China

[BritDownUnder]

Recently I worked in China for 2 months on a power plant commissioning. It was most definitely an experience. I got the feeling it could be where the UK will be heading post peak.

Here are my main thoughts.

When the plane landed at the airport which was some distance outside of the city, a provincial town of 4 million in Jiangxi, I was immediately caught by the aroma of woodsmoke. On leaving the airport as soon as I got out the door the lights were switched off. The taxis were relatively cheap and the drive into the city was past dimly lit farms with an assortment of broken down vehicles on the concrete roads each surrounded by a group of people.

As we got into town the taxi driver began to take other rides and wind the window down and shout at other taxis at the top of his voice. The woodsmoke smell turned more sulphurous from all the coal being burnt.
Going along the roads I was aware of a flash like from a speed camera a every half mile or so. I was told later that cameras were used to record traffic a regular intervals. Roads were not choked by any means for a city which if it was in the UK would have been the second largest city but was a mere provincial city in China.

At the job site the work was seven days for all staff. The local workers seemed happy enough and many lived close by in four to a room dormitaries. There was a cafeteria which served what I thought was horrible food but was considered a perk of the job. No food was wasted with the scraps being categorised and taken away by someone on a tricycle. A family of dogs was hanging around which finished off the scraps. I was told by the interpreter that from time to time one of the puppies would disappear taken away possibly to be eaten.

On the drive to work there was all manner of vehicles ranging from bikes to Porsches with electric bikes and scooters being popular along with something that looked like the front end a motorcycle mated with a rear part of a pickup truck in both electric and fossil fuel forms.

Lighting was very dim with a single LED light in toilets and corridors. The offices were unheated with the heat supposedly being heated by steam from the power plant which never seemed to be working. Gas shortages were prevalent which is probably why the Chinese have just signed a deal with Russia for gas.

Absolutely everything was recycled from the paper dinner plates to waste food to metal and plastic. Around the work site a group of women was picking up stones to clean them and and then use them for concrete. Trucks full of steel and cardboard were almost everywhere.

What went into the food was unbelievable. Chicken stomachs, unspeakable bit of pigs and the interpreter warned that what was called 'beef' was likely to be mink or rat. I soon adopted a vegetarian diet outside of the four star hotel. "Meat' was basically a small sliver of meat attached to a large piece of fat. Chickens could be heard on the rooftops even in the middle of town. People could be seen on the roadside cooking their breakfasts over open fires.

Energy efficiency seemed all the rage. Low wattage lighting, induction hotplates were being sold in the shops. Kettle elements were 1000 watts rather than the 2200 watts in Australia with hotplates being 500 watts. i guess authorities don't want a sudden load on the grid or the wiring system. Street lighting outside of the shopping streets was very dim. Not much PV solar in evidence but plenty of solar hot water systems. No power cuts while I was there. Pollution from the coal power stations was noticeable but not unbearable and did not appear to affect health.

The smell of the street was a mixture of raw sewage, vomit (which I added to after a bout of food poisoning) and rotting food. The streets were never washed but seemed to be swept by people using tree branches. Food vendors sold food the smell of which managed to be worse than the normal street smell. Canola and small vegetable gardens were grown in every space larger than a few square metres in size.

All in all a very eye opening experience. I can see the UK, a similarly overpopulated and densely populated country having to adapt in similar ways to shortages being forced to economise on things like food and energy and recycle far more and consume far less. I can see the recent horsemeat scandal being the tip of the iceberg in the future.

[vtsnowedin]

I'm trying to estimate the cost of a yard of concrete made with hand washed rocks? A very good post. Very enlightening.

[PS_RalphW]

This account is not so different to my experience in Delhi 15 years ago. Traveling by train at night, you knew when you were passing through towns by the smell. There was no light at all. People were employed picking used plastic bags out of the gutters to be washed and reused selling fresh food. I got food poisoning too, even being vegetarian to start with.

Large parts of the developing world still exist at this level. They are far more efficient in their use of resources than we are, but far less resilient. Even a small reduction in supply equates to hunger and rioting.

As global supply declines, we have far more fat to lose. Unfortunately we are psychologically far less prepared for hardship. Will we hold it together to see us through the decline? Will India, China et al be able to out bid us for enough supply to avoid mass starvation? Or will there be global resource wars and fast collapse?

Be prepared!

I stayed in the mountains in a 'school' for local poor kids which was a concrete hut. Amenities were one solar powered battery led light with a broken connector.

They were extending the building using local mud and rocks with the barest minimum of cement to hold the mixture together. At night I looked a the 'concrete' slab above my head and considered it was only 6 months since the last major earthquake.

[vtsnowedin]

As global supply declines, we have far more fat to lose. Unfortunately we are psychologically far less prepared for hardship. Will we hold it together to see us through the decline? Will India, China et al be able to out bid us for enough supply to avoid mass starvation? Or will there be global resource wars and fast collapse?

Be prepared!

I quite agree with you here. My parent's generation had lived through the great depression and WW2 and understood hardship and valued self reliance and economic independence. The knew how to be poor and how to get by on what little they had. Today's youth are a couple of generations removed from this and have no experience dealing with any type of scarcity. The poor Americans today often receive over $30K in benefits and have no trouble becoming obese , smokers , alcoholics and drug addicted. Severe poverty to them is not having the latest smart phone so they can send selfies to their girlfriends.
When push comes to shove the Indians and Chinese will fare much better then us as they have a clue about what it takes and how to fend for ones self. The western youth will learn quickly but the whining and gnashing of teeth at first will be horrendous.

[biffvernon]

We are psychologically far less prepared for hardship, but maybe our profligate lifestyle could allow for massive reductions in resource use without hitting the buffers. We have a lot of slack in our economy which may turn out to be an advantage as we transition to a lean economy.

[/optimism]

[emordnilap]

BDU's post reminds me why I use the phrase 'minority world' to describe us.

You're right Biff - we (SWISO and I) consume a lot more than most people in the world yet a lot less than virtually everyone I know personally. And we have fulfilling, busy and happy lives. It's easily doable for everyone. Opportunity is not the issue.

[Lurkalot]

I'm trying to estimate the cost of a yard of concrete made with hand washed rocks? A very good post. Very enlightening.

I'm suddenly feeling very Asian .
I've done just that , starting with a load of soil that I had removed on a job , riddling it to remove the soil then again to grade the stones. I couldn't find a 20 mm riddle so built one. The soil went into the veg plot , smaller stones for aggregate and large ones were given away or sold on ebay. Washing was done with rainwater , time consuming but done a little bit at a time.
I've currently got a pile of decorative stones that need cleaning. They are something between £3-5 per bag at some places and it just seems a waste to landfill them.

[emordnilap]

We use every stone we dig up, from the smallest to the largest.

[Lurkalot]

Do you have people laugh at you and call you the mean too?

[biffvernon]

We have our own 'quarry'. A couple of feet below our soil is a 6000 year old beach so we have sand, gravel and pebbles. I have various sieves and sort the material so I can do jobs from fine plastering to driveway maintenance. The older parts of the quarried area get renamed 'wildlife pond'.

Of course none of this extractive industry needs bother the bean-counters who compile the Gross National Product statistics. The idea of going down to Jewsons and actually paying for something as basic as sand is laughable!

[emordnilap]

Do you have people laugh at you and call you the mean too?

Yes but that has little to do with digging up stones.

[Lurkalot]

Glad to hear it.
Seriously though there does seem to be an attitude amongst many that doing that sort of thing is a triffle strange. I grew up with a father who would waste very little and spend less if he had the chance. Our house was always full of things others had cast off often for no good reason . It all rubbed off on me and at one point I even acquired the nickname "skippy" because hardly a day would go by with me retrieving something from a skip. Many didn't and still don't understand this attitude to what is classed as waste.
With regards to the stones I've had the comment that " they're only a quid or two a bag and it's not worth the effort" . I patch my clothes and get the same response, grow food and get the same response so perhaps when we have to start living more like the Chinese it'll be much less of a shock to me than to those with a more traditional western lifestyle.

[fuzzy]

Gosh, and I thought I was efficient collecting the neighbours 'nightsoil' to force my rhubarb.

That's a joke BTW..

[biffvernon]

Talk of digging and China, here's something to raise an eyebrow:

Scientists have criticised China's bulldozing of hundreds of mountains to provide more building land for cities.

In a paper published in journal Nature this week, three Chinese academics say plan to remove over 700 mountains and shovel debris into valleys to create 250 sq km of flat land has not been sufficiently considered “environmentally, technically or economically.”

Li Peiyue, Qian Hui and Wu Jianhua, all from the School of Environmental Science and Engineering at Chang’an University, China, write: “There has been too little modelling of the costs and benefits of land creation. Inexperience and technical problems delay projects and add costs, and the environment impacts are not being thoroughly considered.”

One of the largest projects began in April 2012 in Yan'an in the Shaanxi province, where the aim was to double the city's area by creating an additional 78.5 sq km of land.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... -mountains

[emordnilap]

Lurkalot: admirable.

Biff's link about the Chinese: not.