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“How are we going to keep this airplane flying forever?” Answer: At this stage of our voyage that is the wrong question.
Watching the Michael Moore/Jeff Gibbs documentary Planet of the Humans has reminded me (although they did not explicitly discuss it in the film) of the fundamental mistake most people — and our whole civilization, collectively — make when thinking about living sustainably. It is widely assumed that living sustainably means finding a way to sustain our lavish industrial lifestyle. It does not, simply because that is not possible. It means radically adjusting our way of living so that it can be sustained without destruction of the planet’s resources.
I see a small but telling example of this virtually every time I have a conversation with someone thinking about installing solar panels. Almost invariably, they begin by calculating how much energy they use, then how many solar panels they need to produce that much energy. Nationally, that is what Big Green is urging us to do — build enough solar “farms” and wind “farms” to power the Industrial Age on into infinity.
It’s the wrong way to think about this. I try to influence anyone who raises the subject about getting into solar energy to first examine their life, and calculate how little energy they could live comfortably with. Powerful pumps, compressors and motors will have to go, which means you have to devise means of heating and cooling your living space and your food without them. “Always-on” appliances have to go, which means a return to the days when you actually have to walk all the way to the TV (gasp!) to turn it on. And the TV cannot be a 60-inch plasma.
To go full solar, or other renewable source, involves not only a redesign of lifestyle but a total change of mindset. A life powered by solar energy is a life constantly examined, a life wherein you must be continuously aware of the weather, aware of your consumption of energy, aware of the state of your equipment (for example, batteries). Managing your own energy production and consumption in order to stay within the necessary parameters — which is to say, to be sustainable — is a full time job. (It’s not that it takes all your time to do it, but it must be done all the time.)
So, first the redesigned lifestyle, then the transferred attitude, and now we can calculate how many solar panels to buy. It will be a number much smaller than that envisioned in the original approach. And that is precisely what Big Green doesn’t want you to do. Big Green wants to sell you stuff, as much stuff as possible, and frugality is not something to encourage. Nor is mindfulness, which reduces consumption. No, no, no, says Big Green, just leave it to us and we’ll take care of it. For a price.
As a country, as a society, we have gratefully accepted this bargain with the devil. As the Moore/Gibbs film spectacularly shows us, this bargain involves the widespread devastation of the entire planet to try to prolong the unsustainable party just a little longer. “So, what’s the solution?” the Hallelujah Chorus sings disdainfully; among the “criticisms” aimed at the film was that it did not offer a solution to the problem it identified — that the present level of consumption and pollution perpetrated by humans is not sustainable, even in the short run.
The answer is THAT THERE IS NO SOLUTION. Any question that begins with a variant of “How do we continue to live abundantly when we’re running out of everything,” does not have an answer. The fault is in the question, not in the limitations of the responders. Ask how industrialists can make gazillions of dollars from products they label in their ads as “green,” “renewable,” “sustainable” and so on, and the answers look like what we’re getting now: clearcut forests for “biomass,” played-out, eroded and toxic farm fields for “biofuels,” mountaintops removed for wind farms, desert ecosystems destroyed for solar farms, and a planet strangling and becoming uninhabitable because of contaminated air .
Ask instead, how can I change my life so that it becomes sustainable, even through the accelerating crash of the industrial age, and the answers you get will be way different. And better.
But hurry.
In complete agreement here! However, I’ve found that the more sustainable the choice, the more time it uses. I’ve done a pretty good job (with goals of both greater sustainability as well as greater resilience in the absence of fossil fuels) at eliminating the typical dependence upon electricity and fossil fuels, but find that I still like to maintain the electrified/fossil fueled options simply to save time. I farm with horses… but today used a tractor to pick up the hay that will feed them (I do typically put up hay with them exclusively). We heat and cook with wood, and can cut it with a crosscut saw… but usually use the chainsaw because of the time constraints. We grow the majority of our own food, but often find ourselves eating packaged convenience foods because of the time spent doing the former. We have a hand-pump and can fill our stock tanks with it.. but that would take a half hour to do what we can also do with electricity from our other well. The balancing act is a real booger; I often wish we’d just go through the economic crash and have that make the decision for me, at least until I realize how much additional work I’d be doing. At least the 40hr/week job would likely evaporate and open up some more time then…
Congratulations on all you’ve accomplished. With a good location and some good luck, you have a good chance of riding this thing out. I can understand your feelings of “bring it on,” but let’s just give it enough time to get some of us geezers out of the way. By the way, from your perspective, don’t you love the people who say, “when the crash comes, I’ll start growing my own food?”
Yes, the last minute preppers have no idea what lays in store for them. Trying to plug all the dependency holes (such as learning to make files so I can continue to sharpen a crosscut saw when the files are no longer available) has me convinced that the ultimate end game — if we’re extremely lucky — will be living very much like the natives we displaced. Thus, my interests have moved back from 18th/19th century technology to the stone age, but my abilities are lagging my interests in a big way!
I really appreciate David Veale’s comment above that sustainability requires considerable additional time to accomplish things in the absence of fossil fuel-consuming mechanization. It called to mind Joe Bageant’s terrific memoir Rainbow Pie about having grown up during the last gasps of subsistence farming in Virginia in the 1950s. That style of social organization scarcely exists anymore in the First World precisely because its practitioners were drawn into the money economy.
Gregg Knepp’s reductive comment in the previous post that capitalism isn’t really a system is relevant here. Whether it’s called a system, ideology, economic style, social behavior or orientation, lifestyle or lifeway, or any number of other words, the evolved or emergent dynamics of capitalism tend to extinguish all alternatives — at least for now. An acquaintance of mine who runs a small farm in Tennessee mentioned earlier this year that his farm only barely pays for itself. Off-the-farm jobs are needed to pay for things like healthcare, property taxes, and of course an Internet connection to the outer world. In order for the farm to be profitable enough to make a living for himself and his family, two non-mutually exclusive options are available: (1) expand in size (adding acreage, employees, animals, equipment, financing, etc.) to take advantage of efficiencies of scale, and (2) exploit the land cruelly. Basically, he would have to move toward and/or become part of Big Ag.
Reductive?…OK, so I’m trying to be less wordy. I think this is a noble effort. And believe you me – it ain’t easy!
“…tend to extinguish all alternatives.”
Yes, and this, I believe, is the essence of Darwinism, which, in turn, is the essence of all natural phenomena.
I like Jim Kunstler’s suggestion as a going enterprise for the future; if you have the necessary acreage, start now raising mules. I have a feeling he is right on, assuming of course that there remains the vestiges of civilized society at all.
Tom nicely rephrased and stated – sustainable does not mean forever it simply means what is possible with what you have given the natural cycles of wind, sun, rain and soil and plants. Thats the solar economy and you provide the labour and the knowhow. Our experience is that of David Veales. We are are off grid blah blah. Its hard work and a never ending cycle of watching the weather, water and seasons. We too substitute fossil fuel driven machines for an acute labour shortage not just for convieniance, so its horsepower and human power and wood for heating.
I too love the folk who say ah well when it gets bad we will just grow our own food, yeah watched too many urban gardening shows, just dig a hole put it in an hey presto. Oops not really, what time of the year is it, how many potatoes do you eat in a year? Oh bananas and other goodies, dont grow here why not, its called frost and snow my friend, yep thats tight all plants live or thrive in a narrow band of conditions of light, food and water. It has taken us a decade to even get close to being able to provide a reasonable amount of food for ourselves. Fruit trees oh yes they take years to reach that point where they produce fruit (no hey presto there either). You have to learn and learn and learn and then some more. When we moved here to the mountains in Northern NSW in OZ old folk used to call our place a ‘Starvation Block’, why its about the size of the land and what you can do with it. Great grazing country, good timber but the soils are depleted of nutrients(all Australian soils are its their age) so Australian plants have adapated over millions of years to survive with low levels of NPK. Oh yes you can count on 1 reasonable season in 7 that is the sustainability ration here. I know the old timers sat in the dark and ate a lot of mutton and pumpkin when times were tough year on year!
[“Ask instead, how can I change my life so that it becomes sustainable, even through the accelerating crash of the industrial age, and the answers you get will be way different. And better.
But hurry.”]
Praise the Lord … Tom Lewis finally succumbs to the urge to indulge in a little bit of dark humor. ;-)
Better late than never !
Spoiler for first time lurkers out there, the answer for most will be that hey can’t.
Re-watch that scene at the beginning that shows a night time overview of the globe.
Theoretically, we could [maybe] progressively move towards a way less energy and resource intensive life style…but ultimately, only a solemn decision to collectively, willfully embark on a mission to achieve a controlled atrophy of our specie in the most “harmonious” manner possible, until every nation is “permaculturally” food self sufficient; until our numbers don’t force an underclass to live in a shithole, eating shit… and producing shit for export !
——
The truth is that soil fertility, and agricultural output are not constants.
The truth is that decades of indoctrination coupled with varying doses of dumb media content made for a population unable to handle it.
Cheers.
Hi Tom,
Nicely spoken and respect. It is not an opinion you hear spoken aloud these days.
Haven’t been connected to the electricity grid for over a decade now, and use solar PV to generate the electrical charge and store it in batteries. Without doubt this is one of the most complicated problems I have yet encountered on the farm.
Most years the system has had to be maintained and/or extended, or very unusual circumstances come to light. Who would have thought that inductance can be a problem with DC cables? But it is a problem due to the rapid high frequency switching that the various devices in the system employ.
Anyway, this renewable technology is good, it just isn’t good enough to power an industrial civilisation, and I began the journey with the expectation of using on average 3kWh per day, but nowadays I can now utilise a bit over twice that. It is a very useful, if somewhat limited local energy source.
The thing is that nobody, but nobody talks about, is that the system is only as good as the worst day/s. It doesn’t matter how much electricity you can generate in summer. People talk about that until I turn away in boredom. Nope. What matters is how much electricity you can generate at (or around) the winter solstice. And some days all you get is 15 minutes of peak sunlight per day, for a few days. And it is sunny here down under at 37.5’S.
Oh yeah be afraid folks, be very afraid.
As an interesting side note, most people dismiss that real world observation by pointing to averages, or questioning the installation. They’re neat debating tricks, and I’ll give them credit for that.
And one final word. I recently obtained 16 x 190W solar panels for $400 because they are second hand and could not be used in new systems due to regulations and were otherwise to be disposed of. That circumstance should not be, as it is insanely wasteful to a degree that staggers me.
Keep up the excellent writing and I have recommended your website to other folks.
Cheers
Chris
I have not seen the documentary but can well imagine what feedback it gets if it does not offer a solution.
Not because I think it should have one but because I noticed that we dont like to be faced with a problem even if we create it.
Which means to me we dont like to face our own being.
I work in the environmental sector and I noticed what a big part hope place in people’s mind when they deal with the concept of climate change.
” you got to stay positive and work toward this and that goal ” they say.
Keeping your mind of the problem seems to be more important than coming up with practical solutions that might help alleviate the problem, which is ourselves.
It is much more comfortable to work towards an imaginative future than to face what is happening now and the dreadful future we are aiming for.
Therefore any documentary or popular science document seems to have to end on the note that there is still hope if we all just dont look at the problem which we have just pointed out to you and focus on the people who grow a rhubarb plant in their garden to save the world.
I am sorry to be cynical but your work has resonated with something that I felt .
‘There is no solution’ is sad but true. I live in suburbia, thankfully our plot is large enough for me to grow some of my own food unlike the plots (here in Australia) being sold now, just big enough for the huge house. I have no air con, no pool, 2 small cars and work locally, 1 tv and our electricity usage is low. Living in suburbia though allows me to see the mindset of most people today. Most of my neighbours drive 3-5 litre suv/off-roader/pickups and have at least 2, have air conditioning, multiple large tvs, boats, pools… the list goes on. I was replacing the bearings in our washing machine last year, my neighbour looked into the garage and said ‘what are you doing that for? Just get a new one!’. People wonder how we live without air con as Australian summers are hot, well, if I open the windows and put on the ceiling fans and you’ll notice I’ve blocked the sun at this part of the house… I’ve given up telling people its not about loading your roof up with solar panels but about recalculating your energy use, EROEI, living in a finite system. People look at you like you’re some ageing hippie. People are not encouraged to simplify their lives, they are not willing to give up the luxuries. They’re in competition with their neighbours and so the extra unused bedroom and utility room are necessary. Our house is not large and single story, when we moved in after having it built, friends would pop round, their comments were intriguing, ‘it’s nice, you can always sell and get something bigger later’, ‘lovely, its a start on the property ladder, when you’re settled you can upgrade’. What? I was planning on living here until I retire.
People are conditioned and follow the crowd. We’ll simply be forced to simplify our lives. I have a feeling it’ll be quite painful too.