Plan Collapse

PLAN C


Plan Collapse



Strategy is the art of making use of time and space.

I am less concerned about the latter than the former.

Space we can recover, lost time never.

“Napoleon Bonaparte”



Rule of thumb for futurologists: change takes longer to arrive than expected. When it does come, it happens faster and in a more extreme form than almost anyone had foreseen. “unknown ?”



I have been following Peak oil and Limits of growth discussions for many years now. It started with college classes in 1985. I have been following Energy Bulletin since 2004, The Oil Drum and many internet blogs. I have a library full of related books and DVD’s. I have gone through many changes since these earlier days because of these ideas. Some changes were drastic because of the feeling some kind of collapse was close in 2006 then came 2008. I am not a writer or an expert in any field. I am very much a generalist. I am a passionate reader of these topics. It is like a soap opera to me. It is the greatest play in history unfolding before our eyes. My views are from an average guy and I don’t claim this is the truth. I am just trying to get closer to the truth. This is what the study of Peak Oil and Limits to Growth have done to my world view. I call it Plan Collapse or Plan C because this process is inevitable, natural and a self organizing process.



Currently we have highly evolved and complex social, economic, and adaptive environmental systems. These systems have been forced beyond their normal growth/collapse ranges from fossil fuels, technology, and years of intensive investment. For the first time in history these systems are global in arrangement and effect. This has created instability and rigidity in these systems. The nature of these forced systems and their effects on society and environments have produced multiple tipping points that are converging. (storm watch). The ability to predict which ones, how they will converge, and where they will be the most severe is not directly possible. The situation is similar to hurricane prediction.



Consequently the ability of society to make changes and solve the multitude of problems developing is diminishing rapidly. Historical research indicates societies fail and or begin collapse when change become difficult and problems become predicaments that can't be solved. Societies seem to behave like ecosystems and individual organisms in that they are self organizing. This behavior makes it quite difficult for world political, industrial, and social organizations to have effective responses. It appears that serious change is only forced at some point from a significant crisis. We are close to this point. The time frames very greatly as to when a significant collapse will occur. We appear to be on the decent currently in multiple areas but the severity and duration is difficult to predict.



Due to the above we cannot rely on anything big like government, industry, or social organizations to make the effective decisions that will protect us in a time of collapse. In fact it seems that at a certain point society through these large global and national organizations get locked into making the wrong decisions making the situation more difficult and complex. Individual, small groups, and communities still have the ability to organize and make changes to protect themselves. Time is the one variable in short supply. Now is the time to take action.



Efforts made by individuals, small groups, and communities need to be modest because we have little direct ability to predict when, where, how, and the severity of a collapse. Too much effort in a narrow range of responses could just make the situation worse or be a waste of valuable time. Formulating plans specific to a location or group with structures and education in place to activate quickly seems to be the most important steps that can be taken. Education is very important because it creates awareness and facilitates creativity to develop tools to deal with serious problems that will arise. We need awareness to be mentally fit to face the uncomfortable choices that will be needed. Awareness will shape attitudes that we will need to weather the coming storm.



Basically there is nothing we can do to avoid this. There is no way to effectively predict the outcome. Solving the problems that arise will come from small rather than large groups in local settings. Talk about renewables, technological silver bullets, and better green world is fantasy. Overshoot and bottlenecks are what they are. There is no sugar coating these natural phenomenon. If we have a long decent with relatively short periods of severity this process may not be horrible. The young, poor, and developing world will face the worst of it initially. The process has already begun for the world poor. A quick complete collapse is always a possibility anytime. We do have the ability to destroy ourselves just as suicide is an individual option.



The develop world faces a third world future of social, economic and infrastructure decay. The developing world faces dead end growth followed by the same decay. Traditional development has no future but presently is unstoppable like inoperable cancer. There is no decoupling of regions or developed/developing countries. Collapse in one region or major country will leads to global collapse. Climate change has been let out of the bag. Its affects will only hasten the decent but the predictions of the worst scenarios will likely not occur due to the decent that is unfolding.