Mark Janes
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Given the excess generating capacity that wind will provide, couldn’t most or all of the existing hydro schemes be re-purposed as pumped storage? They won’t be needed for generation purposes.
I think we’ve always been pretty smart (although not always wise?). The question is, how much time and energy can we devote to developing our thoughts, beyond that needed to feed, warm and defend ourselves? Our ideas, and the technologies that have grown from them, really only started to take off once we exceeded a personal EROEI of 1.0 and found we had spare time on our hands. This led to surplus, and the ability for others to live off the surplus while devoting all their time to mastery of specialist skills and knowledge. Access to abundant energy has, of course, accelerated the process as you suggest.
I read Holmgren’s essay a couple of weeks ago and found it inspiring. For the first time, I felt that an individual could make a difference through their personal behaviour change. The part about only needing 10% of middle class people to act was the killer statement for me.
I wonder whether the concerns over the “inciter of doom” attracting blame are perhaps misplaced? All Holmgren is suggesting is that people proactively begin to live their lives differently, thus introducing the “new model” as per your Buckminster Fuller quote. The collapse of the old model will happily take care of itself. This was the paradigm-shift for me when I read the essay. Initially, when I saw he was suggesting that we proactively collapse the system, I almost gave up reading, assuming this would be another futile and unrealistic exploration of how some kind of “movement” might achieve this. But the prospect of me being part of a significant minority who could effect change through my own actions was much more compelling. I now feel like a “swing voter”!
Our own personal attempts to power down ad re-localise are well under way, but we had been approaching them with more of a “self-preservation” mindset. Holmgren’s article has enabled us to address these actions with renewed vigour.
Thanks for a good critical analysis of the essay, and for re-establishing it at “front of mind”.
