Banff Transition

Boing Boing: “It turns out that the Swiss Army specifies that bridges, hillsides, and tunnels need to be designed so that they can be remotely destroyed in the event of societal collapse, pan-European war, or invasion. Meanwhile, underground parking garages (and some tunnels) are designed to be sealed off as airtight nuclear bunkers.”

Post-Carbon Institute: “As the world economy crashes against debt and resource limits, more and more countries are responding by attempting to salvage what are actually their most expendable features—corrupt, insolvent banks and bloated militaries—while leaving the majority of their people to languish in “austerity.” The result, predictably, is a global uprising. This current set of conditions and responses will lead, sooner or later, to social as well as economic upheaval—and a collapse of the support infrastructure on which billions depend for their very survival. …

“[I]t will increasingly be up to households and communities to provide the basics for themselves while reducing their dependence upon, and vulnerability to, centralized systems of financial and governmental power. This is a strategy that will require sustained effort and one that will in many cases be discouraged and even criminalized by national authorities.The decentralization of food, finance, education, and other basic societal support systems has been advocated for decades by theorists on the far left and far right of the political spectrum.”

Club Orlov: “[I]t behooves us… to begin a serious examination of the… cultural adjustments necessary… before unmanageable crises arise….”

Hubbert said, "The third curve (on the left) is simply the mathematical curve for exponential growth.  No physical quantity can follow this curve for more than a brief period of time.  However, a sum of money, being of a nonphysical nature and growing according to the rules of compound interest at a fixed interest rate, can follow that curve indefinitely…Our principle constraints are cultural… we have evolved a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that it is incapable of reckoning with problems of non-growth…."

ClubOrlov: “A lot of people just don’t have the right character to deal with collapse. They’ll be running around trying to fix things. That’s the opposite of what they should be doing.”

ClubOrlov: “As for the rest of us, who are itching to do something useful within the confines of existing legal framework and economic reality, there is just one path: the path of emergency preparation, with the added twist that the emergency in question has to be accepted as permanent. Community emergency preparation is about the only type of officially sanctioned activity that may allow us to prepare for collapse.

“The first and obvious part of preparing for the permanent emergency is to construct systems that will allow some, ideally most, of the population to survive in the long run without access to transportation fuels, or to any of the technology that comes to a standstill when starved of transportation fuels. The second, equally important part involves laying in sufficient emergency supplies of food, medicine, cooking fuel, temporary shelter for displaced persons, and so on, to allow some, ideally most, of the population to survive in the short run, while the transition non-fossil-fuel-based existence is taking place.”

Harper’s Magazine: “Nietzsche’s mature view is thus that community cannot exist without being gathered and preserved by a Gesamtkunstwerk. There cannot be genuine community without (in the broadest possible sense of the term) a ‘church.’ And community is important, for only if there exists a community to which we feel we are, in our own way, as we say, ‘making a contribution’ can we live meaningful, flourishing lives. As to the content of a communal religion–as to what would play the exemplary role played in Christianity by its saints and martyrs–he has no view. That content may vary widely depending on the cultural tradition of the community concerned. Nietzsche’s only stipulation is that the sacred figures in any healthy religion must be, like the Greek gods, glorifications of human potential rather than, like the Christian gods, anti-human ideals. The new religious festival will celebrate rather than condemn sexuality, will be a festival of life rather than death”

The Oil Drum: “Few questions of history have been more enduring than how today’s complex societies evolved from the foraging bands of our ancestors. While this might seem of academic interest, it has important implications for anticipating our future. Our understanding of sustainability depends to a surprising degree on our understanding of the human past. My purposes today are to show that the conventional understandings of cultural evolution are untenable, as are assumptions about sustainability that follow from them, and to present a different approach to assessing our future.”

Post Carbon Institute: “A good guess would be that 95+ percent of the people living to earth today do not understand that the oil age has started drawing to a close and that massive change stemming there from are already underway. …

“The second phase of our great transition will come a few years later when it has become obvious to all that the world’s oil supply has started to decline. When this day comes, the political debates should shift to a search for solutions to the reality of surviving without fossil fuels. Concerns about ‘burdensome’ taxes, social issues, creating good jobs, and setting the country to growing again will melt in the face of concerns about national survival and social stability.

“For now however, we are mired in a period when politicians debate and run for office seemingly without an appreciation of serious underlying issues such as resource depletion, overpopulation, and global warming. For now the political debate is shaped in terms of the short vs. long run benefits for the voters – with the short-run beating concerns for future generations hands down. Any action that is perceived to hurt the pocket books of one’s current constituents such as increasing the cost of energy or raising taxes is considered a non-starter.”

Global Guerrillas: “[The current sovereign debt crisis in Europe is] another battle in a war for dominance between ‘our’ integrated, impersonal global economic system and traditional nation-states. At issue is whether a nation-state serves the interests of the governed or it serves the interests of a global economic system. Who’s winning? The global economic system, of course.…

“When this war ends, and it won’t be long, the global economic and financial system will be the victor. Once that occurs, the nation-states of the West will join those of the global south as hollow states: mere shells of states that serve only to enforce the interests of the global economic system. These new states, more market-states than nation-states, will offer citizens a mere vestige of the public goods they offered historically. Incomes will fall to developing world levels (made easy to due highly portable productivity), and wealth will stratify. Regulatory protections will be weak. …”

Casaubon’s Book: “I bloody hate Earth Day. No offense to those of you who love it, and I know there are some awesome Earth Day programs out there, but by the time we get there, I’m spending my days hiding under the covers, because every freakin’ time I open my email inbox a wave of the most nauseating spew of greenwashing comes flowing out.

“Guess what? A major department store chain, nearly in bankruptcy, is now selling the eco-tote, made from organic sheepskin, embossed with ‘Think Global, Act Local’ to show your care for the earth and indifference to grammar. And not to trouble me, but just so you know, the manufacturers of a disgusting sugar laden soft-drink have a new organic one, in a special collectible earth-day bottle.…”