Raising an Energy-Aware Generation

35 Comments on "Raising an Energy-Aware Generation"

GregT on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 2:15 pm 



Considering the inconvenient fact that CO2 is accumulative in the environment, anything that we do that continues to use fossil fuels is adding to climate change, not mitigating it. All electric power generation infrastructure is completely reliant on the continued burning of fossil fuels, as are all manufactured devices that we use electricity for.

Our educators are doing future generations a great disservice by the continued promotion of human technological advancement and exploitation of fossil fuels.

Our children need to be prepared for a future of survival. They need to learn how to grow, prepare, and preserve food. They need to learn how to be self sufficient, self sustainable, and they need to learn about the natural environment in which they are located.

Those that do not have the skills necessary, will not make it through the next 60 years, if anyone makes it through at all.

Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 2:37 pm 



Good to hear that some young people are learning about science. We’ll need top notch scientific skills to keep our civilization going, especially when so many are giving up school, society, work and the future.

J-Gav on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 4:33 pm 



I’ll agree to take this as “good news” Plant, since anything other than the usual dumbing-down is welcome.

But I also agree with GregT because the conclusion here comes up a tad short: “They need only to understand those systems and find the confidence to move ahead.” Oh, is that all they need to do? “Understand those systems,” which very few people up to now have shown any sign of understanding … ? The task is gargantuan and time is short but, sure, every little bit helps…

Northwest Resident on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 4:52 pm 



I look back on my school days and remember the long, tedious, boring class that I took which taught me how to use a slide rule. Next year, hand-held battery-operated calculators were allowed at school, and it turns out that the slide rule class was a complete was of time.

At some point in the future, I suspect there will be some surviving humans who think back on the solar-powered automobile class they took in school and think, what a waste of time!

I wish the schools would immediately switch to a curriculum of teaching organic and sustainable gardening, handy-man techniques, how to scavenge materials and use them to build useful things that don’t require oil to run, maybe classes in raising chickens/rabbits, how to build your own bow and arrow, Indian Survival Methods 101 — stuff like that. Oh yeah, and start teaching the kids how to distill their own liquor starting right now — they’ll really appreciate that training in later life I suspect.

Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 5:05 pm 



Its fine if the dumb kids get channeled into the organic gardening classes, but lets hope the smart kids persevere and become Ph.d.s and M.d.s and engineers and computer scientists and artists and actors and happily bring us new wonders in science and technology and medicine and the arts.

bob on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 5:25 pm 



Well I have young kids and we are not allowed to teach them about climate change and peak oil..We wouldn’t want those over consuming people to feel bad about themselves…

Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 5:40 pm 



@bob

You aren’t allowed to teach your children about climate change and peak oil? Really?

Are you in prison or something? Why can’t you teach your own children?

GregT on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 5:54 pm 



My wife and myself never taught either of our kids about climate change or peak oil. My son just graduated last week as an electrical engineer, and my daughter is a designer at an international level. She has already received some very prestigious awards at 30 years of age, and travels around the world.

My son is very well aware of what the future has in store, and plans to make as much money as he can while the going is still good, so that he can buy land close to my wife and I, that he can farm. My daughter just started asking about peak oil last week. She is just starting to ‘get it’. We are going to let her figure it out for herself. We don’t want to be seen as the ‘bearers of bad news’.

We have an entire generation of over-educated, over-qualified, and un-employed young people, that are mired in educational debt. In the mean time trades people are in huge demand, and we are importing labor from other parts of the world to fill in the gap. Our post secondary educational institutions have become nothing more than another big business that is putting people into debt, that many will probably never pay off.

Plant,

Ya, we should channel all of our dumb people into learning the skills required for our society’s survival, and teach our brightest minds to study things that will become a dead end in their lifetimes. That really makes a lot of sense.

Harquebus on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 6:36 pm 



Those that exploit the current system in order to obtain there own country retreats might have some problems.
An angry mob is one thing, a hungry mob is another.

MSN Fanboy on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 7:26 pm 



Ya, we should channel all of our dumb people into learning the skills required for our society’s survival, and teach our brightest minds to study things that will become a dead end in their lifetimes. That really makes a lot of sense.

Too true GregT: Ive been taught “advanced math” and “Physics” getting an A* in all my exams the previous year…
Now i realise, WTF was it all for? How does this help me? Film and Music trivia knowledge would be more useful.

Beyond reading and adding up my “poor mans wage” the majority of my schooling is pratically irrevelant.

Oh if you just get an A here and there, go to the right University and a high paying job will be yours, infact its already waiting for you, just jump through these debt hoops, i promise.

BULLSHIT

MSN Fanboy on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 7:28 pm 



Good God its depressing.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 8:26 pm 



Harqu, there is no guarantee there will be mobs everywhere. Some places will fare better. Some places law and order will hold. I don’t think it is a given that mad max will be on the loose. I hate the Hollywood movies that focus on cannibalism and mad max. I am sure there will be places that are awful but not everywhere.

bob on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 8:48 pm 



Well here in Amerika I tell my teenage daughter about peak oil and climate change but she just rolls her eyes I am up against the great marketing machine…I should know I used to be part of it before I took the blue bill and realized exactly what I was doing….I packed it all in and then went to building log cabins…peeling logs for penance and beer money…I then got my electrical license 10 years ago thinking solar and electrical would be everywhere…I became aware of peak oil in 1995…what I did underestimate was the ignorance of this country and the rest of the world…so long story short I asked a teacher why they don’t teach climate change in schools she told me she was not allowed……it is almost like there is a (whisper)….conspiracy…..can people really be this stupid?

Makati1 on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 10:04 pm 



They should be prepared to go through a few years/decades of Gestapo Police State like conditions. Then, when that eventually fails for lack of energy, the time of “everyone for themselves”. I think it is unrealistic, especially in Western countries, to expect anything else.

The die off when BAU happens will be quick. The obese and the sick will be first, along with the banker suicides. Then the weak will be next. Gangs will eventually roam the countryside looking for anything they want/need to survive.

No, the ‘Good Samaritan’ is a thing of the past. If there are any, they will be taken advantage of until they too perish. A community that really hangs together will also be rare if it can exist at all. After all, none of us can say what we will do if we are starving, or our kids are. There will always be someone who wants to rule, even in small towns. It’s in our genes.

Northwest Resident on Thu, 5th Jun 2014 11:16 pm 



Makati1 — Dark, bloody and feverish visions you’re having there. All just your opinion, conjured up from the dark brooding recesses of your mind, obviously. You’ve been gleefully predicting hellish and gruesome scenarios for America’s demise since I’ve been frequenting this form. You never quit. Time after time your posts paint a dreadful deathly future for America — almost as if that’s what you just can’t wait to watch happen. I’m sure you’ll be disappointed with America’s future, Makati1, though no doubt much of what you predict might and probably will occur to some degree — but it will everywhere else to, not least in your tiny and grossly overpopulated island with millions of desperately poor people. But you don’t want to think about that — you just want to constantly envision and imagine the worst possible scenarios for America. Too bad for you.

GregT on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 12:05 am 



NWR,

Makati refrained from using the A word. Instead he chose to use ‘Western countries’, one of which I currently live in. I am not going to put him down, mainly because I believe that he is mostly correct. Western societies are going to be the most affected by the decline in energy, because our societies are the most dependant on that same said energy.

None of our children anywhere will be exempt, but the children that are already living a life of sustenance, which you yourself are trying to achieve, are already much further ahead than the vast majority of us, or our children, in Western societies.

Norm on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 12:20 am 



Teach your kid to be energy aware. Buy him a Hummer.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 4:29 am 



Greg, you are off on this one:

Western societies are going to be the most affected by the decline in energy.

The third world will quickly be tipped into famine from the energy decent. I agree with you in the beginning of the decent but not when the decent is in full swing. Mak’s grossly overpopulated little island in climate changes crosshairs will fly apart with a food shortage and throw in some typhoons at the same time. Food is the weak link in a society. Here in North America we will suffer greatly but we have the lower population densities and great food producing regions to make a transition to postindustrial man work. Climate change may ruin these food producing areas but that will take time, if that is what happens. We don’t fully understand AGW now. Will the cities depopulate, yes. Will a die off occur, yes. But you take an Island like Mak’s, much of East Asia is similar, you have sever overshoot of population in all of Asia. You have dying oceans so no more sea food. You have deforestation, pollution on a scale never seen in human history, and finally a China ready to take whatever it needs. Just look to Vietnam for that example. So Greg, No, the worst will be in those countries that cannot meet their food needs. The Philippians a few years back had near riots because of rice shortages. The military was on the streets at distribution points. That was just a very small shortage and high prices. That should be a big red flag right there! Sorry Mak, poor choice.

Northwest Resident on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 9:53 am 



GregT and Davy — My girlfriend and live-in partner for eight years is herself from the Philippines. I know here many Filipina friends here in the US intimately, and I know her large extended family in the Philippines having been there several times. I can tell you without a doubt that every single Philippino I know would not give up their life in America and return to the Phillipines — just the opposite, they are trying very hard and for years to get their family members over here to America. Other than the mud shack villages where dirt-poor natives live outside the big cities in the Philippines, what they have are densely crowded cities where there is barely room enough to breath. It is mountainous and very rugged terrain in large portions of the islands — impossible to farm, rocky volcanic overflow underlies huge percentages of the land mass. The oceans are tapped out, scraped bare. I have visited plantations up in the mountains that have quite a bit of acreage used for growing pineapples, and there are a lot of small examples of individuals having little huts out in the country where they can grow their own food. But the majority of the Philippine population is already living on the edge of hunger and depravation — if/when starvation sets in, there will be massive riot and death across all the islands. My girlfriend is well aware of the impending collapse, and she is terrified for her family members because she knows the stark realities of living like a sardine in the Philippines. Makati1 can pretend and fantasize all he wants about how superbly the Philippines will handle themselves in a collapse as compared to America, but in a collapse scenario I would not want to be a white boy in the Philippines, or even a brown one.

GregT on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 11:06 am 



One of the guys I work with is Phillippino. and yes his family back home is very impoverished. They live on a small family farm and mostly live hand to mouth, they are impoverished by our standards, but they still managed to raise a family of four. He feels very fortunate to be in Canada, and even though he goes back every year to visit, he would never return there to live.

Here in Canada, he owns a condo in a high rise apartment building, he owns a car which he uses to commute daily to work. He shops at a number of well stocked grocery stores, and he enjoys all of the amenities that a world class city has to offer.

The thing is guys, if/when oil becomes unavailable, his condo will have no running water and no electricity. His 20 mile daily commute will no longer be possible, his white collar job in a downtown office tower will no longer exist, and his supply of food that mostly comes from over a thousand miles away, will completely dry up.

While there are some small local farms here that grow produce, they are few and far between. The bigger farms here grow mainly cranberries for export, and only produce one crop per year. There are some corn farmers 60 miles to the east, and large greenhouse operations that grow tomatoes and cucumbers. Other than that, our food comes from Mexico, California, Alberta, Brazil, China, Spain, New Zealand, and the gulf coast.

Over 90% of our population in Canada now live in big cities. If I were to hazard a guess, I would think that over 90% of us would have no clue how to grow food, even if we did have the land to grow it on, which we do not.

My parents both grew up on farms in the prairies, both of their families were dirt poor. They always had food to eat though, because they produced it themselves. With the advent of modern industrial agriculture, their families became multi-millionaires. Big ag has now bought them out. The crops grown on the land now, are all GMO, and require chemicals, pesticides, and fertilizers derived from, guess what, oil.

I am not for one second saying that people anywhere will be unaffected by a dramatic decrease in available energy. What I am saying, is that we here are much more reliant on energy than people in underdeveloped countries. If fossil fuels were to disappear tomorrow, people here would not know what to do to survive. We are two generations removed from being able to provide for ourselves. Most people I know are very specialized in their work skills, and almost none of them have any survival skills what so ever.

Everyone has a different perspective, obviously, depending on their own local. Where I am right now, would turn into an instant hell, if our energy supply were to be greatly diminished. The population would be decimated in a very short period of time, and the most affluent among us, would mostly be the first to go.

J-Gav on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 11:09 am 



GregT – I tried to feed my family and entourage some awareness about peak oil, climate change and biodiversity loss, in bite-sized doses but it didn’t go down very well. About 2 out of 20 people actually got it (wife and my step-son who, as a primatologist, easily got a handle on the climate and biodiversity side). The others freaked out to varying degrees.

I say all that just to mention that your strategy of just letting your children discover this stuff was no doubt a wiser one than mine.

GregT on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 11:31 am 



J-Gav,

I learned a long time ago, if you want to keep friends and family members close, some things are better left unsaid. If the subjects do come up in conversation, I might give people a link to a website, or recommend a documentary, but other than that, I pretty much keep things to myself. People don’t like to hear things that they perceive to be negative. Real or not.

Juan Pueblo on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 12:01 pm 



GregT & NR, great curriculum suggestions.
Greg, interesting choice you made not to tell your children. I have often wondered what would have been best, to tell or not to tell, if I had had children instead of a Vasectomy.

Northwest Resident on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 12:04 pm 



GregT — Excellent points you made there. But I don’t think it is a “given” that those countries most reliant on oil to power their daily systems and food delivery are necessarily the ones that are going to fall the hardest if (when) the global economy were to totally collapse.

The reason why is because many of those nations using the most oil and most reliant on oil for their daily systems operations — USA for example — have enormous amounts of their own oil and NG still being produced — not enough to meet their daily demands of course, but in a collapse scenario we can imagine that martial law will be initiated, almost nobody will be driving back and forth to work or to the local McD’s thereby scaling down millions of barrels of oil daily, which would leave plenty of home-based production available to power the farm equipment, the critical infrastructure and the security forces.

Countries like the Philippines are highly dependent on those Philippinos living here and sending their hard-earned American bucks back to the Philippines — it is a major part of their economy — as well as the tons and tons of food and other items shipped to the Philippines from wherever in the world those expatriates are living and working. Without external support and no market for their pineapples and other produce, combined with a total loss of all the jobs in the Philippines sponsored by American companies (millions of call centers, dozens or hundreds of offsite programming shops, etc…), the Philippines would turn into hell on earth almost immediately — and they wouldn’t even have to change the temperature because it is already hotter than hell in the Philippines as it is.

America is sparsely populated. America has a hardcore disciplined and massive security force that could clamp down and maintain order, for the most part. Most people in America live outside of the big cities, not in them. America can easily produce enough food to feed its entire population — and Canada’s population too — and has its own homegrown oil/NG production to keep critical transportation, infrastructure and security forces powered up. Most second and third world countries don’t have that — and they, I believe, will suffer the worst in a complete collapse scenario.

Juan Pueblo on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 12:07 pm 



Mak, I am afraid I agree with your comment and your dark visions.
I spent 13 of my life living in a military dictatorship that kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and disappeared people at will, many times without reason or by mistake. I have also worked and lived in other violent places of the world.
There is as much evil as good in people, what manifests mostly depends on the circumstances at any given time.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 12:54 pm 



Greg, you are right about the initial decent on the energy gradient with the North Americans. We will take it hard when our complex society grinds to a halt. Walmart’s will empty, replacement parts unavailable, command and control upset, infrastructure decay, and societal unrest. This will be especially true in the mega metropolises. Yet, there is a whole other North America. People in the rural areas all over America scrape by now. They know how to get by and have abilities to raise food, hunt, and forage. Will it be easy…hell no but it is possible. So we will have a mixed bag depending on location. A countries stability and possibility of becoming a failed state is most dependent on its food production abilities. North American farms can be switched over from industrial AG. They will not feed 300 plus million but they will feed some people and probably enough to prevent a failed state. The overwhelming situation in the third world is massive overshoot to carrying capacity in food production. This will mean mass famine and state failure. It will also spell the end of globalism which must have the resources and distribution channels to trade and exchange. In any case all of us are speculating and this will be a crap shoot. Decent involves decay, dysfunction, destruction, and chaos. The significant issue is chaos. I am talking chaos in the systematic term. In this regard we are looking at randomness of event in the decent. There will not be a nice neat slide down it will be anything but smooth. In this regard it is far too difficult to speculate on what will happen yet, we can look at regions and say this region is relatively better prepared than another.

J-Gav on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 1:10 pm 



Makati – I’ve envisioned the scenario you present repeatedly.
Still, there’s more in our genes than a basic survival instinct. Empathy, mutual aid and cooperation have also been part of our evolution. Agreed though, that communities will not make it by counting on angelic bonding with all other communities around them. The best-organized (and armed) ones will stand a better chance.

Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 1:27 pm 



Gav, I think there is allot to be said about the hidden meaning in the Mayan prophecies. There is reason to believe that the cyclical nature of “Nature” may lead to an awakening. It will take the destruction of what we have now for purification. There is no reason why violence will succeed over cooperation. Violence will destroy violence leaving cooperative structures space to grow. The initial decent will be ugly and violent but after the dust settles there will be a rebirth. Life’s nature is growth and development. With so much destruction the rebirth is likely to be very strong depending on the degree of destruction. If the destruction is bad enough the timeline will be very long from our point of view but not from “Life’s” point of view.

Northwest Resident on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 1:49 pm 



Davy and J-Gave — I would like to echo your sentiments. There is a great deal of potential in humans for nobility, for sharing and caring, for recognizing the need to work together and for submitting to extreme hardships in order to preserve and build on what is good. Posters like Makati1 only seem to see the dark and evil sides of human nature — especially where Americans are concerned. Makati1 and his cohorts frequently predict that Americans will set upon each others like savages and that a collapse scenario in America will be a mass free-for-all of violent bloody killing of one another. I totally and completely reject that dark and brooding vision. There will be death and bloodshed and desperate acts. But on the whole, we here in America will reach deep within our souls in times of extreme hardship and find ways to build community and work together. IF humans were all like what Makati1 envisions in his dark contemplations, we would have all gone extinct long ago. But the natural condition of the human species is that when the going gets tough, the tough get going, they deal with the hardships and group together to achieve survival capabilities — capabilities which include love, friendship, bonding, sharing and sacrifice.

I am so sick of American haters predicting that we all feast upon each other in a collapse scenario. That is pure B.S. and reflects the wishes and true desires of posters like Makati1, NOT reality.

J-Gav on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 1:56 pm 



Davy – I agree there is something to the cyclical nature of Earth + Life. Not only the Mayans saw it – ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indian, Chinese cultures glimpsed it too, sometimes in time-scales of about 26,000 years.

Well, don’t worry, I’m not going to go “new-agey” on ya here but … for that rebirth cycle to continue, it needs a seed-bed. If everything gets nuked-out, you’re right that, “from our point of view” that timeline could be pretty long.

J-Gav on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 2:08 pm 



Juan – Military dictatorship. I’d guess Chile or Argentina … with the U.S. training, arming and economically ‘advising’ the countries in question.

I can understand in that context how you can be unsure of just what human nature has in store for us. And I’m impressed that you’re not more anti-Anglo, kill the Yankees etc given such an experience. You sound like you may have read some good philosophy books.

Juan Pueblo on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 2:32 pm 



JGav, close enough. Don’t want to be specific.
I am not nationalistic in any way. I don’t much care for the nation state concept. I don’t discrimate, or at least I try not to on any basis.
I have been based in the USA for 25 years. Many of my closest, dearest friends are Americans. I got married in this country and most of the guests were Americans. I am glad to be their guest and full of gratitude for the life my wife and I continue to enjoy here.
It is not good to hold on to old grudges, they hurt you more than others.

GregT on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 3:28 pm 



Some very considerate comments here guys. Lots to think about. As I said above, everyone’s perspective will be different based on their own experience and location. The one thing for certain, there are going to be some very difficult times ahead. The big question mark, is when?

Northwest Resident on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 3:36 pm 



“The big question mark, is when?”

Too soon for those of us living today, but not soon enough for those who will be living in the future.

Harquebus on Fri, 6th Jun 2014 5:41 pm 



DaveyH. The survivors will go to where the food is ‘n’ it ain’t in the cities.