It's Happening, by Richard Heinberg

[The2ndWheel]

http://richardheinberg.com/museletter/193

What Kind of Coal?

Coal is a fossil fuel and therefore non-renewable. A combustible, sedimentary, organic rock composed mainly of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, it was formed from vegetation consolidated between other rock strata and altered by the combined effects of pressure and heat over millions of years.

When Technology Fails

We humans have been making tools for tens of thousands of years. For a similarly long stretch of time we’ve been talking to ourselves and to one another, developing the other strategy that has made us so formidable as a species—languagemaking. Language helped us refine and expand our toolmaking and tool use (imagine trying to produce something as simple as a stone knife if you couldn’t benefit from anyone else’s experience); meanwhile, we invented a range of tools to increase our ability to communicate (writing, printing, the telephone, radio, television, computer networks, and so on). These two strategies—toolmaking and languagemaking—have together made us the most successful large-bodied animal species in planetary history.

What Car Do You Drive?

The question inevitably arises soon after readers or lecture audiences first become acquainted with global oil depletion and climate change. I must be asked it at least once a week. Sometimes I reply by reciting how I didn’t buy my first car till age 40, how I later drove an old diesel Mercedes while belonging to a local biodiesel co-operative, how I scrapped that fume-belching heap of metal and replaced it with a Toyota Yaris to protest the Brontosaurian dimensions of the typical American SUV, and how I now often get around town on an electric scooter. But that answer, while respecting the query’s intent, fails to advance the conversation. The question presumes a continuation of car-centered culture, and that is precisely what must be called into doubt.

It’s Happening

There is a surreal quality to the experience of seeing the unfolding of unpleasant events that one has predicted. Plenty of times over the past few years I’ve said, “I want to be proven wrong!” Who in their right mind would wish to see economic collapse and famine? But it was obvious that, given the direction our society is headed, these must be the consequences.

[kestrel91316]

1. If I absolutely HAD to, I could go car-free. I'm not psychologically ready

for that, however.

It's definitely time to use mass transit a lot more.

[The2ndWheel]

2. Yeah, it's like a maze

I don't own a car. I've never owned a car. Hell, I never got my license. I very rarely take the bus. I was riding a bike for a while, until I just sort of stopped. I walk pretty much everywhere I go. Not always easy, in a number of ways.

All that, but I still have things shipped with UPS(or whatever). I buy food that comes from who really knows where. My clothes are probably made by children in SE Asia, or by parents with kids just trying to survive for another day, or by a machine that put the some parents out of work and can no longer feed their kids.

There is no easy answer, and there never will be. I still don't know where to start.