COVER FEATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | Q&A
These examples demonstrate a hardening
and armoring of the core of the infrastruc-
ture system while the outer fingers of the
system are abandoned. So in our context,
here in Central Victoria, we know that
single-line, earth-return power lines, which
are the cause of the bushfires, need to be
put underground, but it’s too expensive.
At some point, the government is likely
to close down those lines and say, “Sorry.
You’re on your own. No electric power in
the regions.” Or, “You can move to the cit-
ies, here’s cents on the dollar for your now
valueless rural property.”
There are lots of scenarios where the sys-
tem actually concentrates in a geographic
way with its support of the urban centers
but also in a conceptual sense: the system
goes through a sort of schizoid process
where it wants people to become more self-
reliant and less dependent on government,
as government invests more into these
massive remedial systems in a contracting
economy. It’s pushing people off welfare,
pushing people to look after themselves,
but those centralized systems, like the
industrial, monopolized food system, need
everyone shopping at a supermarket for
viability. There’s this tension between the
feral food economy like farmers’ markets
and grow-your-own and the central food
system. One arm of government and corpo-
rations is trying to squash those things, and
another part is trying to encourage people
to be self-reliant so the system doesn’t have
to support them.
I’m suggesting that those dynamics of
policies and behavior don’t primarily come
from people being bastards or the result
of evil corporations. They are a dynamic
response to these primary drivers. The posi-
tive thing about Brown Tech is that there are
still enough resources for society to meet
its basic needs if it got its act together and
reorganized, even though it is contracting.
Most of our economy is discretionary. It’s
not really necessary. The dog shampoo ser-
vices and the gymnasia for people to keep
fit. None of those things are necessary. In
theory, we could close down three-quarters
of the economy and still be providing for
basic needs.
My other two scenarios of Earth Steward
and Lifeboat are both more serious, because
the rate of oil supply, which sustains 90
percent of transport, falls something like 10
percent per annum. So far, postpeak of con-
ventional oil, we haven’t had that rate of fall,
and those scenarios look, with more than
a decade’s further knowledge, less likelythough they are still possibilities. The differ-
ence between the Lifeboat and Earth Stew-
ard scenarios is that, in the Earth Steward
scenario, the collapse of the world economy
switches off the carbon dioxide emissions
to a large degree. We’re saved from the
worst effects of climate change, though we
go through a massive crisis that reengages
people with a nature that is still working. We
are saved by nature. Even an earth-centered
spirituality revival emerges. The Lifeboat
scenario features the same industrial col-
lapse, but we’re so far down the track with
climate change tipping points that we end
up in the climate cooker anyway. That’s the
most extreme of my scenarios, but I still see
them all as energy descent.
I’ll give just one more example of that
more extreme scenario. In that, rather than
a return to the Stone Age, people will be left
in a salvage economy where the discards of
industrial society are lying around every-
where. Functioning engines that can run on
any sort of leftover oil or biomass will be so
abundant that, for those who can actually
make use of them, they are effectively a free
resource. The production of food each year
and the security of the community might
be urgent and serious concerns, but there
is this enormous material abundance. With
the collapse of world trade, shipping con-
tainers become default new building stock.
Why would we ever build any more build-
ings? We’ll have more buildings than weI emphasize how
the history of past
civilizations suggests
we face crises that feel
like collapses, followed
by stabilizations and
reorganizations of
society at a lower level
of complexity.above Holmgren and Su Dennett harvesting greens. Photo: Kirsten Bradley68 W LT SUMMER 2019