up with. Increasingly it will be essentials we focus on. Discretionary enjoyments will be in decline. This will not only be because there is not enough money to indulge but also because increasingly, discretionaries won’t be available. In economics this is called stagflation.
Components of this stalling are the degree of delocalization and transhumanism in our lives. These are structural dependencies. How many of us could give up our cars or our digital devices? How many of us can remain in a 30 mi local area? These conditions of affluence prevent maneuver. This is both internal and external. These basics of modern life contribute to a feeling of affluence that is scary to consider doing without.
Progressive investments in this delocalized and transhuman life of machines has been unstoppable. It is set to undergo a deceleration as prosperity takes a haircut. Numbers I have seen show that a gradual decline of 40% is ahead over a decade. This is systematic but net energy decline is the most important aspect. This kind of gradual decline leads to sudden decline in localized situations. Unfortunately, such breakdowns can have little to do with how strong people or places are.
This is the nature of chaotic breakdown. Abandonment, dysfunction, and the irrational infect systems. It is best to plan and implement efforts at mitigation to the gradual decline that is easier to identify. The threat of the unknown of sudden collapses requires fortitude. Fortitude requires a physical defense of being strong. It is also important to have a spiritual strength that comes with finding meaning.
These are the primary starting points for preparation for the coming storm. Downsizing with dignity is a good strategy. Downsize now and beat the rush. Dignity comes with being honest with the science and thereby finding the truth. It also requires a wisdom of what knowledge and tech to keep and what to reject. In these times of a knowledge and tech prosperity hitting a brick wall of limits, this means making an effort at less most of the time.
What is “enough” of less. This is going to be an individual effort. Society will not get there until a crisis and once in crisis it is too late. The myth of progress is too strong for a society to voluntarily decline. It does not have a common and accepted spiritual theme for it. In the late stages of prosperity corruption is rampant so the rule of law, fairness, and proper principals of value are lost in the noise of affluence.
The reflection on having less and being less relevant is difficult. It goes against the grain. We are told to reach our potential. This is influenced by our peer group too making it that much harder to resist. In some ways it is so easy it is hard. Yet, for those who embrace this strategy of aligning with the times it will likely pay off.
I say likely because there are no refuges in a storm like what is ahead. There is just good judgment and hard work. Luck will play a part in this process. Yet, it would be unwise to trust in luck only. The best starting policy, if you do choose to believe this is a time of breakdown is a spiritual embrace of humility and acceptance. This will give you the courage to make tough physical choices needed for defense.
A significant amount of the population is not even capable of addressing this thought process. They are too young, old, uneducated, overeducated, and ideological. I would say this leaves 10% of the population that can be potential leaders or critical staff so to speak. Of this 10% only a portion will buy into the idea. This might be only around 2% at least in the begging of the process.
I am speaking to those ready for this journey. Have clear vision and see that prosperity is ending. No amount of tech will save this. In fact, this is the problem now. The law of diminishing returns is now being manifested. The more we embrace powerful tech and knowledge-based abilities the less value there is. In many ways there is negative value. Important strengths are being squandered in the name of progress.
The idea of enough is spiritual and physical. It is for a few who are honest and capable. For these it is a trait of leadership. These people will have the courage to lead their significant others to places of safety. These days enough is almost always less but there is an important caveat. Often times less requires more. Degrowth requires growth.
When complex systems breakdown it frees up opportunity for niches. We are mostly in the gradual part of this complex system breaking down so there is time to grow into degrowth. Time is running out and at this point, time is the most important variable. This means get started now because the ability to change will quickly decline.
There are places with no future. There are careers with no use in a world forced out of prosperity. There are people and communities that are dead ends. Honestly evaluate your situation. If you need to move then do it. If you can’t then hunker down. Having a good location to build up your fortress to decline is one of the top variables to safety just like in warfare.
A spirituality is needed that is generally lacking today. Religions are corrupted by affluence. The secular world is becoming a religion of lies. When science becomes a religion like it is today very dangerous outcomes occur. Artificial intelligence, automation, and efficiencies are a highway to hell.
Spiritually adapt your existing higher power. Many people are religious and that religion needs to be adapted to this coming storm. Religions are community-based spirituality. This means community will limit your spiritual efforts. Show quiet strength and people will follow when SHTF.
In your trap start your journey to strength and value. Be more stoic and practice ascetic living but relative and realistic to your people and place. Remember you are trapped so knowing your limitations is very important. Practice a wisdom of less. Be ready to triage out baggage. Be ready to salvage the good from the age of affluence. Merge this with the old ways when life was more simple and less affluent.
This is a hybridization. This hybridization is with science and the spiritual because it is the science in our life that has encroached on the spiritual by offering those values that can only be found spiritually. If you can scale properly in a life of enough which is almost always about having less then you can find a balance of science and spirit in your life.
These are crazy days and if you don’t see this then you are very much in denial. I am spending more time than I like explaining this ominous shift in life. I am doing this because of how quick and dramatic this change is. In just the last three years normality is no more. What I have been studying and planning for is now reality. The forces of chaos are now loose. Break out of denial and embrace acceptance. This chaos is what happens when a complex system breaks down.
I have been on a journey of discovery for 20 years now. 20 years ago, I saw how the foundation of civilization did not make sense scientifically. I started a journey exploring the absurdities of a life with no future that I was living in. I was honest about the science and questioned the myth of progress. It didn’t add up.
This journey has been both spiritual and scientific. I am an academic doomer so in this aspect of my REAL Green I am a scientist. This is also spiritual journey because it is about life and meaning. This is where I admire shamanism. Combine the two poles of human duality. Science and the spiritual if properly combined allows for a powerful life system to navigate this systematic breakdown.
Things didn’t make sense 20 years ago but there was hope. I don’t have hope anymore in the sense of there being a macro solution. These are times when reality is breaking down the wall of denial. There is no refuge from what is ahead. Instead, I focus on a life boat and hospice mentality. This is grounded in the humility of acceptance.
I have been doing what I call green prepping now for 10 years of my 20-year journey of discovery. This is basically embracing permaculture farming scientifically and spiritually. The first 10 years were a researching of the why and how. I educated myself on homesteading and living a permaculture life. The last 10 years has been the application of what I learned.
The permaculture I am living is mainly an attempt to simplify to a rural agricultural life to better fit the reality of net energy decline. We are a late-stage civilization where affluence has hit a brick wall this requires different strategies. Yet, this is a modern global society I am required to live in so what must be done is a hybridization. This hybridization is physically and spiritually which makes it more complex. You just don’ buy this way of life it must also be spiritually embraced.
I am struggling to remain middle class and be a permacultures farmer attempting green prepping. I want my labor and imputes to produce value but they also have to show a small profit. I am trying to be good to the land and animals in a green spirituality. I am doing this relatively and realistically because I have family and friends to consider many of whom are very much part of the myth of progress in this age of affluence.
My green prepping produces lots of indirect value but little profit to live on. The value produced is a strategy to adapt to decline and decay with the goal of relative resilience and sustainability. This effort is a mixed bag of results because society is built upon a foundation that seeks more affluence. I have been in the purgatory between these worlds for much of these 20 years of discovery.
I preach embracing less because this is the force now in control but civilization is doing the opposite. I am using this decaying affluence to leave it. I accept the reasons civilization continues in denial and have humility because everyone is trapped in its consequences including myself. It is those who embrace the reality of this complex system breaking down who have the best chance to navigate its consequences.
A compression of affordability is now upon the world. Essentials are increasing in price at the same time economic conditions are contracting. This twin force of decline means mitigation is the only solution. This is systematic and not cyclical meaning there will be no return to peak affluence. 2019 was the peak and its downhill from here on out. This is a gradual process but increasingly it will be sudden slaps in the face as thresholds of stability are breached.
That was a macro view. The micro view is one of difficult choices. Catch 22 of choices is the best term for it. Significant sacrifices are at hand. I am living on investments to pay for my middle-class life. My farm roughly pays for itself but does not pay my labor. Do you see the conflict here? The proper future for the average man is small farming yet this is not affordable. The solution is hybridization.
You can’t very well be a middle-class farmer and properly sustainable and resilient. The baggage of affluence is too heavy a load. Farming properly does not support middle class lifestyles. The proper way of living considering systematic breakdown is moving towards the turn of the 20th century in the rural areas. There was no electricity in rural areas and horses dominated the farm. The cities had electricity and there were trains but rural people did most of their work the traditional way pre-industrial revolution. The benefits of the cities trickling down with useful products.
I am trapped in carbon and path dependencies. I am trapped in an economy and social system. I have no option but to use fossil fuels and electricity. I rely on consumerism, financialization, and the car culture. I can’t very well leave this completely but I can reduce it. Real Green is about being relative and realistic in the attempt to be less trapped. I am still trapped so this is the reason for an equally important spirituality of humility and acceptance.
I am prepped better than most people. I am even better prepped than many of the rich who have lots of money to get sophisticated with their efforts. What I have found is the more money you have the more baggage dragging you down. You need enough money. Enough is about balance and balance is about scale. What I mean by enough is an art of living. These days enough is almost always less than we are currently living.
A conclusion on being prepped is sadly you need to be middle class to afford the investments to build a permaculture homestead. Yet, a permaculture homestead will not support your middle-class life. This homestead project I am living is a must for resilience and sustainability. To make faming profitable you have to go big but then you are just back to where you started with being unprepped and not green. This is where a hybridization is required.
My definition of green is being connected to nature which only a rural life can attain. Urban areas are poisonous to life. Modern affluence is a waste stream of consequences with no future. Technology is destroying humans and there is no wisdom to stop it. Urban areas are attempting more of this by growing. They are doubling down on centralization and technology and thereby digging the hole deeper. What is worse is the globalist are pushing more of this from the top.
This is a time of crisis so you are already late to the game. I started 10 years ago with a clear vision. It takes several years to properly prepare. You can get started on the basics immediately. Stop digging your hole deeper is the most important step and much of this is just getting out of denial.
Prepping is a straight forward program although my way of prepping is not the popular way. Mine is about sustainability and resilience in a crisis situation. A Mad Max fortification mentality is not going to save you for long and can be an impediment to community. Security is necessary but community is the most important. Migrate physically and mentally to strong communities. The smaller the better.
Stocking up on essentials is a basic of prepping but this also means managing an inventory which is not easy. You can buy stuff and store it but it degrades with time. The equipment you buy wears out. Your knowledge degrades too. I still think a basic prep plan is essential but I will caution those who want to do more. It is a tough and expensive with time and money.
The green part is spiritual. This spirtuality is about finding meaning in less. Simplification must be done if you are going to negotiate this breakdown of a complex system. Simplification means a lowering of affluence. Getting closer spiritually to the land, the seasons, and localism is essential. This green angle is essential to combining the spiritual with the scientific.
If these two human poles are to be properly balanced, scaling is required. This scale is smaller, simpler, and rural. Get out of urban areas now while you can. Orbiting an urban area is a solution because that is where the resources are but further away is better. Two hour drive from a major urban area is a good start.
Offloading baggage that society loads on your back is very difficult. You will find the baggage you load on yourself is just as problematic. Comforts are hard to do without because they are part of human nature. Your social settings where you live and interact likewise makes this change difficult. Family dynamics tend to focus on more affluence because most people have not been awakened to the paradigm of decline the entire planet is in on every level.
This is where the spiritual part comes into play. If you can discover meaning with a life of less, then you can maintain morale in a time of crisis. Getting your family and immediate community on board means demonstrating this meaning in your daily life. Be able to explain your actions but be careful and don’t sound too radical. Green prepping is a radical departure from growth to decline but you will find your significant others can only handle so much. Remember this is about enough and enough is an art.
Our myths don’t work anymore because a systematic shift has occurred. This is why everywhere the irrational is popping up. This is leading to abandonment and dysfunction. These are the classic signs of the breakdown of a complex system with chaos.
An interesting aspect to a complex system breaking down in succession is the opportunities for niche growth. Yet, this is another difficult path because of the corruption of status-quo growth. A significant amount of Growth these days is really just malinvestment is lifestyles and things with no future. Worse decline is the reality of this growth. These niches of growth have to focus on how you can use existing complexity to find microclimes of security that involve less but still enough.
Your efforts at growth must be made to leave growth. This means very targeted investments in a rapidly declining ability to grow. A powerful wisdom must be applied to guide this effort or it just becomes more corrupted growth. You will need consumerism, car culture, and money but this will be used to leave it.
It is here where raw spirituality is essential. I am not speaking of reinventing your spirituality but instead modifying it. Modify it back to earlier times when life was simpler with less affluence. I talk about green mainly because so many urbanites will have to return to the land from the urban wastelands. These wastelands includes the delocalized world of the car and digital culture that affect the rural areas too.
Raw spirituality is the place where the most opportunity for growth is possible. In a complex system in decline, meaning is of the highest value. Meaning, which comes with the awakening to decline and collapse is essential. This is also another weight to carry on your already mentally burdened shoulders. You will have to live within the failed myths that drive civilization onward. Your awakening will be cloaked in the surreal but if properly fortified with humility and acceptance you can maintain your burden.
Ride the wave of irrational and destructive change. Live in the here and now by getting out of the myth of progress that is rooted in a future of more not less. This myth is really just an absurd life of perpetually goal seeking. Negotiate meaning in paradoxes, incongruous juxtapositions, and surreal flashbacks by connecting with the paradigm of decline.
Here I am 20 years later. How time flies. I feel like I have come a long way but really, I have not got very far. This realization is because life is a journey. The destination is death. If you live for destinations, you will not live much. It is the journey to meaning which is the real reward and that can only be in the here and now.
I have been a prophet of doom for years now. I am not a typical doomer. I am intellectual doomer. There is a big difference because emotions need to be properly siloed when dealing with doom. Yet, this does not mean ignoring the emotions of fear and concern. I look around and see evidence everywhere that a new world is close at hand. I am experiencing fear too.
The reality of doom is a process with sudden and gradual manifestations. Set aside your emotions and start quantifying risk. Educate yourself on what risks are gradual and where sudden change can happen. Combine the threat assessments and have a plan for negotiating what will be a challenging undertaking.
The gradual is currently manifested in a process of overshoot on our physical realities with resources and environment. The earth has been changing quickly and this is resulting in dramatic changes. Much of the best resources have been consumed in this process. What is left is of lower value at a time when civilization is requiring more value to maintain complexity.
The myth of progress has entered the zone of diminishing returns whereby technology and efficiency are creating problems instead of solving them. Competition between nations cements the process of tipping over into a destructive phase.
This myth is extremely dangerous and embedded in almost everything we do. Very few people would agree to turn back our affluent world. This means giving up comforts and life saving products and services. It is that simple but complicated by our desire for affluence.
This process of progressivism will instead be forced into systematic changes that are beyond control. These are self-organizing and self-adaptive in nature meaning even if we had a collective awakening it is now too late to avoid consequences. We are not educated on living with less. We are not emotionally ready to be poorer and experience hardship.
This denial and inability to accept these destructive gradual changes is where a look at sudden change is warranted. When this planetary system is looked at as a whole then system thresholds can be determined. There are multiple thresholds being bumped up against and some already broken through. It is the breakthroughs where sudden change will be manifested.
Many are negatively converging causing a reinforcing process. The forces of chaos are found in these places. It is important to realize chaos is not completely random but instead follows patterns but unlike growth changes are often sudden and cascading. This means that proper action needs to be recognized when addressing the breakdown of a complex system. The forces of chaos are a guide to actions.
The forces of chaos that need to be watched in the macro view are abandonment, dysfunction, and irrational. These are physical and metaphysical forces that are intertwined. In an ascending level of abstraction processes within a complete planetary process are operating.
The subset of processes operates at different time frames. The intersections are markers of things to come. It very difficult to determine where sudden failure will occur. If we take the easier to pinpoint gradual forces and predict intersections then threat assessment can be implemented.
Being able to shed complexity is vital. The previous paradigm is to apply complexity. This is a new age of decline so this path dependency of applying more complexity is now out of date. Shedding complexity involves predictive triage.
Start now ridding yourself of baggage. Be ready to utilize salvage to combine existing value of complexity with older ways of living. We are not ready for the older ways of living but we can start the process of returning to them with a hybridization. Returning to localism and biomass is what is needed. These are the older ways in our history books. Apply existing value to this tougher way of living.
This hybridization will assist the stair steep down nature of gradual decline. Sudden decline is more difficult to adapt to but if you have steps in place for gradual decline, then these will help mitigate what can’t be prepared for with sudden change.
It is important to see the gradual breakdown of a complex system speeds up when it nears thresholds of bifurcation. Bifurcations is a fancy word for rapid change resulting in a new physical regime. This is a breaking and a dip to a new stasis.
Stability will return eventually so plan for a new level of living now. Beat the stampede get there proactively. We are likely not going very far down initially so go to that point now. Yet, realize the true nature of the unwinding process in human time frames means this dropping process will be for now on. There is no turning back.
Stability is breaking all along a front of complexity. This time frame compression means the gradual buildups which are easier to quantify are pointing to sudden changes ahead. At lower levels sudden changes are happening already. The greater levels have yet to break. This is why we are still in a frog boil unaware of the impending changes.
This is a tipping over humans have not experienced in our species history. This does not mean humans have not seen earlier bottlenecks but not like this. I say this because the special aspect of the current bottleneck is the global nature of change. Important to this global nature is our technology and knowledge levels that allowed globalism. Globalism with its transhuman and delocalized nature mean our huge population can’t gradually undo what has been grown into. Our civilization was built linearly not circular.
Path dependencies and carbon traps are everywhere. We are now brittle to change and determined to attempt more of the same. This means society will continue to solve problems with tools at hand but those tools are now the problem. This is when you know a break is approaching. It is when paradoxes appear. When incongruous juxtapositions are all around. This is the surreal world of non-linear change.
It could be different but it is not. We unconsciously chose expansion over the wisdom of living within limitations. It seems that our species is not different from other species in this regard despite our intellectual abilities. In fact, it points to the limitations of intellectual abilities we hold in such high esteem. It is these abilities that are now crushing our world because these abilities can’t be controlled.
A collective inability to embrace a maladaptive condition of a “denial of death” must be recognized to be awakened. This denial for civilization is more the denial of failure. Very few civilizations can embrace failure. This is why none survive.
Some previous ones lived with a cyclical view of change. The Maya is an example but few others embraced the cyclic of change. It appears the Maya chose to degrowth because it was central to their spirituality and science. They were scaled and balanced.
We are now a global civilization breaking down with nowhere to go. Yet, this is only part of the story because we must look at our global civilization as an ecosystem. Ecosystems behave in succession. In the succession of complexity to less complexity there are places where breakdown frees up new places of growth. The rigidity of stable states of a climax system that break down open up opportunities for new species to grow in niches. These are micro-climes of growth.
With this in mind you the individual if you accept this greater process and embrace the new reality, can find places of relative growth if available. Many have no hope for this adaptation because they do not have what it takes. It takes time, money, and education and time is now running out.
I have explained these conditions over the last few years of postings. The outline is simple but the simplicity of it is where the difficulty is. A process of collapse means collapsing in place. Paradoxically, at this time in history collapsing allows growth.
If you do embrace this collapse process then you will do it with humility and acceptance. This spiritual act will allow you to embrace growth when it is allowed and properly presented. Keep in mind very little growth will happen but what does occur will be of very high value.
This will mostly be about an unwind of complexity. This means less affluence and comforts. Deeper yet it may mean hardship and death because loosing discretionary products and services is one thing but loosing necessities means dramatic changes.
Nobody will escape this. It will happen. It is those who live in humility and acceptance who have the chance to survive the changes better. Yes, even the most prepared and adapted will face consequences. The key difference is wisdom. Wisdom can only properly occur with scale and balance. This is why civilization will not provide proper wisdom. It is out of scale and without balance.
Now is the time for the individual to embrace proper scale and balance. This is the wisdom of localism and degrowth with personal applications. The wisdom that is required today is one that is relative and realistic to the traps and dependencies of the greater civilization that determine our lives. Since there is no where to hide like previous times when migration could occur, now it is about choosing better within the cauldron of change.
There are relative migration possibilities within this complexity breakdown. One such action is leaving locations that can’t be supported where complexity is high. Leave activities with no future in a world in decline. You can position yourself differently. You can avoid worse by proper living in better places. Change irrational lifestyles for what is occurring.
Not everyone can do this and even those who can, the degree of positioning is limited. It is here the next step is embraced. This is the spiritual. It is a spiritual positioning that will strengthen your being for the drop to a new level of stability. The entire planetary system including the human ecosystem are now facing this. Spiritually fortify yourself. This paradoxically is the one area of solid growth. “Meaning” itself is what maters now.
Your spirituality is unique so I am not going to advise you on that. Yet, I will advise you to apply a balanced wisdom to your spirituality. Today there are ideologies that are being turned into a spirituality. This is unsound and should be avoided at all cost.
The most unsound is Scientism. Science is the opposite pole to spirituality. One engages in reductionism and the other in embracing oneness. It is this usurping of spiritual elements by science that will cause cascading failures. The cult of Scientism that is pursuing the myth of progress of ever greater intelligence and physical performance is actually a spiritual blackhole of self-consciousness individualism can descend into. This descent is a collective dysfunction and appearing as irrational policy.
Blasphemy of the spirit is the greatest sin of self-consciousness. Try not to look at this sin religiously but instead systematically. If we as a people elevate our science to God like status then consequences will be the result from the resulting irrational polices. This is where a Petri dish of consequences results. Science and spirit are on opposite poles of our duality. Respect for this is lost collectively but you the individual can find a proper balance.
In conclusion, you the individual can properly scale and a balance can be found. This is the science of seeing decline with the spiritual of acceptance. This is what my REAL Green seeks. This is green prepping. What is green is more prepped. This is not the techno green of our social justice warriors but instead the green of biomass and localism embracing simplicity relatively and realistically based upon your traps and dependencies.
This will allow a wisdom of insecurity. This wisdom of insecurity allows proper action relatively and realistically. When considering the breakdown of a planetary system into a new state a different disposition is required. This gradual and sudden process of decline and failure can only be negotiated. It cannot be stopped with more of what got us here.
The rapid breakdown of globalization and financialization is upon us. Yet, the real economy, the one of food, energy, and shelter can decline gradually. The degree of decline of the real economy is contingent on the decline of the financial one.
This is currently very important because of all the areas of human agency against the decline of prosperity it is here where proper management can make a difference. This means rejecting the myth of progress that is firmly in place with global leadership.
This decline is involuntary but it is negotiable but it requires admission by the ruling elites of failure. This admission is sustainable growth is over. This includes the green version trumpeted by the progressive left. What is ahead is a much smaller economy. The process of gradual decline is manageable. The threat is doubling down on the status quo of sustainable growth.
This asymmetric process of the financial economy growing irrationally with the real economy contracting will play out for a time. This is the nature of elite governance. The elites will continue to socialize decline and privatize their gains. The system is now geared toward this incongruity with elite capture of all major institutions. Moral hazard is off the charts.
This means you the individual will have to adapt without help from the government. In fact the government is now your adversary in the process of rational mitigation of your personal decline.
I have been discussing this coming decline on this blog for 3 years. The buildup is over we are in the neighborhood of tipping. The key action is strategically get smaller and more simple. I say strategically because tactically this may mean growing. As a complex system breaks down it frees up niches of growth.
There will be places to grow. There still is an enormous amount of resources to support tactical growth within a macro decline process but this requires proper orientation. It requires acceptance and courage.
I am not going to go into these strategic and tactical steps because many of my previous posts have covered what can be done. Keep in mind many of you are urban. My message I focused on rural living that is green prepping. This means embracing biomass and localism. My message applies only marginally to the bulk of the population that is urban.
My message to urbanites is get out of cities or at least move to an orbit. Cities will not be sustainable but instead will double down on growth and centralization. This is a huge mistake but one that is preprogrammed. Yet, cities are where concentrated goods and services are that you will need to draw on.
I am referencing two great article from “The Surplus Energy Economy” I challenge you to read the latest posts because it intelligently explains what is now happening in the world economy. The current banking inflation crisis is explained by this discussion.
This site has very accurately framed the financial decline process. It also shows what is happening to the real economy and what is the real issues within both. It is all about energy value decline and the breakdown of the myth of progress.
The following is a discussion of notes I took from part 3 and part 5.
“prosperity. The conclusions set out here are that, whilst aggregate prosperity has gone into decline, the real costs of energy-intensive necessities will continue to increase. This creates leveraged downside in the scope for both capital investment and the affordability of discretionary (non-essential) products and services.”
Here the asymmetry is negative. Costs of essentials will rise as discretionary and investments follow gradually lower in size. Keep in mind many discretionaries are responsible for affordability of essentials. Declining economies of scale and decreasing velocity of money will further lower essentials affordability. It will not always be the case that prices become unaffordable but also there will be the case of lower availability and smaller portions. Leveraged here means the process is reinforcing.
“This idea – that innovation in the immaterial field of monetary policy can restore expansion to the delivery of material prosperity – has been tried, and has failed spectacularly, over a quarter of a century of futile financial gimmickry.”
Financial gimmicky is a manifestation of centralization and its wealth transfer to the powerful. It is an effort to maintain the prosperity of the few. It is a socialization of the downside and privatization of gains. It is essentially an indicator of late-stage social developments where the elites divorce from the real economy into a Ponzi Scheme that is essentially a private casino.
“Another claim is that technology can provide us with abundant, low-cost energy from renewables. As we saw in part two, this argument isn’t credible, because it overlooks the reality that the potential of technology is bounded by the laws of physics. Renewables cannot replicate the characteristics – including the density, portability and flexibility – of fossil fuels.”
This leaves us with the third, least palatable conclusion, which is that prosperity is deteriorating because we have no complete replacement for the fading dynamic of fossil fuels.”
It is important to realize the real economy and the financial one. The real economy is essentially energy driven. It is important to understand energy value is in decline and technology will not change this. It can slow the decline but not stem it. The real economies decline means the financial economy will become even more unstable and irrational.
“The outlook for prosperity itself is stark. Until recently, the global economy has carried on expanding, but at a decelerating rate. Now, prior growth in prosperity has gone into reverse. At the same time, the costs of energy-intensive necessities are increasing, not just as absolutes, but as a proportion of available resources. The resulting affordability compression undermines the scope both for discretionary consumption and for capital investment.”
Globalism and financialization are in terminal decline. This decline is rapid whereas the real economy’s decline is gradual. There is still lots of stuff and lots of skilled people. Systems are still in place but increasingly the real economy will suffer from abandonment, dysfunction, and irrational policy.
The rapid decline of globalism and financialization is uncontrollable because it is not sustainable and in many cases not real, the real economy’s decline can be managed or better mitigated. The important point that must be embraced this decline of our real economy can be managed but not without failure.
“value destruction’ has become unavoidable. This points towards disorderly degradation within the interconnected liabilities which are the ‘money as claim’ basis of the financial system.”
Two kinds of value destruction are now in play. One is gradual and one sudden. Those aspects of globalism and financialization that create excessive wealth from the leverage of interconnected activity will see a sudden drop in value. Globalism where parts are shipped over distances and assembled with dispersed origins will see significant failure.
Financialization that relies on free-flowing liquidity will decline rapidly as confidence falters. Liquidity at these scales is essentially confidence. Negative confidence will sever the link of financialization from the real economy.
“The basics, at the aggregate level and in per capita terms, are summarized in Fig. 8. Between 2021 and 2040, both energy consumption and underlying output (C-GDP) are projected to decline by -8%. With ECoE likely to rise from 9.4% in 2021 to over 17% by 2040, the fall in aggregate prosperity is leveraged from -8% to -16%. Further (though decelerating) increases in global population numbers indicate that prosperity per capita is likely to be 27% lower in 2040 than it was in 2021.”
These numbers are dramatic but deceptively because most people can imagine living with less. We can all imagine an 8% drop in our standard of living. This kind of drop would be tough but we would just have less discretionaries like leisure and comforts. There would be more work as we find second jobs.
In the real economy of things this is not the end of the world. In the world of globalism and financialization it is the end. In fact, sustained declines of very small amounts spell the end of globalism and financialization. It is this reality that needs to sink in to you the individual. The world as we know it will change rapidly in a forced decentralization that is the unwind of globalism and financialization.
“secular stagnation”, meaning a non-cyclical deterioration in the rate of economic expansion.”
“Between 2007 and pre-pandemic 2019, real GDP expanded by 48%, but debt increased by 81%. Each dollar of reported growth now required the creation of more than $3 of net new debt. Fully 64% of all the “growth” recorded between 2007 and 2019 was cosmetic.”
“We can best describe the period since the second half of the 1990s as a quarter-century “precursor zone” to the involuntary economic de-growth that has now arrived.”
“During this long period, economic output and prosperity have followed a process of deceleration, stagnation and contraction. In denying this, and trying to fix a material problem with financial tools, we have created an asset bubble”
It is important to realize this will not be like the great depression. This decline will not be followed by a rebound. This will be a drop to a new level of stability that systems go through when stable thresholds are breached. In the case of human civilizations this means a new order. The old order will be no more. Since we have the real economy that is in gradual decline this process has the potential to have value inertia. It is in our hands how dramatic and swift this decline will be when globalism and financialization end.
“comparative complexity. The high levels of complexity in the Advanced Economies result in upkeep expenses which increase these economies’ sensitivities to rising ECoEs.”
“Based on SEEDS analysis, aggregate global prosperity is likely to have peaked last year, at $88tn and will, by 2030, have fallen by a seemingly-modest 3%, though even this will equate to a 10% decrease in per capita terms. By 2040, aggregate prosperity is expected to have fallen by 16%, and its per capita equivalent by 27%, from their 2022 levels.”
Comparative complexity in globalism is really transnational. Upkeep expenses are more related to supply chains then national economies. That said once globalism breaks down it will be the comparative complexity of the nation state that will take on increasing importance. Real components to those economies like food, energy, water, and infrastructure will matter much more as supply chains shrink. Where you live is going to matter much more soon.
“What we are watching is a two-stage process in which, just as top-line prosperity is falling, the real costs of energy-intensive necessities are rising. This creates a process of affordability compression which has far-reaching implications.”
“In essence, affordability compression doesn’t only mean that consumers are going to have to adjust to a decreasing ability to make non-essential purchases. It also means that households will find it an ever-greater struggle to ‘keep up the payments’ on everything from secured and unsecured credit to staged-payment purchases and subscriptions.”
This affordability compression will be a two track one. Anything that is not of real value will deteriorate rapidly. Unsustainable activities and value that is not based on the real economy of physical value will quickly be destroyed. This destruction will take real value with it because this is what abandonment, dysfunction, and irrational responses do. This value destruction is essentially systematic on one hand and physical on the other. How you position for this is critical.
This is why REAL Green focuses on green prepping. What is green is more prepped. This means embrace biomass, physical labor, and localism. Prepping means using the system to leave it. Lots of resources will be available. Many will be stranded but through triage and salvage can be repurposed. Most importantly if you can relocate out of the most vulnerable places. Stop believing in the myth of progress.
“On the one hand, the economy itself is subject to trends which, whilst adverse, are essentially gradual. On the other, the financial system has been managed (meaning mis-managed) in ways which seem to eliminate any possibility of managed decline.”
“two, seemingly-contradictory conditions, and then turn to what some of the implications of this asymmetry might be.”
In this next segment Surplus Energy blog gets more specific. Gradual and sudden decline is looked at to see what is ahead.
“This favorable outcome is, in fact, extremely implausible, for two main reasons. First, scale expansion of the magnitude required would demand vast quantities of concrete, steel, copper, lithium, cobalt and many other inputs which, even where they do exist in the requisite quantities, could only be accessed and put to use using correspondingly vast amounts of energy. Since this could only come from fossil fuels, there is an ‘umbilical link’ between the ECoEs of renewables and those of fossil fuels.”
“The second obstacle is even more fundamental. It is that renewable energy is less dense than fossil fuels. The economy operates by using energy to convert raw materials into products, a process whose thermal counterpart is the conversion of energy from dense into diffuse forms, the latter being waste heat. The lesser density of renewables lies at the heart of the practical obstacles to transition – these obstacles include conversion efficiency limitations, intermittency, and the problem of storage.”
“These considerations mean that, whilst a sustainable economy might be possible, it would be smaller than the economy that we have now. Simply stated, “sustainability” is feasible, but “sustainable growth” is a pipe-dream.”
One of the most dramatic dismissals of the myth of progress that the globalist and their progressive allies fail at is the projections of the scaling up of renewables. While renewables are vital to the coming energy value decline, they will not support growth. They will only dampen decline and this will only be the case if they are properly embraced and applied. This is not the case currently.
They are being embraced as an energy transition paradigm by the techno-green left. They are being applied wrong in a centralized effort to replace a higher density energy paradigm. Renewables should be applied in a decentralized effort that takes into account their deficiencies.
Intermittency and lack of long-term storage are prime factors to adapt to. The other issue is fossil fuels will have to be maintained relatively at current levels as decline lowers their availability and energy value. In coordination with fossil fuels renewable applications can make up for value loss. This means zero carbon policy is a dangerous and one that could cause a dirty cascading decline that will be worse than living with fossil fuels that are already in decline.
“material leverage. Essentially, the economic resources made available by the use of energy are deployed in three ways. The first of these is the provision of essentials. The second and third, which are the residuals in this equation, are investment in new and replacement productive capacity, and the provision of discretionary (non-essential) products and services to consumers.”
“the economy has already entered a contractionary process, and it’s important to emphasize that visible trends in the material economy, whilst adverse, and even daunting, are essentially gradual.”
“ECoEs haven’t jumped from 2% to 10% overnight, but over four decades. Energy supply itself is likely to be driven downwards by deteriorating economics”
“the overall decrease in energy availability can be mitigated, though not reversed, by increases in supply from other sources, including wind, solar, nuclear and hydroelectric power.”
“There are two problems, though, with any possibility of gradual or managed economic decline. One of these is the financial system, and the other is a collective and absolute refusal to accept and plan for any possibility other than the mythical (and utterly illogical) prospect of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet”
Here we see the importance of proper policy and the danger of the myth of progress that is really a secular religion complete with priests and scribes. This science-based spirituality means honest objective science is no longer followed if it is contrary to the narrative of progress.
This has resulted in a tendency towards fascism with the centralization of corporate and statist stakeholder governance. Marxist power projection policies of lying, cheating and stealing for an “ends justify the means” approach.
While we can mitigate this decline with decentralized approaches and proper policies this will not be the case with the current global leadership in the west and China. Here we see a move towards centralization, technocracy, and human control. This will result in increased malinvestment at a time of rapidly declining resources both physical and abstract.
“A case can be made that, under the shot and shell of the GFC, the authorities were justified in using QE, ZIRP and NIRP to steady the ship. These, though, did not turn out to be the “temporary” expedients claimed at the time of their introduction. Even conventional economics would have counselled that negative real rates, reckless credit expansion and the creation of a gigantic “everything bubble” in asset prices could only end badly.”
“We can, in the meantime, attach high levels of probability to two processes. One of these is contraction in discretionary sectors, and the other is cascading defaults, commencing at the outer perimeters of the financial system and then travelling inwards towards the regulated banking sector.”
“ we face an inflationary rather than – or rather, as well as – a hard default resolution to over-inflated capital markets and ludicrously unsupportable levels of liabilities.”
This concludes his analysis and amazingly just ahead of the banking sector implosion we are seeing in the news. What we are seeing in real time is the defaults traveling inwards. The results will be inflationary with higher prices but also deflationary with less available resources which to the individual is similar to what inflation does. Things will cost more with less available.
REAL Green Adaptation 