PowerSwitch

This is a very thought provoking paper (link will download a pdf to your computer) on the likelihood of societal and economic collapse due to climate change in the lifetime of those living now or even possibly in the next ten years.

Many contributors here will agree with what he says, others may need to give what he says some deep thought.

His blog is available here.

An article from The Ecologist on the same lines but not quite so pessimistic.

And a 43-minute vid. of one of Bendell’s talks.

I first read a shorter version of this about a year ago, following on from reading stuff on Dark Mountain (which I came to quite late). I've still not got my head around all the implications, though joining in with XR has provided an outlet of sorts.

The cognitive dissonance I have now is extreme, as my job involves promoting the use of renewable energy and essentially being positive about how it will help us, yet I no longer believe it will make much difference.

Getting people to accept that chaos is coming should be far easier than getting them to do anything about it.

People (esp. here in Ireland) don’t like seat belts, for instance, and - I kid you not - once, waiting for my lift, I saw that the average mobile phone-use-while-driving was about 1-in-6 drivers.

People don’t understand odds. “It’ll never happen to me�.

Mike, I think that the more renewable energy that we have, especially that fitted to houses, the better those that have it can survive in the future. The more that is available to the economy in general the longer that our civilisation can survive, if only by a few more years. The longer our civilisation survives the more prepared those that do prepare can be for Armageddon although the numbers who will have to die will still be a very high percentage of those alive at the time. so your work is not entirely in vain.

kenneal - lagger wrote:Mike, I think that the more renewable energy that we have, especially that fitted to houses, the better those that have it can survive in the future.

Most RE fitted to houses is mains electricity supply dependent of course, PV heat pump etc. Even if not mains supply dependent sadly I find it hard to imagine how much practical difference it will make it for those households to better survive as things fall apart all around. Any notions of hyper individualist stand alone, dare I say bunker mentality, survival are just another delusion. We all do really require other people to survive.

Potemkin Villager wrote:

kenneal - lagger wrote:Mike, I think that the more renewable energy that we have, especially that fitted to houses, the better those that have it can survive in the future.

Most RE fitted to houses is mains electricity supply dependent of course, PV heat pump etc. Even if not mains supply dependent sadly I find it hard to imagine how much practical difference it will make it for those households to better survive as things fall apart all around. Any notions of hyper individualist stand alone, dare I say bunker mentality, survival are just another delusion. We all do really require other people to survive.

Yes in most cases but when push comes to shove I expect people to quickly identify those people that are critical to their continued existence and sort them from those that are detrimental to them. The trick will become to both identify who is beneficial to you and to make them believe (correctly) that you are beneficial to them.

I’ve said - here and elsewhere - that it’s too late.

Not that something shouldn’t be done but it’s too massive a project for the way the economy is rigged and it’s historically always been the case: short term exploitation of resources to almost depletion without any thought for the future.

Fish, good land, topsoil, water, wood, whales, bison etc etc.

We will use up most gas and oil - then it’ll be the remaining coal. And there’s enough of that left to fry everything.

So, despairingly, Bendell’s right.

vtsnowedin wrote:

Potemkin Villager wrote:

kenneal - lagger wrote:Mike, I think that the more renewable energy that we have, especially that fitted to houses, the better those that have it can survive in the future.

Most RE fitted to houses is mains electricity supply dependent of course, PV heat pump etc. Even if not mains supply dependent sadly I find it hard to imagine how much practical difference it will make it for those households to better survive as things fall apart all around. Any notions of hyper individualist stand alone, dare I say bunker mentality, survival are just another delusion. We all do really require other people to survive.

Yes in most cases but when push comes to shove I expect people to quickly identify those people that are critical to their continued existence and sort them from those that are detrimental to them. The trick will become to both identify who is beneficial to you and to make them believe (correctly) that you are beneficial to them.

Ken - I agree, and have my own PV at home (Potemkin: mine is off-grid), but the stuff we promote at work (for the UK at least) is around solutions for commercial buildings, grid balancing, etc. Useful in a scenario where we struggle on for a while, but not much help when things go downhill. My biggest problem is the overall feeling that I'm working to give people false hope.

I agree with emordnilap that we've left it all far, far too late, and that the system is the problem. At least XR recognises this and is going for the system, but there's no guarantee the action planned for April will deliver the desired result, and if it doesn't then things push back another few months. What I'm trying to learn to do, and Jem Bendell advocates, is to enjoy the time we have left, and make the most of it in a positive way. This still includes working to not make things worse than they already are, and some effort to make life more bearable for whatever remnant makes it through the ecosystem/societal collapse, but it's more a case of doing the right thing because it's the right thing, rather than because you think it will work.

mikepepler wrote:...............but it's more a case of doing the right thing because it's the right thing, rather than because you think it will work.

Doing the "right thing" makes us feel better about every thing which is much of what life is about really.

Potemkin Villager wrote:

kenneal - lagger wrote:Mike, I think that the more renewable energy that we have, especially that fitted to houses, the better those that have it can survive in the future.

Most RE fitted to houses is mains electricity supply dependent of course, PV heat pump etc. Even if not mains supply dependent sadly I find it hard to imagine how much practical difference it will make it for those households to better survive as things fall apart all around. Any notions of hyper individualist stand alone, dare I say bunker mentality, survival are just another delusion. We all do really require other people to survive.

Yes, but.
Grid tied PV, or less commonly domestic scale grid tied wind power, is indeed reliant on the grid.
However each Gw of renewable capacity installed thus does slightly reduce gas imports and thus slightly postpone the day when it all goes orribly wrong.
And of course after the crash, the grid tied PV modules can be repurposed for battery charging.

adam2 wrote:...
And of course after the crash, the grid tied PV modules can be repurposed for battery charging.

My thoughts exactly.

What is needed IMO, is a battery charging controller that will charge a 12 volt or 24 volt battery efficiently from a solar array intended for grid tie operation.

Grid tie arrays are almost always series connected to give several hundred volts.
MPPT charge controllers are available that take an input of several times the battery voltage, but AFAIK are not available for hundreds of volts input.

adam2 wrote:
However each Gw of renewable capacity installed thus does slightly reduce gas imports and thus slightly postpone the day when it all goes 'orribly wrong.
And of course after the crash, the grid tied PV modules can be repurposed for battery charging.

I agree it is possible that grid tie PV modules could be adapted to battery charging with some suitable form of switch mode controller. However it does not seem to be available as an off the shelf product and would be quite a challenging project for electronic diyers, especially after it has all gone 'orribly wrong.

Battery charging panels from portable road signs etc ( and their charge controllers and posh batteries) would be top of my shopping list).

The case for bau renewable capacity, large wind etc, is very much weakened if it is only purpose is to put off the evil day a wee bit longer and thereafter be unusable.

I can imagine large wegs, with multi-pole permanent magnet generators, being re-purposed for stand alone operation with suitable frequency sensitive load control. However their location remote from places people want to live, especially off shore wegs, is problematic.