How civilisation will collapse - and when

OK, well that's rather a grand headline, designed to command your attention. I don't actually know how our civilisation will collapse, or when, obviously, but have been picking up some clues in the new book by David Holmgren, co-designer of permaculture.

In Future Scenarios, Holmgren leaves little doubt that the twin threats of climate change and peak oil (in fact, peak energy, because other fossil fuels will run out too) will have a revolutionary effect on the way we live.

And the changes are coming sooner than expected - Holmgren points to a comprehensive study showing that the amounts of energy needed to extract and refine energy are increasing so fast that by as soon as 2014 the net energy yield from gas in Canada (to name just one major producer) will fall to almost nothing.

"The implications are so shocking that the naive and simplistic idea that we are running out of oil and gas (rather than just peaking in production) may be closer to the truth than even the most pessimistic assesments of peak-oil proponents a decade ago."

Officialdom remains, apparently, oblivious. Holmgren points out that the US Department of Agriculture considers an energy return on energy invested (EROEI) of 1.6 for corn ethanol a "good result". But a society based on an energy source of this quality would be constantly investing 62 per cent of its energy back into the energy industry, leaving just 38 per cent for everything else - health, educaction, culture, food production, leisure and so on. We've been used to fuelds with EROEI rates as high as 100.

If this sounds alarming - well, it is. But Holmgren is a profoundly hopeful man, and his book makes the case that, while change is inevitable, our civilisation may not collapse altogether like the Mayan but only gradually decline, like the Romans. "The conditions for ordinary people may actually improve when the resources devoted to maintaining societal complexity are freed for meeting more basic needs," he says.

"I don't want to underplay the possibility of a total and relatively fast global collase of complex societies. I think this is a substantial risk, but the total-collapse scenario tends to lead to fatalistic acceptance, or, alternatively, notions of individual or family survivalist preparations." It's so shocking, it can make people reject even thinking about the future, "thus increasing the likelihood of very severe energy descent, if not total collapse".

In the book Holmgren sets out four overlapping descent paths (covering everything from neo-fascist state and corporate control to knit-your-own-yurt) that could play out over a similar time-frame to the industrial ascent era - roughly 250 years. It's up to us to determine which descent path prevails by planning ahead.

"We do not have to believe that a particular scenario is likely before making serious preparations. For example, most people have fire insurance on their homes, not because they expect their primary asset to be destroyed by fire but because they recognise the severity of this unlikely event."

As somebody already convinced that permaculture offers a useful philosophical and practical framework for dealing with our problems - in short, weaning ourself from systems we can't control and trying to achieve something like sustainable self-sufficiency - I was already inclined to find Holmgren persuasive. But the book proved even better than expected. For several days now, this insight has rattled round my skull:

"'Civilisation triage' refers to conserving technology and culture that could be useful to a future society. The Christian monasteries that saved many elements of the Greco-Roman culture and later provided the foundations for the Renaissance could serve as a model... Like the monks of Lindisfarne, we have to choose what is worthwhile at this great turning point in history - the mixed pieces of myriad broken traditional cultures and the novel and shining bits of unravelling industrial modernity. All of this will end in the dustbin of history. Our task is to choose which pieces will be useful. What is worth saving?"

Comments

[Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D.]

Richard Heinberg appears to forecast this collapse between now and 2030. I guesstimate the collapse will occur before 2020. After this, things will get "challenging."

We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, irrigation, water and waste water treatment, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.

This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html

In June I took a trip to Albany, New York, USA to talk to 3 audiences on Peak Oil impacts. In the group that invited me, the Capital Regional Energy Forum CREF), is a physicist who teaches solar energy at a major university, and who had served in the Peace Corps.

He has solar powered just about everything, including a solar powered canoe which we went for long ride in on a lake in the Adirondacks, and a PV solar powered house and pump for his well. He repairs about everything on his house himself and he heats much with passive solar. So the guy knows his stuff. He is no ivory tower academic.

We talked for hours about survival in the northeast after the last power blackout.

It looks "challenging."

Eventually batteries and even the solar panels deteriorate. He thinks that he could store dry batteries with the liquid stored in glass and thus make "new batteries" after they conk out. But eventually the batteries and solar panels give out.

Cutting and moving wood without trucks, horses, and wagons will be a major effort and very time consuming. There are not many horses around and it will take decades to breed enough horses to go around. Horses require food, care, vets, and medicine. No one is making wagons these days locally.

Wood stoves break, just like everything else. You could keep one or 2 extras, but eventually you have none and can't get more, because there is no transportation on the highways.

Asphalt roof shingles need to be replaced, and houses need to be painted and maintained.

Food must be grown in with a short growing season, and all of the farm stuff that used to be in a 1890 Sears catalog is no longer available. Last summer I took a tour of a farm and saw how dependent farming is on oil -- transportation and manufacture of plastic feeding bowls, containers to store grains/feeds, straw, roofs for animals and storage areas, wire, rope, wood boards, cement, fencing, antibiotics for animals, asphalt shingles etc. Seed and hardware used to be available at the local hardware store, no more.

Then there is clothing which is manufactured and transported from afar. Making cloth is a major operation from growing cotton to making cloth. I have studied the textile mills of Lowell National Historical Park in Lowell, MA for years, as I used it as an example of the confluence of capital, technology, and labor for a course I taught on Global Urban Politics at the University of New Hampshire. I know that the parts in those factories were manufactured in many places with a vast transportation network. After the last power blackout, those factories will not be built again. And there are not many sheep around, nor animals for making leather clothes. Eventually down coats and comforters wear out, as do blankets. It sounds like just keeping warm will be a major problem.

Potable water is another problem, and sanitation also.

And there will be no modern pharmacies or hospitals.

[Justin]

BUT, all these things are not going to run out without people working to replace them. You are right that everything will eventually wear out. But with things like wood furnaces and solar panels we are talking about 10 to 20 years. In that time you think there will be no recovery at all? Sure the highways will be more difficult to traverse, but I'm sure someone will be transporting SOMETHING. Boats on rivers... bicycle powered wagons, Horses pulling wagons. There's alot of surplus crap laying around to salvage before we all turn back into cavemen.

And in the decades of salvage and starvation, don't you think that some people will be resourceful enough to keep civilization around. Not the 20th century 'the future is now' civilization, but something more like the 17th century, but with knowledge of germs and stirling engines. I believe in the power down and some seriously rough times ahead, but humanity isn't going away. I even thing there will be happiness in the future.

[Adam1]

EROEI is a key concept in understanding the significance of energy, as well as a key criterion in deciding which energy sources to develop. However, measuring EROEI is currently an inexact science and we need to codify rules for allocating energy costs to energy production systems in the same way that we have rules for allocating financial costs to departments or production processes in industry.

We shouldn't think of collapse as an event. It is more of process or transition. Perhaps we should say that society will experience a reduction in its complexity, rather than shock people by using the 'C' word.

Two books that are worth reading that relate to this subject:

The Upside of Down by Thomas Homer-Dixon

The Long Descent by John Michael Greer

[Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D.]

See my comment above, here is the reference to Richard Heinberg's timing for the collapse: http://postcarbon.org/museletter_204

And here is what I say in my blog: http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/

[Madhav]

We are testing mother nature's patience for the last 200 years.
It is just a question of time before she shows us who is the boss.......

[matt]

google 'Integral Fast Reactor.' The transition to the atomic age is upon us. Politicians are now being briefed on this source of unlimited clean energy, and leading climate change expert James Hansen was so impressed that he reversed his stance on nuclear power completely.

[oneopinionatedmother]

'weaning ourselves off systems we can't control'

what, like everything? Humankind is eternally at the mercy of physical and environmental forces beyond its control.

the obsolecence of the car, the combustion engine, th oil-fuled powerstation is guaranteed even without a green lobby in existence. Lets not forget, it wasn't the animal rights movement that stopped horses being the driving force in the uk economy.Innovators, inventors, clever monkeys with big ideas saved the poor horse from the horrendous exploitation of the 19th century - they will also end oil-dependancy.

[S P]

Just because EROEI for some Canadian gas deposits is falling rapidly does not mean that the same thing is occuring for most gas reserves, Middle East oil and certainly coal and uranium. Have you got any evidence suggesting things are declining this rapidly for other fossil fuels? I doubt it's the case with coal. What unique qualifications does Holmgren have to suggest that civilisation is about to decline because certain gas deposits in Canada are declining so rapidly?
New technology is advancing rapidly. Plug in hybrids could reduce oil use massively over the next 25 years or so and development and deployment of the integral fast reactor (Google it and see) could replace most coal (used in electricity generation) and most gas (replaceable by electricity including electrically powered heat pumps) over a few decades. This is well before EROEI will decline disastrously for most gas, oil and certainly coal. The reactors could be powered by the huge amounts of depleted uranium and uranium and plutonium in existing nuclear waste for a couple of centuries. (That's a HUGE EROEI since most of the energy for extraction has already been invested!) Beyond that, the IFR uses uranium so efficiently (one tonne of uranium effectively being equivalent to 3 million tonnes of coal!) that there is enough to supply a massively expanded electically powered energy system (replacing coal, gas and much oil) for tens of thousands of years. Beyond that, about 30000 tonnes of uranium enter seawater each year through weathering of rocks by rivers. We could therefore extract thousands of tonnes of uranium from seawater (the Japanese have already demonstrated it is technically feasible) for hundreds of millions of years. There are 4.5 billion tonnes uranium in the oceans but the amount of uranium leaving through sedimentation is balanced by 30000 tonnes entering from rivers. The system must be in equilibrium by now so we could extract a good portion of that 30000 tonnes each year. The Japanese are pretty certain that the upper end of likely extraction costs is about $1000 per kg. 1 kg of uranium is equivalent to 3000 tonnes coal ie coal at $1 for 3 tonnes (33c per tonne!). Admittedly it will require some work to perfect but I think tens of thousands of years will suffice. On that time scale, fusion and cheap solar are almost certain to have been perfected anyway.
Remaining oil demand could be met for decades by remaining conventional and non conventional reserves and advanced biofuels (eg high yield sugar cane with thermochemical conversion via Fischer-Tropsch etc into hydrocarbons or perhaps production of algal oil). We've got a few decades to develop these. Hydrogen may be another alternative to remaining oil demand and again we'd have several decades to develop it properly.
Incidentally, under the nuclear / advanced biofuels / remaining oil scenario, CO2 emissions would be drastically reduced (and eliminated once we ceased to burn any fossil oil).
You are far too pessimistic. If things continue as they are at present, then yes we will face disaster. The point is that they will not because we basically know how to change the energy system over to a sustainable one. It will cost alot of money but not necessarily vast amounts more than investments required to keep the present system going. Read about the IFR and see how the Clinton administration disgracefully vandalised this promising energy source just as it was more or less shown to be viable, under the influence of the antinukes. By the way the only nuclear waste coming out of the system are fission products which are safe after 1000 years. (We could easily build systems to isolate the stuff from the biosphere for this amount of time: the pyramids are 3000 years old, I'm sure 21st century technology could build something to last 1000 years!)

[SP]

In reply to your e-mail Jean-Paul,
Have you spoken to other nuclear experts such as Dr Till who developed the IFR concept? I agree that uranium alone can't solve our problems, but along with advanced energy efficiency and plug in hybrids (with only about 12Kwhr storage capacity there would be enough lithium and they would have about 60 miles range eliminating 2/3 of their oil use) and nuclear electrification of the stationary economy, much oil use (and most coal and gas) could be replaced. The experts who say nuclear can't solve the problems usually refer to there being insufficient uranium if used in standard thermal reactors. If breeder reactors are used (especially the IFR concept) each tonne of uranium has ~100 times as much energy potential. The arguments that breeders are dangerous, proliferative, uneconomic, and don't solve the waste problem are by and large rendered untrue by the IFR. The argument that there is not enough uranium to allow them to supply us with most of the world's energy (with massive electrification) for millennia is simply untrue. After those millennia we will almost certainly be able to extract uranium from seawater or utilise fusion or dirt cheap solar power. As for remaining oil specific (or liquid fuel specific) applications, conventional oil, non-conventional oil, advanced biofuels and (dare I say it) liquefaction of remaining coal with carbon capture of the extraneous CO2 (ie that carbon not appearing in the liquid fuel product) could bridge us to the time when biofuels and hydrogen (made from nuclear power or solar) have to supply demand that can't be provided via electrical energy. I agree it will be expensive building all this plant but most of it can be built over 50 years or so. It is affordable. The French (60 million people ) built reactors at a rate which multiplied by world GDP / French GDP (with a lag for training the engineers and workforce) would allow us to build at the required rate. It just takes determination and commitment. We wouldn't need to mine anymore uranium for centuries once the fleet of breeders was operational because the world's stock of uranium in nuclear waste (still overwhelmingly unfissioned actinides) and depleted uranium would suffice for a couple of centuries.
By the way, I'm not a pro-nuke nutter: if, for example, solar can provide the power fine. I just happen to believe (based on my reading of the science) that nuclear power by virtue of the quantity of raw materials (power station and fuel) ,lack of storage requirements (the sun doesn't go down in a nuclear reactor) and other attributes provides the best chance to quickly drop CO2 emissions . It is conditional on breeders, super efficient plug in hybrids and the near complete electrification of all stationary applications being achieved (including heat pumps replacing conventional space heat boilers) over the next 50 years and a drastic car / plane efficiency programme. It won't be cheap but it won't bankrupt us either and it would probably save civilisation.
There are other problems to solve such as industrial mineral depletion and long term phosphorus supply but (if we get our population under control) I believe they can be solved over the long run too. I look forward to debating them in one of your future blogs!

[Bob Cousins]

I have been reading that civilisation is "about to collapse" for a few decades now. But even when given sensationalist headlines in The Times, the argument is no more credible than it ever has been.

True, oil and gas will run out soon, but there are plenty of other energy sources with a good EROEI. There is nothing magic about fossil fuels, we can survive without them. We use far more energy than we need to, we do so because it's cheap. The boom time may be over, but that hardly means collapse is inevitable.

For another side of the coin, try http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/ amongst others.