Thread by @JeffAndDonkeys

When you hear the phrase "collapse" what do you see in your mind? What collapses? Can we tell? What if it was in November of 2016? But no, countries come and go, that's not what anyone means by #collapse
How will we know it has happened? Will someone announce some temperature C?

2. My friend @postcarbonsteve says every day that climate collapse is food collapse, and there is considerable truth to his reasoning.
If there's no food within a day's journey of you that will be a very high priority in your planning.
Unless you don't even know where to look.

@postcarbonsteve 3. Industrial agriculture feeds at least a couple billion people. Lower energy methods feed another 6.
Billion people.
Donkeys. Oxen. People with hoes and baskets.

@postcarbonsteve 4. Small engine driven machinery, tractors the operator walks behind, combines that mow a 3 foot swath.
I think #collapse means loss of high energy supplies. Gas stations go dry, lights go out.
And stay out.

@postcarbonsteve 5. Discussions about societal energy flows and levels almost always degenerate into discussions of the relative value system of modernity, speed, comfort, non-physicality, and all of it, with "Oh, you think it was better in 1800?"
No, but it's not relevant.

@postcarbonsteve 6. The day the gas stations run dry is the day the world ends.
People like me who live in the country? Same difference, probably. Because "Supply chain." We have enslaved ourselves. Where a neighborhood or town used to make almost everything they needed, today if one bridge

@postcarbonsteve 7. falls in the ocean and blocks a channel, it interrupts commerce worldwide.
Remember the second week of Covid?
Imagine one #JustLikeCovid only 50% fatal.
Imagine the #CovidWeveGot evolves to 50% fatality.
There wouldn't be any gasoline in the Continental US within a week.

@postcarbonsteve 8. Amelioration, preparation, acting like we believe all the shit we say, would start with the supply chain.
Localize everything.
Suck the excess energy out of it, the bunker fuel and the steel, it's got to be All the Tea in China to be worth importing across the Pacific Ocean.

@postcarbonsteve 9. People want to build sea walls.
Give me a break. Build fucking stilts under your house if you're absolutely committed to living there. Build a floating mansion, I don't care.
What #Collapse means is, none of the machines run. None of them. Not XHalfWitter, not the bank.

@postcarbonsteve 10. They all run on fossil fuels.
Yes, they do, to the exact extent that all humans run on food. We still need water, we run on more than one thing, but without fossil fuels there is nothing that runs faster than a running horse.
I don't care if we like that or not. I'm no saying

@postcarbonsteve 11. Everyone go get a horse, I'm saying, everything walks that didn't evolve to swim or fly.
It's not about whether we want to. If the Scientists™ are right, we've cooked our own goose. We pissed away our choice if we ever had one. The question is, now what?

@postcarbonsteve 12. I talk in terms of action. The entire climate conversation is just that: conversation.
Yes, there are actions being taken.
Without exception, all the activities being done for the climate in the industrial world today are increasing fossil fuel burning and production.
All.

@postcarbonsteve 13. Globally, GHG concentrations have never been higher, nor have they ever been rising faster.
The salesmen have decided to split off emissions from generating electricity from the rest of the energy used on actual planet we live on, and claim reductions.

@postcarbonsteve 14. Figures don't lie, but liars figure.

@postcarbonsteve 15. It's the energy.
The world we live in, the part of it around us, has vastly more energy in it than the one I was born into lo, these many years ago.
The fucking wind is horrible.
I've lived in this county since 1985. I've lived in this very hill since 2004, but I worked here

@postcarbonsteve 16. on various projects and animals, outside stuff, since probably 1988 or 1989.
Long time.
The. Fucking. Wind.
Specifically these last 3-4 years.
It's the excess energy from the CO2 molecules. They bang into the air molecules harder, make the wind worse.
It's exhausting.

@postcarbonsteve 17. I'd say some huge percentage of the people in the developed world are deeply in denial.
If most people didn't believe to the bottom of their hearts that high energy services would be available forever, we'd be at least taking our foot off the throttle.
6 billion of the people

@postcarbonsteve 18. That all the Overshooters weep about daily mostly aren't really damaging the ecosystem or the climate at a rate too fast for humans to try to address.
1/4 of us do over 3/4 of the damage.
So, while we argue about what to do about All These People, let's try to quit our rape.

@postcarbonsteve 19. We know what we need to do. We need to wean ourselves off the speed.
And We Don't Wanna.

@postcarbonsteve 20. Imagine you're out in the neighborhood, you're not paying attention, and you walk into the corner of a building. Wham. Ouch.
Now imagine you run into at 60 MPH.
Splat.
Raspberry jelly.
Closed casket.
Energy.

@postcarbonsteve 21. If you see you're pointed at the building, going too fast, slam on the brakes, shed as much speed and energy as you can, splat into it at 30 mph, your car's probably a total loss but you live to tell the story.
It's the rate at which you dissipate energy.

@postcarbonsteve 22. When we all wake up one day and gasoline has been unavailable all week and we suddenly have an epiphany.
Then the lights go out.
That's all it takes.