Things Fall Apart: Complexity, Supply Chains, Infrastructure & Collapse

This is a presentation by Dr. David Korowicz from Feasta, given at the Oil Drum/ASPO Conference at Alcatraz, Italy in June 2009.

The author concludes that “The rate of collapse will be dependent upon the the speed of our critical systems- the operational speed of our financial markets, the speed of our supply-chains, and the maintenance rates required for our infrastructure.

In time a collapse will be seen as a series of jumps to lower levels of complexity occurring over decades. This will be set against a background of creeping failures in many of the systems we take for granted. There may be periods of stability or even slight recovery, but the downward trend will be unstoppable.

We are not in the middle of a financial crisis, but at the edge of civilisational one.

What we urgently need to develop now are emergency measures to soften the impact of such a crisis. The omens are not good, but we do have the ability to make better choices rather than worse ones.”

The Oil Drum