The Sound Foundations of Engineered Earth Construction

Earth construction has recently attracted great interest as post-Peak building method for the First World. (By post-Peak methods, I mean methods of producing useful products which are suitable for a declining or collapsing economy whose resource base is drying up.) The reasons for this interest have to do with looming resource constraints, in particular, the resources required for construction methods which have become standard over the last hundred years in the developed world. However, the principles of proper earth building design and construction must be thoroughly understood and properly implemented in order to avoid loss of life due to failure and collapse of buildings. There is a strong need for validation of techniques, practices and principles of structurally sound earth building. This validation must be accomplished via experimentation and mathematical modeling and analysis.

This validation is also of special interest in the Third World (also known as the developing world), where, according to at least one source, approximately one fifth of the world's population lives in adobe and rammed earth structures, and where, according to another source, more than 90 percent of the population in moderate to severe seismic zones is living and working in non-engineered earth buildings. A body of work now exists which documents the behavior of earth buildings when subjected to various loading events, including seismic and wind events. This development of this body of work has been spearheaded by engineering professionals, universities and governmental agencies both in the developing world and in the First World nations of the Global South.

This work reveals some surprising facts, both with regard to safe earth construction best practices and with regard to the flow of useful information in the developing world. As far as the flow of useful information, two things can be observed. First, there is a much greater proportion of public-minded engineering and technical professionals in the developing world compared to professionals in the First World. This is seen in the willingness of researchers to openly and freely disseminate their published work via the Web without charging rent on “intellectual property.” In the First World, on the other hand, rent-seeking vultures have restricted the free flow of potentially life-saving technical information in many cases. (Many of the publications from First World sources on the topic of earth construction are behind paywalls. One refreshing exception in the United States is the Getty Institute.) This is one reason why the Third World may be better poised for post-Peak adaptation than the First World. Secondly, the universities and professionals of the Third World are every bit as capable and competent as those in the First World, and in fact they may be far more creative.

In the literature which I have discovered, there are two categories of discussion regarding performance of earthen structures: the performance of non-engineered structures and the performance, experimental testing and analysis of engineered earthen structures. These discussions reveal the following observations:

1. Almost all of the literature states that typical non-engineered earthen structures perform very poorly when subjected to severe and sudden wind loads or seismic events. This applies both to rammed earth (also known as tapia, taipal or pise de terre), cob and adobe structures. Rammed earth constructions and other earth structures can be highly susceptible to damage from earthquakes and other ground motion.

2. The mechanism of disintegration of earth walls for various types of earth construction have been studied via shake table and compression tests. Among other things, these tests have documented the anisotropy of multi-layer rammed earth walls. A material that is anisotropic has physical properties that vary at different locations and in different directions in the material rather than being uniform throughout the material. This is important if there is a concern that a wall made of anisotropic material might have material properties that are not constant throughout the wall.

3. Techniques for stabilization and reinforcement of earth structures have been studied. One study focused on two particular approaches: internal reinforcement via chicken wire or bamboo, and external reinforcement with bamboo or wooden members. Internal reinforcement did not work nearly as well as external reinforcement, which spread earthquake stresses over a large wall area, dissipating earthquake energy without causing major cracking.

4. Proper reinforcement of earthen walls is key to surviving earthquakes and other environmental events. Unreinforced earthen structures suffered a number of typical failure modes. In addition, walls or wall elements that are reinforced internally with biodegradable materials like straw have been known to fail due to degrading of the reinforcement by insects and rot.

5. As a result of laboratory tests, mathematical modeling and observations of actual earth structures in the aftermath of actual earthquakes, a number of governmental agencies and NGO's have published earth construction design guides. Many of these design guides agree on key points. In addition, there are countries in the developing world and the Global South which have formulated or are formulating earth building codes. New Zealand is one such case. Their New Zealand Earth Building Standards can serve as a repository of best practices and a starting place for model codes for earth building in other countries. Unfortunately, access to the New Zealand standards is not free.

6. In addition to design guides for building professionals and code-enforcing officials, certain governments and NGO's have developed earth construction manuals for non-professional, unskilled builders who would be typical in rural or poor urban populations. Among the governmental agencies disseminating this design information is SENA (Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje, www.sena.edu.co), a national public entity of Colombia in South America, which publishes literature for public education and vocational training throughout South America. In addition, the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur has published the IAEE Guidelines for Earthquake Resistant Non-Engineered Construction, which is available in PDF form free of charge at the IIT Kanpur National Information Centre of Earthquake Engineering website. A 2011 draft update of these guidelines is also available from the International Institute of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering in Japan. Such guidelines embody low-cost, effective approaches for building safe earthen structures.

7. Researchers have studied the challenge of reinforcing and retrofitting existing earthen structures which have historical significance. Recommended retrofit practices are emerging. Many of these retrofit practices involve addition of bamboo reinforcement to the exterior surfaces of earth walls, both outside and inside an earthen structure, in order to spread forces and stresses so that they don't result in concentrated failure at one point.

Many more facts could be gleaned from the available literature, but unfortunately, I am out of time. However, a list of references and cited works is included at the end of this post. Enjoy!

Additional References And Resources:

1. “Seismic Behavior and Rehabilitation Alternatives for Adobe and Rammed Earth Buildings,” Luis. E. Yamin, Camilo A. Phillips, Juan C. Reyes, Daniel M. Ruiz, 13^th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, 2004.

2. “Modern and historic earth buildings: Observations of the 4^th September 2010 Darfield Earthquake,” H.W. Morris, 9^th Pacific Conference on Earthquake Engineering – Building and Earthquake-Resilient Society, April 2011.

3. “Non-Engineered Construction In Developing Countries – An Approach Toward Earthquake Risk Reduction,” Anand S. Arya, 12WCEE 2000, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India.

4. “Review of Non-Engineered Houses in Latin America with Reference to Building Practices and Self-Construction Projects,” Aikaterini Papanikolaou, Fabio Taucer, European Commission Joint Research Centre, 2004.

5. “Seismic Performance of Mud Brick Structures,” Joseph Hardwick and Jonathan Little, University of Bristol, EWB-UK National Research Conference 2010 and Engineers Without Borders UK, 2010.

6. “Low-Cost and Low-Tech Reinforcement Systems for Improved Earthquake Resistance of Mud Brick Buildings,” Dominic M. Dowling and Bijan Samali, The Getty Institute.

7. “Assessing the Anisotropy of Rammed Earth,” Quoc-Bao Bui, Jean-Claude Morel, 11^th International Conference on Non-Conventional Materials and Technologies, 2009.

8. “Planning and Engineering Guidelines for the Seismic Retrofitting of Historic Adobe Structures,” E. Leroy Tolles, Edna E. Kimbro, William S. Ginell, The Getty Institute, 2002.

9. “An Improved Means of Reinforcing Adobe Walls – External Vertical Reinforcement,” Dominic Dowling, Bijan Samali, Jianchun Li, SismoAdobe 2005, Lima, Peru.

10. “Earthquake Resistant Rammed-Earth (Taipal) Buildings,” J. Vargas, Catholic University of Peru.

The (Worldwide?) Peak of Human Resources

In my last post, I discussed the fallen tendency of some of us humans to conduct ourselves as predators and to regard all the rest of humanity as prey. I also briefly described how this tendency has shaped the evolution of industrial society. Another way of framing this predator-prey relationship is that to the wealthiest members of society, the global official economy over which they preside exists for one purpose, namely their own personal enrichment. Just as that economy requires an ever-expanding supply of material resources in order to generate ever-increasing wealth, so it requires an ever-expanding supply of human capital in order to generate ever-increasing wealth for its elites. The Hubbert Peak of the rate of extraction of various non-human resources is now appearing as a threat to the survival of the economy. I'd like to suggest the existence of a Hubbert Peak of the rate of exploitation of “human resources” as well, and that this poses a further threat to the owners of our present economy, in addition to the Hubbert Peaks of use of other resources. I will present evidence that suggests that we (at least in the First World) are already “past Peak” with regard to human resources. As one version of a favorite song of mine says,

Well, there's a change in the wind, you know the signs don't lie,

Such a strange feelin' and I don't know why it's takin'

such a long time;

Backyard people and they work all day,

Day gets wasted, it's safe to say that they're tastin'

to make the words rhyme...

First, it should be mentioned that Hubbert depletion analysis has been applied not only to inanimate resources, but to biological resources that are exploited at rates beyond their natural rates of regeneration and renewal. One such analysis is “Price Trends Over A Complete Hubbert Cycle: The Case of the American Whaling Industry in 19^th Century” by Ugo Bardi, a professor at the University of Firenze in Italy and author of the blog, Cassandra's Legacy. Those who study the history of whaling in the 19^th century will find an interesting perspective among whalers and those who depended on the whaling industry, namely, a failure to recognize or acknowledge the effects of overfishing and exploitation of whales at a nonrenewable rate. The closest anyone seems to have come to an acknowledgement of this reality is found in a book published in 1878 by Alexander Starbuck who acknowledged that declining production of whale fisheries was due to “an increase of consumption beyond the power of the fishery to supply.” However, like apologists for our present oil industry who blame “aboveground factors” for production constraints, Mr. Starbuck cited “the scarcity and shyness of whales” as a contributing factor in fishery production decline.

Since there are limits to the maximal sustainable rate of exploitation of non-human biological resources, it stands to reason that there is a limit to the maximal sustainable rate of exploitation of human beings as well. Breaching this limit would cause the breakdown of an industrial society even if that society was well-supplied with all other production inputs. Moreover, there would be increasingly severe signs and symptoms of breakdown as the society was driven further and further beyond sustainable rates of exploitation of its members. Finally, it would not be surprising to see the elites at the head of such a society rationalize and refuse to acknowledge the true meaning of these signs and symptoms.

Are there modern societies in which we can see this breakdown taking place? (Is the Pope Catholic?) A better question might be, “Which modern country might best serve as a poster child for the effects of unsustainable exploitation of its human capital?” There are many contenders for this doubtful honor, but today I'd like to focus on Japan – not because I believe that country is worse than, say, the United States, but because the capitalists of that country have created trends which most of the industrial world has been obliged to follow. First, we need to look briefly at the history of Japan from the end of World War Two onward.

The end of the war left Japan both shattered and occupied. The United States provided approximately $18.6 billion in aid, both under the Marshall Plan and other outlays, for the rebuilding of nations whose infrastructure and economy had been damaged by the war. Japan received $2.44 billion. (Total U.S. expenditures from 1945 to 1953 amounted to $44.3 billion.) (Source: Wikipedia, Marshall Plan.) Yet even with American aid, life was very hard for the majority of Japanese citizens just after the war. Their suffering and privation motivated them to quickly fashion an economy which would guarantee robust prosperity for the nation.

Many growth strategies were employed both by the Japanese government and the leaders of its most powerful financial and industrial sectors. While some of these strategies focused on protecting Japanese domestic markets from foreign competition, others focused on building Japan into an industrial powerhouse. One aspect of the building of that powerhouse is of particular interest – namely, the fostering of a certain kind of relationship between the managers of large corporations and the majority of their employees. This relationship was the outgrowth of the Japanese Production Management system (JPM) which has given the world such concepts as TQM (Total Quality Management), JIT (Just-In-Time Manufacturing). SCM (Supply Chain Management), Kaizen, (embodying, among other things, “lean manufacturing”), Zero Defects and Quality Circles. (One other thing to note: although these ideas came to full implementation in Japan, many of these ideas were introduced to Japan by American business and economic teachers such as W. Edwards Deming . This is rather like communism, which was not invented by Russians, yet was wholeheartedly adopted by Russia for several nauseating decades.)

The essence of many of these elements of JPM was to eliminate as much “waste” as possible from the manufacturing process. As JPM spread to other sectors of the Japanese economy, this same focus on “eliminating waste” spread too. The aim of kaizen was continuous improvement of a business process. The measure of “continuous improvement” was continuous growth of profits and continuous reduction of operating expenses. Industry leaders fostered a culture in which workers supported cost cutting and continuous process improvement, identifying fully with the goals of management. This led to situations in which workers on a line assembling car engine parts might have only two minutes allotted per car and no spare time allowed, thus forcing a typical worker to assemble engine parts for 250 cars every five hundred minutes. In such a factory, the production method would involve synchronized production (JIT, no pool of parts and no waste), value organization (to identify the spare time each worker had after one assembly operation in order to identify “waste time”), and supplement production (obtaining the minimum necessary parts from suppliers and subcontractors in order to reduce stock). (Source: “Karoshi – Death From Overwork: Occupational Health Consequences of the Japanese Production Management,” Katsuo Nishiyama and Jeffrey V. Johnson.)

This frenzied work environment was not confined to blue collar occupations, but spread through the ranks of lower and mid-level management as well, giving rise to the salaryman as a cultural icon. It has also given rise to Karoshi (death from overwork), a medical phenomenon of epidemic proportions, along with the related phenomenon of Karo-jisatu (suicide from overwork). Yet this work environment has been reinforced through many means, including identification with traditional Japanese religious and cultural values; unions that have been thoroughly co-opted by management; rigorous standardized schooling with heavy emphasis on conformity, rote memorization and high-stakes, standardized tests, and mass media which promotes the idea of the salaryman as a modern-day samurai contending on behalf of his employer. (As one television commercial put it, “Can you fight 24 hours for your corporation?”)

(To those of you who are not Japanese and who have no knowledge of Japanese culture, I ask: does any of this look familiar? Can you see these things happening in your own societies? Karoshi may soon be coming to a town near you.)

Though this culture has taken a heavy toll on Japan, the government, along with leaders of business and industry, have been extremely reluctant to acknowledge that toll. (What? You're telling me that stress kills people? Aw, come on! “Not all scientists would agree with you.”) But now there are signs that the society which has been built on this culture is starting to break down. The origin of the breakdown is among the Japanese youth, who see their parents being dehumanized and worked to death and who are saying to themselves that they refuse to become like their parents. They are angered by their parents' unrequited sacrifices and they are choosing to opt out of the system.

The opting-out takes a number of different forms. There are the freeters, young people who deliberately choose low-paying part-time jobs so that they can have control over their lives instead of running in an ever-accelerating corporate hamster wheel. There are also the hikikomori, youth who have been damaged by a high-stakes schooling system and who are unable to face the thought of going out into a predatory world without any social support system. There is the larger movement of the datsusara, people who quit work as salarymen or office women in order to launch careers that are more in line with their values.

These people are a threat to the dominant economy, in large part because they represent lost profits (or, to put it differently, they are escaped prey). They have caught the attention of the leadership of Japan, one of whose members suggested not too long ago that all freeters should be forced to join the Japanese Self-Defense Force and go to Iraq. Yet they are part of a phenomenon which is arising in many different countries. As globalization and uber-capitalism have swept the globe, youth who are now coming of age (along with not a few older people) are also coming to realize that the society created by their masters holds nothing for them, and they increasingly feel no obligation to that society. They are dropping out of their respective societies – much as air leaks slowly out of even perfectly good tires on a hot day. The trick is to escape without losing one's mind in the process.

References:

1. “Karoshi – Death From Overwork: Occupational Health Consequences of the Japanese Production Management,” 4 February 1997, Katsuo Nishiyama and Jeffrey V. Johnson.

2. “The Japanese 'Death by Overwork' Phenomenon,” 25 July 2007, Josefine Cole.

3. “Karoshi (Work to Death) in Japan,” 2008, Atsuko Kanai.

4. “Workplace Stress: A Collective Bargaining Issue,” 2002, Anne-Marie Mureau.

5. “The Impact of Globalization on Post World War II Japan,” 2 April 2010, Phillip Luu.

The Danger Of Telegraphing Your Punches

As some long-time readers of mine may have noticed, my blogging has undergone a bit of a hiatus over the last year. This was due to my working two jobs, one of which involves teaching. The demands of the two jobs left very little time for anything more than scattered, brief commentary on this blog. Now, thankfully, I am down to just one job. Though the pay is significantly less than before, the peace of mind is significantly greater.

At the beginning of my (partial) silence, my writing was strongly focused on the subject of resilient neighborhoods, including topics such as the elements of a neighborhood that provide for resilience in the face of economic contraction and energy descent, as well as steps for building neighborhood resilience. Overwhelming busyness prevented me from exploring these themes further, but I was able to keep up with the writings of others who were exploring these topics, in particular, Joanne Poyourow, a writer active in the U.S. branch of the Transition movement. She wrote a five-part series of articles on economic resilience as applied to local communities, as well as a separate post on her own blog, titled, “Resilience: A View From The Transition Movement.”

Her articles and the suggestions contained therein were both good and practical. Yet as I read what she had to say, along with reading the daily news of what was being done to our nation and our world by the holders of concentrated wealth and power, I found myself having second thoughts, even as I reconsidered my own focus and emphasis. It seemed that Joanne had fallen victim to a blind spot which seems typical among many activists concerned with economic contraction and energy descent. I will attempt to point out that blind spot now, along with what I believe to be the issues that must be faced by ordinary people seeking to adapt to our present times.

I'll start with a quote from Gale Warnings, a blog written by Stormchild. The quote reads in part, “...most of us spend our lives as prey, economically and psychologically. Awareness is the key to understanding this; but once we understand it, we may transcend it, choosing, when we can, to be neither prey nor predator.” The problem people have faced almost from the outset is simply this: the fallen tendency for some humans to conduct themselves as predators and to regard all of their fellow humans as prey. There is a long history of predator-prey relationships across societal and geopolitical scales, culminating in the predation of the entire world by the Anglo, American and European empires.

As I see it, three trends have been at work in the world over the last two hundred years or so. The first trend is the tendency toward the concentration of the power and wealth of societies – particularly in the West – in the hands of an ever-diminishing number of master predators who are able to out-compete their fellows for prey, and who eventually succeed in laying claim to every available bite of prey. The second trend is the fight for freedom waged by the prey against their predators. During the 20^th century, this fight for freedom was ostensibly successful in many parts of the globe and many sectors of American society. Several countries were able for a time to escape from being banana republics or something similar, and many members of ethnic minority groups in the United States suddenly had wonderful doors of opportunity opened for them. While this did indeed upset the elites at the head of fading European empires or the expanding American empire, this fight for freedom was tolerated somewhat, because the continual expansion of the global industrial economy was able to absorb the exponentially expanding appetites of these elites even as they lost some of their prey to freedom. (Of course, between the overthrow of colonialism and the gains of the civil rights movements in the 1960's and now, the elites were able to subtly erase nearly all civil rights gains and to recapture a very large proportion of escaped prey, but that's a subject for another time.)

The third trend should concern us all very much, because it is the trend at work right now. I said that the appetites of the elites are exponential. What I really mean is that the expression and manifestation of those appetites is exponential. Today they want one bite of prey. Tomorrow, they will want e bites. The next day, they will want eⁿ slices, where n is an integer greater than 1. As long as the economy controlled by these elites grows at a rate greater than eⁿ, they can tolerate the escape of a few prey from their grip. But what if the economy should begin to contract because of the decline of its resource base and the inability of the earth to absorb any more of the waste products of that economy?

That is the situation we face now. The well has run dry. The resource base of the global economy is drying up, the global economy is contracting, and no one can do a thing to stop it. When governments and wealthy people at the top of society see these things unfolding, their response and priorities are very different from the responses and priorities of ordinary people who see these things unfolding. We live and function in an economy in which the notional “wealth” held by the largest holders of concentrated wealth and power actually consist of relationships of dependence which they have established with the vast majority of the rest of us through trickery and force. In other words, they have made us to depend on them for nearly every necessity of life, which they are willing to give to us in exchange for our labors. The surplus of those labors is creamed off for themselves, leaving almost nothing for us to enjoy. And the “necessities” which are given to us in return for our labors are very tightly rationed, or in increasing cases are mere junk, froth and “empty calories” disguised as necessities.

One needn't look far to see examples of what I am talking about. How about having to pay thousands of dollars a year for “health insurance” which does not actually guarantee that you will be able to see the doctor you need, let alone avoid medical bankruptcy should you become seriously sick? How about not being able to get from point A to point B without driving a new car that costs tens of thousands of dollars, forcing you to go into debt just to get around? How about being beholden to private utilities, including privatized water and sewer services?

Every relationship of dependence on our formal, official economy is a claim on the fruits of your labor – whether it's an interest-bearing debt you owe because of the cost of buying a house, a car or an education; or whether it's the percentage of “market share” of which your purchasing decisions comprise a part; or whether it is the tax burden imposed on you as an ordinary citizen as part of your government's promise to bail out rich financial institutions. These claims make up a large part of the notional “wealth” of the predators at the top of our society.

Many of us now see that the formal economy is in trouble, and that it can no longer deliver the necessities it promises, and we are talking among ourselves, making plans, publishing on the Internet, trying to start movements, trying to warn and influence the policy makers at the helm of society. But the predators at the top see these suggestions and movements as threats to their wealth. For even if we all cooperatively fashion a society that is equitable and suited to energy descent, this means the loss of the power of the elites. If on the other hand, we ordinary people begin to break free from the system on which we depend – if we begin to fashion survivable, sustainable alternatives to the system – we will be regarded as escaped prey by predators who can no longer count on an expanding economy to satisfy their ever-expanding appetites.

(Here I must insert a quote I discovered this last week from a talk given by John Taylor Gatto to the 11^th Annual International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC) in 2003. In his talk he described how the elites of our society see themselves – not as conspirators, but rather, “When you bought your last package of chicken parts, or slabs of beef, or a side of salmon, did you think you were participating in a conspiracy against the lives of these animals? It's a ridiculous idea, isn't it? Q.E.D. You and I are the chickens, the beef and the fish.” I don't know that I believe this isn't a conspiracy, but I thought his quote about chicken, beef and fish was right on.)

If you find ways of meeting your needs outside the system and you are unwise enough to publicize them, I see one of three things happening to you. First, what you are doing may be declared illegal, even though before you opened your mouth, it was perfectly legit. The second and third possibilities are especially relevant if what you do involves networking with others or creating alternative societal arrangements. If you form alternative networks for providing services or necessities to people apart from the dominant system, there is the possibility that global uber-capitalists may drive you out of business by flooding their perceived “market” with low-cost alternatives to your network. This highlights something we all need to realize about the wealthiest members of the official economy, namely, that although they are sitting on unholy amounts of claims on wealth which they call “capital,” they are always trying to grow the size of their “capital.” So their capital “chases yield” – in other words, the super rich are always looking for some market they can corner via strategic investing in order to increase their claims on the rest of us while deepening our enslavement to them. (This is why it is so hard to become an entrepreneur or small businessman in the United States nowadays.) The third thing that may happen is that if there is a political element to your alternative social arrangement – if it takes on the character of a movement – you will be joined by infiltrators and ersatz “reformers” claiming to “be working within the system to try to change the system,” and they will co-opt your movement and derail it.

In other words, if you seek to escape from our present economic system because you see that it is crumbling, you will become an offense to the masters of that system, because they are predators and you have just become escaped prey. Now that their system is shrinking, they grudge the loss of any prey, and they will do all they can to make sure their appetites are satisfied at your expense. Under such circumstances, does it make sense to openly talk and write about establishing “Transition Networks,” or to openly talk and write about establishing local currencies and barter arrangements, or to disclose – on the Internet, for all the world to see – any other suggestions for community action and community resilience? Jeff Vail and John Robb have written about the concept of “open source insurgency” as an outcome of the efforts of ordinary people to break free from predatory systems. I admit that I need to study in more detail exactly what they mean by “open source insurgency,” but I think it is now becoming increasingly unwise to publicize many of the strategies people might use to make themselves and their localities more resilient. I think it would be better for people to discuss and plan their strategies for resilience in face-to-face conversations with people they can trust. I also think it is far past time for people to take a step back from technology and to rediscover methods of communication and collaboration that don't depend on the Web and that are less vulnerable to eavesdropping. This may mean that “neighborhood resilience” takes on a multicolored hue, that there arises a huge variety of means by which various neighborhoods and groups of people in cooperation with each other become “resilient.”

Scoring Some Big Books

Our knowledge of history is under threat in the United States – especially our accurate knowledge of recent history. An accurate knowledge of recent history and of the role the United States has played in that history might well cause a great deal of unease of conscience among the masses of consumatrons who make up the vast majority of native-born Americans. Therefore, powerful institutions are at work to try to make everyone forget. Their efforts seem to be working. As an example, I was talking to a couple of kids a month ago and found out that they knew very little about the origins of the war in Iraq.

Accurate online histories are also under attack, and false histories abound. Even accurate online histories can be subject to sabotage.

So I am happy to report that I scored a big prize today. I finally got my hands on two copies of Fuel On The Fire: Oil And Politics In Occupied Iraq by Greg Muttitt. The book was devilishly hard to get. I wanted to purchase it by a particular method: namely, walking into a bookstore and handing over cash in exchange for the book. I didn't want to order it online or use a credit card or Paypal account to buy it. (Partly, this was because I don't want to let the U.S. Government know what sorts of books I like to read ;) ). It seems that you can only buy this book in person if you go to bookstores in Britain. In the U.S., Borders Books only offers an e-book version. Barnes and Noble doesn't offer it at all. Amazon sells both paperback and e-book versions, but you have to tell them a bit about yourself (things like credit card numbers, for instance). Powell's Books right here in Portland deserves special mention. Powell's will sell you the book, but their website states that the book is “available for shipping only. Not available for In-store Pickup.” (Powell's has made a name for themselves as “progressive” and “locally owned,” but as far as I am concerned they are just as evil and consumerist as Starbucks.)

Anyway, I circumvented a few roadblocks by getting a very small, locally owned bookshop to order me a couple of copies. The bookshop was happy to take my cash in return. These books are thick (as a former boss of mine used to say, “Enough paper to choke a horse), and chock full of U.S. and British government and industry documents obtained from the British government under their version of the Freedom of Information Act, which is a lot freer than the U.S. version of the FOIA has become. Now that I have them, I'll be sharing some highlights from my reading over the next several months, as well as discussing and reviewing a couple of other books that are pertinent to adaptation to economic contraction and energy descent.

* * *

P.S. I am sad to report that Naomi's Organic Farm Supply will be closing soon. Neil and Naomi Montacre are the proprietors of the place, which includes a large organic garden and greenhouse as well as an organic gardening store. They are situated on a plot of land that is owned by Les Schwab's Tire Stores, and Les Schwab wants to build another store on that plot of land. A Les Schwab store seems a very poor substitute for Naomi's. Wherever Neil and Naomi go from here, I am sure they will enrich the place of their sojourning, as they have done up to now.

The Sheep Dogs Of Dissent

I was driving home from work this evening (only a week left to go before I won't have to do that again!), and found myself stuck in a long, slow freeway traffic jam. I wanted to find out why the freeway was so slow, so I turned on the radio, hoping to hear some traffic news from KPOJ.

It wasn't quite the time for news, traffic and weather; like most news/talk stations nowadays, they only give you a smidgeon of news, and that only happens once every half hour. What I got instead was a bit of impassioned commentary from Randi Rhodes regarding the privatization of prisons in the United States. She also played an audio clip of the mother of a young teen sentenced to a juvenile camp by a Pennsylvania judge who was convicted this past February of accepting kickbacks from a private prison corporation operating in the state. Evidently the young teen killed himself as a result of his imprisonment, and so at the sentencing of the former judge, the young man's mother delivered a furious rant when she found out that the judge would remain free until his sentencing.

I found that I couldn't stand to listen to more than three minutes of this, and I shut the radio off and delivered a little soliloquy of my own. I was mad, all right – but for reasons which might not have occurred to Randi Rhodes.

It's not that I'm pleased by the commercialization and corruption of the American criminal justice system. Indeed, I've known about it for a few years now, as I wrote in posts such as “Money and Filthy Hands,” and “The Replacement of Petroleum Slaves,” to name a few. The American criminal justice system is a disgraceful evil whose purpose is increasingly to serve as yet another way of funneling the wealth and labor of poor people into the hands of the rich. Part of what made Randi Rhodes' show so hard to listen to is that it is painful to hear of the miscarriages of justice that are still going on in this country.

Now the fact that rich people profit from locking up youth without cause is nothing new. It was only recently elevated to national attention because of the increasing lockups of non-minority youth. But the minority community (in particular, the Black and Latino communities) have always had to deal with this. (See Color Of Justice and Justice for Some, for instance.) It seems, however, that problems of injustice don't really start to exist until they begin to be experienced by mainstream, apple-pie America. And that I find irritating.

But here's a yet more irritating thing. I admit that I didn't finish listening to Randi Rhodes, but I think I can guess how her commentary was structured: first, to inflame passion and anger among certain listeners with so-called “progressive” political views, then to make impassioned appeals to “work to try to change the system!” Why “work to change the system”? “Because we're all in this together, and we're under the system, so we gotta change it to make the system work better and more fairly!”

The truth is that the “system” under which all but the richest Americans live and operate can no longer be changed by ordinary people of small means. It is evil, predatory, sociopathic and unfair precisely because its masters are evil, predatory, sociopathic and unfair. Its masters are also very powerful. To me, it really seems that there's nothing we can do about this short of disengaging ourselves from the system.

This disengagement may seem like a small act, but it is the one thing we can do to weaken the system. Don't like American public education? Disengage from it. Don't like American for-profit health care? Learn to take care of yourself. Don't like the way most of us get our food? Create alternative means of feeding yourself. But don't tell the world what you're up to. Disengagement may well be the most effective act of sabotage any individual can commit.

You won't find that sort of solution discussed on KPOJ, “Portland's only progressive talk station!” If the KPOJ talking heads seriously discussed how people can disengage themselves from the predatory and corrupt systems under which they now live, Clear Channel would instantly pull the plug. Instead, we get impassioned talk designed to inflame us to go out and vote, or to support one political candidate over another, or "be ethical consumers," or in any of a number of other ways to continue to lend our support to a corrupt and failing system. And every fifteen minutes, there is a station break into which five or six commercials are jammed, telling us to go out and consume even more. Those talking heads who are good at what they do are able to keep their audiences hooked so that they soak up everything, including the commercials.

Meanwhile, the masters of commercialized, faux-progressive mass media in this country do their best to shift their audience base ever so slightly to the right, day by day. How many KPOJ talking heads supported NATO intervention in Libya? Why did Rachel Maddow ask a couple of years ago what the United States should be doing to make the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan “behave”? It seems sometimes that the main job of the faux-progressives is to turn genuine outrage into ineffectual channels that pose no threat to their real masters.

An American Chimera

Over the last year or so, I've almost stopped following the mainstream news. Occasionally I scan newspaper headlines, but that's about all I do unless I happen to be listening to the now ubiquitous “news/talk” radio (with the emphasis on the talk) to find out what tomorrow's weather will be.

An outside observer might have expected my disinterest to change last Sunday when I heard that the United States had assassinated Osama Bin Laden. Such an observer would have been disappointed.

To be sure, I picked up small scraps, bits and pieces of the story. I guess U.S. operatives were supposed to have located and shot Mr. Bin Laden this past Sunday, and to have buried his body in the sea. Bin Laden has provided the U.S. with a convenient excuse for some interesting policies and actions on the international stage over the last decade. These policies and actions have led to the destruction of two national governments, the death of over a million civilians and the attempt to steal the oil of at least two countries.

Now it seems that his death offers more political and propaganda capital than his life did for the leaders of America. What better way to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the September 11 attacks than to announce the death of the so-called perpetrator of those attacks? This will be a big year for the wealthy and powerful leaders of American society, as well as their media mouthpieces. I am sure they will make all sorts of appeals to patriotism via carefully choreographed propaganda stunts and commemorations. Their message will be, “God bless America! And let no one question the sustainability or morality of the American way of life: the unrestrained freedom to pursue material wealth! Support our troops, for they fight to maintain the American way! And let no one question the morality of their fight or the rights of those against whom they are fighting!”

Pardon my skepticism, but the story of Bin Laden's death seems to hold a lot less water than a corpse buried at sea should. “The operation to remove him was so hush-hush, see, that we can't release any photos of his corpse...” For the last few years, Bin Laden has seemed to me to be merely a manufactured distraction from one of the main real issues facing this country, namely the insistence of most of the nation and of all of its wealthiest and most powerful members that America is entitled to control and consume all of the world's resources, regardless of the cost to other peoples or the fact that those resources are now running out.

This issue seems to be too painful for us to bear looking at it for very long. So we look for distractions as we have been trained to by our media, and the media happily dishes up distractions. A week ago it was a certain wedding of two extremely spoiled people in England. (I don't give two cents and a stick of chewing gum about the “Royal Wedding.” He's not the prince of Oregon, is he?!) This week it's Bin Laden. But I'm not distracted.

I care far more about things that our mainstream media continues to ignore – questions like, what's a sievert? How many sieverts does it take to kill you? How many millisieverts does it take to ruin your health for good? How many millisieverts have we in the Pacific Northwest received since the 11^th of March? Will the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster ever be satisfactorily mitigated? How many people know about the gasoline shortages sweeping many parts of the globe right now (including shortages in parts of Georgia and Pittsburgh in the U.S.)? What geopolitical games of robbery will the United States play as global resource shortages intensify? Who will be the next chimera?

Closed The Shop, Sold The House...

It must be tempting sometimes for the most popular collapse-watchers and writers to wonder how others take their words – especially their advice. In this post I'll talk a bit about the effect a few collapse-watchers have had on some recent decisions of mine.

I remember several months ago how I started to become very interested in The Automatic Earth, a blog which mainly focuses on the financial aspect of the decline and contraction of our present industrial society. I learned a great deal about finance from the site (although I must admit that I can still be confused by some of the more abstruse aspects of the world of modern finance). If I had to summarize the main points of The Automatic Earth, I would state them as follows:

• The global industrial economy dominated by the First World, particularly the United States, is in the throes of a deflationary contraction.

• This deflationary contraction consists of the extinguishing of multiple, mutually exclusive claims on wealth and the contraction of available credit.

• The fact that credit and multiple mutually exclusive claims on wealth are being extinguished defines this present time as a deflationary time, even though the prices of energy and many commodities are now rising.

• The best short-term strategy for weathering the present deflationary contraction consists, among other things, of holding as much cash as possible while becoming debt free and securing the means to maintain your own existence.

There's a fair bit of wisdom in these things, as well as other strategies not mentioned here which are listed at the Automatic Earth. But whenever there is advice from a particular source, one is also likely to find somewhat contrarian advice from others.

Anyway, I found myself following the advice listed above, as well as other maxims, such as “Take care of your health,” and “Be worth more to your employer than he is paying you.” I've been working two jobs, one as a practicing engineer and one as an engineering adjunct instructor. Engineering is not the most poetic profession on earth, but then, as Chico Escuela used to say on Saturday Night Live, it's been “bery, bery good to me.” However, I've been working like a dog for nearly a year now. The cash flow has been good – if one's goal is to “preserve liquidity” in the face of a deflationary depression. And I deliberately negotiated a salary with my boss that was lower than the going rate for someone with my experience, so I believe I have been worth more to him than he's paying me.

But he's wanting more and more of me, and over the last several months, it seems that a great many aspects of my life have been put on hold while I devote myself to work and to teaching. This is not a very resilient arrangement, for if the economy suffers the sort of shocks that it experienced in 2008, my firm could lose a number of key clients. There are things I should be doing toward building a resilient neighborhood where I live, toward writing and chronicling the unfolding story of life on the downside of Hubbert's Peak, toward doing good and trying with my neighbors and friends to preserve those things that are of greatest value. The demands of my work have gotten in the way of such things. Most of my co-workers regularly put in workweeks that average between 50 and 60 hours. The only skills we seem to have are cubicle skills. And what good is the money if you die of a heart attack or stroke trying to earn more of it? Or, as the Good Book says, “For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Thus, over the last few months I have come to certain conclusions. A few weeks ago, I gave my boss notice that I am quitting Although I am willing to stay on long enough to finish a couple of projects, I intend to be finished before the beginning of summer. For the next several months, I will be relying solely on my income as an adjunct professor. (This is my version of voluntary “radical cashectomy”.) I will be reducing my monthly expenses as well. Fortunately my house is paid for and I have no other debts, so debt is not an issue.

I have written out a mission statement of sorts for the next couple of years. It could be summed up in one phrase: “transforming myself (along with the people I care about) into someone who might stand a chance, given the world's assumed trajectory.” (Hat tip to Dmitry Orlov for that one.) The savings I have accumulated will provide me with a bit of “learning curve” time to accomplish this. One of my main goals is to develop a suite of post-Peak skills, with an emphasis on understanding general science and engineering and their application to a post-Peak world. Another goal is to become a competent teacher of these skills, as well as a builder of resilient enclaves and a repairer of culture.

I will also continue to write pertinent posts for this blog. Stay tuned!