Thread by @JeffAndDonkeys

When I talk about slowing down, about what would constitute actual #degrowth in the real world, I am talking about a process. I am talking about intentionally slowing our economies worldwide.
This is our - the dominant culture - our only possible route to continuing. Except -

2. For the dominant culture to slow to a walking pace, slow to the pace of infinitely renewable food energy, to accept enough and no more, to live at peace with the rest of the biosphere - that would constitute the end of the dominant culture.
Speed is dominant.

3. But it is always my objective to avoid semantic quibbles, about whether the culture lives or dies. I prefer to speak in terms of specific actions. So - the IPCC has said on the record that developed societies must adopt a different set of practices. Systemic change, the term.

4. If the objective of systemic change is to significantly reduce emissions, then the change must be to reduce actions which are fossil powered. All talk about "fossil fuels" which is not couched entirely in terms of actions which demand fossil fuels, is meaningless. Utterly.

5. The reason we burn fossil fuels today is to power actions we do today for which there is no other option today.
People keep telling me how cheap renewable energy is. So are you trying to tell me that we've got it, but we're not using it, because the fossil fuel magnates are -

6. Stop right there.
Every capitalist in the world is using the energy that rolls off the grid, out of the tanker truck, out of the pipeline, out of the coal train, as needed to do ...
ANYTHING.
Bitcoin - 65 cents of every dollar of Bitcoin value is fossil fuel. 30 cents coal.

7. I've got my lights on, fossil fuel. I'm eating cold cereal with cold milk courtesy of fossil fuel. Right now I've got the air conditioner running, although I'll be turning it off soon.

8. I went out and mowed around my elderberries tonight. Fossil fuel.
My cell phone. The internet. Twitter. All fossil fuel.
That renewable energy everyone is screaming TRANSITION about - we haven't built that yet.
We're building it now, as fast as we know how.

9. As people continue to build them, I am told over and over that wind turbine power is now cheaper (presumably to build) than fossil fuel plants.
Cool.
Fossil fuel demand is skyrocketing. Investors are nervous about it.
I expect diesel at $40.00 a gallon.
Hang on to your hats.

10. I have described a process whereby high speed societies worldwide slow all surface transportation by 5 mph per year for ten to twelve years, at the end of which nothing would go faster than a trotting horse.
Nothing.
Ocean freight would be under sail @EcoClipper. No flight.

11. The current level of material throughput would be impossible. A necessary link in high speed manufacturing is high speed distribution.
Everything would become predominantly local. Populations would have to distribute more widely, less densely, to be within reach of resources

12. The point of the graduated approach is that now, the supply chain for everything, food, tools, clothing, baby formula, is based on centralized high volume production (alleged to be efficient) and high speed long distance transportation. If America lost the about to go 60 mph

13. Overnight - I mean, say the gas stations all run empty and nobody refills them - if that happened there would probably be a big pulse of deaths. But if we spent ten years doing it, by year 8 the gas stations went empty - we'd get by. It might be rough, but national freight

14. Would be moving at maybe 25 mph, so, necessities would not be crossing continents or oceans.
The point of slowing is threefold.
First, to directly reduce fuel consumption.
Second, to eliminate the need for high speed highways, which are ecosystem crimes.
Third, to localize.

15. The very first first day this practice was implemented fuel use growth would slow, then stop, then reverse.
At the same time we would have to commit all available human energy to restoring ecosystems. Regenerative farming. I'm talking about a systemic approach. Real, doable.

16. The IPCC specifically won't advocate a course of action like this because they don't think people will accept it.
Maybe, but I can't help but wonder what people would think if all respectable voices quit pumping science fiction and happy talk at them.

17. I don't see the point of "This can't possibly work but people will find it palatable." I mean, yeah, so?
Demanding a halt to fossil fuels without even acknowledging that we burn them for some reason is, to be gentle, disingenuous.