Thread by @JeffAndDonkeys

Y'all know about me and #slowdown. If you're new here - which, by the way, welcome aboard, I've acquired some new readers lately and thanks for coming. But - if you haven't, please read my pinned tweet. It is a serious proposition to combat climate change and ecosystem collapse.

2. I don't think many people see the speed component of our culture the same way I do. I think most people see speed and think, miles per gallon, how big a difference can that make, and - it can make a big difference.

3. I wrote a thread a little while back where I googled a bunch of relevant facts and demonstrated with real numbers how we could reduce our fossil fuel use by literally millions of gallons of gasoline a year, just by slowing modestly.

https://twitter.com/JeffAndDonkeys/status/1628534515672190978?t=BKna96BeOfs8WVNr1Eo0bQ&s=19

4. But it's way bigger than that.
Under simple laws of physics, a worldwide slowdown will cause worldwide degrowth.
Our global economy, the high speed high energy economy, does the following physical actions:
It extracts raw materials from Earth. Mines, drains, drills, pumps,

5. materials, which then go through a recursive sequence of transportation, processing, transportation, processing, over and over, from raw material to end user.
That is the physical process of everything we do, eat, buy, use, even what we see on TV is transported using energy.

6. Total input tonnage must equal total output tonnage. Total distance is an empirical number.
The number we call speed is a measure of time divided by (mass times distance) and is an expression of a rate of energy flow. The more tons the more miles the faster, the more energy.

7. In all processes where energy is exchanged there is loss. This is an unchanging law of physics, expressed in the three laws of thermodynamics. So, the more energy we use, the more we lose.
If we slow transportation we cannot move as many tons as many miles per year.
GDP is

8. basically a measure of tons per mile per year. Total economic activity expressed in money metric = GDP, total economic activity also = total tons of mass moved per year.
The economy cannot grow without a physical increase in ton/miles per year. That is speed.
New highways.

9. We build new highways to enable us to move more tons more miles per year. See those semi trailer trucks out there? See'em on trains, on highways? Speed.

10. To implement #slowdown is to implement #degrowth. There are respectable voices speaking in favor of #degrowth , but following their guidance there is no way to do it. How do we decide what to degrow?
We slow down every truck. We choke point ocean shipping by not expanding

11. port facilities.
This is all speed.
We slow down the trucks and trains.
Anyone noticed that about every twelve minutes a train derails somewhere?
Know how to reduce that tomorrow for free?
Slow down. Slow the trains max by 10 mph. Computerize it. Reduce death, reduce energy.

12. Everybody wants to decide what the end view looks like, and then build that.
We don't know what the end view looks like, and what we have, if we want to do anything about our problems, is today, the next action we take.
Every step is a choice. Faster, or slower?

13. I am absolutely not prescribing a technology.
If you want to build electric cars in a world where the maximum speed is 10 mph everywhere and there are not impervious paved roads, all paving stones in Earth or wilder, I think the ecosystem can take it.
It really is all energy.

14. There are a million voices calling to localize.
I'm so fucking old I can remember local.
There weren't any Interstate Highways. Everything went slower.
Fast and local are either/or. There is no both.
Take a look at a mass. Say you've got a block of steel 25mm³ (1 cu in)

15. You can heat that block of steel with a torch and it gets significantly bigger. More energy=larger scale.
Societies work exactly the same. Want local? Slow down.

16. Energy breaks things. I got onto this slow down thing when I was a roving technician fix-it man working on phones and computers. I drove my own truck and got paid mileage.
The faster you go the more you break.
Speed is energy. Cars are matter. The matter has to absorb

17. the energy. That's how stuff breaks, how brakes wear out, how tires wear out - all that energy they told you the 'lectric would give back to you still turns tires and breaks to fine dust for us to breathe and clutch our pearls and pretend we can't do anything...
#Slowdown.

18. Every electric car anybody makes in any factory anywhere will have a humongous amount of fossil energy in it before it ever hits the showroom.
Don't buy more cars, #slowdown. Learn like Cuba - 1952 Chevrolet down there, nobody'd bat an eye, keep it alive forever.
Drive slower

19. Nobody has to decide in advance what products to #degrow or where to shovel the tax money - nothing. The slower things run, the slower materials can move, if it's done recursively over a decade, the more people will know what they need. We don't have to decide for them. Slow.

20. It would be hugely advantageous if the governments of the world quit subsidizing fossil fuels, let the market pay its own way, but I don't see it.
We could slow down from below. I already have. Some don't drive. Great, I'm not talking to you. The highways are full.

21. I know my quest has something of a Don Quixote flair to it, but this would actually work.
I mean, we'd need to think everything through one day at a time, but - no givebacks. Slow down.
Never build another highway.
Anywhere.