tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post3433027435481845146..comments2023-12-01T23:15:04.721-08:00Comments on The view from Brittany: Red Cliffs and collapseDamien Perrotinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-85236661118381608892009-06-02T03:18:12.679-07:002009-06-02T03:18:12.679-07:00Clifford, I agree with you that no kind of governm...Clifford, I agree with you that no kind of government can function without some kind of transportation and that infrastructure decay will play a key role in shaping the future. Remember yet that this decay takes a long time. VIth century British warlords led their war parties along old Roman roads they certainly couldn't maintain, and while our road network may be more brittle than the Roman way, it will still be usable for decades or even centuries, even if it is only by horses.<br /><br />Beside, modern polities are very good at handling shortages and crisis. That's what they evolved for to begin with. Faced with permanent shortages or infrastructure failures, they will do what they always do in such situations : they will ration strategic commodities, including food, and focus their dwindling resources upon the most critical infrastructures, leaving the rest going to the wolves. Privatization may be a way of achieving that, by the way.<br /><br />Eventually they will lose the fight for power to warlords or local authorities, but those will work hard to keep crucial services working, just as all successor states did in the past. The Visigothic kingdom might have been less powerful and prosperous than the Roman Empire, but it was still a viable polity and so was the Kingdom of Kent or of Gwynedd.<br /><br />Moreover, transportation does not have to mean 'motorized transportation' – and motorized transportation might even be viable on a local level. There were a lot of large, reasonably centralized states in the past, and they worked reasonably well. They did not have the means to micro-manage the way we do, but trifling with their tax collectors was still a bad idea. The same way, the end of the grid, which will be a process rather than a clear-cut event, does not mean the end of electric power. Electricity can be generated locally. The problem is that it is pretty useless outside of an industrialized society.Damien Perrotinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01509005954914591838noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1437377958282996862.post-88607951434458693192009-05-31T19:35:36.694-07:002009-05-31T19:35:36.694-07:00After the last power blackout, there will be no tr...After the last power blackout, there will be no transportation and no communications. Everything will be very local. Not even local governments will be able to govern without transportation and communications.<br /><br />Independent studies conclude that global crude oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time, demand will increase. Oil supplies will be even tighter for the U.S. As oil producing nations consume more and more oil domestically they will export less and less. Because demand is high in China, India, the Middle East, and other oil producing nations, once global oil production begins to decline, demand will always be higher than supply. Because the U.S. represents one fourth of global oil demand, whatever oil we conserve will be consumed elsewhere. Thus, conservation in the U.S. will not slow oil depletion rates significantly.<br /><br />With increasing costs for gasoline and diesel, along with declining taxes and declining gasoline tax revenues, state and local governments will eventually have to cut staff and curtail highway maintenance. Eventually, gasoline stations will close, and state and local highway workers won’t be able to get to work. We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel and gasoline powered trucks for bridge maintenance, culvert cleaning to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, and roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, large transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables from great distances. With the highways out, there will be no food coming from far away, and without the power grid virtually nothing modern works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated building systems.Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, University of New Hampshirehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00604482549497831495noreply@blogger.com