Welcome back with the nice new format, but any chance of a better contrast between the light-green background and the only-slightly-darker-green-and-fairly-small-at-that font? “My eyes, my beautiful eyes!”

Anyway, I found you another British commentator on this topic also leaning towards the ‘fucked’ verdict. A worker in the oil industry who wrote in to Jim Kunstler here:

Agricultural production has dropped disastrously in recent years, with thousands of farmers being forced into bankruptcy by the monopolies enjoyed by the likes of Tesco (big and nasty) and Sainsbury (smaller and nasty). At least the USA still has a huge amount of good land available. In the UK, we are packed in like sardines in terms of population density, which spells disaster when the oil gets short.

This isn’t great news. I wish I knew what the best plan of action was. Find a permaculture guru somewhere and try to educate all the people in my Dunbar Number? Or should I skip that and go straight to the wild edibles as I prepare to run for the hills? Yeah, I know, probably both

It’s not exactly pleasant to have that running commentary as one walks about town going: ‘Yeah, you know that’s not gonna survive. No that won’t make it either. And see that? That’ll probably all be gone in ten years’ time’. Some of these are things that I would be glad to see the back of, but then I start looking at the people in the street as if they were non-swimmers on a ship they didn’t realise was sinking, and then it’s a whole different ballgame…

I suppose, taking this thought to a more personal level, has basically the same feel for the individual when collaspe hits. Some will hang on society to the bitter end, some not knowing of another way. As for me, it’ll be alot like Steve McQueen in the movie, “Papallion”, taking the big plunge with my little raft.

I expect, this will be people’s number one decision in life. Get busy living, or get busy dieing…………………Also like in “Papalion”, when Dustin Hoffman asked the question, “Do you think you’ll make it?” McQueen answers, “Does it matter?”

Both of these pale by comparison to the imperial apparatus of the old European empires.

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Even on your proposed level of how much energy the core can extract from the periphery, there has been a significant drop.

I’m not saying I don’t believe you — just that I’d like to see the numbers…

The Allegheny Plateau was once prime hunting grounds for the Seneca. The old growth forest supported about 10 deer per square mile. Today’s herd is many times that, and deer overpopulation is a huge ecological problem. That situation won’t last forever, but we’ll at least have abundant food in our first decades. As a healthier ecosystem takes hold, we’ll have all manner of game. There’s already turkeys, bear and all kinds of small game up there, and there’s even the elk herd that was reintroduced. Especially with the permaculture we’re experimenting with, “marginal” is not the first word that comes to mind, even in today’s “endangered forest.”

From your observations and predictions, where do you think the map will open up first when civilizations starts its “budget cutting”?

My basic rule of thumb is, “wherever it closed last, and for the very same reasons.” I’m bound to the Tuppeek-hanne (a.k.a., the “Clarion River”), which might not seem like such a great spot at first blush. It’s within a day’s drive of half the U.S. population. And yet, the map closed in most of the American West before it closed on the Tuppeek-hanne. That’s because it’s up on the Allegheny Plateau, with poor soils and a short growing season. It took railroads to close the map here, just as much as it took railroads to close the map in the West. Now there’s highways. As first the highways, and then the railroads, stop being economical, the map is going to open up here. Hordes from Pittsburgh or Buffalo coming to deforest my home? How are they planning on getting it all back home? The rivers are great for that, but the Tuppeek-hanne has seen lumbermen like that before, and the economics of that business made it too inefficient to cause any major damage.

So, when you’re looking for where the map will open up first, my rule is, look for where it closed last.

I don’t think this necessarily follows.

It was Tainter who offered the most widely-accepted definition of collapse: “the sudden loss of an established level of complexity.” A proliferation of independent countries is, by that definition, the most direct evidence of collapse one could ask for.

Also, are we certain that decolonisation signaled a loss of complexity? Again, I’ve no numbers to make the comparison, but it seems to me that the level of complexity required to maintain the imperial relations may well have increased. Think of, for example, the U.S. military bases ringing the world; or the number of bureaucrats in the employ of the IMF and World Bank.

Both of these pale by comparison to the imperial apparatus of the old European empires. Neocolonialism is more subtle. Territorial empires always involve more complexity than hegemonic empires. The imperial government oversaw several provincial governments; independence turned those provincial governments into governments in their own right, and the former imperial government became a peer, effectively simply eliminating the imperial level of complexity–which was a far more significant body than the IMF, World Bank, U.N., or any of the modern shadows of former imperialism.

Even on your proposed level of how much energy the core can extract from the periphery, there has been a significant drop. Even if extraction had continued apace, the simple fact that some amount of energy had to go into maintaining the newly independent governments would represent a reduction in energy exported to the core. But in fact, most have not produced as much as they did as colonies, and the rampant corruption in most post-colonial governments increases their cost even more.

Aron, consider this. What is more depressing: collapse, or the alternative? Collapse will be terrible for the people who hitch their lives to civilization to the bitter end–but what about those who don’t need it? Those who leave it behind? For them, collapse will open the first windows of opportunity to live a human life without being annihilated. You have kids–and because civilization is killing itself, all you need is to sever the ties that bind you to it, and your children will actually get to live as human beings, without being dehumanized.

You’re a human being. You’re up to it. It’s everything you were born to do, the way you were born to live. The universe spent three million years making you perfect for this kind of life. That’s what you’ve got inside you, and what your kids have inside of them.

How do adapt to this coming new world will be a challenge, I admit I’m not sure I’ll be up to.

This more subtle form of empire is itself a clear sign of collapse, however, with proliferating de jure independence movements that eliminate the established level of European imperial complexity, as well as the rise of various “rhizome” networks, from multinational corporations to terrorist networks, that defy the conventional, Cartesian definition of the nation-state, and represent the next step down towards collapse.

I don’t think this necessarily follows. If we’re agreed that the charge of empire is to extract resources from the “periphery” to be consumed in the “core”, it should be possible to chart the ratio of energy invested by the imperial powers to energy extracted from the subject peoples.

If you were to compare this ratio between, let’s say, the pre-World-War-I era and the post-Bandung era, it seems entirely plausible to me that the latter era has seen a more efficient stealing of resources that the former — “independence” notwithstanding. I don’t know this by any stretch of the imagination. But, as I say, it’s at the very least plausible.

Of course, it looks, just in recent years, as though the empire is finally slipping out of control.

Whatever the Vietnam war may have cost the empire, it seems certain enough that it scared the Third World shitless enough to accept without much resistance their virtual re-colonisation at the hands of Volker’s unilateral raising of interest rates. Yet to-day we see movement in the opposite direction, even in the wake of the massive devastation visited upon Iraq.

This may surely be seen as a sign of collapse. I would suggest that, at least according to this one aspect of the issue, the collapse began sometime after the conclusion of the Vietnam war.

Also, are we certain that decolonisation signaled a loss of complexity? Again, I’ve no numbers to make the comparison, but it seems to me that the level of complexity required to maintain the imperial relations may well have increased. Think of, for example, the U.S. military bases ringing the world; or the number of bureaucrats in the employ of the IMF and World Bank.

Duncan places the peak of energy production per capita at 1979. Perhaps this was the beginning of the collapse? At any rate, I would’ve liked to’ve seen more “math” in this series.

That said, the beginning point of the collapse doesn’t really matter much, because, as you say:

For us, the most pertinent question is less when the last city will fall, but when the first spaces beyond civilization will begin to open up again.

From your observations and predictions, where do you think the map will open up first when civilizations starts its “budget cutting”? Will it be where the food trucks can no longer afford to travel? The Great Plains post-green revolution? The satellite nations and protectorates of the U.S.?

I’m most likely going to practice permaculture, H/G, tool-making etc. at home in the Northeast, but it would be good to know where the map might open up to maybe get a one-up before the gears start falling apart.