Forever and a day

Talk with many green technology advocates and you might get the impression that we have forever and a day to make the transition from an unsustainable society to a sustainable one. Of course, they will tell you that one day far into the future, if we don't make the transition, we will have serious problems.

Their view is based on not one, but two assumptions. First, as I said, it is based on the notion that we have a comparatively long time to make this transition, usually claimed to be several decades. Second, it is assumed that technology will appear and be deployed in time to prevent the worst problems that might result from fossil fuel depletion, climate change and a variety of other environmental and resource challenges. In short the transition will be a relatively smooth one. Keep in mind that these are people who believe we have serious problems that need to be addressed. Their agenda as environmental matters go is actually quite radical if somewhat gradualist.

The notion that we have a comparatively long time stems from two lines of thought: 1) The idea that the problems we face aren't that serious yet and 2) the belief that supplies of fossil fuels will be adequate until we are able to address these problems by developing and deploying alternative energy along with other technologies to address climate change, soil degradation, deforestation, fisheries depletion, fresh water depletion, and so on.

Of course, the technological optimism stems from two centuries of unparalleled technical achievement. My usual response to this is that technology is NOT energy, but rather runs on energy. Ergo, if you don't solve the energy problem, you won't get the technical fixes you are expecting for two reasons. First, you need sufficient energy to support a gargantuan research and development infrastructure to invent and test possible technical solutions. Second, you need energy to run that technology once you deploy it. Think of the amount of energy we would require for atmospheric carbon dioxide collectors on the scale needed to actually reduce carbon dioxide levels even if we seriously curtail emissions. And, finally, the perverse or counterproductive effects of new technology are never considered. All the technologies which are going to be deployed are somehow assumed to have zero side effects.

Let us return to the urgency issue. It is notable that some green technology optimists give themselves decades for a successful transition. Clearly they are hoping they are right for a very important reason: Substituting one technology for another or a new resource for a dwindling one requires time, often considerable time. It could easily take decades to replace our current liquid fuel-based transportation infrastructure with one that relies primarily on electricity. If our rate of conversion is too slow and the time window for the conversion too short, then we will fail.

The most critical question is how much time we have to make the transition. A fully equipped hospital with on-duty surgeons and staff may be the ideal technology for a critically injured patient. But they mean little to such a patient if we are in the position of having to build the hospital and train the surgeons and staff before administering treatment. I think this analogy aptly describes our current predicament. If you miscalculate concerning the time question, it will not matter how clever human beings are.

This concern is at the heart of the peak oil movement. Its most coherent statement is the now famous (at least within peak oil circles) Hirsch Report published in 2005. The report suggests that a 20-year crash program to develop and deploy alternative liquid fuels before the peak would be necessary to prevent tremendous social and economic dislocations. Hirsch is even less sanguine now given the torpor among the world's leaders on this issue. Partly this stems from his belief that peak will arrive within the next five years.

The green optimists need to rethink their position and do a little scenario planning. What if they're wrong about how much time we have? What is their fallback strategy? Even if they regard the risk of a nearby oil peak as small, they cannot absolutely know when peak will occur. Given that their entire approach is balanced on one assumption, namely, that we have decades, they must, of necessity, admit that a nearby oil peak would call for an entirely different approach.

That approach would require immediate and drastic action to reduce our consumption of oil and to move our infrastructure quickly toward other forms of energy that do not deplete. It might also require some stopgap measures using nonrenewable resources such as coal and natural gas, but only to help us complete the transition.

Will the post-oil future be bicycle-free?

U. S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood may soon be nominated for heresy-of-the-year award for an impromptu speech at the 2010 National Bike Summit last month. In that speech he said federal transportation policy will no longer favor automobiles over bicyclists and walkers.

As anyone who regularly rides a bicycle knows, this change is big precisely because automobiles and bicycles share much of the same infrastructure. But this very fact may bode ill for the bicycle in a post-oil future.

This distressing line of thought occurred to me recently as I was finishing James Howard Kunstler's beautifully written post-oil novel, A World Made by Hand. I spotted not a single bicycle in its 317 pages. Why? Because in the novel the roads upon which one might ride are crumbling beyond passable. These roads are navigable on foot or by horse, but not particularly by anything on wheels.

But, wait, you may say, bicycles don't need good roads! We'll use trail bikes instead. All well and good. Still, where will the rubber for the tires come from? What we use now is synthetic rubber made from oil. Perhaps we'll get latex from such places as Brazil and Malaysia, that is, unless world trade has broken down. And, the way in which bicycles are made today, we'll need aluminum smelting operations for all the aluminum parts, even if only for repairs.

As simple as a bicycle is compared to a car, there is much that ties it to the energy-intensive, global logistics chain. No doubt we could make bicycle frames out of something other than aluminum. But again, we must ultimately come back to the question of right-of-way. If we assume that there will not be sufficient resources to run a nationwide fleet of private automobiles and therefore neither the political will nor the financial capability to pay for the upkeep of our road system, then we must also assume that the bicycle as a widespread form of transportation will not be practical. Some locales may maintain a few bike trails. But it is hard to see highways being maintained just so bicycles can ride on them.

Let's go back a bit in history to understand why. Bicycles came of age in the latter half of the 19th century. As such they were manufactured on the industrial model. Bicycle owners became a potent force for the paving of roads upon which they could then ride. Ironically, the industrial methods for the manufacture of bicycles and the paved roads which bicycle owners championed became the basis for mass-produced automobiles--automobiles which ultimately usurped the roads from bicycles.

Now, my apprehension about the future of the bicycle posits that industrial society has sunk into a pretty sorry state and that no forms of motorized land transport for which it is worth maintaining roads survive . But even if we maintain main roads for, say, intercity buses, that would still leave all the side roads--roads ideal for bicycle riding--without maintenance.

I'm ashamed to say that until reading Kunstler's novel it had never occurred to me just how dependent my bicycle is on the automotive infrastructure. Could it be true that the bicycle's viability is linked to that of the automobile? Having said all this, I'm hoping someone will talk me down and explain how we might be able to have a future filled with bicycling no matter what the fate of the automobile.

Faith-based economics in two graphs

It took a French newspaper to unearth information put out by the U. S. government more than one year ago that provides a worrisome projection for world oil supplies from an agency that for years said such supplies would be no problem for the foreseeable future. Glen Sweetnam of the U. S. Energy Information Administration acknowledged in an interview that total liquid fuel supplies could actually fall between 2011 and 2015 "if the investment [in new capacity] is not there."

While this report has been circulating on peak oil sites in the last week, it is a graph which accompanied Sweetnam's 2009 presentation (PDF) which I found particularly illustrative. (See below.) It reveals in stark relief the dangers of running the world using the ideas of what I call faith-based economics.

Let me back up for moment. I use the term faith-based economics to refer to the pathology we currently call neoclassical economics. The Encyclopedia of Earth does a very nice job of explaining the origins of neoclassical economics and why it is complete nonsense to rank it among the sciences. So if it is not science, then what shall we call it? I suggest that it is a religion because its basic precepts are not subject to verification; and so, like a religion the tenets must simply be taken on faith. This wouldn't be so serious were it not for the fact that neoclassical economics as a system of thinking dominates policymaking and academic thought across the globe. And, it parades as a science that can help us determine optimal economic policies.

In 2007 the neoclassically inclined thinkers at the U. S. Federal Reserve forecast that the world might experience a slowdown in growth and said that the subprime loan problem was well-contained. Readers will recall that in order for something to be a science, it must be able to make accurate, verifiable predictions. We can verify that assurances of a limited credit problem and a soft landing were dead wrong. And, it's not clear, in my view, that anyone can consistently make accurate predictions about the direction of anything so complicated as the world economy--lucky guesses, yes, but consistently accurate predictions, no.

It is an often rehearsed claim among neoclassical economists that market forces will allow society to extract whatever it needs from the biosphere. The EIA was once explicit in its concurrence with this view. In its 1998 Annual Energy Outlook (PDF) it details a series of adjustments to its forecast for oil supply and then explains: "These adjustments to the USGS and MMS estimates are based on nontechnical considerations that support domestic supply growth to the levels necessary to meet projected demand levels." Here's the translation: The projected supply growth was fudged to meet projected demand growth. The magic of the marketplace is supposed to make resources we don't know about or cannot currently extract appear.

Now, let's look at a graph from a 2006 release from Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), the archcornucopians of the energy consulting business.



The impression the graph gives to the uninformed observer is that we--that means some humans somewhere on this planet--know exactly where all the oil supply depicted will come from. The truth is more unsettling. Much of what is included in this graph has not yet been discovered or has no demonstrated technology which can extract or produce it economically.

Now to the graph that so aptly demonstrates the gulf between what neoclassically inclined thinkers (like those at CERA) tell us and what we actually know.



Sweetnam's graph shows us what EIA currently recognizes as known sources of oil that we have the technology to extract. It then shows us the gap between that and what we think we will need. It rather charitably calls this gap "unidentified projects." I would call these faith-based projects. I have no doubt the oil industry will identify new projects in the future and successfully develop many of them. What I have less faith in is that these "unidentified" projects will be sufficient not only to overcome the relentless depletion of existing wells, but also to cause a substantial increase in the rate of production.

Sweetnam's graph--the first of its kind from EIA--shows us exactly how much faith it takes to practice faith-based economics. To be a true believer one has to wager the entire future of our oil-dependent civilization.

The complete Radio Ecoshock interview

The two-part interview which I did with Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock is now available. In lieu of a regular post this week, I've decided to link to that interview. Part 1 is about navigating collapse. In Part 2 I discuss the scale and rate-of-conversion problems with alternative energy and touch on climate change.

Part 1 - Navigating Collapse: Alex Smith interviews Kurt Cobb (23 minutes)

              A Lo-Fi version of Part 1 is also available.

Part 2 - Alternative Energy & Climate Change: Alex Smith interviews Kurt Cobb (27 minutes)

              A Lo-Fi version of Part 2 is also available.

Will enhanced oil recovery be an oil supply savior?

My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Will Enhanced Oil Recovery Be An Oil Supply Savior?" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:

Oil supply optimists often say that the application of enhanced oil recovery techniques to existing and future wells will vastly expand oil reserves and oil production. The trouble is these techniques aren't new, and they are already being widely applied. That means current oil reserves and production already reflect any effect they have had....Read more

Perry Mason and the climate change deniers

The fossil fuel lobby knows that much of the public's worldview is shaped by television, and television is filled with courtroom dramas. The vast majority of those dramas, however, are about criminal cases, not civil cases. (I'll come back to this difference later.)

Climate change activist and 350.org founder Bill McKibben alluded to this in a recent piece appearing on "The Huffington Post." But America's and perhaps the world's love affair with defense attorneys whose clients seem to have no chance whatsoever of an acquittal goes back much further than the O. J. Simpson murder trial which McKibben mentions.

Perhaps the best but certainly not the earliest example of the perpetual underdog defense attorney is Perry Mason, the main character of the eponymous television drama. Mason's fictional clients almost uniformly have the means, the motive and the opportunity to commit murder. And just as uniformly, Mason would unmask the real killer, often through clever cross-examination that exonerated his client. Combine this with the number of times television audiences have heard television judges explain to television juries that in order to convict they must find a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and you get a public primed to accept that any doubt is sufficient for acquittal.

The fossil fuel lobby has used this persistent and decades-long instruction to good effect. Most fossil fuel industry propagandists no longer claim there is no climate change since this position has become untenable in the face of overwhelming evidence. Instead, like Mason they point the finger at so-called "natural" warming as the true murderer of climate stability. They do not present any evidence of their own because they have none. (All their money is spent on propaganda.) They merely cite research from bona fide climate scientists which documents previous periods of climate change unrelated to human activity. This, of course, proves nothing.

But it does set the stage for the second tactic, which is to focus on ambiguities and uncertainties in climate science. What the propagandists claim is that these ambiguities and uncertainties, which are a part of any scientific endeavor, are reason enough for an acquittal. Remember: By the standards of a criminal trial any reasonable doubt means the defendant should go free. It does not mean the defendant didn't commit the crime, only that the evidence is not sufficient to convict him or her.

This standard, however, was designed for individuals on trial for crimes. And, whatever one thinks of the actions of fossil fuel companies, their activities are not considered crimes under the law. If they were, we would all be implicated in those crimes since virtually every person on the planet uses some form of fossil fuel energy. But there is another standard upon which we make all sorts of decisions, not just legal ones, every day. That standard is called preponderance of the evidence. What it means is that evidence is weighed based on not just the amount of evidence on each side of an issue, but also the soundness of that evidence and the conclusions that can be drawn from it. It is how we ought to make public policy, and sometimes we actually do.

But the public is little aware of this standard. One reason is that television and movie dramas very rarely revolve around civil litigation for which the standard of proof is the preponderance of the evidence. This is because real civil litigation is almost always deadly dull. And, in those few dramas that do involve civil litigation such as A Civil Action and Erin Brockovitch, almost all the action takes place outside the courtroom. That's because the courtroom action behind these real-life dramas would include the endless, tedious questioning of experts painstakingly trying to explain highly complex technical and scientific information to a jury or a judge. Filmmakers and directors know that nobody would watch such a thing as entertainment.

If the climate change issue were litigated as a civil case--what a minute, it already has been! The results have been what one would actually expect in civil cases where virtually all the scientific evidence comes down on one side: namely, that climate change is real and that humans are the major cause of it. Based on that evidence the U. S. Supreme Court decided that the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrongly refused to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants when it was petitioned to do so. The EPA is now preparing to do what the Supreme Court told it to do in 2007. In a related case, the Export-Import Bank of the United States and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, two agencies of the U. S. government, were forced to begin evaluating the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions related to the projects they fund, establish an overall policy concerning climate change, and fund $500 million of renewable energy projects.

Other suits are getting started, and it is hard to say whether courts will allow individuals or groups to sue greenhouse gas emitters for damages. The questions so far have been 1) whether such litigants have standing to sue and 2) whether the court could proceed without guidance from the U. S. Congress about how to handle such cases. But where the question has been whether climate change is real and humans are responsible, government agencies have so far been forced to move ahead with new regulation and policy by the courts--courts that have been convinced by the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence presented in civil lawsuits.

So, we have a precedent for how climate change policy should be determined, not by the bogus logic that any hint of uncertainty in any of the climate science should be grounds for doing nothing, but rather that the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence demonstrating the human link to climate change should frame our actions.

Climate change activists are foolish from a rhetorical point of view to respond to every discrete piece of disinformation spread by the fossil fuel lobby and its legion of paid publicists and unpaid dupes. This just reinforces the idea that the standard for public policy ought to be one of beyond a reasonable doubt. By that standard we would never regulate anything. Instead, climate change activists need to focus on the overwhelming case for human-induced climate change and advance that as succinctly and clearly as they can. And, they need to put Perry Mason and his like back where they belong, on television and in movies and banished from the realm climate change policy.


P.S. If the climate change deniers continue to insist on using beyond a reasonable doubt as their standard, perhaps we should require that they apply this standard to the fossil fuel industry itself. The industry should be required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that greenhouse gas emissions will NOT alter the climate. If it cannot, then by that standard the industry should be forced to cease extracting and burning all fossil fuels. Standards can be a double-edged sword. Be careful what you wish for.

Regrettably, A Comments Policy

The vast majority of comments on Resource Insights come from thoughtful people trying to advance our understanding of resources, climate change and sustainability. I thank them for helping me and my readers expand our awareness of these critical issues, and I invite them to continue our journey together.

Some recent comments on this blog, however, have prompted me to institute a comments policy. Previously, the only comments which I deleted were either spam, direct attacks on individuals, or in some way clearly abusive. But now I feel compelled to respond to those who want to use this blog as a depot for disinformation generated by the fossil fuel lobby. Frankly, it is a waste of my time on this blog to refute disinformation about basic climate science. I will no longer do so. Instead, comments which in my judgment are merely designed to be conduits for disinformation about climate science or about any other topic will be deleted. I encourage other commenters to ignore such comments as well. I don't want you wasting your time either.

If you are a reader and have questions about basic climate science, there are many excellent websites and publications which can answer your questions. The single best book I've read for those who want a basic comprehensive briefing on climate science is John Houghton's (somewhat pricey) book entitled "Global Warming: The Complete Briefing." Another excellent and highly readable book is Tim Flannery's (quite affordable) "The Weather Makers." You'll find Houghton's book in many university libraries. Flannery's book is probably available in your public library. And, online I can recommend RealClimate, a blog written by bona fide climate scientists.

The Internet is a wonderful place that allows everyone to have his or her say. If you want to dispute basic climate science, I encourage you to start your own blog or website or to post on those that specialize in industry-funded propaganda.

Ocean acidification: Why the climate change deniers don't want to talk about it

Most people know that the release of carbon dioxide into the air from human sources has contributed to rising global temperatures and massive increases in the rate of melting of the ice at the poles and on Greenland. One of the major consequences they may not know about is the acidification of the oceans.

The chemistry is quite straightforward. It's the same process that occurs when bottled water is carbonated. Most of the carbon dioxide simply dissolves in the water. But some of it reacts with the water to form carbonic acid. And, that's what's happening in the world's oceans as humans release more and more carbon dioxide into the air.

Climate change deniers love to dispute climate modeling, to talk about short-term weather phenomena, and to pick on minor citation errors in official reports. But, they don't like to talk about ocean acidification for three interrelated reasons. First, humans have indisputably been dumping exponentially increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the beginning of the industrial revolution, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels. Second, the oceans have absorbed about one-third of this carbon dioxide which then forms carbonic acid. This reduces the pH of the water in an acidic direction. Third, scientists have documented through direct observation the changes in ocean species, both large and microscopic, that have resulted from this increased acidity.

What the scientists are finding is troubling. First, the entire food chain of the ocean could be short-circuited. Second, ocean acidification in combination with other human impacts on the ocean could result in mass extinctions. Third, no one knows how such changes might affect life on land which is by no means isolated from the ocean.

Among those who accept the science of climate change, there are some who believe we can engineer our way out of the problem. One proposal calls for putting small reflective particles into the atmosphere to block a portion of the sunlight falling on the earth. But a recent study revealed that this would have little or no effect on the continuing acidification of the oceans.

Even though 1) the mechanism for ocean acidification is well-established, 2) the source of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and consequently in the ocean is traceable to man-made causes, and 3) the effects are already being observed--they are no mere projections--the climate change deniers will no doubt tell us that ocean acidification is nothing to worry about. Of course, we must remember that they are in the pay of or under the influence of propaganda put out by the fossil fuel interests, interests that spend millions on disinformation and zero on ocean research.

These same climate change deniers insure their houses against fire, their cars against accident and their bodies against illness. But they want us to play Russian roulette with the oceans and the climate. They cannot possibly know how the future will turn out. But even if climate change were not an issue, the peril associated with the acidification of the oceans by itself would justify immediate and drastic action to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

It is hard to imagine a case weaker than that made by the deniers against the science of human-caused global climate change. But there is one, the nonexistent case against the reality of human-caused ocean acidification. So, it's no wonder the climate change deniers don't want to talk about it.

No post this week

I am concentrating on editing a book manuscript this week and will post again on Sunday, March 14.

An uneven collapse (Hint: It's already happening)

When we think of collapse, we often think of a building or bridge or other structure suddenly giving way. We have a tendency to take this physical model of collapse and translate it into the social and political world.

Thus, when Joseph Tainter or Jared Diamond write of societal collapse, we are inclined to think of a relatively rapid process that acts equally across an entire area and even perhaps across the entire globe. But I believe that the collapse of the globalized society we now inhabit will be exceedingly uneven geographically and one that is spread over many years. And, I believe that that collapse has already started to appear in places which might be considered the periphery of our global system.

My index of collapse in this case will be reasonably objective: When population in a country or region declines persistently and the main cause is not a voluntary decline in birth rates, but a persistent rise in death rates, then collapse has been confirmed. Notice I didn't say "collapse has begun" for the engines of collapse are set in motion long before such demographic proof shows up.

Exhibit number one is Russia which has had a persistently declining population since 1991 when population was close to 149 million versus just under 142 million today. A broad range of factors are said to explain this decline. But despite the slight uptick in population this year, few experts expect the trend to be reversed. Russia may be a foretaste of how such a decline might be experienced elsewhere in the world once it arrives.

The reason the Russians have a head start is that their fall from Joseph Tainter's perilous tightrope of complexity began in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, an event that continues to rain its cataclysmic consequences down on the Russian Federation and all the former Soviet republics that are now independent countries.

One key element has been the collapse of the public health system in Russia. AIDS is racing through the population and tuberculosis has resurrected as a major killer. Certainly, the famously low Russian birth rate has something to do with the decline in population. But that rate was already low before the Soviet Union collapsed. It has declined since then as the life chances that Russians perceive for themselves and their children continue to darken. Death rates meanwhile have shot through the roof, up 40 percent since 1992.

Surely, a country as rich in natural resources as Russia should be able to turn things around, especially since a strong central government (some say too strong) has been re-established under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. But such has not been the case. And, the Russian example shows that once collapse begins it tends to be self-reinforcing. More deaths and fewer births now lead to more deaths and fewer births in the future as the cohort of women able to reproduce shrinks and as the capability of the country to respond to the crisis shrinks with the declining population. And, remember, this is all happening in a country in which health care is provided to all people by the state and which has had one of the best educational systems in the world, at least until now. And, it's happening inside the world's leading exporter of oil, revenues from which have been swelling state coffers in recent years.

Perhaps you will say that Russia's situation is unique. But other parts of the former Soviet empire are also experiencing significant population declines. Ukraine suffers from similarly high death rates due to AIDS, alcoholism and smoking. Many parts of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc are facing both declining births and rising death rates, the latter a sign that public health systems are inadequate to handle the problems they face. (See several of them in this table.)

But these countries have had histories of low birth rates. What about countries with historically high birth rates? There too we find a cluster of countries in southern Africa that are suffering heavily from an out-of-control AIDS epidemic. South Africa, Lesotho and Namibia appear to be on a trajectory toward population decline despite their high birth rates as their death rates spiral upward.

This cannot simply be put down to AIDS. There are AIDS sufferers in many countries. But wealthy countries such as the United States have spent considerable resources to keep a lid on AIDS infections. In some of those countries AIDS has even become a managed chronic condition rather than an automatic death sentence.

Resources, financial and otherwise, then must be the key. In a world of shrinking resources, especially shrinking energy resources, we will have less wealth to spend on the multiple threats to our complex global society such as climate change, epidemics and depletion of fisheries, forests, water, soil and minerals.

The first stage of collapse, Dmitri Orlov tells us, is financial collapse. We have just witnessed the most colossal financial collapse since the Great Depression. And, despite protestations to the contrary, we are following very closely the script of the last depression. (Both then and now markets rose about 60 percent from the bottom of the crash and experts everywhere were claiming that the worst was over.) The financial collapse is followed by a commercial collapse, i.e. an economic collapse in which businesses continue to fail and unemployment continues to rise.

These collapses cut revenues to local, state and central governments and force cuts in services that are critical to the health and nutrition of the population. It will likely be a long time before the average American or average Western European enjoys the same health as the average Russian or South African does today. But the wheels are in motion to undermine the very supports critical to public health even in wealthy societies. And, if economic stagnation or decline persists, the decline in income and employment among the middle and lower classes will inevitably lead to inferior diets and health care. Already many people in the United States are about to lose their unemployment benefits and many others who have reached time limits for public assistance must now sell their food stamps to pay their bills.

Today, the world's wealthy countries still enjoy several advantages in the collapse game. Many have large tracts of excellent and highly productive farmland. Some like the United States, Canada and Australia have extensive energy and mineral resources left. Circumstances that force wealthy countries back on their own resources would be traumatic, but not as traumatic as what's in store for many of the world's poor countries, the resources of which have been transferred over many years at bargain prices to the wealthy countries. Those countries poor in resources and lacking well-developed public health and other administrative systems will certainly collapse first.

Now, collapse doesn't mean annihilation. In Tainter's view it means returning to a less complex society. Complex, large-scale systems would be abandoned because they are no longer effective in the face of new realities. It would be wise to begin building the replacements for those systems before they collapse. To a certain extent the local food movement is doing just that. But to build a truly resilient society there are so many other areas that require our attention--health care, education, manufacturing, transportation, communication, and the arts to name a few. And, even though those of us in wealthy countries will have some extra time to prepare, we will be doing so against a backdrop of increasing chaos and decline which will be made all the worse by the failure of governing elites to correctly diagnose our situation.