Thread by @homemadeguitars

I'm going to ramble a bit this afternoon on and around the topic of the ecosystem catastrophe we choose to call climate change.
Some of us refer to it as "The Anthropocene," but I think that's a misnomer.
Ought to be "Industriocene."
We were Anthro for a quarter million years.

2. Twitter is full of #ActOnClimate #ActNow and everybody knows what "act" means.
It means build and install a vast global electro-mechanical overlay in addition to the ones we have already built.
Can we agree on that?
When we say, "We have the technology," we don't mean,

3. you know, *have* the technology, as in, I have three donkeys. Have and can point at. Have in terms of physical reality.
We mean, "We have built a small model of the technology we think will enable us to power the entire industrial economy without emitting CO2."
Have. Not.

4. The thing about Americans - maybe developed societies writ large, but I just know what I see, so Americans, is: they don't know where stuff comes from.
Americans live amongst the undescribable wealth of trinkets and gadgets on the output side of global industry, and have no 🤔

5. How stuff gets made and delivered.
Grocery stores make food, airports make jets, and mountains and prairies make solar panels and wind turbines.
Meanwhile, we've *really got to hurry* because we have totally worn out the nationwide concrete machine we spent the past 65 years

6. building.
I hate to ask, but have you ever thought about how we got to where we are today?
We started building that infrastructure at the VERY LEFT HAND EDGE OF THIS SLOPE.
In 1956.
I was 9.
I've watched all that happen.

7. The idea that, for instance, within today's context (that graph) we can build a new, nationwide, system because we've worn out the old one and anyway we want to go faster farther,
And while doing that
Install charging stations
Hooked to the existing fossil fuel electric grid

8. So that somebody can buy an electric car that had to be built to be sold (contrary to popular belief, dealerships do not immaculately conceive cars) and drive that car, and
You're not going to believe this -
Say that's "climate action"
Y'all, this is a zero sum atmosphere.

9. People were writing learned papers about climate change from industrial CO2 emissions before the invention of the automobile or the airplane.

10. The amount of concrete to pour to combat climate change is: none.
Ever.
Never again.
Not building the highways and not building the charging stations *by itself* would reduce emissions more than twenty years of electric cars.
And - high speed rail.
🤮

11. America, I hate to break this to you, but using the phrase "climate change" to justify every new gee-whiz toy you dream of won't end well.
It just won't.
"We want to reduce emissions so let's go faster" is, in technical terms, "a lie."
Sorry.
But - that's all as may be.

12. We're going to build it. And it's going to load the atmosphere up with carbon like nothing we've ever done before, and this curve is going to get even steeper and higher.
I've got that. So then what?

13. We're blasting down the highway on our high speed train, and pieces are falling off, and it's making funny noises, and we've turned up the stereo twice already.
Fires out west, cold winter darkness in Texas, melting mussels in the Salish Sea -
Pieces are falling off.

14. One of the pieces is going to take out one of the major energy supplies. Gasoline already blinked in the petroleum-rich US South.
Pieces are falling off.

15. I don't know what's going to do it, but I feel confident that within the not too distant future, high energy will become broadly unavailable.
I expect a lot of death.
All of the desert southwest survives on electricity and imported water.
I'd get out of there if I had to 🚶

16. One thing which could take out the whole infrastructure is the pandemic we didn't have this time.
Worthless although we are led to appear in the industrial machine called the global economy, lowly humans make pretty much everything run.
If people can't go to work... Poof.

17. I've seen different numbers, and can't state any absolutely certain facts, but the plague in Europe was somewhere between 50% and >90% fatal.
Take a virus that strong, a two week incubation, and global jet traffic, and...
Everything stops.
All the lights go out and stay.

18. The way water runs out of your pipes is, electric pumps pump it up high somewhere in a tower or a reservoir, and it runs downhill to your house.
Works a few days without electricity. Drains out.

19. So what I would recommend everybody do is, try to make it so that *if you had to* you could live without the high energy machine running. The one that fills the faucets and the grocery stores.
Forever if need be. This isn't about barrels of water or gasoline.

20. By the way - no, I can't prove or offer evidence any of these events will happen. This is one man's opinion. I have no credentials to add to it.
I do not see the machine we live in continuing to run indefinitely.
It's all one global machine.

21. Your local grocery store has food and supplies from every corner of Earth on its shelves. The machine that delivered all those supplies, to that spot, and offers them to you. That's one machine that won't run without the global energy machine. It's all one thing.

22. I could see Russia and the US get into a global pissing contest about ransomware and blowing the whole thing up. 🤷

23. What you've got to have is food, water, and shelter. Air, but if you run out of air there's not much to do about it. Not enough time.
Water, food, shelter.
You could die in a day without shelter, or live weeks without it, depending on circumstances. Can't live long without 💦

24. Food's important. In the long run it's critical, but you've got a little time to arrange it.
If the machine goes out, Earth herself is capable of providing for us all three. But it requires knowledge.

25. And access to Earth.
Even a suburban lawn, if the suburb doesn't mandate a grass lawn.
I would buy books on Permaculture.
This is one of the guys who invented it.
Learn concepts. Ideas. Not details and techniques.

26. If there's any way I could I'd try to get at least five acres and a donkey. Ten acres. Two donkeys. Not much more, unless woodland that didn't require management.
Five or ten acres, managed properly, wisely, without high energy machines, can feed and power a family well.

27. Ideally, starting today, employed people would start looking for such land, within a range they could stand to commute to the day job.
It's a hassle.
The day the machine stops, the day job does too. Stay home from then on out. Forever if necessary.

28. Every edible plant is made half out of carbon. A little more than half.
It's easy to catch some of that, while just taking care of the land's needs and yours. If you cut grass and leave the clippings to rot you have caught carbon.
Grass is also donkey food, energy, power.

29. All the things you read about after we reach 4 degrees and stuff - I don't think the machine will continue to run long enough to get there. I admit if you really wanted to, a coast to coast highway and bridge project would be the quickest way, so maybe. 🤷

30. You can call it anything you want, but Earth is tired of our shit, and pieces fall off the machine every day.
I'd recommend being ready.

Later.