…a good post over at . . ….

As for loss of skills in case of a genuine mega-crisis, the first thing I think of is Pol Pot. During the Cambodian genocide, people were killed because they wore eyeglasses – because it implied that they might be readers. More than a few inhabitants of our own country have an overt hostility both to educated “experts” and to religious/ethnic minorities, and would need very little excuse to go on a rampage targeting many of the very people who hold valuable skills. A longer-term concern is that there is no list of skills that must be preserved – of course, it would be subject to enormous debate – and some knowledge that might be critical is rarely practiced and likely to be overlooked. For example, John Michael Greer (whose writing I admire so greatly that I’m thinking of joining AODA) once used lens grinding as an example of a narrowly applicable skill that might have lower priority. I would argue, though, that while we could preserve basic medicine and public health in the total absence of electricity, we could not do so without lens grinding. I suspect that within a few generations without microscopes, you would lose the germ theory – or at best, “germs” would be just another variety of invisible demons that cause illness and must be warded off by ritual behaviors like handwashing, boiling water, stoning neighboring witches, etc.

Generally the word connotes some kind of intelligently, rationally, equably structured social organization. Yes?

Sorry, I don’t see any.

Prior to the discovery of artificial nitrification, farming was in two camps. The first was the intensivist groups, primarily Europeans and slave owning southern farmers. The reason for this was that tilling the land with primitive composts was labor intensive. The other group was strictly American, and primarily consisted of those who were western bound. Exploitative techniques were predicated on the economic condition of land being cheap and abundant, while labor was expensive. This schism became moot as the discovery and exploitation of lightweight, cheap artificial fertilizers quickly became essential to staying competitive.

Artificial nitrification, and boosts from soluble chemical amendment – all products of chemical warfare research prior to WWI – allowed farmers to plant the same uniform products season after season. The net consequence was not only dramatic swings in soil chemistry, and minerals concentration, but dramatic erosion problems, waterway nitrification from erosion of unbound additives, and general decreases in the thickness of humic layers, along with general decreases in critical native soil biota.

The silver lining is that the knowledge about low input methods can sustain our productivity levels somewhere between these two extremes, while protecting and rehabilitating the productivity of previously sterilized soils. Hundreds of millions of people will make the slide into the category of chronically malnourished every year before this transition is fully underway, however. People still widely believe in silly things like religion, so it’s unlikely that technical knowledge about how to survive and prosper will propagate rapidly to where it is needed the most. It’s strictly the availability of cheap energy that has allowed the global population to increase dramatically from about half a billion persons at the dawn of the Enlightenment, to almost seven billion persons.

People don’t usually starve to death. They get malnourished. They get weak and can’t work. Their immune systems become compromised, and they die from pneumonia and other illnesses. Meanwhile, they try to think of other strategies of survival that cannot be sustained. Examples include predating upon the local megafauna where prey are already scarce, deforestation for wood fuel where woody vegetation is already scarce, or burning down tropical forests in regions with oxisols in order to cheaply and temporarily restore usable nutrients for farming purposes. Oh, and humans also tend to go to war with their neighbors in order to survive.

Any way you look at it, things are going to get quite messy.

The Olduvai theory states that the industrial civilization will have a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years (1930-2030). Gee, that 1930 date is mighty close when electrical generation was coupled to machines of mass production, eh? This theory was first introduced to by Richard Duncan PH. D. in 1989 (almost ten years after my formal education), and divides human history into three phases. The first “pre-industrial” encompasses most of human history when simple tools and weak machines (like the photo posted earlier), limited economic growth. The second “industrial” phase encompasses modern industrial civilization where machines temporarily lifted all limits of growth. The final “de-industrial” phase follows where industrial economies decline to the point of equilibrium with nonrenewable resources and the nature environment.
The decline of the industrial phase is broken into three sections: 1) The Olduvai slope (1979-1999), 2) The Olduvai slide (2000-2011), this marks escalating warfare in the Middle East and the peak of world oil production, 3) The Olduvai cliff (2012-2030), by 2012 an epidemic of permanent blackouts spread worldwide, first there will be waves of brown outs and temporary blackouts, then finally the electric power networks themselves expire. Finally culminating to a world population of 2 billion circa 2050.

When did the modern industrial environment, or movement really begin in earnest when it started to have this profound effect on the land? I would dare say some where in the early 1900′s, especially when machinery transformed the previous agricultural movement by replacing the energy that up to then was produced by men and livestock.

Back at the old school house, the instructors thought there were only two men who actually changed the world, benefiting mankind. They are often called the “fathers of the modern industrial society” and were the best of friends. They are Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, together these two men actually transformed the world, more than anyone else, in the history of mankind.

Henry Ford, often thought of the father of the automobile was much more than that. Actually, he is the father of modern assembly lines used in the mass production of uniform parts. Thomas Edison, often thought of the father of electricity, was actually one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention. Through electrical generation, this would provide the power needed to produce parts and products in mass quantity. Ford held a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. It was Ford, who thought that by coupling innovation and a higher wage for workers, would enable those workers to buy the products being made.

Even though Ford’s dream was a noble one, it was doomed to fail from the start. Probably unknown to him or Edison, was that the earth’s resources are limited, making consumerism unsustainable. It’s very likely both men held a linear view of the future, that through new innovation the human race would ever progress. Also, I can’t imagine that both men could foresee the “elephant in room”, that was created during this movement.

Back to Duncan’s Olduvai theory, the first phase of human history basically was when simple tools and weak machines limited economic growth. The second “industrial” phase encompasses modern industrial civilization where machines temporarily lift all limits to growth. The final “de-industrial” phase follows where industrial economies decline to a point of equilibrium with nonrenewable resources and the natural environment. Our modern industrial environment started when cheap fossil fuels made it economically feasible to couple electrical generation with mass production of uniform parts. Take any one of these out of the equation and we don’t have this environment any longer. If we don’t have this environment, we cannot support the people that was produced by it. It’s just that simple. People will have to find another environment and try to adapt to it.

Sharon, I do hope this may be of some use to you.

Thanks, yooper

Thanks, yooper