Discussing Die-off Should not be Taboo: The weatherman syndrome

Is die-off the truth that cannot be discussed? To solve any problem you must first be prepared to admit there is a problem that needs solving. Die-off is a real and serious possibility that won't go away by ignoring it.

Okay, maybe the term "die-off" wasn't the best choice. How many people, after all, would buy more appropriately named "death insurance"? Over the years how many concepts, ideas, theses, theories and movements have failed to spark the public consciousness because of a poor choice of name or slogan? There seems to be an unfortunate human tendency to reject a book because of it's unacceptable cover, a message because of the way it is conveyed. Alvin Toffler (or his publisher) aptly explored this phenomenon by releasing his then controversial book "Future Shock" in multiple colours when it was came out in paperback. I assume, though I do not know, that they tracked sales by cover colour. The marketing and advertising industry, in fact, exists to ensure that the combination of words and images used for a product fit together in such a way as to maximize public acceptance of the product. The product and the messages used to sell it are even tailored to fit different markets and different consumer niches. This is particularly important when that product has no built-in aesthetic appeal. Think of all of the possible bad terminology choices that could be used to try to sell "bathroom tissue" or "sanitary pads" or "suppositories" or a host of other products designed around various bodilly functions. Advertising and marketing, in fact, do not sell products. They sell dreams. They do not satisfy needs. They create them. They do not appeal to our rational consciousness. They appeal to the deeper, often unexpressed or even unrecognized desires of our subconscious.

So let us, instead of talking about "die-off", discuss "carrying capacity enhancement" or "personal spatial optimization" or some such positive and socially acceptable interpretation of the population rationalization that will accompany our transition into the new energy-minimized society of the future. In this new world the individual worth and importance of each of us will be much enhanced. Each of us will have a much bigger piece of the global pie...........

A rose by any other name........... Regardless of what we call it, "die-off" is a distinct and serious possibility in the near-term future of the human race. We are facing a serious convergence of global disasters that collectively will represent the greatest challenge to our species that there has ever been. Overpopulation, as well as being one of them is also central to several others. The other global disasters before us include, peak oil, climate change, habitat destruction, accelerated species extinction, global pollution, global pandemics, top-soil loss, desertification, aquifer depletion, sea-level rise, and more.

There is significant though debated evidence that the human race has gone through multiple die-offs in the ancient past. On at least one of those occassions it appears that human numbers were reduced to a few tens of thousands putting our species precariously on the verge of extinction. The bell curve that we have all become familar with in the peak-oil movement thanks to the work of M. King Hubbert also seems to apply to the evolutionary history of species which have gone extinct. Such species, about midway through their history on earth, reached their apex and then began a long, slow decline toward eventual extinction.

This, of course, begs the question of whether we are currently sitting at the point of peak-homo-sapiens, peak-humanity. That, of course, depends on how soon the global disasters mentioned above befall us and whether they do so concurrently or serially. Since the likelihood of any of those disasters erupting with a force sufficient to have a measurable impact on human numbers over the next few years it is reasonable to assume that the human population will continue to increase in the immediate short term. It is also unlikely that multiple of the above disasters will occur with full severity at exactly the same time. So peak humanity, if that is what we are soon approaching, will unlikely be a sharp peak but a bumpy plateau that could last for some time, perhaps decades, possibly centuries. Considering the energy use per person that has allowed the population to rise from a billion at the beginning of the industrial revolution to 6.5 billion today, and the permanent decline in available energy per capita that will follow the global peak in oil and other fossil fuels, it is very unlikely that there can ever be in the future a peak in global human population greater than whatever level we top out at in the near future.

The question before us now is whether we can sustainably maintain the peak in human population, whether it be the current 6.5 billion or something higher. According to a 1994 paper entitled "Optimum Human Population Size" authored by Gretchen C. Daily University of California (Berkeley) Anne H. Ehrlich and Paul R. Ehrlich Stanford University, "....world energy use [1993] amounts to about 13 terawatts (TW = 1012 watts), about 70% of which is being used to support somewhat over a billion people in rich countries and 30% to support more than four billion people in developing countries." Since that time, however, world population has increased by over a billion, the global energy use has, according to recent reports, increased to 14.5 terawatts. The overall energy use (availability?) per capita, however, has declined by six percent. The energy use per capita in the rich developed nations has increased so the gap in energy use between rich and poor has also increased. In the above paper, Daily, Ehrlich and Ehrlich then suggested that a sustainable level of global energy use would be about 6 terawatts. That is about 41% of the energy use per capita than present usage even if the population stabilized at the current 6.5 billion. The authors of the above report, however, also suggest that the potentially sustainable human population at that energy level would be about two billion. This is a figure that is generally regarded in die-off discussions as the high-end of sustainability. Admittedly it is difficult to see how over five billion people in the third world could possibly decrease their miniscule use of energy by another 41 percent.

The energy availability on the other side of the global peak in fossil fuels, despite heroic efforts to maintain it with alternative energy options, will begin to decline. It is a long way down from the current 14.5 terawatts to the suggested sustainable energy level of 6 terawatts. It is even debatable now, considering that nothing has been done since that paper was written to curb our consumption of non-renewable energy resources, whether 6 terawatts of usage would be sustainable in the future. That also, therefore, puts in question the suggested sustainable population level of two billion, which is one of the reasons it is the high-end estimate in die-off discussions. It must also be noted that the two billion number in the above paper was based on somewhat optimistic assumptions that needed political action would take place. To date there are no indications that such is happening.

It is difficult to see how the transition from the current levels of global population and energy usage to those projected in the above paper and countless other studies and papers in the intervening years could be called anything but a die-off. It is equally or more difficult to see any possible way in an energy-deprived future how we could possibly maintain current population levels. Even today between twenty and forty thousand people die every day of starvation and other nutrition-related illness and disease. With the decline in global food production capability that will parallel the decline in global fossil fuels and the loss of the associated artificial carrying capacity (termed "ghost acres" in the above report), it is unreasonable to assume that there will not be a significant escalation of global deaths due to nutrition related diseases. The additional impact from fossil fuel decline on medicines and pharmaceuticals and a host of other areas (there are over 300,000 products in every day use derived from oil) very strongly suggests that there will also be increasingly measurable impact on human population in these areas as well.

The purpose of this essay is to provoke thought, not to supply answers. I will close it this way. Those who are prepared to look at, consider, discuss and write about the impact of peak oil, global climate change and other potential near-term disasters are collectively suffering from what I call "the weatherman syndrome". There is an unfortunate tendency to blame them for what they are presenting, to suggest that they somehow are relishing and looking forward to the problems they are discussing. The weatherman does not make the weather he reports. Catastrophists, as we are often called, are likewise not responsible for the disasters they see approaching. The weatherman is conveying information on which you can make decisions. So too are we.

Peak Oil And Global Warming Do Not Fit Socially Believable Disaster Profile

No explosions. No volcanoes. No earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, floods, tectonic upheaval, no buildings falling. No hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes. No cinematic special effects, pyrotechnics. No dramatic, heroic rescues. Just a long, slow, grinding, debilitating, dehumanizing, hungry slide into...... nothingness.
The combination of the social destruction of peak oil and the ecological destruction of global warming and climate change could, over this next century, kill more people than ever existed on earth prior to the last century. Together they could reduce the human population to a billion or less, force the remainder to gather together into a few narrow pockets of ecologically and climatically sustainable regions.
To be honest, we have no idea how these two devestating forces are going to play out. The greater part of the human race are urban dwellers, living in a virtual world of technology reliant on incredible amounts of continuous energy for its very survival. We have disconnected ourselves from the land, from the real natural world that sustains all life on this planet, the only world that will eventually be left to us when the energy that sustains our technological world diminishes and eventually disappears and our urban enclaves begin to crumble about us.
How do you show people a long, insidious catastrophe like that? How do you compress the next couple hundred years into a ninety-six minute movie to make it visible? What special effects can possibly show people what this future is going to be like? How can we possibly show people what it is they need to see to understand what lies ahead and which compels them to prepare in order to even be able to survive the collapse and have a chance to be part of the rebuilding.
I know this is rather apocalyptic, but that's the mood I'm in right now. It happens every once in a while.

Juggling With Eggs (follow-up on "Eggs, and the Baskets that Hold 'em")

Which of the potential global crises and disasters ahead of us does one prepare for?
That is not a frivolous question. It is not like, "Pick a card, any card." To some degree there are preparations that one can and should make that will stand you in good stead whatever crisis overcomes us first. And, to be sure, the crises ahead of us are not theoretical, not remote possibilities. All are strong probabilities. The common question concerning all of them is; When? Which one will we have to deal with first?
In order to properly evaluate the risk and imminence of the various impending crises it is necessary to evaluate the underlying, mitigating factors involved. What are the variables that will affect when any of those crises will explode upon us and how seriously they will impact global society?
There are two clear and unmistakable mitigating factors common to all of the global crises we are facing; 1) human population; 2) lifestyle and its utter dependence on global fossil fuel usage.
The risk of a global pandemic is exacerbated by our massive human population, our incursion into more and more areas of virgin wilderness exposing new disease vectors, the ease of global travel and the associate potential of quickly dispersing a pandemic to global proportions, the global overuse of antibiotics and vaccines and the resultant overall weakening of human immune systems. At the same time, our ability to quickly, and hopefully successfully, respond to a global pandemic is heavilly dependent on the global medical infrastructure that our use of cheap fossil fuels has allowed us to construct. Once peak oil is upon us and as global society is impacted by diminishing oil and other fossil fuel energy supplies both the ease with which a pandemic can spread globally and our ability to contain and control it globally begin to diminish. One of the first casualties of peak oil will be an accelerating loss of the ease of global travel. Although the risks of a global pandemic are high, therefore, that risk is itself heavilly mitigated by peak oil.
Global overpopulation and its dependence on a human-created, artificial carrying capacity, is itself the most serious problem underlying all of the potential crises ahead of us. That human population, however, and the ability to produce, process and distribute enough food to support that population, is very, very heavilly dependent on cheap oil and other fossil fuels. The green revolution that allowed our human population to explode from two to 6.75 billion people is heavilly dependent on artificual fertilizers (produced from natural gas), herbicides and pesticides produced from oil, mechanized irrigation dependent on oil-derived fuels, and a global food processing and distribution system that is critically dependent on oil-derived fuels. When the global oil goes into decline, therefore, the artificial carrying capacity that supports our current population will begin to decline at an accelerating pace.
Global warming, though it may be debated whether fossil fuel usage is the cause, is certainly seriously exacerbated by our global use of oil and other fossil fuels. If peak oil and subsequent oil decline, coupled with a global decline in natural gas, sees a rush to the use of "dirty" fossil fuels such as coal, oil shale, and peat, our human impact on global warming will, in fact, worsen.
Our global consumer lifestyle, coupled with our massive human population, is depleting this planet's finite resources at a breakneck pace. We are not only looking at near term acceleration of depletion of oil and other fossil fuel reserves but also of a host of other finite resources including a wide range of base metals, arable top-soil, underground aquifers, climate- stabilizing rain forests, potable ground water, arboreal forests, and more. We cannot have our cake and eat it too. If we continue to "consume" earth's finite resources those resources will run out. That's what "consume" means. If we will not alter our patterns of resource "usage" we are looking at near-term very serious resource problems, problems that simply will no longer be able to support "business as usual". That global consumerism was built on and continues to rely critically on cheap oil and other fossil fuels. There are over 300,000 man-made products in every day use that are derived from oil or oil derivatives. Look around your home and see if you can find one product for which oil, in some form, was not involved in its manufacture and distribution.
Oil is at the very heart of human society. All of the man-made or man-exacerbated global crises before us are, to a greater or lesser degree, dependent upon our use of oil and other fossil fuels. Peak oil will, as a result, have a profound impact on all of those global crises ahead of us. Oil depletion will either exacerbate them or, in some instances, oil depletion and its impact on our population and global lifestyle may be a blessing in disguise. The singlemost crisis with the greatest potential for a severe near-term impact on global human society will be peak oil. The only problem is we do not, at this stage, understand to what degree and in what way declining global oil reserves will impact the severity and timing of these other global crises.

Eggs, And the Baskets that Hold 'em

We are, today, faced with an unprecedented smorgasboard of global problems and crises, the majority of which are either man-made or exacerbated and pushed toward criticality by human activity. Any one of these problems by itself, in the worst case, without concerted and coordinated international effort to head it off, could become a global disaster that could ultimately result in the near-complete breakdown of global human society with the potential loss of literally millions of lives.

Which of these problems do we address? Peak oil? Global warming? Atmospheric, water and soil pollution? Depletion of millenia-old underground aquifers? Topsoil erosion and depletion? Destruction of soil fertility? Unleashing of severe killer diseases? Human overpopulation? Food security? Species extinction? Habitat and rainforest destruction? Chemical saturation? War?
Few would today persist in a belief that all is well. Most people today recognize that there are multiple serious global problems that must be addressed. The problem is where to begin. Which one do we tackle first? Can we tackle them independently? Which one is the more imminent problem and which one do you prepare for? How many baskets are there to hold all these eggs or is everyone faced with having to put all their eggs in one basket? If they can only prepare for one global disaster, which one do they prepare for?

But how can any one person prepare for the anticipated impact of one of these future disasters when the society around them appears to be intent on ignoring them and carrying on business as usual? That's the rub, isn't it? Not many people could enjoy the stigma of being a Noah building an ark in the backyard, absorb the laughter and the ridicule of everybody perceiving them as some sort of cassandra, the boy who cried wolf, chicken little.

Pat Meadows, one of the regular contributors to various peak oil Yahoo groups in which I participate, consistently espouses her "theory of Anyway". Her preparations for peak oil are those changes that she considers right and that feel right regardless of when peak oil occurs or any of the other potential global catastrophes should become more imminent. All of those preparations are geared to continuing self-sufficiency and sustainability.

That may be all the preparation anyone can realistically hope to accomplish. There is such a huge wall of legislation and rules and laws standing in the way of effective personal preparation that one cannot really ignore the business-as-usual mindset of the society around them. There is likely not a jurisdiction in North america that would permit the construction of an outhouse in the backyard and the use of humanure on the garden, for example. Yet ultimately sustainability is not achievable unless all possible nutrients removed from the soil are returned to it.

I tend to strongly feel that peak oil is the most imminent and destructive of the large group of global crises ahead of us. But what if I am wrong? How can one take the chance of putting all their eggs in that one basket when there is a reasonable risk that one of the other global crises will be upon us sooner? I don't have an answer for that. But to use that as an excuse for doing nothing ensures that one will have to deal with the worst effects of whichever crisis hits us first.

Whatever preparations one makes must be flexible and adaptable to whichever crisis first demands our attention, especially when our governments appear to be paralyzed into inaction by the multitude of possible crises. The degree of certainty that governments demand before they take action will, in most cases, mean that whatever action they do take will be too little and too late. A politicians first priority is to get elected. The second priority is to get re-elected.
Picking an uncertain future catastrophe to head off, with the risk that it is the wrong crisis, does not allow a politician to atend to either of those priorities. Telling the voters that there is disaster ahead will guarantee any would-be politician that he will be watching from the sidelines. Any preparation for the crises ahead of us is going to have to be at the personal and grassroots level. Government leadership will never emerge in time.