Thread by @homemadeguitars

I tweeted this earlier, in the middle of another thread, but I want to address this question: do people think we can go on living like this and escape utter climate catastrophe?
I think the answer is, sort of, except they know there's an expiration date. Out there somewhere.

https://twitter.com/homemadeguitars/status/1460004456490323976

2. My opinion is just that, an opinion. It is based on responses to my climate / speed / energy threads going back three years, since I formed these theses.
I think most reasonable people think it's basically hopeless. I know all about the Not Giving Up school of thought. Good.

3. The Not Giving Up school of thought is, I feel, purest denialism. I can understand the roots of such an action, whether the decision be conscious or from another level, and maybe it's better. But it's not wired to reality. We are in full committed accelerationism, and physics.

4. Based on scientific - sounding articles in respectable publications, I think there is a broad sense of resignation that life is going to become steadily, gradually more dystopic from year to year, more fires, more killer heat waves and domes, more and bigger hurricanes and 🌪️

5. but amidst it all, life won't change much. More road construction, running cables up and down country roads, building towers, getting new cars, getting stuck in traffic jams, the boss is an asshole, Trump stole something, year after year. Dirtier air. 1.5°, 1.8°, 2°, ice melts

6. But basically life just goes on.
I don't think that's how it will work.
"Life goes on" by any terms developed countries, particularly America, means "High energy delivery goes on."
If anything significantly disrupts delivery of fossil fuels to *everyplace*, life goes off.

7. We're already seeing breakdowns in our ability to consistently provide high energy services nationwide. Ransomware got much of the Southeast for a few days. Blink. Cold weather got Texas. Blink. I'm betting there are places in California where fire took the electric. Louisiana

8. This excellent @umair article explains one view of the interlocking chains of cause and effect which stand between us and "life goes on."
That is to say, you can measure it in money, you can measure it in energy, comes out the same.

https://twitter.com/umairh/status/1459636186377449477?t=pXvF_PMVW-q6iyX20zYIjQ&s=19

9. I think two things, myself. I think we could literally squeak out of this mess by the skin of our teeth through an honest global race to slow to a walking pace and convert the entire global economy to food energy and intensive permaculture horticulture.
And I think we ain't.

10. The most critical survival skill in the formerly developed world is going to be obtaining the minimum resources necessary for survival, using only available food energy and food energy powered tools.
If that means only your hands and feet, be capable with them.
Donkeys r good

Water. You die quicker from lack of water than anything else but air. Know where to get water.
It's more important to know where to get it, than to have it stored up.
When the machine goes down, it's forever. That's the day we reach the end of this road.
The next morning, sunrise

11. Life goes on. It's a new one, and it goes on for those who continue with it. Each of us reaches our end too, but might as well plan for survival. If you don't make it, you're out nothing.
So: water.

12. Shelter is a biggie. In most cases, shelter is a more critical immediate need than food. Most Americans have a few spare calories with them all the time. I certainly do. But we need shelter from the elements, most of the time.
If yours is on the 12th floor, it's a long climb

13. Loss of delivered energy isn't a cause, it's an effect, but it then becomes a cause.
Our scale of operations is enlarged by available energy. We are looking at a semi breakdown in the transportation sector now. At some point there isn't enough energy flowing. Crap stopped.

14. But imagine a global breakdown in the petroleum machine.
Petroleum delivers coal.
Petroleum maintains gas fields.
How?
A pandemic could do it. The grandaddy of all ransomware attacks. Global war.
National war in the US.
Trump's working on it.

15. I tweeted this earlier today. I meant it literally. We're going to accelerate fossil fuel use from today, non-stop, until the day Earth stops us. She will. One characteristic of that process will be the permanent interruption of high energy flows.
Right now today most of us

16. live quite literally on high energy life support systems.
Water delivery is life support. Shelter is life support. Clothing is. Food is.
If we've got those things we can try again tomorrow. If any of those are missing it's a lot harder.
I don't have much faith in the machine

17. YMMV