Cathie and I disagree on how this is all going to play out.

Whilst Cathie thinks we’re going to have a number of major game-changing and horrible shocks over the coming years I think it’ll be a more gradual and under-the-radar bumpy downwards path. There will be some big shocks for sure. But I can’t see there being one single end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it event.

Admittedly one pretty big shock did happen recently and that’s the current ‘global economic crisis’ which some argue convincingly was a direct result of peak oil; I’ve no doubt that it played a part. Others say that our climate is approaching a tipping point due to the vast quantities of Co₂ that we’re pumping into our atmosphere, fuelled (excuse the hilarious pun) by this too-cheap energy. I can’t decide what’s more scary: a world system predicated on cheap energy that must grow economically just to stand still AND that energy is about to run out, or, as a result of using this too-cheap energy, we utterly screw up the place that we live and kill ourselves off. Climate change *slaps wrist* sorry I mean Anthropogenic Global Warming is so mind numbingly frightening that it’s no wonder that so many really clever people either deny it’s happening at all or just start chanting La La La La, stick their fingers in their ears and head into town to buy some more (cheap) crap.

Richard Heinburg  gives some excellent comment on this continual growth insanity buried within his recent guest posting on The Oil Drum:

During the past century growth has become institutionalized in the very sinews of our economic system. Every city and business wants to grow. This is understandable merely in terms of human nature: nearly everyone wants a competitive advantage over someone else, and growth provides the opportunity to achieve it. But there is also a financial survival motive at work: without growth, businesses and governments are unable to service their debt. And debt has become endemic to the industrial system. During the past couple of decades, the financial services industry has grown faster than any other sector of the American economy, even outpacing the rise in health care expenditures, accounting for a third of all growth in the U.S. economy. From 1990 to the present, the ratio of debt-to-GDP expanded from 165 percent to over 350 percent. In essence, the present welfare of the economy rests on debt, and the collateral for that debt consists of a wager that next year’s levels of production and consumption will be higher than this year’s.
Given that growth cannot continue on a finite planet, this wager, and its embodiment in the institutions of finance, can be said to constitute history’s greatest Ponzi scheme. We have justified present borrowing with the irrational belief that perpetual growth is possible, necessary, and inevitable. In effect we have borrowed from future generations so that we could gamble away their capital today.

I digress…

Huge climate events or meteorites hitting the earth to one side, I think it’ll be lots of ‘small’ crises: mass redundancies, petrol being a bit more expensive wobbling up then down but always tending upwards. More floods, droughts and freak weather. Ice caps melting just a bit more each year. Deserts getting that bit bigger each year. There being a bit less drinking water because that ice on those mountains up there melts too quickly and isn’t replenished because the snowy season is much shorter. Food becoming a bit more expensive because the fertilisers, oil based of course, are more expensive. As is the cost of picking it, transporting it, packaging it and running the shops we go to buy it in (which is more expensive as it costs more to drive there).

Looking back in 30 years time I feel sure that our society will look very different to that one we see today in ways that great big swathes of the global population just would not [want to] believe if confronted with right now . Energy will be very expensive. Water will be very precious in a lot more places and arable land – that’ll be productive arable land that can grow things on it without needing fertilisers –  will be in shorter supply. People will also pay the real cost for their goods that take into account the total energy cost of the product as well as the materials used. If they are not already dead then there will be lots more poor and that [lack of] wealth will be measured not just in terms of assets owned but in terms of energy resources one has access to.

A good example of unthinkable change is Sharon Astyk’s excellent post Will the Internet Still Be Here in Tough Times? It makes points that will seem ridiculous to some:

I think the assumption that we are making, that the internet will always be here for all of us – and I think it is an assumption made even by many people who should know better – risks enormous negative consequences.  Whether we are printing out valuable information (on the backs of other paper, of course) or remembering that even though we may like the people on the internet better, we still will have to live with our neighbours, perhaps exclusively, our assumptions should be that we may not always have things, just because we find it unthinkable to live without them.

A 16 year old with a modern internet connection would probably not be able to conceive of a world just 10 years hence where downloading a 20MB file would have taken at least a couple of hours and cost a fortune in telephone bills. Internet not always on? You had to manually connect? Unbelievable.

In a way I think that not having these big shocks is A Good Thing, it’ll mean we’ve time to get our business in order. However I do wonder whether bigger shocks would actually give us the kick up the ass to DO SOMETHING about the underlying problems. Living sustainably and within our means would be a nice start.

So I’m not expecting big shocks, no end of the word, just lots of small dips that can almost be missed on their own. When we get to the other side it’ll either be too late and the game is up, or – as I sincerely hope – we’ll have made the tough decisions needed and will be living within our means more.

On an ending note I thought it interesting to see articles on coming energy shortages in both this week’s Money Week (Are we about to hit peak oil?) and The Economist, the latter having the front cover with the headline “How long till the lights go out?”

I am only just  starting to really understand the challenges that we are faced with to keep those lights on. Best crack on eh?