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If what they are talking about is the whole world returning to some kind of agrarian existence in order to make manually harvested biomass a sustainable energy

by danans 6y ago

If what they are talking about is the whole world returning to some kind of agrarian existence in order to make manually harvested biomass a sustainable energy source, that's not going to happen without a major civilizational collapse. Then again, perhaps that's what the author is actually advocating . If so, it's not so surprising. There are a lot of cheerleaders for civilizational and especially institutional destruction these days, often just as a means to replace them with some other system more appealing to their personal preferences, whatever those are. Renewables like wind and solar are hardly radical solutions for energy production anymore, despite the narratives coming out of fossil-fuel aligned political groups. They are just the obvious incremental next step in the evolution of harnessing solar energy. Yes, they are complicated enough technologies that, unlike biomass, they can't realistically be harnessed today without a dependency on global supply chains. If you consider that a problem, then well, that's a different topic altogether.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
est31 6y ago
Small scale subsistence farming is still widespread around the globe in poorer countries. If they can, farmers try to send their children to schools so that they can have a better life. And many do! The reason why China can offer such cheap labour is because of this effect. Your laptop/smartphone etc was likely assembled by someone who's parent was a farmer. To say that subsistence farming is the only good lifestyle is western decadence tbh.
- danans 6y ago
  6 or so generations back nearly all of our ancestors we're engaged in some sort of agrarian existence. There's plenty to be said for re-establishing the common knowledge people had back then with regards to growing their food - via things like allotment gardens, reintroducing the basics of farming in the educational system, etc - but the frequent fantasizing you see about returning industrial society broadly to an agrarian condition is often dishonest in its stated intent. Very few want to return to agrarian society, but some want to use a reversion as a pretext for controlling industrial society toward illiberal ends.
  - 6nf 6y ago
    6 generations ago the earth had 1 billion people, we're closer to 8 billion now. What happened? Haber Bosch. We can't go back without a massive reduction in population.
    - danans 6y ago
      That's the thing, I don't think that advocates for "going back" actually want to go back. It's a convenient ruse for seizing power, one that's easy to sell because it appeals to people's idealized views of the past.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        Or they do want to go back. I know some people like that personally; they just don't comprehend what it would take to go back. And it would take a huge population reduction (either up front, of through starvation after the shift to agrarian lifestyle). It would quite likely take rolling back the industrial revolution altogether - because it would be next to impossible for a reduced population of farmers to sustain current level of technology; all tools and things supported by it, including industrial chemistry and material science, would just degrade over coming decades and it couldn't be recreated. All of that is hard to imagine for someone with shallow understanding of how the world and technology behind it works.
      - fogihujy 6y ago
        I do. I have no illusion about it ever happening though.
  - est31 6y ago
    Yeah absolutely, study past ways of living just how you'd study classical latin authors or other historical things. And if you like it, do subsistence farming yourself. But people have reasons why they drop it in masses. Don't think you are smarter than them just because you live in the west, or because you are particularly convinced of your ideology.
- User23 6y ago
  Small scale semi-subsistence farming is still widespread in the rural United States. It doesn't take much land to grow enough vegetables to feed a family for a year and chickens aren't too much of a hassle either. Even cows aren't too bad if you can get a timeslot with a butcher, but these days you can't.
skyfaller 6y ago
What Low-Tech Magazine is talking about is not mysterious or sinister. They advocate for reducing energy use, especially in developed nations, in order to reduce the difficulty of transitioning to renewable energy on a short enough timescale to avoid climate catastrophe. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/how-much-energy-do-we-need.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/how-much-energy-do-w...
- danans 6y ago
  The issue with Low-Tech-Magazine is the ludicrous way they advocate to lower energy use, by abandoning higher efficiency technology altogether, i.e: "There are several ways to escape from the parallel universe of energy efficiency. First, while energy efficiency hinders significant long term reduction in energy demand through the need for equivalence of service, the opposite also holds true – making everything less energy efficient would reverse the growth in energy services and reduce energy demand" "Likewise, if an “energy inefficiency policy” were to mandate the use of inefficient central heating boilers, heating large homes to present-day comfort standards would be unaffordable for most people. They would be forced to find alternative solutions to achieve thermal comfort, for instance heating only one room, dressing more warmly, using personal heating devices, or moving to a smaller home." https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/bedazzled-by-energy-efficiency.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/bedazzled-by-energy-... It almost reads like marketing copy from the oil industry. A far more sensible way to handle this is not to return to 1960s ICEs for cars and oil powered central heating boilers for heating (with all their associated local pollution damage), but rather to price renewable electricity appropriately to ensure efficient consumption by having rapidly increasing price tiers for higher usage consumers and time-of-use pricing based on supply and demand. This already happens in many places. This should also satisfy the requirements of those who wish impose a type of "noble hardship" upon the population, as it still subjects them (via pricing correlated with weather events) to the vagaries of nature, including weather (want to set your AC to 65 at 4PM during a heat wave, without a medical requirement? No problem, that will be $0.80/kWh). Also, remember that the cost of producing renewable electricity is not based on the the marginal cost of generating it, but on the capital cost of building and financing it. That cost will drop, but it isn't going to zero any time soon. What is needed is for renewable+storage to drop in cost below the that of fossil fuels. We're almost there.

by danans 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

est31 6y ago

Small scale subsistence farming is still widespread around the globe in poorer countries. If they can, farmers try to send their children to schools so that they can have a better life. And many do! The reason why China can offer such cheap labour is because of this effect. Your laptop/smartphone etc was likely assembled by someone who's parent was a farmer. To say that subsistence farming is the only good lifestyle is western decadence tbh.

danans 6y ago
6 or so generations back nearly all of our ancestors we're engaged in some sort of agrarian existence. There's plenty to be said for re-establishing the common knowledge people had back then with regards to growing their food - via things like allotment gardens, reintroducing the basics of farming in the educational system, etc - but the frequent fantasizing you see about returning industrial society broadly to an agrarian condition is often dishonest in its stated intent. Very few want to return to agrarian society, but some want to use a reversion as a pretext for controlling industrial society toward illiberal ends.
- 6nf 6y ago
  6 generations ago the earth had 1 billion people, we're closer to 8 billion now. What happened? Haber Bosch. We can't go back without a massive reduction in population.
  - danans 6y ago
    That's the thing, I don't think that advocates for "going back" actually want to go back. It's a convenient ruse for seizing power, one that's easy to sell because it appeals to people's idealized views of the past.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Or they do want to go back. I know some people like that personally; they just don't comprehend what it would take to go back. And it would take a huge population reduction (either up front, of through starvation after the shift to agrarian lifestyle). It would quite likely take rolling back the industrial revolution altogether - because it would be next to impossible for a reduced population of farmers to sustain current level of technology; all tools and things supported by it, including industrial chemistry and material science, would just degrade over coming decades and it couldn't be recreated. All of that is hard to imagine for someone with shallow understanding of how the world and technology behind it works.
    - fogihujy 6y ago
      I do. I have no illusion about it ever happening though.
- est31 6y ago
  Yeah absolutely, study past ways of living just how you'd study classical latin authors or other historical things. And if you like it, do subsistence farming yourself. But people have reasons why they drop it in masses. Don't think you are smarter than them just because you live in the west, or because you are particularly convinced of your ideology.
User23 6y ago
Small scale semi-subsistence farming is still widespread in the rural United States. It doesn't take much land to grow enough vegetables to feed a family for a year and chickens aren't too much of a hassle either. Even cows aren't too bad if you can get a timeslot with a butcher, but these days you can't.

skyfaller 6y ago

What Low-Tech Magazine is talking about is not mysterious or sinister. They advocate for reducing energy use, especially in developed nations, in order to reduce the difficulty of transitioning to renewable energy on a short enough timescale to avoid climate catastrophe. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/how-much-energy-do-we-need.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/how-much-energy-do-w...

danans 6y ago
The issue with Low-Tech-Magazine is the ludicrous way they advocate to lower energy use, by abandoning higher efficiency technology altogether, i.e: "There are several ways to escape from the parallel universe of energy efficiency. First, while energy efficiency hinders significant long term reduction in energy demand through the need for equivalence of service, the opposite also holds true – making everything less energy efficient would reverse the growth in energy services and reduce energy demand" "Likewise, if an “energy inefficiency policy” were to mandate the use of inefficient central heating boilers, heating large homes to present-day comfort standards would be unaffordable for most people. They would be forced to find alternative solutions to achieve thermal comfort, for instance heating only one room, dressing more warmly, using personal heating devices, or moving to a smaller home." https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/bedazzled-by-energy-efficiency.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/01/bedazzled-by-energy-... It almost reads like marketing copy from the oil industry. A far more sensible way to handle this is not to return to 1960s ICEs for cars and oil powered central heating boilers for heating (with all their associated local pollution damage), but rather to price renewable electricity appropriately to ensure efficient consumption by having rapidly increasing price tiers for higher usage consumers and time-of-use pricing based on supply and demand. This already happens in many places. This should also satisfy the requirements of those who wish impose a type of "noble hardship" upon the population, as it still subjects them (via pricing correlated with weather events) to the vagaries of nature, including weather (want to set your AC to 65 at 4PM during a heat wave, without a medical requirement? No problem, that will be $0.80/kWh). Also, remember that the cost of producing renewable electricity is not based on the the marginal cost of generating it, but on the capital cost of building and financing it. That cost will drop, but it isn't going to zero any time soon. What is needed is for renewable+storage to drop in cost below the that of fossil fuels. We're almost there.