What now?

and then what next?

I’ve written for 8 years about means to immediately (starting on any day, then or now) reduce emissions and fossil fuel use, how to follow a track from modern life to survivable life, how to spend a decade getting from modern life to a life which can be operated with extremely limited amounts of concentrated energy, either electric or flammable.

I guess I knew that it wasn’t going to happen, although I confess I did have a hope that it would become part of the public conversation. Either way, it didn’t happen.

Today, we live in a world where, at best, liquid fuel availability is going to drop by at least 20%, and in all likelihood it’s going to stay there for a long time, possibly forever. Yes, the Strait of Hormuz might reopen, although it might not, but refineries and ports have been destroyed, and if the war ended tomorrow they couldn’t be fully replaced within a decade. There has been a drastic reduction in petroleum availability and it’s not going away for a long time, if ever.

Many writers are gleefully predicting that this will lead to the long-promised Renewable™ Energy Transition™. These writers appear to be unaware that mining, smelting, manufacturing, shipping, site preparation, and erection are all powered by fossil fuels. A culture which loses 20% of its fossil energy overnight is going to dedicate the energy which remains to perform immediately necessary tasks like farming, shipping, and manufacturing daily needs. Like it or not, wind turbines and solar panels are unlikely to make the cut.

I have specifically advocated slowing surface speeds to reduce fuel use.

Public response has been overwhelmingly negative. The most common form of negative response has been the simple, self - fulfilling prophecy, “Nobody will do that.” The second common response has been denial that slowing would significantly reduce fuel burning, but in scientific terms this is exactly the same as denying global warming. There are none so blind as those who will not see, and there’s no fix for them.

Right now there is no reason to discuss my suggested options for ameliorating ecosystem degradation. There is only one new action happening in the world, and that is tomorrow’s steps in the war.

If His Madnesty blows up a few of Iran’s power plants, and they respond by blowing up several desert kingdoms’ water desalinization plants, there is going to be a mass death event that will make the Black Plague look like today’s measles epidemics. Measles epidemics suck, but - those deserts will not support any more humans today than they would in 1800. Probably fewer. All the difference comes out of concentrated energy via desalinization plants. And Arizona, another fucking desert.

If that happens, the global high energy socio-economic system will respond negatively. The very best this could be is analogous to the engine dying at 70 mph. A median outcome might be like blowing out a tire at 70. A not totally unimaginable outcome would be closer to running into a bridge abutment at 70. What we’re not going to do is continue to cruise along at 70 arguing about the cliff up there somewhere.

If you want to know what will happen next, there are hundreds of writers on Substack who can tell you. Personally I don’t have a clue. I see a massive slowing of everything as inevitable. Speed is kinetic energy. If a mass moves, energy moves it. The faster it moves the more energy it takes.

We’ve gotten so used to talking of things in abstract terms that we tend to think that the way things are is the way they have to be. All the cars, all the noise, all the dirt, all the stuff in all the stores, all the goods and services competing for our attention and our money, that’s just the way things are. We ignore the energy. We are oblivious to the universal energy flow underlying our entire global economy and social system, what one might call our civilization. A vast flow of kinetic energy pours without ceasing across Earth, and without it none of things we take for granted would happen or appear.

An inconceivable amount of mass is moving around Earth’s land surface, water surface, low atmosphere, and close orbital space. All of that motion, all of that kinetic energy, was released from petroleum molecules by burning. That which we call civilization burns over 100 million barrels of petroleum a day. Over half of that, some fifty-five million barrels a day, goes to industry, including industrial agriculture. Over half of what’s left goes to transportation. The biggest single portion of that is ocean vessels which burn the heaviest diesel oil in the word, and that’s with over 100,000 jets taking flight every day.

There’s no place in that system where you can take out one of every five gallons and not notice it. If we lose half of it we’ll be in deep shit.

The current economy is what it is as a result of unimaginable amounts of energy being unbound from molecules and released into the wild, into the ecosystem, into Earth, Water, and Air. Added to that, and exceeding it, excess solar energy gets caught by all the extra carbon we’ve put into the air. It’s massively not working. Everybody’s crazy.

Writers measure the energy that atmospheric carbon has captured from the Sun in terms of atomic bombs. So many Hiroshimas.

By the tens of thousands.

The ancients were absolutely right: the real elements are Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

Too much Fire for the Earth, Air, and Water. She’s tired of us. She’s made us put a crazy man in charge. She’s got a plan.

We don’t. I’m not sure what hers is, but I think it could be summarized as: less Fire.

This may sound crazy, and it’s partly imaginary, I guess, but only partly. I think that Earth is alive. I know absolutely for certain that each and every living human on Earth is part of her. We start out invisible. All the part of a human that you can see was built out of other plants and animals, and several levels before that the animals built themselves of plants, and all the plants undeniably built themselves of Earth. Plants create themselves out of water and air, of carbon, nitrogen, rocks and metals, using only the power of the sun. We eat them. If we had any sense, we would return the leftovers to Earth in balanced applications. We would return the portion of what she gave us that we did not need. However we try to avoid it, when we die we go back to her. Even if we squirt our bodies full of poison, sooner or later we return from whence we came. Our bones, being metal, last the longest.

We’re three quarters water. By dry weight we’re half carbon. Calcium is a metal, what reductive science calls an element. We’re busily building robots while we’re already walking on metal legs. We just don’t have the sense to respect them. Instead we roll blindly over the surface of Earth who made us, blind to her beauty, oblivious to her suffering.

Actions which have already been taken have removed one out of every five gallons of diesel fuel, and probably more, from the global energy supply. I’m not going into details here, but oil isn’t exactly fungible. This barrel and that barrel aren’t the same stuff, and you can’t make the same stuff from them. Global industry, specifically including industrial agriculture, runs on diesel fuel. Not gasoline.

I don’t know what comes next. My only suggestions at this time would be things like, buy a hoe, maybe a shovel. A big knife, corn knife or machete. Be handy to have a little knife too, one you can carry in your pocket. Buy a good pair of walking shoes, buy a two wheeled wheelbarrow or an old lady shopping cart so you don’t have to carry everything you need in your arms. It’s too late to go looking for donkeys, and anyway our government is busy killing them. It takes a long time to learn to train a steer to work. Really, as of now, I don’t have anything else to offer.

I’m just waiting to see what shakes out. I don’t know what it’ll look like. There are a lot of ugly possibilities out there, but they’re not guarantees. Mr. Rogers was right: Look for the helpers.

I’m an old man and rely on daily intakes of industrial medicine. I have no thyroid. There’s no guarantee I’ll survive this, although I’ve heard that pig thyroid contains all I’ll need. Either way, it’s been a good ride.

Best to y’all.

Jeff